Corrode

PL Corrode RC2

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Jan 20, 2010
1,317
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Would you believe that Corrode has been in development over 5 years? I made the very first sketch of Corrode right before my 21st birthday. After making a handful of fairly terrible maps, I decided it was time to get serious and really make something ambitious.

From the very beginning I intended to make a dilapidated hydro-electric plant that was actually hiding a nuclear plant. You can see, from my very first alpha that it was all essentially there already:

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The first playtest was grueling, but it was successful.

Part of what inspired Corrode was reading Grazr's incredible tutorial on Scale which he had posted just a few months before I started Corrode. (If any of you are getting started mapping, that should be one of the first tutorials you read.) I wanted to make Corrode and emphasize the scale of things as best I could and take advantage of vertical space. Whether or not I was successful is debatable. It honestly would've been much easier to do had I not primarily confined myself to interior spaces, but I am quite happy with it.

One of the biggest turning points when creating the map was meeting Gooba the Viking. Some of you may remember him for making a Artpass contest map that Valve mentioned when they announced the winners. He graciously allowed me to use his textures in my map as well as making some incredible paint-overs of Corrode. These paint-overs served as a great visual inspiration for 2 parts of the map.

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I cannot thank him enough. It really gives Corrode an unique look which I believe is one of its biggest strengths.

Another huge help were my good friends at Playstuff. Corrode was playtested endlessly by them. Not only that, but many Playstuffians helped me in even more impressive ways! Like Equinoxo, for instance, modeled the entire reactor for the last point, light shafts and all! I can say for an absolute fact that it is the most impressive part of Corrode and his hard work was well worth it.

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I also have to thank Seba for modeling the broken metal roof right after CP A as well as the collapsing concrete floor/roof scene outside red's first spawn and inside red's second spawn.

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This is just going to devolve into thanking people, so here we go.

Also need to thank Booj for making the logic for the cart elevator, which I could not figure out for the life of me. It works flawlessly and I love it. In fact, I love it so much I added it onto my other map Crag!

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I absolutely must thank Boylee from Playstuff. Not only has he been a well of encouragement from Day 1, he also detailed a couple rooms in Corrode as well as reworking the displacements.

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^He detailed this room.

Of course, Fubar. If he hadn't prodded me just a few months ago, I would not be here right now. He also made the explosion animation for the final point, which is just amazing and I can't wait for you guys to see it. I don't really have a good picture of the explosion, so you'll just have to play it to see!

There's a few other people that helped in less visible but just as important ways!

Yyler, who is both meticulous and insane. He has been very encouraging at all times, being my own personal Shia LeBouf. He also did a very productive check of the current version of Corrode that fixed a lot of problems with it.

My awesome IRL friend ElectricEidolon who, much like Yyler, is a constant well of encouragement.

Post Script from Playstuff for much the same reasons, also for being a cheeky bastard.

Just, once again, Playstuff in general. I have never met a more welcoming, more European group of friends.

Can't forget TF2Maps. I make no illusions that I've had my rough times with all you buggers, but it has overall been a very positive experience! If it was not for this site and the wealth of knowledge it contained, I would not be making maps today. I love all of you, warts and all.

And, to Valve as well, who I am sure will be looking here to make sure I mention them. :p They gave me great feedback on Corrode back in the day which really helped me discover what exactly I've been doing wrong and how to fix it. It took me significantly too long to actually heed their advice.

They did suggest I make the map shorter, though, which didn't happen... they're probably right, but here we are!

Corrode's track is 50% longer than Badwater. It took 5 years to make. Countless hours. 6 people working on it in some capacity. 111 custom models. Lord knows what else. But here it is!

If you'd like to see more screenshots, scroll to the bottom of the DL page.


Read the rest of this update entry...
 
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Zed

Certified Most Crunk™
aa
Aug 7, 2014
1,241
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Make sure to put it on the workshop too!
 

Flower_Shop_Guy

♪ -- ♫ -- ♪
aa
Mar 10, 2015
196
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Hey I found some issues, just quick looking of your map.
I check the number of edicts and HOLY CRAP "(Total 1729 entities 0 empty, 1717 edicts)", ~1720 edict that's relay alot, servers will be crashing with "Engine error: ED_Alloc: no free edicts" error, and it's gonna be with ~24 players i garantee to you (I imagine what will be with 32 players). My map had around ~1520 edicts and servers are crashed after 15 minutes of playing (32 man server). So you shoud immediately starting cutdown these to ~1450 if you wanna stable game with 32 man server.

And the map is very quiet, add the soundscapes, the more that is "rc".

