Also, the blu wood by the mid has a very distinctive pattern, and i'd move some of the textures a bit vertically cos at the moment the building looks like a blue tiger.
- Thread starter Ravidge
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If anyone tells you that this image has too much wood, what you do is grab them by the scruff of their neck and smack them repeatedly in the face while asking, "WHY ARE YOU SUCH A TOAD?" If anything, you could use some poster/sign overlays near the pickups, or maybe scoot some of the props there to draw attention to them.
This one however is overloaded on wood. Yes, you have some metal walls, but they're so similar in tone and colour that it almost doesn't matter. Plus you have the same wooden frames on all the buildings, wooden or metal. That doesn't help. Further, you look at the building geometries and don't get any sense of their purpose.
Suggestions would be:
Similar problems with the red side, but you're actually a lot closer to having each building look and feel different here thanks to big use of concrete walls and varying shapes. Honestly I'd say just change some of the buildings to one of the yellow/beige "neutral" woods. Like the smaller one to the right side of the picture with the staircase in the bottom. Change the metal on the big one on the left to some other metal colour that doesn't blend in with the wood so much.
Bear in mind I'm writing this feedback only based on the screenshots you provided. I haven't had a chance to play the map yet. It's looking pretty great from what I see. Just needs some tweaking of the composition.
This one however is overloaded on wood. Yes, you have some metal walls, but they're so similar in tone and colour that it almost doesn't matter. Plus you have the same wooden frames on all the buildings, wooden or metal. That doesn't help. Further, you look at the building geometries and don't get any sense of their purpose.
Suggestions would be:
- Change the height of some of those buildings. Add some openings up high for cranes or barrels or whatever suits your fancy. Make some super tall with giant "Farmer Coop" overlays, etc. Make each building look like it was constructed seperately, and later joined together.
- Use different framework -- entirely different wood texture, and put the crossbeams at different angles on each building. Skip framework entirely on smaller buildings, especially the metal ones. This will help differentiate the buildings from one another.
- Use radically different metal textures. Try the foundry BLU metal on one for example.
Similar problems with the red side, but you're actually a lot closer to having each building look and feel different here thanks to big use of concrete walls and varying shapes. Honestly I'd say just change some of the buildings to one of the yellow/beige "neutral" woods. Like the smaller one to the right side of the picture with the staircase in the bottom. Change the metal on the big one on the left to some other metal colour that doesn't blend in with the wood so much.
Bear in mind I'm writing this feedback only based on the screenshots you provided. I haven't had a chance to play the map yet. It's looking pretty great from what I see. Just needs some tweaking of the composition.
Thanks everyone. It's no secret that I'm mediocre when it comes to detaling, so these suggestions are great.
Today I have:
- Redone the metal textures. They have a lot more "metal" feel to them, setting them apart from the wood now.
- Slight changes to the blue wood texture, not really noticable, also 2 (slightly darker) variations.
- A crossover texture between blue wood and the unpainted wood.
- 4 new variations of the roof texture scattered around the map. These were made using $color, so it's the same base material, just various shades.
- Concrete ground for the trains at last-cp. More concrete for the ground level indoor parts.
- Used another wood ground texture in various locations to break it up a bit.
- Made a tall "tower" structure (it's actually not that tall), raised the roof of the MID forward spawns by 128 units and added some windows on the walls
- Changed the color most wood trim on the blue side, simple $color edit
- Reduced trim on metal buildings, and changed what is left to be metal trim.
- Adjusted the texture tiling on wood buildings so that they don't appear quite as stripy as before (it's unavoidable to some degree, but now there's less of it).
- More paint patches
- Changed the radio tower and radar models on the blue side to be textured blue.
Hammer screenshot showing some of the things:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1281220/2012-07/Screenshot-2012-07-23_21.10.55.jpg
Gameplay fixes:
- Added a bulletblocker to a chainlink fence that was missing.
Today I have:
- Redone the metal textures. They have a lot more "metal" feel to them, setting them apart from the wood now.
- Slight changes to the blue wood texture, not really noticable, also 2 (slightly darker) variations.
- A crossover texture between blue wood and the unpainted wood.
- 4 new variations of the roof texture scattered around the map. These were made using $color, so it's the same base material, just various shades.
- Concrete ground for the trains at last-cp. More concrete for the ground level indoor parts.
- Used another wood ground texture in various locations to break it up a bit.
- Made a tall "tower" structure (it's actually not that tall), raised the roof of the MID forward spawns by 128 units and added some windows on the walls
- Changed the color most wood trim on the blue side, simple $color edit
- Reduced trim on metal buildings, and changed what is left to be metal trim.
- Adjusted the texture tiling on wood buildings so that they don't appear quite as stripy as before (it's unavoidable to some degree, but now there's less of it).
- More paint patches
- Changed the radio tower and radar models on the blue side to be textured blue.
Hammer screenshot showing some of the things:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1281220/2012-07/Screenshot-2012-07-23_21.10.55.jpg
Gameplay fixes:
- Added a bulletblocker to a chainlink fence that was missing.
