excavation

Fireman

L4: Comfortable Member
Mar 21, 2008
150
59
RED and BLU have each set up camp in these recently discovered ruins, both in searching for valuable artifacts. It's going to get bloody as both sides seek to steal the other's knowledge of the ruin's secrets.

My main focus in creating this map was making sure that there wasn't anyone sentry spot that could completely lock down the intel. There's a myriad of routes into each base, and each potential sentry spot has one (or more) weak points. The intel itself is exposed on all sides to enemy efforts. Players have a choice in either advancing across the middle section, straight through enemy fire, or dropping down into the trenches below and hopefully moving forward undetected.

CHANGELOG

a3
- Additional sniper cover added outside each base
- Redistributed health/ammo
- Minor entity changes/fixes
- Detailing - Basic textures added, minor detailing=

a4
- Shortened distances between bases
- Added water to trench
- Additional structure added to middle
- Removed side routes into base
- Removed ledge area
- Added tunnels from trench to base
- Tightened up bases a bit
- Added health and ammo to middle/areas outside each base/tunnels (yay)
- Additional cover added to the middle
- Readjusted cover outside each base
- Minor texture changes
 
Last edited:

Kronixx

L5: Dapper Member
Apr 17, 2009
205
38
it looks quite promising, i like the look of it. Kind of reminds me of mach4, which i liked. Some people didn't like it so much but it's to me kinda like a mach4 in egypt theme.

I have one opinion i'll throw out there though.

ctfexcavationa20000.jpg


this sight line in my opinion is ridiculously long. My first thought was to perhaps raise the center island up a few feet and have the bridges ramp slightly upwards to meet the center island. This would force the losing team to fight from their base to shoot into the center, once the center is taken, they get the height advantage and their snipers can go to town on the other base. Sort of split the whole ground level into 3 mini-areas: blu side, center shrine, and red side. But as it stands now, the areas aren't much defined aside from the giant pit that moats the center structure. With this level plate, snipers can go to town on a very wide area of the map. Aside from that, i like the layout, will love to see your detail work.
 

Fireman

L4: Comfortable Member
Mar 21, 2008
150
59
Yeah, the people I'd sent it to previously also had concerns over snipers, hence the inclusion of that smaller structure between the two in the middle. I don't want to pump out a new version just for that one change, especially since it hasn't been playtested yet.

The only real qualm I have with raising the middle is I want that height to be easily rocket jumpable for soldiers and demos. What I may do if it proves to be a problem is either A) add more cover along those edges/bridge, both to break up sightlines and provide cover advancing/retreating times, or B) lowering the bases, so the middle height will be preserved. Who knows, maybe I'll just end up doing both.
 

Fireman

L4: Comfortable Member
Mar 21, 2008
150
59
Thanks to everyone who played this on gameday earlier, I've got a pretty good idea of what I need to fix now.

Things I noticed just from playing:

- The bases themselves are too open, and there's no clear defendable positions. While this meets my initial goal of keeping engineers from being able to tuck themselves in a corner and hammer away, it also meant the interiors played more like the mid point on warpath than a base defense. These will have their layouts tightened up come next version.

- I was actually pretty satisfied with the way the mid itself played. It served its purpose of blocking sightlines between bases, so there were no companion cube snipers firing from base to base. HOWEVER! Snipers simply set up in the mid itself instead.

- Tying into the last point, the strips outside each base proved to be too large, in my opinion. Most of the fighting seemed to be staged on each of these areas, instead of the mid or trench. The areas outside each base are going to have to have their sizes reduced, and I'm thinking I'm going to move each base forward, so that they are much closer to the trench's edge.

- The upper area was originally intended to be used for scouts and spies to avoid the mid spam. Unfortunately, it also proved to be an excellent sniping spot. This will have to be fixed.

- There was a complaint about a lack of ammo in the map. I originally did this to discourage engie camping out there, but I'd forgotten that hey, other classes need ammo too, especially spies. I'll be adding a few small packs around the map.

- Health is going to have to be reallocated again, players didn't move around the map as I had anticipated, and missed the ones that were there completely.

- Once the intel was out of a base, it seemed to be pretty much gone. The lack of sightlines between the bases meant that a runner was pretty much home free once he'd gotten around the mid structures. Hopefully moving the bases will mean more people will be in the mid to stop this.

- I'm thinking of adding an additional path from the base's interior to the trench, to encourage its use more as a flanking/spy route.

I'll have a better idea of how exactly I'm going to implement these changes once I view today's demo/hear some additional feedback.
 

