Biocenter

[Sgt Frag]

Looks pretty cool. Nice concept and some cool architecture.

The underwater point worries me though. That's gonna severly limit a few classes. Pyros will be worthless. Spies will have a hard time sneaking there. Demos will be nerfed heavily.

And I think the stairs/chairs on that outside shot could make some frustrating pathfinding.

 

[MrTwitch]

A shame we couldn't try the map out but at the same time I am happy because I wouldn't have found any of those spawn problems* on my own. I'm taking advantage of this to fix a lot of the other little problems I had with the map as well but I'm going to leave layout and gameplay alone until I get a proper test.

Now that the spawn rooms have been fixed I'm making custom signs to help direct teams a bit better as just from the 30 seconds I did see, people had a bit of trouble navigating out of the gates.

NEXT UPDATE:
- Custom signs/decals!
- Soundscapes!
- Proper clipping!
- Proper spawn rooms!
- Mood lighting!
- Steam!
*There was a player entity resting on the skybox, 5 of the BLU spawns were set to "Start Disabled" for some reason and the only one that did work was touching a brush. Hurray! And just so everyone knows, I had tested the map in the past with no problems, just never with more that four people. :I

And finally a preview of things to come:

 

[MrTwitch]

Two major issues that come to mind immediately is the lack of playerclip brushes. There's a lip into the room for A cap point which is infinitely frustrating to keep getting tripped up on; I would playerclip over that. You also have a lot of stairs (e.g. at B) that aren't playerclipped over, I would go over the whole map and playerclip the whole thing, erring on the side of caution.

I am doing it as I type this.

safety rails outside of B that prevent you from exiting the water in a lot of areas which you can't see from inside the water;

The rails are there purely aesthetically but I would still like to wait for a proper playtest before removing them.

For the GUI, is it possible to have the CP icons all in a row? This is a single stage A/D map, the two tier style makes players think it's a gravelpit style A/D map where more than one CP is open at a time.

The reason they are tiered is because the basement (D) only becomes accessible to both teams once the first three are capped. There is no way what so ever to get down there before the third point so I wanted to separate it from the rest. I also assumed the lock icons on the other CP's would be enough.
I am making custom icons for these so hopefully that will clear things further.

Thanks again for the feedback!

 

[MrTwitch]

The underwater point worries me though. That's gonna severly limit a few classes. Pyros will be worthless. Spies will have a hard time sneaking there. Demos will be nerfed heavily.

I thought about this a lot but the capture area is so small that most classes would be better off using melee or their shotgun. We will see once I get a full playtest in.

And I think the stairs/chairs on that outside shot could make some frustrating pathfinding.

Could you elaborate on this please?

Just finished the custom objective icons for the map. I'm not 100% happy with the snowflake and the rocket but I'm going to leave them alone for now as I think they are pretty straight forward.

edit: Just added a nicer map layout to the OP, should clear up any layout questions. Click here to see it

 

[MrTwitch]

Bump for alpha 4 release.

Aiming for a playtest this weekend!

 

[Sgt Frag]

point_b_pool.jpg is the pic with the stairs.

I don't know, might be alright. Might be good to put a clip ramp across each section of stairs/seats.

Just looks like one of those spots where you back up to get away from someone and you keep tripping up on something.

But it doesn't look as bad as it must have the first time I looked at it.

 

[MrTwitch]

Just looks like one of those spots where you back up to get away from someone and you keep tripping up on something.

But it doesn't look as bad as it must have the first time I looked at it.

I've added playerclip ramps to every staircase and problematic ledge in the map that I could find for this release. I didn't clip the seats yet because I was trying to find a way to do it that wouldn't obstruct players strafing in front of the benches but I am working on it for the next release. So far a heavy can back up over the stairs with no problem. I am not 100% happy with the stairs so I will see about making them less obtrusive in the next iteration.

I also just realized that the models in the aquarium screenshot in the OP have a really short draw distance... I don't know how I missed that.

 

[MrTwitch]

I'm glad I finally got a proper playtest with this and was able to see some of the glaring problems with the map as it seems to be an engineer paradise.

Looking forward to hearing what you guys thought!

 

[Ravidge]

While the custom icons helped a little. All the signs in the map were labeled A, B and so on. And I had no idea what point actually was A on the hud.

That Ice point seemed easy to defend since there was no flanking route for offence.

 

[maggotrain]

I liked this map! I like that there are open areas and overall design is nice. The graphic design is good and the fits the theme.

Someone said something about making it easier to go between areas. It was quite frustrating few times to enter the snowy area where you had to jump? Or do you have to jump over the broken glass?

Waiting for next session!

 

[Uriak]

GameDay feedback : played soldier, pyro, heavy

Quite a maze like map. The design may be simple in itself, but the constant direction changes are quite a distraction at start. And there are those spot with fence doors waiting to be opened... You did quite a good job with sign, especially the multi arrow right at the exit of the red spawn, but that spawn on itself features way too many doors opened at the same time. Kinda kills the team cohesion.

I didn't get much of your water and spring CP. For the winter one, I don't really like it being so near from the red exit. Worse, the main route for blues (the one you'd naturally takes, litterally drives you in front of this exit (red did build a sentry in their spawn area). Not really fun since you can easily find yourself agonizing from bullets before you can reach your own capture point.

As for the last CP, I think the little door could be opened earlier, since there are a serie of rooms to get through before reaching the silo CP. The silo door on itself creates interesting situations. In both case, gives players a clear prooth that they are in front of the door they seek, and that it's only a question of waiting. The silo door was so slow, I doubted for a moment I was looking at the right place.

