Tug-o-war Special Delivery Concept

Uncuepa

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Oct 25, 2014
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d37435143f.png


I'd need someone more versed in gamemode building. Logic systems further than basic binary confuse the shit out of me, so if anyone wants to give it a run I'd love that!
 

ibex

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Sep 1, 2013
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I have a similar setup laying around somewhere. I'll edit this post with the vmf. My setup is pretty messy though because I was trying to do a special voice over setup and a door that opens at the top of the elevator, but you can easily delete that from the I/O.

edit:
Okay so "sd_idea_demo" has the messy door and VO, I included it because it was the final version that hopefully removed any errors. It was also when I didn't know I could play VOs directly from I/O.

"sd_idea_demo_1" has none of the fluff, just the flag/elevator.

Download for vmf/bsp of both of those.

And this is a link to the map that I used it in, which I've been meaning to orphan.
 
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UKCS-Alias

Mann vs Machine... or... Mapper vs Meta?
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Sep 8, 2008
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On that image the spawnrooms are too close to the elevator.

Since it takes a while to capture it you should at least have a larger distance from the elevator than turbine has to its intel. Otherwise it becomes too easy to use the spawn area as safe zone and it will stalemate fast.

I think putting the spawn more to the bottom there is the first thing to do (only by the size of the rectangle). then make that exit the normal exit.
Then to the right give an alternative exit that does end upstairs to where the current rectangle ends.

Further, the #2 australium now is in the middle of an area that might be too sniper friendly and also makes potential spawn camping happen fast. I would try to extend the area further downward and use the back area as connection between the 2 spawns. At the same time also giving an exit of the spawn to the bottom.
This will seperate the areas in a similar way to doomsday which is good to make the regular defense at the elevators have no effect at defending the australium forcing a team to choose. In your current image it seems possible for snipers to target the australium aswel as the elevator.
This also will increase the overal map size which improves gameplay for 24 in general.

The #1 australium is positioned even worse than #2 as it already is in the zone the team has to defend to be able to capture in the first place.

Also, ensure that from the spawn area it is in no way possible to directly aim at any key position for the elevators (idealy it would require 3 seconds walking so they are in a far more unsafe position). This is otherwise a major problem as snipers in doomsday already show a major effect as they can safely shoot cappers from a distance as they arent able to move away to take action.
The middle area with its openness however would at least compensate on that. So locking that off for them might also be counter productive.

Before doing the brushwork i would do some more drawing as i see quite some flaws in the layout currently yet with some more thinking to prevent problems like these i see it becoming a very interesting map. At least more interesting than doomsday
 

YM

LVL100 YM
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Dec 5, 2007
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Just a two-rocket variant of SD?

Pretty simple to do. Relatively straight forward from a design point of view as well since now you're just making your elevator into an A/D elevator, then mirroring it for the other team.

Really, the interesting design element might come from what you do instead of an elevator/rocket.
 

tyler

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Sep 11, 2013
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I don't understand the motivation for the game type or what issues with SD this is meant to address. What does having two rockets do to help make SD generally more enjoyable?

I felt like YM had a better idea with blending PLR and SD to create sd_sabotage. His reasoning was pretty good: in payload, the entire time can push the cart or defend the cart or whatever, but you can't do that with intel. Intel means only one player affects the game at any one time, really; everyone else is DMing. It's certainly true in practice if not in theory.

But in this case, I can't quite grasp what you expect two rockets to do.
 
Oct 6, 2008
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I think there should be 2 intels - forces both teams to attack and defend at the same time - stops one team from defending the elevator alone.
 

killohurtz

Distinction in Applied Carving
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Feb 22, 2014
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I don't understand the motivation for the game type or what issues with SD this is meant to address. What does having two rockets do to help make SD generally more enjoyable?

I felt like YM had a better idea with blending PLR and SD to create sd_sabotage. His reasoning was pretty good: in payload, the entire time can push the cart or defend the cart or whatever, but you can't do that with intel. Intel means only one player affects the game at any one time, really; everyone else is DMing. It's certainly true in practice if not in theory.

But in this case, I can't quite grasp what you expect two rockets to do.

I don't understand why an idea has to be "motivated" or "addressing issues" to be worth trying. If you don't have a good reason to discourage someone's idea, just let them experiment. It might work out better than you think.
 

ibex

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Sep 1, 2013
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When I made mine (sd_wash) the basic idea was one-cap, invade ctf. I used the mvm bomb and had an explosion. The elevator was there to remove instant cap and there also wasn't a rocket.
The map was too small and I couldn't get the voicelines to work correctly, and there were other bad gameplay choices I made.

I had an idea to make the map a sort of Cuban missile base, where both sides have a silo in the ground and you deliver the launch codes to other base and the ground opens and launches the missile to win. No elevator, but you get the visual cues while waiting. I just don't have the motivation to work on it over other projects.
 

tyler

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Sep 11, 2013
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I don't understand why an idea has to be "motivated" or "addressing issues" to be worth trying. If you don't have a good reason to discourage someone's idea, just let them experiment. It might work out better than you think.

