Drip

qpingu

L1: Registered
Jul 5, 2008
25
9
"Drip" is an attack/defend map like Dustbowl, with a few differences.

1. Rather than stages with setup time between, the Drip will be continuous with six control points grouped into sets of two. There are three stages (two points each), and upon completion of a stage, a unique one-way door will trigger and forward spawn rooms will be used. Basically, this means that Drip will have the gameplay of Dustbowl without the long wait between rounds (and the thrill of jumping off of a dam).

2. The stages are more open-ended than dustbowl, with at least one route to either of the two capture points (no bottlenecks). This does not mean that everything is wide-open, although the tendency as the stages progress is to have narrower and narrower paths.

3. The first point in each stage is recapturable by the defending team. This introduces some greater strategy, as both sides will have to decide whether to attack or defend when the first point is owned by the offensive team.

4. In a non-typical fashion, there is a single payload point on this map. The ability to push the payload cart is controlled by a control point that the enemy team may recapture.



Here is the breakdown of the stages:

- Stage 1 -
Takes place in an alpine environment with a river flowing through the middle. The first point is on a hill, and the second point is on the dam at the end of the river. Upon capturing the second point, the Blu team will be directed to jump off of the dam into water and onto the next stage. The stage is very open with large amounts of water.

- Stage 2 -
The water on the other side of the damn is dirty and the riverbed quickly runs dry. This stage takes place in the canyon with numerous tunnels. Rocks and leftover machinery scatters the area and provides cover on the main, winding, path. The first point is in the middle of a large cave and the second point is located in front of a large factory that occupies the canyon. The second point is must be captured with a payload cart unlocked by the first point. The cart smashes a hole for the attacking team to enter.

- Stage 3 -
Takes place inside of a factory. Nobody is sure of what is built at this factory, especially because there is no machinery here. The corridors are not that wide and lead to the occasional room. The first point is located in the generator room and the second point is in the control room. Upon capturing the very last point, the ground starts the rumble and, provided it can be made, water smashes through the large wall overlooking the point.
 
Last edited:

Fire Tock

L1: Registered
Sep 14, 2008
21
0
map looks awesome. if it gets really poular i'd play on it all the time. but dont ask me for mapping advice or problems you can fix.
 

FreeLance_FoX

L6: Sharp Member
Sep 6, 2008
353
173
I can tell from the screenshots that you're going to have issues with this being a sniper fest. This is mostly because of the open areas (which will also hurt your FPS later on when combined with the amount of water), but also because the open-ended nature of the map and the lack of distinct paths will probably make other classes like Pyro, Heavy, etc useless.

It's cool to have large open areas, but only when they are contained within some kind-of borders that control the amount of spam popular... for instance, Badlands yard around the spire: it's a HUGE area, but the amount of space is balanced by the entrances from each side at different heights to give several different areas of gameplay.

Otherwise, your map seems very unique and the gameplay may turn out to be something totally fresh. Can't wait to see it done. >_0
 

evanonline

L420: High Member
Mar 15, 2009
485
273
If I could make a recommendation, crank up the scale of the very back wall textures that serve as the stage boundaries--they repeat too much and it looks a little ugly. Even simply doing 0.35 x 0.35 over 0.25 x 0.25 can easily fix that.
 

Agentkid

L1: Registered
Feb 27, 2009
45
15
on first pic can you do something about that huge concrete wall (dam i think) in back where the red controlled cp is its kinda of dull
 

Bockagon

L3: Member
Jul 15, 2009
147
72
I would suggest cutting off the line of sight between the two caps, this would probably be the easiest way to eliminate sniper-fests. Perhaps you could make an extension off of that building that would reach across the water. I like the concept though. Dustbowl has always been my favorite map so I can't wait to see how this turns out.
 

qpingu

L1: Registered
Jul 5, 2008
25
9
I can tell from the screenshots that you're going to have issues with this being a sniper fest. This is mostly because of the open areas (which will also hurt your FPS later on when combined with the amount of water), but also because the open-ended nature of the map and the lack of distinct paths will probably make other classes like Pyro, Heavy, etc useless.

Yeah, I completely know. I wanted the design regardless of the sniper whoring, and most of the props I've added are there to break the line of sight for snipers. Not much can be done without scraping the entire map, but I'm going to continue to develop this stage to make the sniper less effective. I want to see how it plays right now, though, because I have a feeling that scouts and spies will be able to flank the snipers with moderate success because of the open-ended nature. The idea is to have diverse stages, and this is definitely the one for the classes whose name starts with 'S'.


If I could make a recommendation, crank up the scale of the very back wall textures that serve as the stage boundaries--they repeat too much and it looks a little ugly. Even simply doing 0.35 x 0.35 over 0.25 x 0.25 can easily fix that.

Noted. The walls are far from done, and I just did a quick job on the big walls you see.


on first pic can you do something about that huge concrete wall (dam i think) in back where the red controlled cp is its kinda of dull

I was thinking about putting a roof over the last control point with glass windows.
 