This is already a huge improvement. Kudos.
I think the metal and wood look a touch too noisy. But they do look better.
I'm gonna try this new thing that I'm calling "WHAT IF".
Basically I rip out a part of the map and change it to something new, show it, and see what people think of it. From a gameplay standpoint please, the aesthetics I don't care about
WHAT IF #1: I removed the roof of the middle buildings.
It would allow easier access for the jumping classes and maybe make it a more attractive place to hang around.
OR
Originally it looked (and looks) like this:
Basically I rip out a part of the map and change it to something new, show it, and see what people think of it. From a gameplay standpoint please, the aesthetics I don't care about
WHAT IF #1: I removed the roof of the middle buildings.
It would allow easier access for the jumping classes and maybe make it a more attractive place to hang around.
OR
Originally it looked (and looks) like this:
If I had to pick one or the other, I'd probably choose 2. I liked the idea of having the high ground, and a bit of cover. But, I don't think removing the roof will make more incentive for players to go use that, just because it's easier to get up there.
Maybe add another hole out on the third side, towards the back side (the side towards the flank to the next point). That would (at least for me) provide more incentive to get up there, since I can see/cover more high ground. I don't know how that will play out, but just my 2 cents.
Maybe add another hole out on the third side, towards the back side (the side towards the flank to the next point). That would (at least for me) provide more incentive to get up there, since I can see/cover more high ground. I don't know how that will play out, but just my 2 cents.
I need that platform with the health and ammo to be somewhat safe, so that a team can hold that ground as a forward position when fighting over mid.
I'm not going to open up a way to shoot down on that area from a height advantage.
With the roof gone, it would be much easier to bomb that area though (jumping out of the building through the non-existent roof), which is one thing I want people to consider when looking at it.
I'm not going to open up a way to shoot down on that area from a height advantage.
With the roof gone, it would be much easier to bomb that area though (jumping out of the building through the non-existent roof), which is one thing I want people to consider when looking at it.
Beta 4
Download: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1281220/maps/cp_evergreen_b4.bsp.bz2
Images in the OP.
b4:
- Increased width on platforms at Last cp. Added a high see-through fence/cover and also connected the right and left bridges together for easier movement overall.
- Added a second floor to the small house next to the first spawnroom.
- First spawn moved back 256 units. Makes it harder to duck into the spawn for cover when defending last.
- Spawntimes reduced by .5 seconds
- A lot of new textures, and subtle variations of shades on all red/blu textures. Less wood and more concrete and metal.
- General detailing and clipping, the usual stuff.
- Less geometry 'popping' though weird areaportals, I hope. This is really hard to eliminate completely and still keep a good framerate.
- I probably did something else, but it's been 6 months, I've since long forgotten if its not listed in this changelog.
Download: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1281220/maps/cp_evergreen_b4.bsp.bz2
Images in the OP.
b4:
- Increased width on platforms at Last cp. Added a high see-through fence/cover and also connected the right and left bridges together for easier movement overall.
- Added a second floor to the small house next to the first spawnroom.
- First spawn moved back 256 units. Makes it harder to duck into the spawn for cover when defending last.
- Spawntimes reduced by .5 seconds
- A lot of new textures, and subtle variations of shades on all red/blu textures. Less wood and more concrete and metal.
- General detailing and clipping, the usual stuff.
- Less geometry 'popping' though weird areaportals, I hope. This is really hard to eliminate completely and still keep a good framerate.
- I probably did something else, but it's been 6 months, I've since long forgotten if its not listed in this changelog.
nightwatch
aa
- Sep 7, 2012
- 638
- 500
I posted your changelong over at teamfortresstv in the hopes that it gets some more attention. It was a fun map the few times I've pugged/lobbied on it!
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nightwatch
aa
- Sep 7, 2012
- 638
- 500
I've had some good feedback about it during pugs. The major issue seems to be that everything blends together because of the wood textures and that the points' locations aren't obvious enough.
nightwatch
aa
- Sep 7, 2012
- 638
- 500
Let me try to outline what I mean about too many routes. Let's take your lobby area as an example.
There are 4 doors into the lobby from the last point. Badlands also has 4: the main tunnel going straight to the point, the flanking tunnel on the left, and the upper route which branches left and right. Granary also has 4: the left and right bottom doors, and the pipe and window exits. So you're not doing anything particularly drastic there.
The problem is inside the lobby, as illustrated by these pictures, where I've highlighted all the doors into the separate rooms or out of the lobby:
In terms of size, it's fine! In fact, it's laid out rather nicely and it's not confusing to navigate at all. However, if a scout gets picked and wants to call out the location of the enemy roamer, how does he do it? There's just too many "locations", too many little doorways to be hiding in. Competitive players tend to have their own names for each of the areas in a map, to make comms easier. By having so many distinct rooms in your lobby (and so many entrances to each room), keeping track of this is very difficult.