This texture is not looking good here.
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That rock is in the air.
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This fence is too.
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Sew these displacements.
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Clip theese stairs and walls (you have alot of them).
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As a meticulous perfectionist, I would like to see it more to the center :)
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Anyway, I really like your map. ;)

ps: as again i do apologise for my bad english, like I was said this is not my native language. :jimijam:
 
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Jan 20, 2010
1,317
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Hey I found some issues, just quick looking of your map.
I check the number of edicts and HOLY CRAP "(Total 1729 entities 0 empty, 1717 edicts)", ~1720 edict that's relay alot, servers will be crashing with "Engine error: ED_Alloc: no free edicts" error, and it's gonna be with ~24 players i garantee to you (I imagine what will be with 32 players). My map had around ~1520 edicts and servers are crashed after 15 minutes of playing (32 man server). So you shoud immediately starting cutdown these to ~1450 if you wanna stable game with 32 man server.

Well, tits. Corrode had been crashing servers before and I had no idea why. This is news to me! Thanks so much for telling me, it's been bothering me for so long.

Also, your english is fine. :)
 
Jan 20, 2010
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I'm probably going to do a quick mini-release fixing the server crashing stuff before I fix the other stuff. Depends on how easy it is to fix the server crashing thing.

Thanks for the input so far, guys. :)
 
Jan 20, 2010
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Also... the bomb reached the final point alone, automatically... but I dont going to tell you how I did to make it go without a player to push it... you must find the mistake you made, and if you cant find it, probably i will post what is the bug.

Umm... >_> Could you just tell me, please? That would save me a whole lot of time. :]
 

Pocket

Half a Lambert is better than one.
aa
Nov 14, 2009
4,694
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This texture is not looking good here.
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This is due to there being, for reasons I can only imagine, two identical grayish-blue cinderblock textures; one has a normal map and the other doesn't, and one of them (I forget which) doesn't match the one with a blue stripe at the bottom. The fix is to just swap it out for the other one. Hydro's BLU base has the same problem.


Nitpicking here, but the textures seem poorly aligned. The horizontal cracks don't match where they are on the walls, for one thing, and there's a vertical one running all the way down even though there's no reason the supports would be made of blocks that thin. Also, those squiggly pipes just look goofy to me, like they should only snake once or there should at least be some obstruction justifying why they don't.


The front textures all line up here and possibly on other staircases; remember to vary their alignments so it doesn't look so much like a repeating video game texture.
 
Jan 20, 2010
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Hey guys!

Thanks for the plethora of feedback, it was incredibly useful!

I fixed a bunch of bugs, hopefully all of them. There's only one bug I couldn't figure out, but it shouldn't be too big of a problem. The biggest one, the edicts, should be fixed, but I won't truly know until we try to play the map. I also clipped almost literally everything.

The bigger part of this update is that I opened up a few places on the map that should help with the general flow and navigation of the map.

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Happy gaming everyone!

Read the rest of this update entry...
 

Vel0city

func_fish
aa
Dec 6, 2014
1,947
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Now that's one sexy-ass map you have there.
 

Vel0city

func_fish
aa
Dec 6, 2014
1,947
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Oh Mr. Mystery Biscuits! I do declare! *swoons*
Gotta say though, I see some things for RC2. Purely visual things, but still... things. WALL OF IMAGES INCOMING.

