ctf_clash

[ChickenHunter]

this is a map i have made. it is kindof like duelduel3 combined with 2fort. the map itself is small, with one huge room in the middle where all the fighting occurs. in order to get to the other base you must pass throught the room and get to the other side. however there is an alternate route for scouts that takes them above the area of the huge room. its a little bridge that only they can acceses but they are still not safe since the bridge is completely exposed. the intel room has one enterance and is rather easy to defend. to attack it you will need a demoman, a soldier or a spy. right next to the door is a little exposed part that a demoman can shoot through and not expose himself to the sentrys.

UPDATES:
Renamed map to clash
removed useless sniper deck
eliminated spawn sniping
made it tedious to spawn snipe
fixed a few textures
fixed stairs
some gaps between brushes
added trigger_push at the spawns
narrowed the "scout" bridge to add more confrontations above
added ligting props
added cube maps
added overlays
added lighting
added props
added an extra "product placement" room

http://www.fpsbanana.com/maps/46342

NOTE: These pics are a little old and all the light spots you see on the roof now have Props attached to them. New pics up ASAP

P.S. this is my first ever map. I'm still learning my way around SDK

 

[Scotland Tom]

Welcome to TF2Maps! Looks like things are coming along well, especially for your first map!

My first thoughts were on the lights with no sources, but you already mentioned that, so no biggie there.

Secondly, I think it'd be nice to open up that central room where the two sides meet. It looks a little confined right now, not to mention dark. I'd like to see that area as an outdoor area rather than an indoor. Just like in reality, people like to see some sunlight and sky, especially when cooped up indoors. So when you can give them that in a map it makes them feel less like they're trapped in an inescapable bunker and more like they're playing in an open space.

Thirdly, I'd stay away from that "line down the middle" look. It's alright, but personally I'd probably fix that by, again, putting that center area outdoors and making it a neutral ground with neutral textures. This is personal preference of course, but I think it'll help the look of things.

Finally, I realize it's an early map, but you've got 4 sets of full health and ammo packs sitting out in that center room. It may be for testing purposes, but if you want to test gameplay you'll want to vary the sizes of the health and ammo pickups as well as their location. Right now it's too much too often. You should experiment to find the "just enough when you need it" balance.

Overall, looks pretty good as far as first maps go. Keep workin' on it!

 

[ChickenHunter]

Dont worry about those ammo/healths from the playtesting ive seen people only use them when they are A on fire or B gonna die. no un balace has been made with those being there. I would like to make a Skybox but i just dont know how to really. as for lights with no sources already fixed. as i said those pics are a little old. the newer ones im getting will have the lighting fixtures in them. Also the room is alot bigger than it looks and for the down the line i wanted it to look like red and blu said "my side your side stay off" so i thought that would look best with that theory. Thanks for the actually good suggestions (havent have gotten alot of that)

 

[YM]

A big list of things you need to work on :
-That bridge is unbelieveably thin, it doesn't look very realistic, make itthicker and add some supports. Remeber - when you are building brush work, build it as though it were real, you cant have a (arbitary example) solid concrete wall floating in midair because: whats suporting it? so if you have a wall, make it a sensible thickness, an area jutting out of a building, give it some suports... you get the picture
- Add fewer, smaller ammo and health caches. running for 5 seconds to be instantly stocked up on full health and full ammo doesn't make for an enjoyable game
- Add resupply lockers in spawns to balance out new lack of ammo/health in the centre.
- Learn to vary the textures you use, add trims around door ways, windows, doors(you cant use), signs...
- In that last picture it looks like you've got some large brushes missalinged, this will bump up compile time, add to rendering issues and posibly cause leaks, which are bad. Whenever you make anything try to use default power of 2 brush sizes as much as posible, thats 16,32,64,128,256,512.... keep the grid as large as you can afford when making brushes (useing the [ and ] keys to make the grid smaller or bigger respectively)
- I've just seen you've had an FPSbanana link, I cringed. Heres why: As a rule of thumb, you never ever release your first map to the world. Reasoning: unless you have previous experience of doing something similar (like mapping for a Quake game, or UT) then you map sucks, its the sad truth. But its ok, everyone sucks at some point, heck you should have seen the crap I was churning out when I started! So basically what you should do is make a map as your first map and test it with a few people, good friends, but not really any mroe people then that. That will start to give you a little idea of wether it is good or not (depending how much your mates lie to you ) Another good way of getting better at the start is to post screenshots of your first/second/early maps on sites like this for experienced mappers to critique. Take everything they say on board, they know their stuff, and act upon it, make a new map that has all the things they told you to do in and steer clear of all the things they told you not to do.
- When making a map make an idea, then develope the idea. This idea might be "A CTF map in a weapons factory" so then when you put brushes down, texture and place props you are constantly thinking: "would this fit realisticlly into a weapons factory?" if the answer is yes, great, keep going, if it is no then you need to re-evaluate what you are doing, and if necesary seek advice.

