BeerBowl

PL BeerBowl b8

NightHawK

L3: Member
Mar 1, 2008
107
74
Created by: NightHawK & Rotatceps
Current Version: Beta 8

BeerBowl is a 4 capture point payload map. (And yes, it has beer and humping cows.)

The map is currently on rotation on the FITH Gaming server (IP: 216.52.148.223:27015)

There is a custom cart: (In Beta 8, this is cut in half)



And custom health kits.
Beer Bottle - Small Health
6 Pack of Beer - Medium Health
Keg - Full Health

Beta 8 Changelog:
-Reverted lighting back to a previous version (b5a)
-Final Capture Point Changes
---Changed the doors to one way doors on the top right flank, BLU now has to jump down to attack bottom right sentry spot.
---Changed the layout of the left flank and added a door, to slightly slow down BLU from that area.
---Added another door to final RED spawn.
-Reduced Maximum Cart Speed by 11%
-Reduced Addtime on CP3 by 30 seconds
-Added nobuild triggers to certain areas.
-Made the friendship bridge near CP2 look cleaner.
-Reduced the yellowness in many of lights around the map.
-Fixed various exploits.

Planned upcoming changes:
-FIgure out a way to do a two cart system with rollforward and rolldown mechanics without having the two cart go inside each other.
-Keep polishing and improving the map.
-Make the forward spawn after CP2 less awkward.

Changelog From Beta 6c to Beta 7c (Super Summarized)
-Added rollback and rollforward mechanic
-Re-designed 2/3 of the map
-Cleaned up all of my old messy brushwork
-New Final Capture Point
-Re-designed 1st Capture Point Area
-Reduced walking distances
-Did multiple pass throughs to get the map as optimized as possible.
-Added an additional forward BLU spawn near the 3rd Capture Point
-Changed the lighting to a sunset (Will try to make it less yellow)
-Added Humping Cows
-Fixed several minor bugs
-Speed Boost is now 3 people on the cart and is significantly slower than the previous speed boost
-I enjoy having this, since it adds a lot of pressure for RED to defend the cart and a nice little change from standard payload maps.
-Added Custom Health Packs
-Beer Bottle = Small Health
-Six Pack of Beer = Medium Health
-Beer Keg = Full Health


Bugs:
-The cart doesn't kill buildings in front of it though having a trigger_hurt on it.
-Minor visual bugs
 
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Acumen

Annoyer
aa
Jun 11, 2009
704
628
i'm totally digging the red-green and blue-green contrast on the first two pics. the rest looks like solid tf2 standard as well.
but the first ones have such a colorful and warm appeal - totally in love with that :D
great work on that composition !
 

PMAvers

L6: Sharp Member
Jan 29, 2008
389
142
Definitely looks cool, at the least.

There's a few visual glitches I noticed. One's where you're approaching the final point. If you're following the track, look up over the buildings (the one with the cow in it) where you should see the bottle, and it'll pop in and out of view depending where you're standing. Same with that elevator/ramp that would be to the left of the bottle.
 

Zanpa

L4: Comfortable Member
Jan 17, 2009
164
43
Awesome cart is definitely awesome !

Edit : okay, I just tried it like 30 seconds.
What the hell happenned with the BLU spawn ? It's so little, so many things in here, plus you have to walk like 10 seconds to get to the doors.
Also, the wheels on the cart don't move. This does not look good.

Your map looks quite good, but imho there are too many props, to many things everywhere, it's like "aaaaah where should I look omg where should I go".

But it does look good, that's sure. :D Looking forward to play it soon !
 
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NightHawK

L3: Member
Mar 1, 2008
107
74
Awesome cart is definitely awesome !

Edit : okay, I just tried it like 30 seconds.
What the hell happenned with the BLU spawn ? It's so little, so many things in here, plus you have to walk like 10 seconds to get to the doors.
Also, the wheels on the cart don't move. This does not look good.

Your map looks quite good, but imho there are too many props, to many things everywhere, it's like "aaaaah where should I look omg where should I go".

But it does look good, that's sure. :D Looking forward to play it soon !

Thanks for the feedback.
 

ricardojvc6

L6: Sharp Member
Jun 8, 2009
268
66
the map is amazing especially the cart hehe :D bomb bottle cart
 

FLOOR_MASTER

L3: Member
Mar 10, 2008
118
140
We just tried b3a with 16v16. I can't really give any detailed feedback at the moment since nobody was familiar with the map and we only played two rounds, but a few minor things:

After BLU captures point 3, I'd suggest closing off the resupply room slightly ahead of the point that RED has access to.

The time added throughout is on the long side. At one point, there was over 15 minutes on the clock. IMO, a team shouldn't have to defend a single point for more than 7.

We'll definitely be trying this again.
 

Axolotl

L1: Registered
Mar 8, 2009
13
1
At times, this map feels extremely cramped and subject to whomever can spam the most; Points C and D come to mind in terms of sheer numbers --- at other times, I see the slightest bit of Gold Rush, sans the supremacy of sentry farms.