Texture misalignment here. Not very visible, but still visible.
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This prop uses its collision box for the shadows, giving it an unrealistic shadow. Did you compile with the -staticproppolys and -textureshadows options for VRAD? Also, this fence is just a bit weird. It's there just to block a sightline, but it doesn't make a bit of sense in the detailing world. A bunch of rocks would do just as well, or a small building.
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A simple door model here would do wonders to the detailing in this area. It looks really empty and a bit boring. Love the bright blue color though.
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These things shouldn't be illuminated from this side.
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Unnatural lighting on the metal floor in the corner.
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Waterfalls don't float you silly.
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WHAT ARE THOSE GIANT BEAMS IN THE SKYLIGHT...
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That explains it. Skybox power line holder thingie (what's the English word for that thing?) is clipping into the real world. If you move one foot across the floor in that building the whole power line holder thingy zooms across the ceiling windows.
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My god that's the biggest Sniper sightline in the world right now. It goes down the entire hallway. cp_orange_x3 would be so proud (I lied about it being purely cosmetic feedback). Also, all these walls look a little empty. Could use some overlays.
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These white lines indicate something went terribly wrong with packing the green goo material, also rendering the water underneath it, well, un-renderable. It can happen if you extract something out of the bsp file with something like VIDE. I do like the caustics though.
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Please please please please make the lightmaps smaller on this wall please thank you.
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Floaty skybox walls are floaty.
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A lot of this stuff can be covered in nodraw to save on lightmaps and thus bsp file size.
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Same with this wall (right behind where the camera was placed in the previous screenshot)
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Again, all these walls can be covered in nodraw.
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Please extend into the ground. I can't get stuck under it, but it's not very good looking.
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Nodraw all of these walls.
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I never noticed there was water down there until I dove down with a waterproof spectator camera and got under the water. Put some bubble particles down there that float upwards from the turbines, and change the water material to something that isn't cheap (so, cubemapped water). Also, not a lot of people look down when walking out of spawn. That and the fact that it's really dark down there makes this detail area very not noticeable. Some lighting cues or something like that would help.
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This hallway feels rather boring. Also, what's that platform doing there on the top left? There's absolutely nothing there other than that railing and a single lightbulb.
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You can clearly see the end of the out-of-bounds canyon area.
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This skybox ledge is clearly visible from the playable space.
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Then some other stuff: the map seems to be lacking cubemaps. The water is black, metallic things don't shine and the Sniper Rifle scope doesn't reflect anything. Then sounds, and particularly soundscapes, and actually particularly the lack of proper soundscapes. Every area on the map sounds the same, whether I'm outside or inside the big buildings. I'm not supposed to hear a bird chirping when I'm near an exploded chemical thing where I'm about to drop a bomb in right?

I think you'll have a rock solid RC2 if at least these things can get some attention. I can't say anything about map balance though since I haven't played it yet (I know it's a shame) other than that Sniper sightline.
 
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tyler

aa
Sep 11, 2013
5,102
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I just went through RC1 and definitely heard soundscapes. I can't speak for cubemaps because my TF2 never shows me broken ones for some reason.
 

Vel0city

func_fish
aa
Dec 6, 2014
1,947
1,589
I just went through RC1 and definitely heard soundscapes. I can't speak for cubemaps because my TF2 never shows me broken ones for some reason.
I hear them too, just not the right ones at the right time.
 
Jan 20, 2010
1,317
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I hear them too, just not the right ones at the right time.

They're pretty old, so I need to give them the once over.

Thanks for all your feedback! The one in particular that I'm unsure how to fix is the 3dskybox showing through the roof. The skybox brushes are set as 2D skybox so it shouldn't show the 3d skybox at all... It's really baffling for me.

If anyone has any idea about that, I'm all ears.

Also, the map should have cubemaps. Every area has at least one and I built them before release, so I'm not sure why they're not showing for you.

Oh, and that water has to be cheap water because it's at a different level them other water within its visgroup (I'm pretty sure that's the technical reason for that.) With it being in a detail area, I think it's okay with how it looks for now.
 
Jan 20, 2010
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Oh also, few more things. The silo and the metal walkway with unnatural lighting are both props. I used propper to prop them and they've been giving me a headache ever since. I'll just have to keep messing with lighting options for them.

The fence is from the construction pack which VRAD really does not want to read a lights.rad file with them contained in it. I'm really not sure what to do there. I've tried everything I know.

Nodraw all of these walls.

I can't. You can see them from above where the control point is.

That buggy water, I'm not sure what to do about it. However, no one should really be seeing under it so it's not a huge problem.
 

Vel0city

func_fish
aa
Dec 6, 2014
1,947
1,589
Oh also, few more things. The silo and the metal walkway with unnatural lighting are both props. I used propper to prop them and they've been giving me a headache ever since. I'll just have to keep messing with lighting options for them.
Why make them a model? They function just as well as normal brushes which would actually solve the ugly lighting.

That buggy water, I'm not sure what to do about it. However, no one should really be seeing under it so it's not a huge problem.
People should see the green goo though. It's the goo that's bugging out.

Actually, I just realized you made the goo in the reactor a water material. That's not gonna work. Water materials need to have a continuous surface rather than patches of goo. Otherwise you'll have "holes" in the texture and the water shader does not like that at all, thus borking out. I think it's better to remove the goo texture and make a custom water material that has a toxic green color.
 
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Pocket

Half a Lambert is better than one.
aa
Nov 14, 2009
4,694
2,579
The fence is from the construction pack which VRAD really does not want to read a lights.rad file with them contained in it. I'm really not sure what to do there. I've tried everything I know.
Just set it to not cast shadows at all; I'm pretty sure that's what Valve always does for chain-link fences. -textureshadows really only looks good with high-detail lightmaps anyway.

Broken conduit right in this screenshot :p