In badlands, if I call out to my team that their roamer is on our crates, my team knows exactly what I'm talking about. I can say that there's a spy cloaked in secret in gullywash, and my team knows what's going on.
Making up names isn't the hard part - the hard part is keeping track of so many! I think that your layout needs a lot of names. Having small rooms laid out the way they are in evergreen means that to effectively comm to my team about where the enemy is, I need to be specific to the room, and there's just a heck of a lot of them.
That's just one problem I can see, but the multiple routes could definitely be cut down around mid as well - with only 6 people per team it's hard to cover all the routes - more than 3 distinct pushing areas becomes very difficult to watch.
There are 4 doors into the lobby from the last point. Badlands also has 4: the main tunnel going straight to the point, the flanking tunnel on the left, and the upper route which branches left and right. Granary also has 4: the left and right bottom doors, and the pipe and window exits. So you're not doing anything particularly drastic there.
The problem is inside the lobby, as illustrated by these pictures, where I've highlighted all the doors into the separate rooms or out of the lobby:
In terms of size, it's fine! In fact, it's laid out rather nicely and it's not confusing to navigate at all. However, if a scout gets picked and wants to call out the location of the enemy roamer, how does he do it? There's just too many "locations", too many little doorways to be hiding in. Competitive players tend to have their own names for each of the areas in a map, to make comms easier. By having so many distinct rooms in your lobby (and so many entrances to each room), keeping track of this is very difficult.
In badlands, if I call out to my team that their roamer is on our crates, my team knows exactly what I'm talking about. I can say that there's a spy cloaked in secret in gullywash, and my team knows what's going on.
Making up names isn't the hard part - the hard part is keeping track of so many! I think that your layout needs a lot of names. Having small rooms laid out the way they are in evergreen means that to effectively comm to my team about where the enemy is, I need to be specific to the room, and there's just a heck of a lot of them.
That's just one problem I can see, but the multiple routes could definitely be cut down around mid as well - with only 6 people per team it's hard to cover all the routes - more than 3 distinct pushing areas becomes very difficult to watch.
Thanks, that is the most useful comment I've had on the subject. Very informative, thanks for your effort!
Guess I'll type down my reasoning for these, in general terms. Not to defend my decisions or anything, but just so you can see where I'm coming from, and that there's at least some thought behind why it has so many doors. And why I think it's a hard thing to just go in and change at this stage.
Many of the doorways you point out are there for optimization reasons, limiting the vision between major areas. Top floor has a lot of this, because there are no closing doors in any of the doorframes, vision has to be limited by some other method in a very small/limited space (quite tricky). Again, 'vision' of the engine for optimization not the vision of players necessarily.
A few of these were added because people complained that it was too hard to shift from one position to another (you had to commit to one route and hope you made the better choice) which wasn't very fun but with the added routes/paths it increases the complexity and limits possible solutions that take into account both accessibility/flow and optimization at the same time. I tried to make it the best of both worlds, but that means a lot of doorways.
A couple are pretty useless doorways that was added for aesthetic purposes only, to make it look like a somewhat believable 'real' building. The bottom floor mainly does this. Since there's actual doors here I don't need to cull visuals that badly using angles and hints. So those doorways inside are for looking nice.
But also the structure outside that you point out, the one with the 90° stairs. It fills no huge optimization purpose and mainly looks the way it does with the doorways because that's how a house like that would look (in my mind). It's main purpose is blocking off player vision, just to cut down on how open the map is in that area without it.
(I could write these things for every element of my map, nothing was created randomly, there's some thought in every piece)
Guess I'll type down my reasoning for these, in general terms. Not to defend my decisions or anything, but just so you can see where I'm coming from, and that there's at least some thought behind why it has so many doors. And why I think it's a hard thing to just go in and change at this stage.
Many of the doorways you point out are there for optimization reasons, limiting the vision between major areas. Top floor has a lot of this, because there are no closing doors in any of the doorframes, vision has to be limited by some other method in a very small/limited space (quite tricky). Again, 'vision' of the engine for optimization not the vision of players necessarily.
A few of these were added because people complained that it was too hard to shift from one position to another (you had to commit to one route and hope you made the better choice) which wasn't very fun but with the added routes/paths it increases the complexity and limits possible solutions that take into account both accessibility/flow and optimization at the same time. I tried to make it the best of both worlds, but that means a lot of doorways.
A couple are pretty useless doorways that was added for aesthetic purposes only, to make it look like a somewhat believable 'real' building. The bottom floor mainly does this. Since there's actual doors here I don't need to cull visuals that badly using angles and hints. So those doorways inside are for looking nice.
But also the structure outside that you point out, the one with the 90° stairs. It fills no huge optimization purpose and mainly looks the way it does with the doorways because that's how a house like that would look (in my mind). It's main purpose is blocking off player vision, just to cut down on how open the map is in that area without it.
(I could write these things for every element of my map, nothing was created randomly, there's some thought in every piece)
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