Terr

Cranky Coder
aa
Jul 31, 2009
1,590
410
In no particular order:
  • There are some places it looks like you can climb out of the water, but you can't. Perhaps smooth those slopes a bit or make some sort of decoration to show places which are/aren't exits from the water.
  • The respawnroomvisualizer should be moved out from the attackers' exit closest to the first point, or a single turret (or multiple!) can be placed cover the only exit from the spawn room.
  • Yeah, it's pretty sniper-friendly.
  • The wooden bridge might benefit from an invisible texture block unless you want people to shoot through it.
  • Should engineers be able to build under-water? It provides them a bit of an advantage since demoman pipes and stickies change their behavior, and because some people (depending on their own settings etc.) will have trouble seeing what's under water.
  • The red spawn seems very campable/snipable. Is this intentional to allow blue to win? RED could use at least one alternative exit door to alleviate player frustration.
  • It is possible to rocket-jump up onto several of the trees. A clipping plane spike on the top might help, although if they land in the direct center anyway...
 
Last edited:

qpingu

L1: Registered
Jul 5, 2008
25
9
In no particular order:
  • There are some places it looks like you can climb out of the water, but you can't. Perhaps smooth those slopes a bit or make some sort of decoration to show places which are/aren't exits from the water.
  • The respawnroomvisualizer should be moved out from the attackers' exit closest to the first point, or a single turret (or multiple!) can be placed cover the only exit from the spawn room.
  • Yeah, it's pretty sniper-friendly.
  • The wooden bridge might benefit from an invisible texture block unless you want people to shoot through it.
  • Should engineers be able to build under-water? It provides them a bit of an advantage since demoman pipes and stickies change their behavior, and because some people (depending on their own settings etc.) will have trouble seeing what's under water.
  • The red spawn seems very campable/snipable. Is this intentional to allow blue to win? RED could use at least one alternative exit door to alleviate player frustration.
  • It is possible to rocket-jump up onto several of the trees. A clipping plane spike on the top might help, although if they land in the direct center anyway...

First of all, thanks for the feedback. It really helps.

I've been trying to smooth out the coast of the river for some time now and I obviously have more work to do. It's hard, because the threshold for being able to climb out of the water isn't really stated anywhere.

I'm allowing engineers to build under water for lack of any better spots for sentry guns. There are only a handful of good spots for defensive engineers and even then, they will be very easy to take down from long range. The water is clear and spotting underwater sentries should be no issue from high places. We'll see if it gets abused.

I've been working on the Red spawn for a while now with limited success. The plan was to use some well placed props to break a sniper's line of sight, but I didn't forsee the fact that the river runs in that direction and can't be blocked. Another concern is that the path from the spawn to A can be covered by snipers standing just outside of their spawn. I think I'm going to move the Red spawn a bit closer to the final control point but deeper into the cliffside, with an alternate path through the mountains provided that A is under control.

I'll see about fixing the trees.
 

littleedge

L1111: Clipping Guru
aa
Mar 2, 2009
986
605
I like how the first stage looks, and you did some nice work on your Displacements. I've got a few things.

http://files.getdropbox.com/u/1490725/cp_drip_a10002.jpg
You can see where each individual water brush is throughout the river.

http://files.getdropbox.com/u/1490725/cp_drip_a10004.jpg
The control points are skinned as blue, even though red owns it. Also, as Zanpa says in the chat as I took that screenshot, there seems to be many full health kits lying around.

Stage one is supposed to be very wide open, but it's TOO wide open.

Once you get your other stages, I can see Engineers griefing by building teleporters to the old stage.

Make it so you can get out of the water, please. It is very hard to with the steep slopes.
 

Owlruler

L12: Fabulous Member
Dec 10, 2008
964
275
Also, snipers, are very effective and the defenders were able to spawncamp for a few minutes quite easily.
 

qpingu

L1: Registered
Jul 5, 2008
25
9
Alpha 2 released. It's a bit rushed and there are some noticeable problems, but nothing major.
 

The_Ulf

L6: Sharp Member
May 26, 2009
399
115
Results from today's playtest seemed to be thus:

1) Snipers. Having an open, Colosseum-esque arena of combat is neat, but that first area is incredibly sniper sight line friendly. Try to cut down on these with some taller rocks/buildings/terrain, particularly where BLU snipers can see to the RED spawn shack. The canyon floor was also a bit too open, but we didn't get to see much sniper abuse there as the defense had little time to catch up to BLU and it's cart rampage.

2) Recapturability of control points on an offense-defense map is problematic, as it forces the BLU team to keep getting distracted by defending their prior conquest. It made for an interesting fight, but one that rarely moved forward.

3) The third control point is also A? I avoided signs for it because I thought I was heading backward to the first area once I respawned below.

4) The cart section always degraded to a steam-roll, as anyone still above on the Dam never made it back to the front of combat and RED had no time to prepare against it. I would advise breaking this off into it's own stage (that can then have it's own HUD).

Surprisingly though, many of us were still having fun - so there's great potential here. :D
 

lana

Currently On: ?????
aa
Sep 28, 2009
3,075
2,778
1) You can shoot through trees easily, making it a playground for snipers and heavies, and leading to a lot of deaths that involve a "What the hell shot me?" moment.

2) Going to the third point from the first two is confusing. The dam would previously kill you, but now doesn't? You need to make it clearer that it's harmless somehow.

3) Very easy to set up sentries behind the barricades at B.

4) The cart is almost impossible to stop.
 

ChickenLover

L2: Junior Member
Jun 28, 2008
95
19
I think The Ulf hit most of my points. The only one I'd like to add is that jumping off the dam is VERY counter-intuitive. I was wandering around up top for a while with a few other people trying to figure out how to get to the other points. Long jumps like that generally mean death. Especially when it is setup so that while points 1 and 2 are still being defended it does mean death. Very confusing.