PD Cursed Cove rc3

[Bakscratch]

Cursed Cove - Cursed Cove is a Player Destruction map

WE HAVE A SERVER! "connect 192.186.132.51:27015" or search "Cursed Cove" on server Browser!
To explore the map by yourself, Open the console and type "map workshop/1498584149" (Must be subbed to work) or Open the console and type "map pd_cursed_cove_rc2"

Overview:

Set on the shores of a town taken over in the past by pirates, Red and Blu must help out Davy Jones by collecting souls for him, Jones is running out of souls to pay for his Locker so the players must help him out as much as they can. Enjoy a unique TF2 map set in a new theme that has not been seen before, from the shores of the town to Davy Jones' Locker itself, there is plenty to see and explore!

Objective:

PD Cursed Cove is a Player Destruction map where by player have to capture the enemies souls by killing them, Then Jump aboard Davy Jones Ship and deliver them to him in the Locker…

Thanks to:

Bakscratch - Lead
Jusa - Map layout, detailing and optimisation
Boomsta - Art and Models
Hex - Animations and Promo
EmNudge - Voice and Audio
Exactol - Particles
Stiffy360 - Art, Models and optimisation
Yacan1 - Detailing and concepts
Magnus - Music
Py-bun - Additional materials

Extra Bits:

This map has been a labour of love since early April 2018, Myself and the team has worked so hard to make the map, we are really happy with how it turned out and tried to do something different from the rest of the community I hope you all enjoy the map as much as we did making it. There are some thing we had to cut due to time and not easily being able to do it.

If you have any question feel free to leave them below or find me on Twitter @Bakscratch.
Also check out the team’s other work.
Hex - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGVRMOKQMNYN2ky1r2sgDMw
EmNudge - https://emnudge.com/
Boomsta - https://steamcommunity.com/id/heavywepon/myworkshopfiles/
Magnus - https://soundcloud.com/user-999584414
Py-bun - https://steamcommunity.com/id/pybun/myworkshopfiles/
Yacan1 - https://www.artstation.com/yacan1
Exactol - https://steamcommunity.com/id/exactol/myworkshopfiles/
Jusa - https://steamcommunity.com/id/jusa-/myworkshopfiles/
Stiffy360 - https://imgur.com/a/g8n4Z

Disclaimer to people whom this may concern, There are members on the team who produced some fantastic work but made stupid decisions, I do not agree with their actions and it does not reflect on the map. I hope me writing this helps you understand.
Thanks, Bakscratch.​

 

[Bakscratch]

Chapter 1.


Player Destruction Cursed Cove started Development late March early April as a conversation between myself and Jusa wanting to do something for Halloween.

We threw around some ideas like a dracula themed map or a Frankenstein map but wanted to do something a lot different from the rest of the recent halloween maps.


We both agreed on a pirated themed map with Davy Jones as the main character, We began spitballing ideas on what the “gimmick” would be. We both liked the idea of having players fight out in Davy Jones’ Locker, but trying to work out HOW we would, then we realised it was right infront of our eyes the Flying Dutchman which would send people to the locker where they would have to deposit their souls.


Then began the map it’s self, I wanted it to be very cooperative so I set up the manifest system (Good tut https://tf2maps.net/threads/mapping-collaboration-or-using-manifest-and-version-control.24787/)

We started with some rough sketches:

(bakscratch)

(Jusa)

This helped us get an understanding on where would like to go with the layout and how to theme it, Next we began building the map going back and forth with ideas. This was one of the quickest and funnest ways to map, we were able to find problems almost instantly. This meant the map was in a really good place by the time came around to testing.

Here is a video of the back and forth we went through.

As you can see we went back and forth quite a lot, ironing out all the problems as we went.


Me being me wanted to keep the overall map idea a secret as by the time we were testing it was end of April start or May so it was super early for a halloween map, Plus I wanted to keep it a surprise for people which I think is much more fun!

After a few test me and Jusa felt comfortable the map is playing how we wanted it had a nice balance to it.
Next came the detailing stage, we spent a good day find reference images and watching some movies find a good mix of what we all liked.

Here are a few that we all really liked:

Yacan1 Did some amazing concepts too which helped us get as better understanding too.

This one is by another team member

This concludes part 1.

I will go into details about the models and the voice lines next.

 

[Asd417]

We might quickly run out of ideas for halloween maps

 

[ics]

Clearly a lot of work has gone into this map, planning and designing it. I dont generally like PD gamemode itself, because it turns to "hold this area forever and then dive in" thing but this one has a movable object, its not just 1 place to hold that goes around that issue like for example Pit of Dead has.

If valve picks maps from the community this year, this is a very strong candidate. Good luck!

 

[YOYOYO]

This map is flipping gorgeous! Like, how did you do this?

But I did still find a little detail that I saw on both sides. Maybe you missed it? (look at the wall of the white house)

 

[Bakscratch]

RC2 Change Log:-
Changed location of locker exit
Changed buff from entering and exiting the locker
Changed poster
Changed so nobuild in the locker
Fixed being suck on stairs when being pushed out of locker
Fixed hole in ship
Added smoke

(Thanks DrSquishy for testing)

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[Prosciutto]

I feel like this map has a 75% chance of getting in the game

 

[Bakscratch]

Chapter 2.


