CP_Tower?!

[timtim]

I had an idea about a map similar to well or warpath (just the ordinary 5 capture points) Using a huge tower and fighting upside down or vice versa most of the time. I am trying to balance the longer time to walk up (in opposition to jumping down) with shorter ways to the first cp and better resupply/spawn positions for the last cp for the team starting on the ground.
What do you think of it?
Would you like to play a map in a huge tower?

 

[Paria]

rather than trying to balance something like that into a linear cp map - why not make it attack defend? blu team starts at the bottom red has to defend some objective at the top, if you start making the bases not match in a linear cp map you will have all sorts of balancing problems. And the simple fact that 1 team is going donwhill and the other uphill already skews alot of alot of class balance majorly -i.e weapons that rely/are enchanced by splash dmg - soldiers/demoman are going to love going downhill rather than up

 

[dookiebot]

I am currently working on a map where battles will take place in a vertical battlefield similar to a tower.

A couple of things to keep in mind IMO:

1. Gamers aren't used to fighting in a vertical space as much. It takes a different mindset for the gamer to put himself in (looking up and down instead of front and back). As I began working on my map I became worried of players developing "fatigue" of playing on a constant inclined plane. I didn't want the fighting to be so alien from the other stock maps so as to receive a backlash against from the gaming community so I made some changes to my map (first 4 capture points or more horizontal with a few vertical twists to acclimate the player to looking up and down with the last two capture points a full on verticle push for the desperate last stand).

2. Vertical spaces take some work out as a mapper as well. Pay attention to sentry ranges to see what their ranges are aiming up or down. Make sure snipers don't have free range, demos can't reign hell from above without impunity ect. Also you may find point A to point B might look close to each other in Hammer but when you load the map up and find yourself running up to it suddenly they are a lot further apart than you realize.


Just my advice and kudos for attempting to try something different. Just remember, in whatever you do, all maps boil down to the same common denominator... gameplay... is it fun?

 

[Paria]

in a 5 point linear cp map - it also boils down to is it fair ?

 

[ChronoTriggerFan]

If remember correctly from the Portal developer commentary, one of the hardest things to get a player to do is to make him look up. This will take some creativity to fix (just to give you a heads up). Another thing, if you do take Paria's advice (not that its bad), you will have to stop the possibility of a couple engineers locking the area down with sentry guns, because height is a significant advantage for sentry guns. For this I may suggest making the area smaller each capture point, so that it is harder to defend, and vice versa, harder to attack. Hope it works out for you.

 

[timtim]

Well I remember that commentary from portal. It's solved with a ladder that falls apart as soon as you use it. My Solution would be a big tower in the 3d skybox you can see as soon as you leave spawn. Impressive graphics always make you look at them. And as soon as the player realizes this is a freaking huge tower i'm going into he will probably start to look up as soon as he entes.

the attack defense idea sounds good as well but since i've just started mapping for TF2 i don't really know how to do that. I guess i need to search for a tutorial for that as i was just planning to copy & paste all the entities from the cp_game_entities.vmf and see if it works. i guess 3x 2 capture points would be nice as it would make the tower even bigger.

 

[MrAlBobo]

I really liked this idea and figured id give it a shot, mainly to give myself a break from my other map...which is really annoying me right now <_<
thus far ive nearly got the structure up to the 1st point done
though...im not doing it so much up and down, im going to be having floors with a cp on each floor

 

[Spamdini]

ive already used the name cp_tower for a map i made a while back just to let u know.

 

[timtim]

well i started a couple of days ago and was thinking that the name might already been taken and that just tower wouldn't be tf2ish enough (like dust-bowl, Gravel-pit...) so i decided to name it doomtower. i couldn't find any maps with that name for TF2.

 

[MrAlBobo]

keep me up on your progress, I want to see just how similar our tower maps end up; I tend to do more unusual things, like 4th cap is on a floating platform (credit to raem)
I intend to call my map obelisk