PL Escarpment

Hurray for pretty text!

Lookin' Good Like It Should

 

That bridge is really nice!

 

regarding my exit out of river comment - it was said here, when i encountered the dead end. I'm just used to TF2 having no dead ends and being able to +forward my way out of everywhere.




I kinda disliked how when i was trying to get through here, often somebody spawned and started flankattacking me right from the spawndoor.




i really disliked how these raised rock platforms with a pine on them (i found 2) look perfectly walkable until i find out that they, in fact, are not.




i think an extra spawndoor here would be beneficial.

 

You're just rushing it, and there's no need for rushing when the contest is 3 days old.

 

Only 116 days left, no need for a rush









Faster, faster, time will end soon!

 

I really like your layout, but i also got some suggestions.

Here they are, maybe there a some things you don´t have to do in alpha.
As also some things that are just bad.
Anyway:

Stones for normal classes to get up there. (spyway)

Window would be good here

Clip for better jumps back to the woodbeam.



It should be enough to turn the "debris" flag on in the trigger for players.

 

The map in question is in fact looking simply divine as such a map should™.

With that I did some running around, checking for clipping, ammo placements, and theoretical gameplay assumptions based on where everything is and my options as a player. I'm going to start with my criticism with saying you have very nice track placement, and your maps simple layout is intuitive. A few revisions of how the side tunnel routes are and a bit of cleaning up to help players tell where the need to go and this should be a pretty solid map.

Now onto the images.

I'm able to get outside the map, easily
This takes place on top of the BLU's spawn. I found this just simply preforming two rocket jumps despite the cheated in health. With the Gunboats that's nothing.

As I turn around I noticed I have about half the map rendered, I can see into the other points, and I was able to just rocket jump from where I was to the other side of the map. Clipping is very important! (Also it's very easy to just fall out of the map when I did this)

As a side note: I know it's an alpha but you might want to hide this in BLU's spawn.

Also this fern seems out of place.

A few area's I probably shouldn't be on top of
Double check the clipping here, again I could just pop off about 2 rocket jumps (Ground, Wall Jump, Height Advantage). On top of the height advantage I could just walk out of the map.

Now here, I don't believe should be reachable. Raise it up and clip it off. I'm probably 512+ hmu up.

Lighting in a few places really needs to brightened
In this room (Also here and here) I can hardly see a thing, and as I've learned incredibly dark rooms does not get along with TF2. Throw in some really dim light entities next to the dark area's, brighten it a tiny bit.

With these two area's here and here I think you're just better off not making them platforms and simply solid pieces of geometry.

With the props, I found a few very ugly eye sores that could have easily been fixed with a few lights or shift in placement. Namely these around the 1st control point.

Couple of layout ideas
Why is there only two exits out of blue's spawn? I can very easily see both and as a sniper I could walk back a few hundred units and snipe like there's no tomorrow. This of course goes both ways. I think you should add a third exit as illustrated in the image. (By door I mean setup gate)

Maybe raise this up a bit..? Feels a tad cramped.

Alright now I was a bit confused about this one. On the outside it's easy to see how it works but at the same time it leaves much to be desired. I think you should add wires or something to help explain why it's just precariously floating there. Make then thick cables.

Also in that same image I can imagine falling down in that death pit of a hole and just thinking "Well SHIT now I'm DEAD" for every class except maybe scout and soldier. Add another plank leading out of it on the opposite side. It might help alleviate that feeling a bit for BLU.

Now right here, for better lack of words, aggravated me. It clearly looked like playable area despite it being extra scenery. I really think you should damn it off with some geometry or add more rocks, or something of that variety. If I had been playing I probably would just have wasted a ton of health rocket jumping towards it and died.

This tunnel is very long, boring, and is silently whispering "Please.. add some variety". Just as Bloodhound said I really think you should bring one side of the tunnel out a bit and push a tiny "room" into the other side of the wall as I illustrated. It makes it easier to dodge rockets, bullets, etc. Also it makes for a good place to put down a medium health and ammo.

I saw a few of these tree's through the map and I think they look really nice. Although the way you're clipping them gets really annoying as I constantly run into them just casually jumping by. I think you should disable the collision on them and do a playclip as I have it up there. That choice is up to you of course, if you don't want that platform playable at all you may need to change it from being a simple tree. As a note, this happens in about one or two more area's with tree's in spots just like this. They weren't very far from this one.

Summary
It's a very nice layout, I love how the track pieces are positioned. Fix up those things I told you and you should have a nice alpha. I did have a ton of images about health and ammo placements, as well as criticism about how they're not very thought out (sorry to say). Alas it is 3am at the moment and I'm getting a tad tired. Tomorrow if you want I can post about a few changes you might want to make to you're placements.

One last thing: I love these stair's/track slope combo.

 

pretty fun map. reminders of today: sentry on roof, cart rollback midair over dynamic area, teleporter in blue spawn.

some thoughts:
Near the second capture point I'm not a fan of the dropdown flank available for red team after the cp in that area is capped. that flanking path does not promote defending at all, instead it promotes pushing/flanking. usually blue has more available routes than red to promote the two roles of offence/defense, but here you have red has more routes than blue, which would explain why red was pushing blue back a lot around that area. perhaps if you made it more difficult for red to access that area (instead of currently the fastest/best path) it would feel more deserved. That path is also far too good for red spy. it is a free flanking area, and easy to get back to spawn and destroy and teleporter.

other thoughts:
dynamic area feels gimmicky and unnatural at the moment. why would a cart be travelling across a gap like that in that manner? also feels a bit fast, and platform too small.

keep up the good work! I'm impressed that you got out your alpha so quickly!

 

I was suggesting in chat having the bridge raised in case you missed it

 

Doing something with the bridge could be good. It is a landmark in the map.

 

I agree, the doing something with the bridge could be very interesting. Something to do with the bridge exploding, and a side track the cart takes might be something you could consider dynamic. Just food for thought.

 

You could have an out-of-playable-area track going through the bottom of the pit and make the platform look like it's intended to lift carts up and down as well, not only across the pit. It'd look like a logical useful thing. You could even have some sort of a decorative control panel with up-down and back-forward switches so that platform moving when players are on it would have a logical explanation.

 

Some things I noticed while playing today:

Supermassive sigthline to/from BLU spawn


Another one from RED forward


Floating building

 

Don't look at the top-right corner, nothing interesting.

 

Another thing you could do is do something to the cart to make it dynamic in itself (like the Lil' Chew Chew in Frontier).

 

There is flaws in that make it kind of undesireable...


... and Aly, you still need to go around to some of your area's and check distance from track, i got pinned into some corners because the cart passed me and I didn't have enough room to escape.