This would be a fair objection to my post if, anywhere in it, I discouraged him from pursuing his idea. Maybe I could have worded it better? I agree with you, for the record, and just made a similar post in another topic.

I wanted to open a discussion on SD design, because this topic is labeled "concept" which implies (to me, at least) that it's open for discussion and debate. Or at least feedback, right? And I haven't really seen anyone discuss SD since Doomsday was released; there's only the one official map and a dearth of custom ones. Why are there no SD maps? What doesn't work now that we've had months, years to think it over? Even if two rockets doesn't "fix" a "problem" with SD, why was that the adjustment made to SD? Like, where is this coming from? What informed the decision?

In asking for his motivations, and what he wanted to accomplish, I was hoping to learn more about how the idea got to its present state. I thought we could give better feedback on it (or other ideas) if we started a conversation about the ideas themselves. Perhaps that conversation could lead to more SD variants or something. Or other maps. I don't know. I definitely didn't want to question his motivations to the point where the concept is abandoned.

I brought up Sabotage because it's one of the only SD variants I've played and it's also pretty good. The points I made about it -- teams, etc -- were things YM said during a test of his map, and they struck me as great points. Not just about SD, but also CTF. It even makes me view stock RD in a new light (rather than assigning all value to the intel carrier, teams can progress toward goals through normal play). I thought YM's observations and conclusions held value and wanted to share them. So I did.

I don't care what anyone does with their time. I really don't. I only want people -- literally all of us -- to try to think critically about why we make decisions and what they're meant to achieve. I don't want to discourage people when I ask questions about why they're making a variant game mode; I just want to understand their thought process so I can understand what their aim is, and therefore be better off to help them.

That's why in the thread for my current map, Theory, I've been posting my reasoning behind my choices, what I hope to achieve, and what I'm struggling with. A few people responded very positively to that with some excellent view points and ideas of their own, and I thought that was wonderful. We need more of that in general. Those posts were incredibly helpful to me and helped me to see things I never had before.

It's my feeling that people rarely discuss level design on this site outside of tutorials, and I think here's a great example of why: when I tried to leverage this topic into a discussion, I got ignored and/or misinterpreted. I think that happens a lot, and frankly it probably comes from the age range of the site. But I think we need to stop doing that. We need to move the discussion on game design out of the tutorial threads. We need to be actively questioning why we make choices and how to improve them.

We can and should question our choices, motivations, and design goals without also questioning their validity. Since coming back to TF2M after an absence of several years, I see many people exasperated with the poor level of help and feedback they get on design ideas. Guess what: that's probably because we never talk about design. So let's fucking talk about design.

So, with that, I return to my original question. What led to two rockets, and what will that achieve? With other game modes (and some variants) I have enough information (Valve design posts, in game commentary, etc) to figure it out or make conjectures. With this, I don't, so I want to know. I want to discuss it.
 
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Uncuepa

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Oct 25, 2014
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...What led to two rockets, and what will that achieve? With other game modes (and some variants) I have enough information (Valve design posts, in game commentary, etc) to figure it out or make conjectures. With this, I don't, so I want to know. I want to discuss it.

I find that the issue with doomsday is having one central area being a bloodbath, and a separate area only visited by those willing to focus the objective only to be shut down when rejoining the fights. This spreads people out and also places defensive classes in defensive positions, and vise-versa, and in doing so make the whole match more focused rather than the doomsday situation.

In my mind, it's about creating a different feeling to SD, like how 5cp is to AD, while retaining that classic SD feeling.
 

tyler

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Sep 11, 2013
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I find that the issue with doomsday is having one central area being a bloodbath, and a separate area only visited by those willing to focus the objective only to be shut down when rejoining the fights. This spreads people out and also places defensive classes in defensive positions, and vise-versa, and in doing so make the whole match more focused rather than the doomsday situation.

In my mind, it's about creating a different feeling to SD, like how 5cp is to AD, while retaining that classic SD feeling.

Interesting idea, because to me, creating two rockets would only exacerbate the problems you described. Now you've got two areas that need to be defended and more players around the map doing different things. That's not necessarily bad of course, especially since you're still (?) working on layout. That'd be a concern of mine though.

It's interesting that you decided to split the commonly accepted SD layout sideways, into a Y shape, instead of rotating it and making it like invade CTF but with the SD mechanic instead of a typical 3 caps mechanic. If I was setting out to make a 5cp-esque version of SD, that would've been my first thought I think.
 

YM

LVL100 YM
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Dec 5, 2007
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I think two rockets work in sabotage because the defensive classes have time to see the enemy is coming and set up a defence.

This is only true because the payload is slow.

A scout grabbing the flag runs at a billion mile an hour, literally every other class is slower, so there's no way to get there before he does to set up a defence. You're forced to commit to always defending it or never defending it.

Scouts are what make flag mechanics unfun, they're so fast that you can't ever catch up to them and block them if you're not already in the right place.