This post has gotten too long for me to keep track of. so I'm gunna write a short conclusion - Keep going, listen to all critique you get and think twice about releasing maps to upload sites (Run it through the "Is this actualy good, or am I just proud I managed it" test)

 

[Scotland Tom]

Listen to Youme. He shares good constructive criticism and has already helped me fix a fair number of things in my mapping exploits.

 

[ChickenHunter]

Ok will take note of that
i'll start with the easiest thing i can do... the bridge

about fpsbanana i had to upload it somewhere

 

[ChickenHunter]

Clash has been updated to ctf_clash2

Updates:
added Props
added a way back to the respawn
added Weapons of Mass Destruction room
added break room
added a few lighting spots
added metal in intel room
added water to the sewer
fixed gaps
etc things I've forgotten

Try it out and give me your thoughts. Also the map has been tested and the metal/health locations do not break the map.

 

[YM]

-First Image
Stairs half sunk into a wall? looks strange, they are too thin also. They aren't alligned properly either. You've got a stretched dev texture for the floor which looks bad, really bad. with the exception of the floor this whole place is covered with model textures.. BAD BAD BAD BAD!!!! replace anything with model/... or prop/.... in its name with one that doesnt have prop or model before the slash!!

-Second Image
Again, covered with a model texture! You've got the same repeptative poorly aligned staircase. the floor is terribly aligned as is the brushes at the top of the screen, oh and that doorway is poorly aligned as well, quite off centre and it doesnt look good.


-Third Image
A rather large gap which not only looks ugly but will increase compile time, create unecessery visleaves and work against you whilst optimising


-Fourth Image
Sunk into both the floor AND the wall....... I'm not even going to explain why this is bad, you should be ashamed


-Fith Image
I know when you place the overlay that sign is large, but its really isnt suposed to be that big, have you ever seen a sign like that that large? it should be about a quarter of the size, it just looks silly.

 

[YM]

-First Image
A rather bad gap in the wall. Problems with optimisation, compile time, visleaves.

-Second Image
You've only used one of the models for this door, there are a fair few more models to make this look like it should, for example the handles and the hinges. look through the model list and find the others to stop it looking like floating panels of glass. Also, this map is definatly set indoors, but there is a car in there? wtf


-Third Image
Why just why? this area only causes problems for optimisation and causes unsuspecting players to get caught and die at the hands of a passing enemy player. You should never have this many unrelated overlays near each other, its just stupid. remember when you make an area ask yourself "does this area make sense in the setting of my map" if yes, continue. if no, stop, rethink, and start again.


-Fourth Image
This area is horrible, everything is missaligned and you have to do a terrible combination of crouching an jumping to get though The stairs don't line up with the floor or walls and whats with that wall texture on the ceiling for the first little bit?


-Fith Image
The same area on the other teams bit is even worse, you can actually get through it on the blu side, on the red side you can't get through it properly you have to do even more crouching and jumping its jut terrible, utterly terrible

 

[YM]

-First Image
What even is this? is it a door? is it a horrible mash up of wall textures with a frame? I really cant tell what it is? I think I walked though it at one point. The comment about things making sense in maps......applies for this too.


-Second Image
model texture - BAD!!!!


-Third Image
Things making sense again? its a recurring theme tonight isnt it. what is with this bit? this makes the least sense of all, been and an engineer standing there......... Just why?


-Fourth Image
Terrible shadowing here, either move the billboard forwards so it isnt inside the wall or set the prop so that it doesnt cast shadows ('disable shadows' yes)


-Fith Image
Repeated poorly aligned stairs again, why are you using the same small section for ALL the stairs in the map, seriously its quite boring, variation is the key!

 

[YM]

- Final Image
Have you ever seen a concrete wall this thin? no? didn't think so. the whole ralism thing and things making sense comes into play again, if this was a currugated metal wall then a wall this thin would be fine but a concrete awll this thin would crumble and fall over the instant anyone even came near it.




- Overall
You've got massive problems with the scale of the map, you have a few areas that are deceptively small and a few areas that are deceptively huge, like the middle room, it looks small but takes ages to run across it, its bland, its boring. I really can't express how much effort you need to put into this to make it anywhere near decent. The only thing I can suggest is to start completely over with an empty vmf and work from the ground up, rebuild everything, make sure all your brushes are nicely alligned keeping your grid on 8x8 16x16 or 32x32 where possible, making as many brushes using standard sizes (multiples of 64 for lengths, multiples of 16 for depths and multiples of 128 for heights) I really think that before you release another version of this, or infact another version of any map by you, you go burry your head deep within all the millions of internet tutorials on mapping theory and basic mapping tutorials.

