Waterfront

MVM Waterfront RC3_2

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signalmanx

L1: Registered
Apr 6, 2014
23
71
Waterfront - Fight against hordes of angry robots in the concrete confines of a lakeside power plant!

An entry into the Mappers vs. Machines contest!

Possum Springs - a quaint little mining town with a rich history of coal miners, factory workers, and questionable environmental protection policies. But now, their long-held heritage of polluting the lake water with chemicals is in danger, as the power plant on the edge of town has just gone under new management - and that management just so happens to be waging a war against an army of killer robots.

Welcome to the Waterfront! Fight against hordes of angry robots in the concrete confines of a lakeside power plant!

Watch out, though - brand new Caustic Robots have been thrown into the mix! These walking Geneva Convention violations tote corrosive weaponry, and can inflict long-lasting and ethically questionable damage over time! But if you’d like to remain an outsider in the business of melting to death, you should know that you can wash off all your detrimental status effects by hopping into a pool of Mann Co. coolant water! If you feel a slight burning while submerged, don’t worry about it - that’s just the healing magic of the water taking effect! Probably.

This map was designed to encourage a tug-of-war motion between the players and the bots. The map is small, and this is very intentional - Many different paths throughout the map exist, allowing rapid rotations and pushes between areas. Mobility was a big focus here! You’ll find that upgrading jump height and speed upgrades will allow you to traverse the map with ease, and that while the map is small, it makes good use of the space provided. Areas are designed to aid the players in pushing back robots, something further compounded by rapid bomb-reset timers. There were many times in playtesting where we would get pushed back to the hatch, only to slowly recover the map, pushing back the robots to the front lines again. And this often happened multiple times in one wave! Due to this push-and-pull design, you’ll find that each area of the map is utilized to its fullest, and that waves can span the entire length of the map, and back again!
 

Idolon

they/them
aa
Feb 7, 2008
2,105
6,106
Detailing notes:

Really frustrating lack of symmetry. Ideally everything should just line up, and the little zig-zag on the floor stripes show that the discrepancy is only about 64 units. It might be pretty late in the detailing phase to deal with this, and players won't notice this quite as easily, but the zig-zag looks bad and you can tell the large ramp doesn't line up with the hatch. Worst case scenario, you keep this sort of thing in mind for future maps.

The lighting is pretty flat. It's a consistent and clean look, but its also noticeably fake when the ghost light in the center of the room throws shadows onto the walls in the wrong direction, like with the platform on the left. Here's another case of mystery shadows. Also consider that lighting can let players know where they need to look, and that "dark ceiling, bright floor" is an idea that players understand intuitively, so illuminating the ceiling can be subtly confusing and disorienting.

This scene offers very little to indicate that it isn't a playable space. It has a lot of detailing, the lighting is as bright (if not a bit brighter) than the rest of the room, and the barrier between playable/unplayable is easy to miss. I'm also not sure that a fence of metal posts and netting is fit for the environment either.

Would people really be placing pallets, doors, and electrical equipment in an area that floods frequently?

This is the strangest detail I've ever seen.
 

signalmanx

L1: Registered
Apr 6, 2014
23
71
Detailing notes:

Really frustrating lack of symmetry. Ideally everything should just line up, and the little zig-zag on the floor stripes show that the discrepancy is only about 64 units. It might be pretty late in the detailing phase to deal with this, and players won't notice this quite as easily, but the zig-zag looks bad and you can tell the large ramp doesn't line up with the hatch. Worst case scenario, you keep this sort of thing in mind for future maps.

The lighting is pretty flat. It's a consistent and clean look, but its also noticeably fake when the ghost light in the center of the room throws shadows onto the walls in the wrong direction, like with the platform on the left. Here's another case of mystery shadows. Also consider that lighting can let players know where they need to look, and that "dark ceiling, bright floor" is an idea that players understand intuitively, so illuminating the ceiling can be subtly confusing and disorienting.

This scene offers very little to indicate that it isn't a playable space. It has a lot of detailing, the lighting is as bright (if not a bit brighter) than the rest of the room, and the barrier between playable/unplayable is easy to miss. I'm also not sure that a fence of metal posts and netting is fit for the environment either.

Would people really be placing pallets, doors, and electrical equipment in an area that floods frequently?

This is the strangest detail I've ever seen.

Hey, sorry to see that you didn't seem to enjoy the map. I already know about the lack of symmetry - it's something that became apparent a bit later into development and I cannot fix it without re-doing most of the detailing from scratch. When I was pondering whether or not to do anything about it, multiple people assured me that it was fine, so I'm sorry to see that that isn't the case. I tried to make it as clean as possible with the zig-zags, which is something that I thought would give some style to the area.
 

Crash

func_nerd
aa
Mar 1, 2010
3,315
5,499
I wouldn't take his feedback as not enjoying the map. Just critiquing your detailing.

I agree with him on the lighting and I'd say that's something you could focus on easily for an update if you wanted. Give it some more dynamics instead of being so evenly lit everywhere.

Overall, the map looks pretty good and you presented it really nicely in your screenshots. Good marketing with the little text blurbs.