Microcontest #8: Thinking Inside the Box

The cart is interesting, but it's a bit small, even for a single capture point. I get that you had limited space to work with, but I feel like you might have been able to do more with the space. There's no place to set up a hold once the front line falls, since the final spawn exit isn't in a great spot and Blu can get to the cart so easily. I'd make the inside edge route harder, and push attackers to the outside. I'd also make Red's area around final easier to hold, and give them another spawn exit.

The map was not compiled with LDR, the door is way too loud, and the playable spaces are far too small. We had to skip in the first round since it was deafening people, the lighting was broken, and it was actually going to be impossible to win. Part of the issue is that you pushed the func_respawnroomvisualizers so far forwards; the point itself isn't a great place to hold, so the layout naturally pushes players to try and hold the choke that enemies need to come through to attack. They can't do that though, since the respawnroomvisualizers are in the way, so you can't effectively hold anywhere. I think it's possible to make a functional SD map with this small of a space, but this one doesn't really make the best use of the space. Pull back the respawnroomvisualizers to the spawn doors, stretch the center of the map out to fill the whole length of the box (maybe even shrink the capture hole area?), and throw the capture zone up onto some kind of defendable platform and I think it'll play a lot better. Also, make it symmetrical; the cover between the point and spawns isn't mirrored! Also, it stalemates when a team captures.

Incredibly clever! Seems to play alright as well, though airblast is really powerful. Of the small-player maps, I think this one is stronger since the scale and knockback is still somewhat reasonable. There seems to be a bug where sometimes people won't be small when they change classes in spawn, but the rest of it works. Second is far less interesting to play since the point is just in the center of a big flat space, but it's serviceable for a microcontest entry. I'm really interested to see the rest of Upwards done in this style, and I hope you continue to built it out in your free time!

I quite like this visually, and it's a great use of the space! Final is a bit hectic, but I'm not sure there's much more you could have done with the space. Shifting the whole thing over to shrink the shoreline might have helped with Red's spawn, since that seems to be the weakest part of the map. Red spawns far too close, which makes it really hard to push since Red just appears from everywhere at once. I'm really interested to see if you keep working on this free from the confines of the microcontest, since I think this could be really neat if it was just a little bit bigger!

Several people joked that this was the only overscaled map, but I don't think the relevant gameplay spaces were too big, just that there's a lot of unused space at the edges of the map that made it feel huge. Pull in the level boundaries and it might be fine? The flags have an interesting setup, but they feel really close together. Rounds ended quite quickly, since players could just slip in and grab the flag before people really started dying. Maybe pull them back towards the edges a bit to force teams to kill players before going for the flag is a viable strategy?

I think the idea here is more interesting than the execution. Organizing the three points as three lanes is really neat, it's just a shame that there's so many sightlines and it doesn't flow well. Reversing the central lane to make the map an S-shape might be interesting. I'm not sure how you'd manage Red's spawn in that case. The height across the map felt quite extreme in a lot of places, but attackers still managed to capture a decent amount. I think this was more due to players getting lost, though. In general, navigation was poor; use more signs and make sure your one-way gates used the orange setup gate props; all one-way gates in official maps use those.

Very, very impressive how you fit this into the space! It's hard to cross the point, but it does trade back and forth quite a bit. It's got a bit of an issue with how powerful the sniper deck is, and how hard it is for Spy to be able to do anything. Every attempt at a spy reaching me as a sniper led to me catching them before they reached me, and most of the time that was from crossfire on the point. Fighting enemies after crossing mid was also rough, since reinforcements can sneak up behind you. I'm not sure if that's good or bad, it's just a side effect of the layout so I thought I'd point it out. Some other kind of route around, under, or over the point is probably a good idea, though I have no idea how you'd fit it in. This is one of the most interesting KotH layouts I've seen in years, and I hope you continue to poke at it, even if it's just for a few versions!

Impressive, but very difficult to play. The 4-way symmetry made it hard to navigate, and having the diagonal rounds play as a different mode seemed to cause massive confusion. The lack of a round map doesn't help either; players didn't know how far they were into the game, or what the goal was for the round. It's a nice proof of concept, but I don't think there's much you can do with this layout. Fix the crashing, make it clear what's going on, and give it a proper layout and this could be a really neat April Fools day map.

Unfortunately this map was unpacked, and got skipped. I stepped out of the test to recompile mine that also broke, so the temporary host of the test made the decision. It seems you did upload a fixed version (which you accidentally later deleted?), but didn't ping me on the site or Discord to let me know. I would have happily run the fixed version at the end if I had known, but it seems that message was lost since I wasn't in the tests when you asked about it. As such, this feedback is based on me just looking at the map rather than playing it, and for that I apologize. I'll be honest: this doesn't look very fun. Having the point be so high up, but only able to be reached by repeatedly jumping looks like it'll either never be capped, or the team that caps first will hold it the rest of the time and win. There's only two exits into mid which are both lowground compared to the point, and teams on the point can see through the skybox into the next room over. These combine to make it impossible to flank, and easy to camp out anyone trying to enter mid once one team has control. Players can also enter the other team's spawn room, be sure you add func_respawnroomvisualizers! Spread out the entrances to mid, give players ways to get onto the point other than jumping 11 times in a row (yes, I counted), and make sure to keep players from seeing through walls by using non-skybox textures for walls. This seems to have been your first map, and I've seen far worse first attempts, so well done!

