CP Daybreak

eljest

L1: Registered
Jun 22, 2015
17
2
My third map! The first one that I'm going to finish. I have no experience with mapping except for Crash's new tutorial and trial & error.
 
Last edited:

Lenny

L2: Junior Member
May 2, 2013
90
35
A friend and I went over this map. It's a pretty decent attempt at a first map, but there are a couple of issues you should look into. (Typical stuff for an a1, though, no worries.) Also I suck at organizing these posts so sorry about that.

Mid
Mid point's kinda weird. The skybox on it is really, really tall. You can stand in a couple of weird places, like on top of the forward spawns, on top of the billboards, and - on RED side only - there's some weird clipping on the walls. Also, you have a ton of pickups. The thing is, you have some health kits in places where only certain classes can get them - the full health pack can only be gotten by explosive classes, and that's really awful for balance. I'd recommend removing that billboard and the full health kit entirely - full health kits aren't a very good idea in the first place, especially not at mids. You should also take a leaf out of Granary's book: yes, Granary has small health kits on top of crates, but because of the catwalks, any class can get up there. As it stands right now, explosive classes can grab 6 small health kits, 2 medium ammo packs, 2 small ammo packs and a full health pack. That's huge! You should definitely reposition some of the packs at the very least, especially at...

Second
Second point's got potential. I love spires and second has one! But that's pretty much it. It's really big and open; Snipers and Soldiers/Demos can get a lot of work done here. The upper area is kinda nice, but again, really open. The small health kit is useless; nobody wants to go into a cramped and bad area just for that small amount of health. The medium health kit is also kinda useless. You can only get to it by doing something that will make you lose health (explosive jumping or just falling from the point, with the exception of Scout). And on the upper area, the health/ammo packs would be nice for a Sniper if the rest of the area weren't so open they could just snipe wherever.

Last
I'm gonna be honest, I don't like last. It's huge, and I'm not sure why. Last points are supposed to be very easy to defend (since the base is right there), but these ones aren't. The ramps lead up to nothing and I don't understand the purpose of them; since the room is so huge it's useless to build a sentry up there (it can only see like half of the room). The pickups, again, here are pretty weird. You have a small health pack right next to a medium health pack and large ammo pack right next to the respawn room! (Also, the barriers aren't solid.) And there's also small health and ammo under only one of the ramps. In general, this gives way too much of an advantage for the pushing team. Also, this weird ramp thing is only on RED side. That brings me to another issue.

Spawns
There's some important things you need to address with spawns. In the last screenshot you can see your func_respawnroomvisualizer is the size of a normal door. Well, if you jump on the truck, you can just hop on top of the visualizer and into the enemy spawn! The cabinets seem to work for both teams on both sides - you might want to fix that. Also, the trigger for opening the first spawn doors overlaps with the initial spawn points - basically, as soon as you spawn, the door opens. The spawn points should definitely be farther from the door.
Forward spawns: RED's spawn at second only opens for BLU, BLU's spawn at mid only opens for RED.
BLU's second spawn: this happens every single time you exit. You can easily fix this by just having it open the other way. And, the spawn at mid, you can stand on top of - since the door closes as soon as you exit, it's a really cheap and easy way to spawncamp.
You should also probably put better signage on your spawns. I thought they were just detail at first. A resupply sign above each door would be enough.

General
Overall, your map is really huge. Vertically and horizontally. Even in the screenshots you provided you can see that the doors are really tall, and every area is really long. You don't have a single roof anywhere in the map - the sky is literally the limit (haaa). But seriously, that's a bad thing. Nearly every (good) 5cp map has a roof at last - even in Snakewater, at least the point is enclosed in a small room. Consider placing some info_player_teamspawns or just props of playermodels in some places just to get a feel for how big a player is, and scale your map accordingly. (Make sure to delete them before compiling, though!)
Also, do you have ABS' pack installed? It provides some doors and control point prefabs all ready for you to use so you don't have to make your own func_door or place your own trigger_capture_area. (Seriously, the capture areas were really inconsistent.)
Edit: I forgot to mention earlier, there's only one way from mid to second and there's no transition area between secon and last. After the stalematey mid, second and last went by very fast.
By the way, those are some neat rockets.

Hope this helps. Make sure to get your map tested in a gameday sometime; after all, I'm only one person - getting feedback from a lot of people at once is definitely very helpful. I'm looking forward to see how this map changes.
 
Last edited:

eljest

L1: Registered
Jun 22, 2015
17
2
A friend and I went over this map. It's a pretty decent attempt at a first map, but there are a couple of issues you should look into. (Typical stuff for an a1, though, no worries.) Also I suck at organizing these posts so sorry about that.

