atelier

[Leminnes]

Introduction

Red, in their infamous haughtiness, has built themselves a whole base all to themselves. It's three stories of complete mockery against Blu and they are not taking it laying down. Blu has decided to infiltrate this headquarters through the Janitor's closet and knows that they will not fail. Except that Red has already seen right through their plan and is set and ready for any explosions or bullets that Blu might have ready for them.

Blu held a press conference today; Quoted from the Blu Heavy: "Red have big giant building, why not us have big giant building? We crush big giant building under fist!"

CP_Atelier

A one stage, A/D map, cp_atelier is a 3 story high building who's eventual theme will be "red headquarters" with all fun spy-tech and the like. It's intended to be a fairly fast paced, but tough map. I've attempted to give Blu and Red an equal advantage in both offense and defense so it shouldn't stalemate, as far as I know.

Anyway, tell me what you think. It's my second ever map so I'm still learning things here and there. But, it should hopefully have far less errors then my first map.

Giving Thanks

So I owe some people some thanks for helping me make this map.

Moose helped an immense amount, thinking of some ideas and helping me with the flow of the map.

Fireslash for motivating me to make the map (after he tore my first map a new one just from screenshots.) I greatly appreciate his unique support. :cool1:

Scaids for testing my map and showing me some odd spots here and there. Also giving me some ideas and some criticism.

Stylus / 0 for doing much the same as Scaids, play testing my map a bit and pointing out some bugs and gameplay issues.

Known Issues

No glaring ones at the moment (next to some minor glitches here and there.)

 

[nik]

FLOATING STAIRS


scurred

 

[red_flame586]

To get your door open after the point is captured:

set the door as start disabled, then on the control point, go to the outputs tab, then OnCap Team1or2, (can't remember which is which) set the door as the target, then set the input as enable

 

[Leminnes]

To get your door open after the point is captured:

set the door as start disabled, then on the control point, go to the outputs tab, then OnCap Team1or2, (can't remember which is which) set the door as the target, then set the input as enable

Thanks very much.

As for the floating stairs. Get over it until I put supports on the side. There is the whole rest of the map to look at.

Edit: Alright, I updated the map a bit (didn't bother changing the version, since this isn't anything major.) The floating stairs are gone and the doors that should open only after the first cap is capped work.

 

[Leminnes]

Alpha 2 is released. Fixed notes:

Fixed the "floating stairs"
Doors that lead to stairs next to blue spawn work properly.
Added health and ammo in convenient places.
Added some platforms here and there.
Moved red spawn a bit farther back from the second CP.
Fixed some skybox and nodraw issues here and there.

At this point it should be entirely playable. It's not optimized and has no clipping, but still playable.

 

[gastrop0d]

Had a run around:

- Spawn rooms seem tiny!
- Spawn room doors slow to open - increase trigger size + door speed
- Mix of blue + red textures everywhere is disorienting. Keep blue for areas of blue dominance (such as around their spawn), and red areas for the opposite (their spawn, basically). Mixing them constantly made me think "is this a good spot for blue or a good spot for red? Who goes where?"
- no signs to help navigation. I found the second point before I found the first!
- glass railings are bad for gameplay. I kept running into them because I couldn't seem them clearly from a distance. You should be able to spot stuff like that from a mile away, especially when playing as scout or soldier. I say replace them with a more conventional railing that's more readable
- the heights are huge, creating these massive stair cases, which I see becoming choke points for the whole level, and fighting up massive stair cases just doesn't seem fun in my mind.
- final point seems extremely cramped, which, coupled with the difficult exit Red has from their spawn, would probably make it impossible to defend. Just seems like the only viable strategy for red is to choke the stairs and spam the hell out of the point from above with demos and soldiers.

Basically, if you're going to have multiple floors sitting on top of each other, They can't be too tall or you'll get the epic stairs. I would try moving the areas out so they're not on top of each other. Something like that.

 

[Leminnes]

Had a run around:
Sic.

The stairs were a... crutch, really. I needed a way to get from the 1st floor to the 3rd as quickly as possible BUT, I think I know some ways I can be a bit more creative with them. I'll see if I can get that in more.

As for the textures, I'll see what I can do there. I was mostly just throwing in different colors to make it easier to differentiate between various platforms and such. I'll see if I can concentrate them.

I'll change the railings in the next or second next alpha and I added Nav signs and made the spawn rooms bigger right before I read your post.

Anyway, I plan on keeping the 3 stories I just need to be more creative with the stairs in order to avoid chokes. Also, there is 2 ways to get upstairs so red would have to cover both exits, if they could.

Thanks for the looksee, I appreciate the input and I'll be sure to mess around with things here and there.

 

[Leminnes]

Well, I might be getting a little ahead of myself (especially releasing 2 versions in essentially one day) but I wanted to get this out here as soon as I could. Fixed a lot of things. I don't plan on changing the screens until I've made some more visually dramatic changes, so just keep in mind that the glass railing is gone and that the giant window in the stairwell is not nearly as boring. Next to that, everything else in the screens is basically the same.

cp_atelier_a3:
Fixed some general bugs with doors and other random things.
Made window in super stairwell far more interesting.
Added some clipping.
Changed railing from glass to actual metal railing.
Added directional arrows to first CP for red team and to second CP for blue team.
Extended red's respawn room to have a second exit.
Blue's respawn room has a sliding door before its exit in order to contain spawn-camping.

