freef

ARENA freef A10B

8BitFenix

L1: Registered
Mar 30, 2020
45
11
Since the A1 version of the map played pretty well, I am planning to keep working on it. This update is just general map changes, a lot of the areas have been slightly tweaked since the A1 version was made in 3 hours and that meant I couldn't do a lot of the things I wanted to.

Changelog:
-Added hazard tape around the points
-Point B is now opened up to the sky and has a deathpit
-Middle passageway has been altered to make it simpler
-Point A has been altered slightly
-Moved all the ammo/health around slightly
-Many other changes I don't remember

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8BitFenix

L1: Registered
Mar 30, 2020
45
11
Changelog:
-Blocked off nasty sightline at A
-Renamed points from "Radio Tower" and "Server Room" to "Point A" and "Point B"
-Added small health and ammo at spawn
-Added a small health and a second small ammo at the middle
-Added a small ammo near B (Total small ammo count on the map is now 8 and small health count is now 3)
-Added more trees
-Minor adjustments to deathpit to make it a little more exposed
-Doors connecting point B to the hallway have been widened and made taller
-Added another spectator camera

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8BitFenix

L1: Registered
Mar 30, 2020
45
11
Point A plays well, but B plays like absolute trash. This version aims to fix that issue.

Changelog:

-Added walkway near point b and placed medium healthkit there

-Point size has been increased substantially

-Entire area around point B has been made less cluttered

-Doorways from point B to connector have been remade

-Walkways have been made smaller

-Point B area is now higher up

-Ammo at point A now is behind cover

-Changed the patches to frontline ones

-Removed submarine to reduce filesize

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8BitFenix

L1: Registered
Mar 30, 2020
45
11
It turns out that detailing in alpha is kind of a bad idea, so I removed all the custom assets to lower the filesize from approximately 17mb to 2mb. Also some other small changes.

Changelog:

-Changed the skybox and lighting from sky_coastal_01 in the frontline pack to sky_hydro_01

-Removed all custom assets and models, things have been shifted around slightly because of it. When assets couldn't be removed they were replaced with their vanilla equivalents

-Added walls to the deathpit because seeing the bottom of the skybox wasn't nice

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Twist.vmf

L420: High Member
Jul 29, 2016
439
208
screenshots would be nice.
just to take a look before downloading.
 

14bit

L14: Bit Member
aa
Oct 5, 2014
642
2,066
8BitFenix asked for my thoughts from the test earlier today, so here they are!

I think the biggest issue I have with the map is that both points look and play very similarly. With a rotationally symmetric arena map that's fine and expected, but this one's mirrored so it's a bit of a letdown.

First up, there's not much going on on your way to the points. You can go right or left, and there's little else available. Check out Byre, where you're given a lot of different little routes to reach either point or some of the neutral spaces around the map. Here you start with a binary choice, and you're pretty much locked in unless you rotate though where you spawned or put yourself in danger. Maybe some kind of route into the middle from spawn to allow for some different strategies? Can't just be a straight shot though, or it'll be too easy to rush to the enemy spawn. Not sure.

A plays quite a bit differently from the first version, and I'm not a huge fan anymore. The rush to take the highground rather than the point itself was interesting and fun, but now that you have to double back around the cover it's not as viable or encouraged. Right now you need to put yourself in view of the point to try and attack the highground, so you might as well just go right for the point instead of bothering to double back. I'd look into finding a way to make that viable, while still blocking up that sightline. Maybe something like this?

freef.png


Heading though the center of the map, there's not much going on. It's an empty hallway for the most part, which can be fine sometimes but I'd love to see something else going on to fight on/under/around in some way.

Point B is pretty much just in the middle of a flat room; the cliff never comes into play and there's not much you can do while on the point. Arena lives and dies on having interesting geometry to work with, but there's not much to do here since it's so flat. While I've only seen the first version and this one, I think I preferred the height variation that was going on in the original. There is some variation going on, but it's all at the entrances to the area. Don't be afraid to extend the variation into the spaces where fighting is with different floor heights and high/low ground. Even a little dip in the floor in a room can make a big difference, see the point on Suijin for a good example.

Overall, this version seemed to play better, but wasn't as interesting or fun to me, and I think in the end it's the lack of height variation and available routes in the end.
 
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8BitFenix

L1: Registered
Mar 30, 2020
45
11
This version includes general fixes along with improvements to Point A based on 14bit's feedback, Point B changes will come later. It's A4B instead of A5 because I thought the changes were not major enough to warrant a full version. (screenshots coming tomorrow)

-Added signs to Point A and B

-Point B deathpit is now slightly more exposed

-The areas on the side of the bridge thing at A are now closer to the point and higher up, the sightline blockers have also been moved there. This is so that there are more places to attack the point from

-Added a wall in the hallway to make fights a little more interesting and block off another sightline

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8BitFenix

L1: Registered
Mar 30, 2020
45
11
Since the amount of changes has been getting very large, I have decided to post the non Point B changes first, and release the Point B remake later on

Changelog:

-Added a turbine to the middle of the hallway, this should hopefully help block sightlines and add interesting geometry to fight around

-Increased the hallway size around the turbine to let players move around it, instead of the pickups being in the middle of the hallway, the pickup amount has been doubled and now they are on the sides of the turbine

-Added a skylight above the turbine, as the turbine is quite tall and would not have fit otherwise

-Removed the "blocker" in the middle of the hallway, adjusted the doorway size and position along with the other blockers to cover up sightlines that came about as a result of the removal

-Adjusted the length of some ramps to make them look nicer and not as steep, some ramps have also been moved slightly