Mid
Mid point's kinda weird. The skybox on it is really, really tall. You can stand in a couple of weird places, like on top of the forward spawns, on top of the billboards, and - on RED side only - there's some weird clipping on the walls. Also, you have a ton of pickups. The thing is, you have some health kits in places where only certain classes can get them - the full health pack can only be gotten by explosive classes, and that's really awful for balance. I'd recommend removing that billboard and the full health kit entirely - full health kits aren't a very good idea in the first place, especially not at mids. You should also take a leaf out of Granary's book: yes, Granary has small health kits on top of crates, but because of the catwalks, any class can get up there. As it stands right now, explosive classes can grab 6 small health kits, 2 medium ammo packs, 2 small ammo packs and a full health pack. That's huge! You should definitely reposition some of the packs at the very least, especially at...

Second
Second point's got potential. I love spires and second has one! But that's pretty much it. It's really big and open; Snipers and Soldiers/Demos can get a lot of work done here. The upper area is kinda nice, but again, really open. The small health kit is useless; nobody wants to go into a cramped and bad area just for that small amount of health. The medium health kit is also kinda useless. You can only get to it by doing something that will make you lose health (explosive jumping or just falling from the point, with the exception of Scout). And on the upper area, the health/ammo packs would be nice for a Sniper if the rest of the area weren't so open they could just snipe wherever.

Last
I'm gonna be honest, I don't like last. It's huge, and I'm not sure why. Last points are supposed to be very easy to defend (since the base is right there), but these ones aren't. The ramps lead up to nothing and I don't understand the purpose of them; since the room is so huge it's useless to build a sentry up there (it can only see like half of the room). The pickups, again, here are pretty weird. You have a small health pack right next to a medium health pack and large ammo pack right next to the respawn room! (Also, the barriers aren't solid.) And there's also small health and ammo under only one of the ramps. In general, this gives way too much of an advantage for the pushing team. Also, this weird ramp thing is only on RED side. That brings me to another issue.

Spawns
There's some important things you need to address with spawns. In the last screenshot you can see your func_respawnroomvisualizer is the size of a normal door. Well, if you jump on the truck, you can just hop on top of the visualizer and into the enemy spawn! The cabinets seem to work for both teams on both sides - you might want to fix that. Also, the trigger for opening the first spawn doors overlaps with the initial spawn points - basically, as soon as you spawn, the door opens. The spawn points should definitely be farther from the door.
Forward spawns: RED's spawn at second only opens for BLU, BLU's spawn at mid only opens for RED.
BLU's second spawn: this happens every single time you exit. You can easily fix this by just having it open the other way. And, the spawn at mid, you can stand on top of - since the door closes as soon as you exit, it's a really cheap and easy way to spawncamp.
You should also probably put better signage on your spawns. I thought they were just detail at first. A resupply sign above each door would be enough.

General
Overall, your map is really huge. Vertically and horizontally. Even in the screenshots you provided you can see that the doors are really tall, and every area is really long. You don't have a single roof anywhere in the map - the sky is literally the limit (haaa). But seriously, that's a bad thing. Nearly every (good) 5cp map has a roof at last - even in Snakewater, at least the point is enclosed in a small room. Consider placing some info_player_teamspawns or just props of playermodels in some places just to get a feel for how big a player is, and scale your map accordingly. (Make sure to delete them before compiling, though!)
Also, do you have ABS' pack installed? It provides some doors and control point prefabs all ready for you to use so you don't have to make your own func_door or place your own trigger_capture_area. (Seriously, the capture areas were really inconsistent.)
Edit: I forgot to mention earlier, there's only one way from mid to second and there's no transition area between secon and last. After the stalematey mid, second and last went by very fast.
By the way, those are some neat rockets.

Hope this helps. Make sure to get your map tested in a gameday sometime; after all, I'm only one person - getting feedback from a lot of people at once is definitely very helpful. I'm looking forward to see how this map changes.

Thanks for the feedback! I really appreciate it! I have a ton of stuff to fix now, and thank you for taking your time to write this and test it.
 

Berry

resident homo
aa
Dec 27, 2012
1,056
1,898
I don't think Lenny mentioned this either, but your map looks very flat even though you have things like spires, and mid being raised. The issue isn't the central area, but more of the routes in to the areas. Take a look at any good official map (other than Granary, the out liar) and you'll see between each objective buffer zone and each objective area or spawn area, there's routes of between 2 and 4 different heights (though 4 routes is sometimes unusual, unless it's a spawn).

So basically, I'd suggest having your routes at varying heights to make the map seem less flat. As well, pretty much everything Lenny suggested would help the map also.