 

[Leminnes]

A4 has been released with significant gameplay tweaks (from feedback from various places.) Also fixed some bugs. Next step is getting rid of some of the "invisible walls." Still trying to decide if I should start detailing yet.

cp_atelier_a4:

Made the huge stair-case far more interesting, giving access to the second floor and a quick way to the CP.
Added a long "chute" to give easy access from 3rd floor to 1st. Ends in a shallow puddle so no fall damage.
Made the first CP easier to capture and made the second harder. (They both take 20 sec to cap.)
Added some more clipping.
Added directionals to points A and B.
Made exit to Red spawn a bit more open.
Fixed the sliding door to the red spawns second exit so it doesn't crash the game.

Edit: Added new screens. The overhead one doesn't really do a good job of showing the layout, since it is 3 levels, but I thought I'd include it anyway.

 

[Duki]

Some things i noticed:

-blu spawn seems very tight and maybe you can add another optional way to get out
-blu spawn door opens very slowly
-you can jump on here.

-maybe you could add some options for snipers

and please keep the big stairway. It will be funny as hell.

 

[Leminnes]

Some things i noticed:

-blu spawn seems very tight and maybe you can add another optional way to get out
-blu spawn door opens very slowly
-you can jump on here.
[IMG*]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4084532/atelier.jpg[/IMG]
-maybe you could add some options for snipers

and please keep the big stairway. It will be funny as hell.

I'll see if I can make it bigger. I'm not sure where I can effectively put another exit but I'll think about it. I'll add a place or two for snipers, although I don't want to give them too much of an edge. Also, the stairway is going nowhere. I'm way too proud of it.

 

[Leminnes]

I would like to test this tonight, if anyone is free. I have about 5 people already. Just need a few more to have a big enough sample. If you're free tonight (around 6-8PM EST) let me know either by messaging me on Steam or sending me a PM here.

Thanks much.

 

[Leminnes]

A4B released. Some minor fixes here and there. Changes below.

cp_atelier_a4b:

Fixed redspawn door, can no longer shoot through it.
Added third exit from blue spawn.
Added a sniper-deck of sorts above the room heading to CP A.
Moved a few health and ammo packs.

 

[The Political Gamer]

Fill this in:

Nodraw here:

Center your no entry textures:

 

[HellJumper]

From the look of the third screen shot, I'd say scouts and soldiers would definitely dominate on this map.

 

[Leminnes]

Soldiers definitely do. I'm going to be modifying the second CP quite a bit. Also, thanks TPG. I'll be sure to fix all of those. Fireslash found some during the playtest today as well.

 

[gastrop0d]

Playing it today got me thinking a little more.

It seems like a lot of the map complexity involves the passages and transition areas between the spawns and the CPs. I think this is especially true of the first point.

One thing to keep in mind is that the CP area should always be non-trivial and have a dynamic in itself. Look at any area around a CP in the Valve maps as an example.

I came to this thought while on red at A. The first thing defense does is lock down the point, ie they sit in the CP area, and A is just this kind of box with 2 entrances and a ledge overlooking it.

B basically plays as a box with a very tall group of ledges overlooking it; very similar. I know there's other stuff in B's area, but I don't really see them getting utilised since the ledges are so dominant they decide the battle for B completely.

It's a pain to say, but I think you should approach it by designing the CP areas, then consider how to connect them afterwards.

 

[Leminnes]

Just a bit of a preview of the next version with changes to CP B. The first picture is from hammer, showing the cover I added (didn't want to bother compiling and such again. )

 

[Leminnes]

A5 has been released. After the play through, a lot of things became apparent that needed to be changed and this is the result. CP B is very much still under consideration but I'm leaving it as this until I have a chance to play test it again. I've updated all the screenshots. Here are the major changes:

cp_atelier_a5:

Complete re-haul of CP B.
Any exterior spaces have been enclosed.
Red spawn has been moved to the second floor and placed farther back from CP B.
CP B now takes 15 seconds to cap (down from 20.)
Many places have been removed or redone.
Some bugs have been fixed.

Here's some extra screens I took:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4222914/Atelier_A5/cp_atelier_a50000.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4222914/Atelier_A5/cp_atelier_a50003.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4222914/Atelier_A5/cp_atelier_a50004.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4222914/Atelier_A5/cp_atelier_a50007.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4222914/Atelier_A5/cp_atelier_a50008.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4222914/Atelier_A5/cp_atelier_a50010.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4222914/Atelier_A5/cp_atelier_a50011.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4222914/Atelier_A5/cp_atelier_a50013.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4222914/Atelier_A5/cp_atelier_a50014.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4222914/Atelier_A5/cp_atelier_a50015.jpg

 

[gastrop0d]

Definitely a step in the right direction!