Pike

evanonline

L420: High Member
Mar 15, 2009
485
273
Pike is a variation on the Gravelpit style of the Control Point gamemode. BLU has direct access to Point A upon spawning, and after taking it, open up points B and C, which they can take in any order they choose to. Both B and C must be taken in order for D, the final point, to be unlocked.

This is my second published map. The initial inspiration for the map came from the idea of "Gravelpit's Point C but with the spire from Badlands", so I ran with that idea and decided to put together something unique.

Changes from B2 to B3:

-HUGE DOOR is less HUGE
-Respawn times toned down slightly
-Added more indication that the roof of C can be jumped to
-Added a health pack near the C/D connection
-Rock walls redone to create more clutter and cut the map's size down
-Fixed various exploits allowing people to go outside the boundaries
-New set of stairs added to the building in D to allow easier access
-New path into D added from the underpass connecting B and D
-Optimization improvements
-New maplist thumbnail/map photos to reflect changes made to stage


Changes from B3 to B3A:

-Added cubemaps to the cave in D
-Fixed uneven doorway in the cave in D
-Fixed a misaligned texture on a rock wall in C
-Optimization improvements
-Removed error-causing area portal in D shack

Changes from B3A to B3B:
-Fixed texturing error on RED's spawn
-Fixed an error where players could jump on top of the vents on the roof of C
-Fixed scaling issues with some signs
-Fixed being able to jump on the lights outside RED's spawn
-Fixed an area portal error in the warehouse
-Adjusted cover in B

Gray Gravel Co. Spytech materials are from http://forums.tf2maps.net/downloads.php?do=file&id=256
 
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Efhan

L2: Junior Member
Jun 13, 2009
82
19
On the point with the payloads, are they moving or stationary?
 

DaFatCat

L3: Member
Apr 19, 2009
129
11
Damn you and your ability to find hats!
 

evanonline

L420: High Member
Mar 15, 2009
485
273
A very confusing problem has come up from testing. For some reason, Cap C cannot be defended when a RED player stands on the point at the same time a BLU player does. What causes this?
 

evanonline

L420: High Member
Mar 15, 2009
485
273
B2 released, but apparently tf_gamerules decided to eat my goal messages again, though. Oh well. Check the main post for what's been changed. I'm gonna look into signing this up for playtesting soon, I think. This version is ready to be played on bigger servers now that spawntimes have been ironed out and a forward spawn's been added.
 

Sgt Frag

L14: Epic Member
May 20, 2008
1,443
710
I think the major issue was size. Not so much overall size imo but the areas are all just very wide open. Either bringing the cliffs in, putting in some facade buildings to do the same. Maybe also to add a few paths and or balconies would help.

There's also somewhere at D where a sentry was built underground.

I don't recal seeing much ammo/health around.

It looks pretty good, nice skybox and all that.
 

evanonline

L420: High Member
Mar 15, 2009
485
273
I'm already working on cutting down the openness by bringing the cliffs in. I have been meaning to re-do the large cliffs that separates B and C, because that's actually just two brushes. If you could see the original version of this, it was ridiculously sloppy and I had no clue how to do displacements. Some of the hardest stuff with this map was fixing up sloppy amateur mistakes I made.

It turns out I've still make quite a few sloppy amateur mistakes though!!! I have absolutely no clue how anyone got under the map, no one was nice enough to tell me. I've been meaning to go back and re-do that wall, but it was going to be a pretty big undertaking to re-do that whole thing so I left it be for a while. Unfortunately that was a pretty bad idea.

There is ammo and health around, but not enough attention is drawn to it. The buildings in B, I've found, aren't accessed as much as I'd like them to be. It's hard for me to really think about that given that I know about where all of it is. I know one thing is for sure, I definitely need to make those buildings more accessible. There's a lot of nice little alcoves and crannies lying around, but no one seems to think of getting to them. I have to draw more attention to certain areas and in the case of the buildings in B, add some new paths. Simply adding a new stairway up to that building would have solved a lot.

And my last and probably biggest amateur mistake is my admittedly sloppy job of optimizing. I had already been aware that it was a problem, but no one made it out to be as big of a deal to me as it ended up being. I've tried working with area portals but they didn't work so I decided to not bother with that until B3. Again, big mistake!