Oh yeah, you may not like any of the things I've said, but you'll thank me later.

 

[poopster101]

Oh yeah, you may not like any of the things I've said, but you'll thank me later.

lol

but seriously
youme is right
you got a good starter going in the sense of it helping you learn to map but still needs all the things he said

 

[R3dRuM]

Are you using some sort of prefab for your stairs? it looks like you are.

 

[poopster101]

i think its just a bad copy paste job

 

[YM]

I couldnt tell if it was a model or a grouped set of brushes, either way its very poorly done. They wouldnt be quite so bad if they were all lining up with everything properly. Make sure you set your grid scale to a sensible size like 8, 16, 32 or 64 - I barely everchange from these four, and I only change to lower when I actually need to go lower. Also, use ctrl+b (I think, I have a terrible memory for shortcuts when I'm not actually using the program) for stap to grid so that anything you've copy/pasted lines up nicely

 

[Brandished]

I'm not sure whats going on with the black shadow under the signs in the center. I'd put a player clip around the signs and make small indent in the wall behind the sign and add a prop static fence with a tools/skybox texture for indented wall section behind the signs. If you do use the tools skybox texture, make sure you open up the map properties and replace "sky_day01_01" with one of the TF2 skyboxes listed here http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Sky_List.

The hole just outside the player spawn is nearly impossible to dodge, lol. I don't know if that was purposeful or not.

You also need more space right in front of your stairs, I'd suggest at least 128 hammer units from the wall to the first step.

 

[ChickenHunter]

thanks for all the tips. ill be sure to fix those stairs -_-' I could never manage to get them correctly alligned. thanks for actually playing it. one reason i can barely advance is because i never get any tips from people so i cant fix problems. im not sure why the red resupply went like that it was perfectly fine before. i really want to work on it i just cant because my parents took away my computer for awhile.
To do list:
stairs
car
resupply locker
billboards
textures
alignments
getting into opponents spawn
that way back to spawn

those were model textures i was using? sorry i didnt know it was listed under wall on the texture list

 

[YM]

one reason i can barely advance is because i never get any tips from people so i cant fix problems.

Poor excuse. You are your own best critique. I spent the entire of last year making terrible maps that no one would want to play and after a while of working on each map I'd realise that it wasn't anywhere near the standards of normal maps so I'd scrap it and start a new map which I'd do better. Every tiem I did this my skill increased tenfold. You just have to keep asking yourself questions like 'would this blend in seamlessly if it were released with TF2' 'why doesn't it blend seamlessly' 'what will look good in this area'
Collect theory and skills from the incredibly huge amounts of tutorials on the internet - seriosuly there are millions. If you rely on public critique to better yourself (especially at this early stage) it will never happen; people just arent prepared to hold somones hand as they take their first steps though mapping. People on the internet aren't your school teachers. I'm going to liken mapping to higher level education now. Whilst at primary and secondary school you are pretty spoonfed stuff, you can just turn up to lessons, sit the exam and get good grades - I know, I did this. But then when you start getting into A levels and then on to Uni you are expected to do the work yourself loads more, sure the teachers will tell you the stuff you need to know but you have to go away, research, practice, better yourself. without doing that yourself you will get to the exams and you will fail. Thats like mapping, the tutorials and forums will tell you the basic information needed but you need to go away and apply that to yourself, practice it and get better at it then submitting a map is like taking the exam, if you've done the necessery work then you will pass with flying colours and everyone in the community will love you (Like shmitz with roswell and science or vilepickle with chaos and castle) But if you don't then you will publish a poor quality map, no one will play it and no one will love you. Using this analogy, you have failed youe exam. Fortunatly though, unlike real exams, you get lots of chances with mapping. now is your time to realise that you need to put in loads more work and burry your head in the textbooks for next years re-sit.

those were model textures i was using? sorry i didnt know it was listed under wall on the texture list

The texture browser shows both model textures and normal textures, the key is to look at its name.
For example:

- props_spytech\rocket002 is a model texture
- nature\rockwall_001 is a normal texture

You have to look before the slash. Most textures come with a model version and a normal version so you should just be able to swap them out easily.

i just cant because my parents took away my computer for awhile.

What did you do? I think I'd murder my parents if they attempted such a feat

 

[ChickenHunter]

i got a c+ in math progress report :001_unsure:
so now i got to fix that

but despite the problems with the map, did you have fun? thats one of my main concerns