pl_Alongside: seeking help and discussion

Hello,

I'm looking for help with my map pl_Alongside. I'm running into some roadblocks in my a5 version which are preventing me from loading it up for another IMP. I've made many changes since the last version, but I'm having trouble reaching the finish line with this version and so I'm looking for another set of eyes to help me through some of the tougher challenges I'm facing.

Challenges:

-Namely, The walktimes from my spawn points to checkpoints are pretty wacky, I'll outline them below, and I'd like some help in trying to remedy this. Namely, in terms of placement, balance, distance, etc., anything really.

-I'm wondering if I should keep D point and the building section right before it. The map is pretty long and I think this length might be adversely affecting playtests, but I just need some feedback on this as well.

Considerations:

-Skybox is still broken from the last time I tore it apart to make changes and isn't even close to being ready, so you'll have to forgive me for just cordoning the whole thing off, including the awful performance and frame drops

-In the same vein as above, my clipping is still out of wack

-I still need to finish up some geometry, pickups, lighting, etc. but before I can move forward with this I'd like to tighten up my spawns and timings.

Included in this Post:
-Diagrammatic maps of the paths in relation with spawn points and checkpoints
-A pdf containing walktimes for each spawn point and a comparison to pl_chilly (Also a 5-point payload map)
-the VMF of pl_Alongside_a5 as it is at time of posting.

thank you so much for any help!

First, thank you for taking the time to comment, I was worried no one was going to answer.

Huwareyou said:

- It looks like you're trying to make a upward style spawn for blu where they keep the spawn when A is capped but spawn at the front of it. From the overview the spawn looks super long with the outside area, maybe make it just the indoor bit

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I am, I'm already thinking that I might move A forward a bit, further from BLU spawn 1, just so that I can make the physical building much smaller than it is.

Huwareyou said:

- Blu and Red both have a lot of spawns, maybe you could build spawns on the inner side of how the map curves to have a spawn that has changing doors (A dynamic spawn) to save entity work.

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Yes, they do. I really wanted to limit the spawns to 3 each, but as I kept creating things just started to necessitate more and more spawns, which has definitely been a contributing factor to the trouble I'm having now. I've also thought about having such a spawn, but I think as it is, it wouldn't be possible. I'd need to quite drastically change the geometry and layout for that kind of spawn to work. It's on my radar though.

Huwareyou said:

- In the image I can see a long weird track from spawn to A to make it longer, I haven't played the map so I don't know how it plays, but it looks a bit weird.

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I'm not sure what you mean?

Huwareyou said:

-Another general point I have is that 4cp maps tend to have the distance between the points not be too long for some checkpoints, especially between B and C in maps like badwater (B is tied for the shortest in the game) and Upward (C is quite short) (Although its not 4cp, Swiftwater has a short checkpoint between B and C that is very short). Since it seems quite big for a 4cp payload map, why not make it a 5cp payload map like pier or swiftwater? By inserting a new checkpoint you can justify the many spawns and help make it easier for blu.
.

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It's actually already a 5-point map (A-E), hence the length. I'm definitely going to be studying Pier and Swiftwater to see what they're doing to make this issue work.

Huwareyou said:

Sorry for the reply spam, but I just thought of another solution: If you really like all the areas and don't want to rework them, maybe you could split the map up into 2 stages, and work on each as a 2/3cp? I don't know much about setting up multi stages but I think it could work well

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This is an interesting idea. There are a few of the areas that I quite like and would like to keep, so I might start looking into converting this into a multistage map.


Thank you for your input!