Caverns

Apr 13, 2009
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Caverns (placeholder name) is a medium-sized (somewhere between turbine and well...) ctf map featuring 2 spytech-ish bases lodged into desert-ish rocks. There's mostly 2 paths to the intel (left or right), with a large central arena that you can't avoid, but can cross in many ways.
The least exposed path is usually also the longest.
Most of the map features at least two different ground heights.
 
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grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
aa
Mar 4, 2008
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I spy with my little eye, something beginning with"Half-Life textures".

Sorry, i've always wanted to troll a thread with a single comment.

Map looks well made, developed, i also appreciate the exclusion of dev textures in the development process. But it's something i've found useful for playtesting purposes. Helps prevent a lot of back tracking and wasted time for more complex maps.

The map looks like a sniper/scout fest. Gameplay appears undirected, unfocused and inherently broken. But such is the case with any map that fractures a team of up to 16 possible players with more than 2 routes. Open spaces allowing for no solid defencive possibilities furstrate short range classes such as soldier, heavy and pyro, not to mention the engineer and his sentry; as will the apparent lack of cover. But this is only judging by texture scales, it is hard to find scale without players.

Design is very old skool and cliché and so not very suitable for TF2 game mechanics.

Texturing is fine if a little unimaginative, more model inclusion will probably help with this.

Brush work is fine, you're obviously an experienced mapper.

Lighting seems ok if not a little dark in places.

I would like to see this on a gameday.
 
Apr 13, 2009
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Thank you for the reply.

I spy with my little eye, something beginning with"Half-Life textures".

[...]

Brush work is fine, you're obviously an experienced mapper.

lol. I say there might be a correlation between this and that. Maybe. :rolleyes:
This is my second map with the source engine, barring testmaps and other killboxes.

Yeah, I know about the textures, but heh, we'll see how it turns out later. Not my primary concern.

Planning on sumbitting it for next Euro gameday (I wanted it ready for friday but it wasn't quite ready).

About lighting, yeah, maybe I'll need to increase the strength of existing lights. Due to the very nature of the map, there's not a lot of light from sky, of course.

About the scale : well, to give you a rough idea, the average corridor is about as large as three players. A sentry on the intel has the range to cover the whole intel room (but will probably be taken out easily).

Sniper fest ? I doubt about it. Yeah the central area is meant to be used by snipers but it's probably not too hard to slip by, the route is the cover. Also you have the two side roads (which are primarily meant for close quarter classes and spies), which means camping is probably a bad idea.

Scout fest ? This, however, could very well be the case, we'll see about that.
 
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Apr 13, 2009
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Updated to a2 :

Redone the texturing of the rock sections, increased overall lighting, and changed skybox and light_env. Seems to feel much more alive and TF2-ish (at least IMO).
Added some corners where to 'hide' in the side routes.
Added more of a blend of natural and artificial materials in the tunnels.

Known issues :
Still no detail props or displacements, and overall, little brushwork detail either.
Cubemaps are completely off.
Some (small) areas are not properly lit, and have strange shadows.
 

DaFatCat

L3: Member
Apr 19, 2009
129
11
The second screeny reminds me of the ravenholm caves :D

In the third screen, I think you went a bit overboard with all the pillars.
 

grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
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Mar 4, 2008
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I've made several scenes within caverns and the hardest part is getting the lighting to look right. Planting loads of lights everywhere just looks ugly and making the lights too bright leaves horrible white blurs on walls where they are too close. It's fairly straight forward in your basic corridor.. but producing an attractive looking cave is certainly a challenge. So i wouldn't fret too much if you are having trouble.

The only thing i might suggest is increasing your light bounce count in your compile commands. I think the default is 20 bounces.

I'd like to see it look less "quake-y" but such is the case with many mappers coming from the old skool scene. Such as Vile Pickles Mach4 and DJive's current Temple.

Throw in some spy tech for good measure.
 
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Apr 13, 2009
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Update to a3

Following friday's disastrous playtest :)facepalm), I have remade the map from the ground up. I was already going to redo the middle area anyway.

So, from now on, you HAVE to pass through the middle area, though there's plenty of cover around if you are willing to run a little more. Pathing has been simplified overall, resulting in the removal of many no longer needed signs.
The intel rooms have been made smaller, which should allow for a coherent defense, and thus require some form of teamwork to push through.
You can still cap on the old capture point, though you no longer have any reason to do so, you can now cap on your own intel. You should also no longer find yourself in front of the enemy respawn unless you really really want to.

Overall, there's even less detail than there was in the previous version. But everything's still textured (if only roughly).

The cavern theme has been a little dropped along the line, for the sake of having an open sky, and I was planning on finding a better name anyway. Ideally, the theme's supposed to be a blend of spytech and mining, about half/half.
 
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Apr 13, 2009
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Updated to a3b

Minor fixes :
added a couple of decals and signs just to make sure people always have something to fall back to (though the radar could be enough...)
added another way to get to the upper floor that is neither in the intel room nor in the central area.
reworked some of the corridors to test another layout.
 

Synthesizer

L1: Registered
May 21, 2009
5
1
Just played a bit of it at the gameday and my first comment is that it's way too big! You could probably get away with it being half the size or so and still keep the feel you're going for. I got lost quite a few times as well. Perhaps the side corridors could be more direct as well, they seem to meander just for the sake of it.