MVM Shipside

UltimentM

L1: Registered
May 4, 2014
30
14
MVM Shipside (Version Dev)
Map made by UltimentM

-Map Blurb-
Shipside is a small seaside town which has some factories producing Mann Co. goods. Nothing much important to over 100 year-old megalomaniacs with a robot army at their disposal. But what if I told you, unknown to the workers, the heart of the factories town contains a small stockpile of Australium (now that'll get their attention). Now desperate for Australium, Gray Mann has assembled his finest robots to destroy the town and steal the goods! Stop them!

This is a map that I'm currently working on, and what will be my first released map. The concept is simple: Set in a small seaside town, it will be similar to Mannhattan, in which there is one gate which certain robots may capture. However, tanks will also spawn in the map, and when the gate is captured, the tank spawns will move up! (hopefully) Planned map is available above.

However, I am not that experienced at map-making and need some people to help. They will be credited towards the map:
-Large Team Fortress styled ships (and other props)
-Map programmer (for MVM)
-Map compiler (my computer takes years to compile large maps)
Help will be appreciated!
 

RubbishyUser

L7: Fancy Member
Feb 17, 2013
414
488
I suspect having a kill pit, and a large one at that, next to robot spawn will be too strong. Just sayin'. Also, that game looks so close to the bomb pit, especially since you want tanks to spawn there, that robots capping it will be extremely unlikely and if they succeed the team will almost certainly lose.

I like the premise, though!
 
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Potato Uno

L1: Registered
Jun 14, 2014
17
9
Like one user mentioned earlier, having the reset pit very near the robot spawns, and a big one at that, makes your map extremely easy to play on. In other words, your map will be mostly difficulty-independent (this is bad thing), since it looks like 1 engineer, 1 phlog pyro, and 4 airblasting maniacs can just reset the bomb over and over, again and again, and beat the mission (regardless if you make it normal or expert) with no real effort.

I do like the idea of having reset pits at the water, but they seem too massive. If you want to keep the pits as-is, a solution to the above problem is to make about half of your bots be resistant to airblast (check the attributes on the bigrock bosses for example - you can't even airblast them 1 pixel off the ground), and to make the long-range classes like soldier, demo and heavy benefit from certain bots. For example, in mannhattan, the liberty launcher soldiers have a "damage causes airblast", which will push players far away from where they are standing if they get hit. Not only does this discourage full-team airblast pyros (since they themselves will get tossed around), but it can also make the pit work against the players; that is, the soldiers may blow a player off of his/her feet and toss them right into the ocean.

Either way, the large pit definitely impacts the challenge curve on the map to the very easy side. You can either reconsider shortening/moving it elsewhere, or toughen up the bots so the players can't BS the mission with just resetting the bomb. Yes, tanks can potentially crush full-fledged airblast pyro teams (since a majority don't even upgrade damage - they get only ammo cap, airblast force, and ammo canteens), especially 60K tanks, but you don't want your map to become a tank-grinding race either where you con the players to be mostly phlog pyros or soldiers/demos (which introduces a problem that's not much better). In either case, make sure to keep class balance in mind. As it currently stands, everyone not a pyro will probably be bored out of their skull playing this map with the airblast freak constantly resetting the bomb near the bot spawn.

From valve maps and custom maps I have seen, the pits are almost-always midway through the map, very far away from any bot spawn (mannhattan being an exception with the grinder next to gate A). Do take note of that when making your map. Some of them don't even have any pits at all, and they are as equally fun as those with pits.

I would like to help you out with your map creation. I have modified and fixed quite a few mvm maps thus far (ranging from annoying map music to missing map props to downright broken, server crash-inducing maps) and my i7 processor can do full thorough map compiles even on massive maps in 10-15 minutes. I also have a pop file integrity checker program I wrote sitting in my TF2 server as well (to assist the Compy - SandyD admin - and I in fixing hundreds of broken pop files we found around the internet) so that can be used to check your pop file(s) for semantic & syntax errors as well (and tell you where the error is located). I also have gotten my hands dirty on bot nav generation on a map (which is also CPU-intensive), so I can give you assistance there as well. I don't have any experience in actually writing a map, so you'll have to find a professional to help you out there. However, in terms of making sure your map & mission works with a TF2 server like you want it to, and to compile your map in a quick manner with a nav file, I will happily lend you a hand there. Feel free to send me a friend request on steam if you would like my assistance.

Either way, good luck on your map! I know making an mvm map is hard - I tried and failed hard many times. However, I just suck at hammer; you know what you're doing.
 
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