I stepped out of the test to recompile mine that broke, so Idolon was hosting during your map. As such, this feedback is based on me just looking at the map and watching footage rather than playing it, and for that I apologize. It seems like there's no good way past mid from what I watched, but that might not be a bad thing? Some of the players on voice thought that was kind of neat, and made it feel different. It seems like there was some interesting back-and forth going on, but some kind of side route might help even things out if a team has a really good lock on mid. Maybe some one-way, blind drop downs to the enemies' side might help keep the feel of the map, while still adding a little bit of a flank? Though those ramps at the sides of mid do offer some amount of flanking already, so I'm really not sure. I'd have love to play it and get a better feel for what's up with the map, but I didn't so this is about as much insight as I can provide.

Seems to be quite flat, but not in an interesting way. Yes, there is some height—particularly at B—but it's not used well since there's only tiny doorways onto the pipes. The single central spawn for Red is neat, but I'm not sure about the B->C route for attackers, if you could call it that. Actually, not sure about C in general. It kind of just... doesn't have it's own identity. If you've got momentum then B is easy, if not, it's impossible. A falls instantly, B is impossible if Red has set up any defense in advance, and C is boring. Pretty decent use of the space, though!

Absolutely bonkers. Being tiny makes knockback insane, and sentries are a big (pun intended) issue. It took far too many rounds to figure out how to reach mid to try capping for me since the jump pads on second were so hard to see. Please give players a different way up! Speaking of, the jump pads are a nice idea but the sentries completely break it. I almost never recommend nobuild but please nobuild, like, the whole thing. It simultaneously didn't pack some textures, and also managed to pack custom control point icons, so something is messed up with your packing process. Also, there doesn't seem to be any way for non-jumping classes to reach the enemy's final at all? I can't say much about the rest of the layout since it was way too fast and the sentries ruined any attempt at gameplay, sorry!

Red only managed to hold one round, and the whole time it felt like we shouldn't have been able to hold as well as we did. Red got steamrolled every other round. There aren't good places to hold, and it's too easy for attackers to rotate though the defender's spawn. The respawnroomvisualizers for Blu are way too far forwards. There's nowhere to hold A as Red, since all routes for reinforcements come in from the low ground. B isn't much better, you have to forward hold to have any chance at all since there's nowhere else for Red to set up. Add more places for Red to hold at both points, and block Blu from rotating though Red's spawn area and you might have something interesting on your hands, but as it stands it's not great.

Very clever, very fun! The random elements are really great, and help keep things interesting. I'd make the ball glow, and reduce spawn times. I'd also toss the teams to their own sides, rather than the center so that players don't collide as soon as they enter the arena. A few of the rounds feel like they need something else between the goal and the ball at the start, but when the kickoff didn't instantly score those rounds felt fine. Maybe have a little wall a ways in front of the goals that disappears shortly after the ball is first kicked off? Players also kept blocking the obstacles, so you might want to keep players off of them until they've moved into place. Very nice!

We played this on lower player counts before switching servers, so sorry about the lack of feedback. It's very hard to recap mid, and there seems to be some sightline problems. It's also quite hard to get out of mid once you're down in it. It's also hard to push out of final due to all the sightlines, and there's nowhere to set up for a push into final either. In general it felt too open, and a bit flat in places.

I know the joke was that it was just a going to be a tiny Brazil because of the point design, but it actually does feels a lot like a faster Brazil. It's too easy to hold the high ground at mid, and as a result spawncamping was a real problem. Reworking the routing to push people to the outer edge would help a lot, but then it's just Brazil. Actually, all the layout recommendations I can think of just turn it into Brazil. It doesn't have much of it's own identity in the end, but it's still impressive that you fit such an interesting bit of geometry into such a small space!

Wow, a steeltype for any kind of microcontest is impressive, let alone one with limited space requirements. Very well done! The geometry of B feels like it should be A since it's so much more inviting to attack, and A doesn't feel great. Mark your cap zones on the floor! Routing for Red is poor, but mostly manageable for everything but C. C is a nightmare to find, even when you know where it is since there's no signs to help guide you. Rework your signage and label the points on the HUD and everything might work a lot better. Regardless, this played better than most attempts at steeltype I've seen in quite a while, and that's really neat. I hope to see more versions of this going forwards!

I like this a lot! The geometry is fun, and you filled the space well. I like the spawns a lot as well; great work! Final is a bit chokey, and easy to defend. It looks like there's room in the box to expand the B->C transition, which should make that better. I've not got much to say about this one; it's genuinely enjoyable for most of the playtime, and I'm looking forward to seeing if you continue with this one.

Nobody knows where to take the cores at first, since there's no indication where they are or that they are always open. Having zones always open kind of breaks PD, since teams can just camp the drop zone; it's made even worse by having the cap zones on your own side of the map. It turned into a waiting game with teams hanging around their own drop site for stray players who were just going for frags to wander into range. I did like the buildings with the ramps in them; the glass floor seeing under the ramp is a nice big of geometry that was fun to fight around. Having the zones close and alternate between the two spires might be a good starting point for fixing the zone mechanic issues going on without completely renovating the layout. I'd try that out if you're looking at continuing this.

Mine! I'm really happy with this one. I've not touched the mode since 2015, so I've had a lot of time to think about what might work for a more serious take on it than my original moonbase jokemap the mode was made for. My issue back in the day was the spawns; I didn't know how to make them work with the mode so I just gave up and launched players into the map in plr_orbit. Seeing Maid's attempts at the mode with Snowthistle led me think more about possible spawn layouts, and so this was an experiment to see if my ideas work. The big idea was to split spawns into left and right exits to increase walk times to the closest part of the track, and I think it worked. Navigation was easy, and teams set up where I expected them to. I'm curious how well it'll do on a full server.