Also, while jumping around as a Soldier, I found quite a few number of areas that you've portalled off; it's very disconcerting to rocketjump into an invisible wall. Is there anything that could be done to add a bit of extra height or room to the map as a whole? Playing as a Soldier on offense and defense was a miserable experience, to be impartial.
 

NightHawK

L3: Member
Mar 1, 2008
107
74
At times, this map feels extremely cramped and subject to whomever can spam the most; Points C and D come to mind in terms of sheer numbers --- at other times, I see the slightest bit of Gold Rush, sans the supremacy of sentry farms.

Also, while jumping around as a Soldier, I found quite a few number of areas that you've portalled off; it's very disconcerting to rocketjump into an invisible wall. Is there anything that could be done to add a bit of extra height or room to the map as a whole? Playing as a Soldier on offense and defense was a miserable experience, to be impartial.

I'll see what i can do.

We just tried b3a with 16v16. I can't really give any detailed feedback at the moment since nobody was familiar with the map and we only played two rounds, but a few minor things:

After BLU captures point 3, I'd suggest closing off the resupply room slightly ahead of the point that RED has access to.

The time added throughout is on the long side. At one point, there was over 15 minutes on the clock. IMO, a team shouldn't have to defend a single point for more than 7.

We'll definitely be trying this again.

I'll fix that spawn red door open bug soon.

I can probably get b3b done, probably this week. I wanna see more feedback on bugs or changes i could do.
 
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MangyCarface

Mapper
aa
Feb 26, 2008
1,626
1,325
For what it's worth, this map is awesome.
It could do with a little bit of visual cleanup. This just involves reducing the number of styles at play. A good example is how you have one tunnel made of metal and glass in the side of a hill, surrounded by rock, which is then surrounded by alpine materials, and the end of the map is concrete... it just doesn't flow as well as it might. There are some other small but strange detailing decisions: the water near the last point seems hastily implemented. I understand it's to prevent fall damage, but you need a muddy/rocky bottom to a waterbed, and the props in it seem oddly placed. I'm sure if you work on it with one more pass (and I know how much of a bitch this might seem) you could really tighten the map's focus. For example, turn the metal/glass area into a cave a la behind sawmill's waterfall, and make the heavily concrete area near the end more metal/wood a la the rest of the map.


What makes this map fun is a ton of exploitable geometry and pathways that allow player choice to influence the player's success. Great fun exploring and rather intuitive, F_M and I ran around as a medic/heavy pair and whenever we thought "let's try pushing this way" we found a route existing there to allow us. The only part that suffers is right before B, I believe, where there is a bit of a choke with only a single (albeit wide) path to go through. You could do for an additional path in this area, or to simply move the point closer to A by 256 units or w/e.

BTW this is after ~6ish plays. Keep it up :D
 

flubber

L4: Comfortable Member
Nov 16, 2007
171
35
Really nice work, we tested it @24 yesterday, it was really fun (especially as spy :p), it's in our mapcycle for now. I'll try to put asap a heatmap.
 

NightHawK

L3: Member
Mar 1, 2008
107
74
Thanks guys for the really good feedback.

So, in b3b will come out this week. In b4, i'll make the final capture point area match the rest of the map. Thanks Mangy!
 
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thmyth

L1: Registered
Jul 15, 2009
1
0
Red needs a spawn closer to the first point. Where the cart first starts, there's an invisible box. If you jump on top of the cart and let the cart move forward, you won't move and can just stand up there and it blocks you when you run out of spawn. If you are on top of the front of the cart, you can't move toward the back because the "cab" part will push you back.

Something that might be difficult is to somehow integrate a way to use the bottle a bit better. I was thinking something along the lines of having beer spew out of it.
 

NightHawK

L3: Member
Mar 1, 2008
107
74
Red needs a spawn closer to the first point. Where the cart first starts, there's an invisible box. If you jump on top of the cart and let the cart move forward, you won't move and can just stand up there and it blocks you when you run out of spawn. If you are on top of the front of the cart, you can't move toward the back because the "cab" part will push you back.

Something that might be difficult is to somehow integrate a way to use the bottle a bit better. I was thinking something along the lines of having beer spew out of it.

I am aware of that problem and will be fixed in b3b.
 

Icarus

aa
Sep 10, 2008
2,245
1,210
Running around by my self, I've noticed that there is a nasty amount of visual clutter that doesn't assist the player in any way where to go. I spent most of my time trying to figure out if I was facing the right way or not, especially when trying to navigate the alternate routes. Trying to use more, bigger signs to compensate this problem would just make things worse. You need to simplify some of your areas visually to give better indicators to which directions players should be headed. Valve uses impressionistic detailing, giving the more significant areas more detail and brighter, contrasting lights to attract the players' attention to certain areas.

Furthermore, the final areas were confusing in regards to which roofs were accessible and which were not. There was this one roof in particular that could be reached by simply jumping from an adjacent roof. Raising the inaccessible roofs to a higher level could be a solution to this.

And about your cart: prop_physics can't be animated, so having static wheels on the cart looks very unnatural.


Regardless, it looks very nice. I'll put it up on our servers once you get b3b out :)
 
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NoHeroes

L2: Junior Member
Oct 16, 2008
94
53
This map has been added to our Payload Extreme server, and is becoming a new favorite.