DJive

Cake or Death?
aa
Dec 20, 2007
1,465
741
^ heh, you hit most everything mentioned =)

was fun though, although once its sized down a bit i worry about Eng's. Though we will have to see.
 

Fireman

L4: Comfortable Member
Mar 21, 2008
150
59
^ heh, you hit most everything mentioned =)

was fun though, although once its sized down a bit i worry about Eng's. Though we will have to see.

Yeah, engies will always be a concern, I want to try and obtain a balance between them being good for the defense to have and being able to lock down the base. Right now that goal's taken a bit of a backseat to having the map just play well, though.
 

Ida

deer
aa
Jan 6, 2008
2,289
1,372
A few suggestions for you:

- Regarding the middle, try making it more inviting for people who want to set up there and be offensive Engies etc. Even more cover would probably work great.
- Running across the middle takes ages. It could use lots of downscaling, including the height down to the lower area. Such a far drop is hardly necessary, I think; it could easily be halved.
- There was a side path that you could access from the middle. You said this was so people could avoid the middle spam - however, there was hardly any middle spam at all, not to mention you had to go to the middle to get there in the first place. It might need more cover from Snipers as you said, but I think you also need to redesign it so that you can access it from each team's base (but not necessarily enabling people to go from base to base) or something like that.

I know I'd enjoy this a lot more if the middle was scaled down. The bases seem good to me.
 

Fireman

L4: Comfortable Member
Mar 21, 2008
150
59
After gameday, I definitely agree with on your comments about the scale. I'm afraid I got a bit carried away while I was blocking it out, leading to the huge spaces you guys experienced.

In addition to working on scaling back the distances between the bases, I'm working on reducing sightlines across the middle by modifying the central pillared structure and adding an additional building over part of the trench.

I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with that side tunnel just yet. I'm not a fan of one way doors. but I'm definitely considering adding base access to it. I might forgo having it as a good entrance to the base, and instead add a very narrow route from the trench to the base's interior, just for you spies and scouts. Of course, the base itself is going to have to be more defenable to compensate. One thing I'm definitely going to do with it is lower the height of the side route, after playtesting I'm pretty certain players don't need that additional advantage.

Next version I'm going to take a suggestion from gameday and try adding some water into the trench. Whether this is going to be everywhere and deep enough to put out flames (think the water at the bottom of the stairs in 2fort) or just in certain spots, I don't know yet, but it'll definitely be there as a bit of pyro relief.

Overall the map as a whole felt way too open to me, even when populated by players. There were no clear routes of attack or places to stage defense. So, my main goal next version will be tightening everything up considerably. Oh, and I might just add some of that ammo and health you all seem to love so much :p

I'm probably not going to have another version out for this gameday, we're running into our finals week here, but hopefully with the weekend I'll have enough spare time to crank out the next alpha.
 

Fireman

L4: Comfortable Member
Mar 21, 2008
150
59
So after today I have some more planned changes.

- Engies being able to get all the way up to the soldier/demo roost was a surprise, so that's going to be redone.

- I think part of the reason it feels so large is that the neutral ground is all one big open area, at least with aerospace/mach these spaces are funneled into specific routes. This area's going to see some additional changes next version.

- I thought I'd gotten the water height right, but apparently not, it's meant to extinguish fires if you crouch at either end of the ditch on both sides.

Overall, I'm still not satisfied with how this one is playing, but it's definitely making progress.

Any thoughts from Gameday folks?
 

Sgt Frag

L14: Epic Member
May 20, 2008
1,443
710
I think you covered the main issue.

After playing again I really like the demo roost.

I think the back tunnel into sewer could go. It's very long and at the very back of the map. The map is already large so it can take alot of time to go through there for not much benefit. You could probably still have another route that ends up on top in the same place, but make it as short as possible.

You should mirror the ramps out of sewers. Right now you come out of sewer to get to ramp ->
go this way up ramp<-
then turn around half way up and go this way->
mirroring them would cut out one length of the stairs to walk.So you come striaght out of sewer and are at the bottom of the ramp already.

Maybe the floor of sewer could be displaced dirt with a rise oin the middle to block views. There are tons of sniper site lines all over the map, breaking some up would be good.

Some of the side rooms/routes like jumping through the hole in the wall could stay, but those side rooms could probably be half the size.

I tried to sticky jump the short wall on the right heading towards intel. It's lower than the roofs but you can't jump over (towards spawn) which seems weird.

I like the scale, maybe a little large, but I think if you simplify the paths a bit it will be OK.