-Reopened the area around the hallway near A, returning it to how it was in A1

-The points now have icons on the HUD to show which one is which

-Adjusted the clipping on the metal barrier

-Decreased the height of some doorways

-Decreased the size of the alcove with health under Point A

-Adjusted spectator cameras

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8BitFenix

L1: Registered
Mar 30, 2020
45
11
A6 played like I hoped it would, so I'm keeping those changes, however mid did not play well as it was very cramped, so I'm releasing a small update to it along with general fixes

Changelog:

-Replaced the 2 way arrow in spawn with 2 different arrows that have point letters next to them

-Adjusted some textures and moved some of the map boundaries to better align with the grid

-Removed the doorway straight from point A to mid, because the sightlines from there were too overpowered

-Since the sightlines are gone, the B doorway has been expanded and no longer has "lips" to fix sightlines

-The side generators have been removed and have been replaced with little platforms that you can walk on

-Expanded the size of mid

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8BitFenix

L1: Registered
Mar 30, 2020
45
11
Mid was still too cramped, and the area that was up higher didn't really play the way I wanted it to, so this update hopefully addresses all these problems.

Changelog:

-Removed the turbine in the middle, replaced it with a wall, this completley eliminates every single sightline from A to B, also the high ground area has been changed so that the high area is on the B side of the wall wile the A part is lower

-Made the A side of the building a bit less wide

-Readded the door straight from A to the building because the sightlines are gone

-Adjusted the exits from the underpass at A to be easier to walk around, also adjusted a lot of the geometry there

-Removed all the small ammo that wasn't next to a health kit, added a small ammo near the health kit under A

-Adjusted patches

-Did some basic optimization

-Fixed the issue where the entire A sign was red

-Added a 2nd light in the main building

-Probably a lot of other small tweaks

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8BitFenix

L1: Registered
Mar 30, 2020
45
11
A7 played very well, so I'm releasing this to change some of the things that could be improved, also a small amount of detailing at B because I like rockets. Unless I find any big things that need fixing, this will be the final alpha version before B1.

Changelog:

-Actually repacked the map. Turns out I was uploading the unpacked version before, whoops. However, this means that the map is now under 1mb!

-Added a rocket silo at B, this replaces the cap point model

-Made B slightly less wide because I realized it wasn't a perfect square

-Changed the point names from "Point A" and "Point B" to "Radio Tower" and "Missile Silo"

-The radio tower at A is back! after being absent for a few versions, it returns in all its glory. (The reason I removed it was because it forced me to have a really tall skybox in the map, but turns out I didn't actually need to have such a tall skybox, whoops!)

-Point A is raised slightly, this is to make it more on grid as previously it was just below the grid

-The blockbullets on the metal barrier are now even more accurate, however they still aren't perfect, so expect more changes to them in the future

-Mid is now a bit bigger, the hallway from Mid to B is a bit smaller to compensate.

-The wall separating mid is now twice as thick and a bit less long

-Removed the needless ramps from A to Mid, because they just went down and then straight up, Mid has been made a bit higher so that there still is height variation

-Mid is now fully enclosed, this is because having mid be fully exposed to the sky looked kinda weird

-The area for health and ammo under A no longer has a strange lip above it

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8BitFenix

L1: Registered
Mar 30, 2020
45
11
A quick update to fix bugs and make a slight change in geometry, probably the last Alpha unless some more small issues arise

Changelog:

-Fixed some lights shining onto faraway surfaces due to incorrect settings

-Lowered the brightness of lights and moved a lot of them to stop very bright circles from appearing near them

-The ramps on the path from Spawn to B are now slights closer to spawn

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8BitFenix

L1: Registered
Mar 30, 2020
45
11
This version fixes a bug and makes some minor adjustments to A, hopefully this is the actual final alpha version.

Changelog:

-Fixed an issue where only half of the patch for the healthkit at B appeared

-Replaced the fence things at A with actual fence props, moved them slightly. They are also see through now so that you can see whats on the other side

-Replaced the blocks at A with rocks, returning it to how it was in A1 (but the rock props are different)

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8BitFenix

L1: Registered
Mar 30, 2020
45
11
A8B still didn't cut it, so this version hopes to address a lot of the problems the previous versions had. Almost a month in the making due to my computer breaking, and a lot of changes that went nowhere and had to be removed and redone.

-Map has been widened by 128hu and spawns moved back 256hu

-Added walls to A to block up large sightlines and spice up combat

-Added side areas to A with health and ammunition

-Changed the rocks at A

-B has been completley redone, the sides are now inside buildings, the layout is very different. Hopefully it all flows better than the previous version

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8BitFenix

L1: Registered
Mar 30, 2020
45
11
After almost a year with no updates, its time for one. I've been working on this sporadically throughout the year, originally I planned to release A10 months ago, but that never happened. Basically everything has been changed in at least some way, but the big stuff is that the points have been redone to be bigger and have more entrances, the spawn has been moved back and made bigger to make room for these new entrances, and a lot of things just look nicer in general. I am quite happy with how A is in this version, but I still think B needs more changes. I have some ideas, but I didn't want this release to take over a year to make so I'll put the changes in A11 if B plays poorly.
20210810075400_1.jpg 20210810075406_1.jpg 20210810075407_1.jpg

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8BitFenix

L1: Registered
Mar 30, 2020
45
11
8BitFenix updated freef with a new update entry:

A10A: More Refinement

Still not really happy with the map. There are parts of the layout I don't like but I'm not sure how to tackle that. This update contains a bunch of small changes to the map to try and make the layout work a bit better, along with general tweaks to make it look nicer and be more visually consistent.

  • Shortened the length of spawn
  • Altered lower passage to B from spawn, incline is more spread out to make it less steep, added doorway to make it look better and less empty
  • Altered...

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