I also heard some suggestions to add a new path to D. D is the only one I feel like I did right here and it's the only thing anyone really had any nice things to say about, but I do have an idea for a new path into D. One other thing people seemed confused about was the bomb cart yard, so I'm probably going to try and add some signs in that clearly tell you or imply "THESE ARE JUST FOR SHOW YOU DON'T HAVE TO PUSH ALL THESE DON'T FREAK OUT". The idea of a big yard of bombs the enemy team was storing seemed cool, but unfortunately it just ended up being a bit confusing.

so tl;dr I think I can save this map and make it good, and if I can't, hey, it was a good experience to make it and I'll just have to try again with a new map if it flops. I'm sorry the playtest left a pretty bad taste in everyone's mouth but it really helped me a lot.
 

Tinker

aa
Oct 30, 2008
672
334
I think you should pursue it. The areas around the caps and the caps themselves I felt were really well designed, the problems lying with the areas BETWEEN the caps. Also the bomb storage is definitely a cool-looking place, keep it in.

And please please please keep the HUGE STOREHOUSE DOOR.
 

evanonline

L420: High Member
Mar 15, 2009
485
273
The HUGE DOOR is still pretty huge, don't get me wrong, just realistically huge.

I've already done some work redoing the canyon walls, but the screwy camera glitch that's plaguing Hammer right now is kinda making it hard to work with displacements
 

Doc

L1: Registered
Jun 8, 2009
5
0
I liked it; it should run a lot better if you work on making those canyons block visibility. Maybe my hardware is getting too old but I was having some big issues with framerate playing this.
 

evanonline

L420: High Member
Mar 15, 2009
485
273
I liked it; it should run a lot better if you work on making those canyons block visibility. Maybe my hardware is getting too old but I was having some big issues with framerate playing this.

It's more my shoddy optimization work than anything else. I know how to use Hints and Skips fine but this map is big enough to necessitate Area Portals, which I honestly have no idea how to use. I mean, I've looked through Badwater, which uses them extensively, and I understand how they function, but I can't get them to work myself. I'm gonna have to figure that out, though, I suppose.

Part of the problem also lies in the skybox roof being rather large, in order to allow parts of the level to be seen everywhere. I've packed it as tight as possible, though.

I have already extensively cut down some unnecessary space and completely redone the large rock wall that separates B and C, but due to the camera problems currently plaguing Hammer making the displacements...displaced has proven to be quite a challenge.
 

Tinker

aa
Oct 30, 2008
672
334
Run through it again today, and there's a lot of useless space. Especially around caps C and D, and from A to B & C it feels like there's just random rocks and shacks everywhere. A map should funnel people to the caps, so cut the corners, make less room. A specific example of this would also be the shack at the back entrance of C - it feels very useless. The whole back entrance does, by the way - I'd say for C, you'd be best suited with two entrances only, or add one via the roof to make it feel less flat.

Point B, the buildings and the cap, feel exactly right.

Point A also needs cuts on its space, maybe you could stack up huge amounts of crates?

Point D plays fine, but it's still.. a big Badlands pike with a shack on it. Like someone remarked, why would I go through all that trouble to capture a rock? Maybe add a radio tower or a rocket to it?
 

Fearlezz

L10: Glamorous Member
May 4, 2008
787
476
Oh right forgot about this map, heh, sorry. I played this on gameday for like two days ago. Was fun. But did you fix the exploit I found?

I managed to build a teleporter exist behind one of the fences. Then building a entrance and using it to get behind the fence. This allowed the to also get under the ground. I could build dispensers and sentrys without the other team ever noticing. I played this some other time after gameday and I did this exploit. Its alot of fun but as a mapper to mapper I feel that I must tell you about this.

The fence I got behind was at cap C I think, not sure though. Just put a func_nobuild behind all fences just to be sure. Or put a playerclip brush over it.

Hope this helps
 

evanonline

L420: High Member
Mar 15, 2009
485
273
Thanks for explaining that to me. No one said anything about it to me but I was oh-so-certainly aware of its existence. I'll fix that.
 
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evanonline

L420: High Member
Mar 15, 2009
485
273
Oh, WOW.

That fence in particular didn't even have a a playerclip over it, do you potentially could have just rocket-jumped right over it. I feel pretty dumb for missing it. :U