The gameplay on itself may be interesting, but should I sent biocenter in the current state on my regular server, it will be raped by the angry mob Far too confusing.
Since the capture sequence is linear you may go for some more linear signing and door use.

 

[Terr]

We will see once I get a full playtest in.

It could also be an "sea-lab"-style underwater room with glass holdin the water out. (Would have to use a custom glass material to mimic any ripply water effects.)

 

[MrTwitch]

Thanks for all the good feedback!

While the custom icons helped a little. All the signs in the map were labeled A, B and so on. And I had no idea what point actually was A on the hud.

This was the first thing I fixed after the playtest. I've added the letter icons to all of the point icons and also, placed them in the order they appear to the attacking team as many people had trouble finding them.

That Ice point seemed easy to defend since there was no flanking route for offence.

I will get to this at the end of this post.

I liked this map! I like that there are open areas and overall design is nice. The graphic design is good and the fits the theme.

Thank you.

It was quite frustrating few times to enter the snowy area where you had to jump?

I have added a patch of snow and a player_clip brush to the display case and an alternate route that leads behind the point rather than into the ridiculously easily defended facing room.

Quite a maze like map. The design may be simple in itself, but the constant direction changes are quite a distraction at start. And there are those spot with fence doors waiting to be opened... You did quite a good job with sign, especially the multi arrow right at the exit of the red spawn, but that spawn on itself features way too many doors opened at the same time. Kinda kills the team cohesion.

I've taken all of this into account for the next version with much simpler directions and routes that actually lead to where you would expect them to.

As for the last CP, I think the little door could be opened earlier, since there are a serie of rooms to get through before reaching the silo CP. The silo door on itself creates interesting situations. In both case, gives players a clear prooth that they are in front of the door they seek, and that it's only a question of waiting. The silo door was so slow, I doubted for a moment I was looking at the right place.

I had never tested these doors during a proper playtest and realized with all of the carnage going on in the C room that you couldn't tell that the doors were opening at all. The doors in the next version will be larger, faster and far more obvious with big flashy lights and a siren of sorts.

It could also be an "sea-lab"-style underwater room with glass holdin the water out. (Would have to use a custom glass material to mimic any ripply water effects.)

Which point are you talking about?

It will be at least another week before the next version is released as I have started from scratch based on the four playtests I participated in this week. 75% of the map will remain the same as I am keeping the same basic layout. The reason for the restart is a lot of the points were far too easy to defend and required more access to the attacking team. The a4 version doesn't have any room for more routes and I have also recently discovered this awesome little thing called prop_static... for some reason I was under the impression that every single prop in my map needed to be a prop_dynamic and couldn't figure out why I was getting a VERY FULL!!! warning next to my entity list every compile.

In terms of progress, I have finished recreating the entrance, RED spawnroom(s), Winter Room with 3 access routes, main hallway (which is smaller yet will now offer players a much better view of the levels layout) and most of the outdoor area. C will be nearly identical to the last version except with alternate routes coming in through the sides, rather than all from the front and the basement/rocket CP will only have changes regarding path finding and cover.

I will post screenshots of the new capture rooms and layout over the course of the week and I must say, I am very, berry excited to see what you guys think of the layout changes and how they playout on the next gameday.

 

[Terr]

Which point are you talking about?

The underwater area, as Frag mentioned:

The underwater point worries me though. That's gonna severly limit a few classes. Pyros will be worthless. Spies will have a hard time sneaking there. Demos will be nerfed heavily.

I realize: "Make the underwater point just a water-decorated dry place" may not be the goal, though.

 

[MrTwitch]

The underwater area, as Frag mentioned:

I realize: "Make the underwater point just a water-decorated dry place" may not be the goal, though.

I've rewatched the demos I have a handful of times and the only problem I saw with the underwater point were sentry guns. Even with the water's effect on demo grenades and stickies a demo is still able to take on any other class once in the water due to the small space. I have made it impossible to build a sentry under the water and removed a lot of the hiding spots I noticed people exploiting. It means that once RED breaks through the outside defenses the cap will be open to them, rather than what was happening with BLU raping them on land and at sea.
For pyros I figured the fact that they get to airblast players into a rocket pit would make up for them being forced to use their shotguns on the second point.

For underwater effects, all I would use is pulsing lighting and bubbles as you wouldn't notice much distortion anyways. There is already an aquarium to the left of the point in the map right now but I have moved it to a dark hallway to make it more obvious. Sea cucumbers and starfish will be added promptly as will a very lucky mammal. I will be posting my sketches of the new aquarium point and a handful of other sketches from this map tonight.

 

[MrTwitch]

As promised, here are the sketches:

RED now has entry directly to the point as they were often being pushed back into their spawn or the main hallway before they even got a chance to touch the cap.

Not much will change regarding the outside of the Biocenter other than both defending and attacking teams having much clearer routes to the point. The pool has also been moved so you walk into it rather than having to go around and then down.

Note that these are sketches and definitely not to scale...

 

[Uriak]

Just to react, spies are by far not useless underwater, I have wonderful memories of battling around the submarine in cp_aqua. Speaking of which, you may use metal frame or other things to create cover and flanking possibilities into your tank (if you keep the idea of a tank, of couse). And as you did, keep it no build, sentries are by far the largest threat underwater, and as a easily distinguible feature, it doesn't puzzle engineers much to see it unbuildable.

 

[MrTwitch]

Screenshot update! I'll post the sketches for the other points on Friday.