EmNudge came on around half way through the project to help with bring Davy Jones to life with his voice work, and also some audio stuff too.


This was the 1st piece of work he recorded for me.

We had a really good starting base which inspired us all to make the map even better, It was a perfect match for what I had imagined and what Jones looked like.


Once on the team EmNudge and I worked on voice line for the game mode, Using Helltower as an example for the tone and the type of style that fits with tf2. We had a pretty good selection of early lines for certain instances.

Here is a spreadsheet of what we worked out.

We soon realised that we had to cut a lot of these down and streamline it which meant ditching a bunch of cool ideas we had, but we didn’t want to overload the player with voice line after voice line, so we went it and made it much more manageable and clear for the players.

Here is what we got it down to.

As you can see we cleaned it up by quite a bunch removing all the extra stuff, and keeping it to the point. We still gave him character within these lines though and a few little easter eggs to those who listen carefully. We had come up with an idea of using certain phrases as an indicator to something happening, so “All aboard” would be used to signify that the ship is coming, “Ay” to show the zone is closing and “Avast” to tell the player they are being removed from the locker. This little touch we hope will help players understand what is going on within a few rounds. If people in the future do the same with custom voice line we recommend doing the same as valve also does it at stages.

Time came to recording the lines, EmNudge tested out with some lines to test his effects he had set up give them a listen.

I was happy but EmNudge wanted to adjust some things to make it a bit more like we imagined, We both were then happy with how it sounded and EmNudge went on to record the voice lines fully. We left this quite late in the process as we wanted to make sure everything was in place so we aren't recording line again and again (I felt bad for making his voice do it after a while).

Here are all the final lines:

Hearing the lines finally in the map was a really happy experience as it brought everything together after a long development process.


This section will be about more technical stuff.


So most of the problems getting them to work in the map and sound good was the classic “Cuz Source” issues. Source as a tendency to make sound files a lot quite then then really are which mean that you have to be peaking the audio a lot which means they don’t sound as good but with the effects on it covers a lot of that problem.


Getting them set up to work in game was the next step I 1st used ambient generics to play the lines but I soon realised that is the wrong way of going about it. Which is when I remembered about the wonder of _level_sounds.

These make the entire process of adding new lines and playing them correct a hole bunch easier, We used the Valve ones as reference before making our own custom set up. As PD has basically 0 announcer lines other then victory and you failed this meant we had to write a full new list of level sounds.

This is what we ended up with.

Doing it this way also meant that I could work on the map letting EmNudge play around with audio levels and getting them set up correctly on his own.


Getting them to play is sorta the easy part as all you have to do is target the tf_gamerules PlayVO for both teams and picking the sound like.

This also let us do team specific lines.


Once all that is in place and all the files are packed we were set.

If anyone has any questions about getting lines set up or working out what works best feel free to contact me. If you want to know more about the audio side feel free to contact EmNudge i’m sure he is silly to help you out someway.

I hope all this is somewhat interesting or helpful.

 

[ics]

Interesting stuff! Too bad the workshop itself is broken so if map is ran from "map workshop/id", the sounds wont play at all. A lot of people will miss these completely unless the map is ran separately on a server.

 

[G.bo]

I swear, as soon as I get my laptop fixed, I'm playing this map and soaking in all the amazing detail work and seeing how this plays. This is a fantastic piece of work, and if Valve happens to release another pack of community Scream Fortress maps this year, I hope this is a part of it!

 

[MegapiemanPHD]

Had an idea for a map like this a little while ago but hadn't figured out how to do it. Glad to see someone else had the idea and was able to make something awesome. Good work so far

 

[Bakscratch]

-Added Skeleton pirates
-fixed various issues
-adjusted buffs when leaving locker

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[Penguin]

jaw dropping

 

[ics]

I'm not sure if the skeleton pirates work properly. I can see them when i create server for my pc, but on actual gameserver, they appear just as normal skeletons without the skins. And even upon death, they turn also normal skeleton gibs on my pc. I assume you just replace the skin by packing stuff into the bsp?

 

[nᵗʰSonata]

We played the map on the TF2Maps.net server today, and it caused everyone's games to crash the first time the ship came, except for one person who happened to be on the ship at the time. You might want to look into that

 

[ics]

We played the map on the TF2Maps.net server today, and it caused everyone's games to crash the first time the ship came, except for one person who happened to be on the ship at the time. You might want to look into that

This also happened on my server few days back. I suspected sourcemod smac plugin failing, reacting somehow to the ship itself and i didnt test the map after that, just removed it from cycle. But the symptoms were the same. Everyones game crashed when ship was just about to come up after bubbles.

 

[Prosciutto]

It’s really starting too remind me of sea of thieves

 

[TheMightyGerbil]

Loaded up the b3 version to test it on my computer and the skeletons are invisible. It is possible to kill them and they can kill you. They also kill your frame rate while you are "looking" in their direction making it currently unplayable. Console was continually spiting out the below error...

Error Vertex File for 'bots/skeleton_sniper/skeleton_sniper.mdl' checksum -1116148723 should be 2024478943

b2 was GREAT so I hope you can get it fixed .

 

[ics]

Those skeletons propably crash everyones game when map is ran on an actual server instead of a players pc too. Vertex errors are notorious for crashing games.

 

[Bakscratch]

Yeah, think gonna have to say bye to them probably, I don't think hacking them together will work.