Ezofuji

[Vinnie]

Hey guys, here's a mostly untested map for you! It's the first map I've made for TF2, though not my first one in Hammer. It is, as you can see, a large KOTH map in an arctic setting.

I originally started making this a little under a year ago, where it was a 3-point CP map. Since testing that with a handful of people, I found that KOTH (a new game mode at the time) would probably work a lot better. The goal when I originally built this was to make a KOTH map where spawn camping was almost impossible, and to promote defense by making turnovers easy.

I have no idea if this map has accomplished any of that, but I figured I would post it and find out! Here's some more details about the setup:

- Both teams spawn on the top of their respective mountains, with a sentry guarding the exit just in case.
- Lines of trees mark the boundaries of the map, where falling beyond that kills you. The icy water beneath the bridge also causes a decent amount of damage, but doesn't kill you right away.
- There's several routes to get down from the spawn, but heading back up is time consuming. Hopefully, this will make engineers more useful.
- Really cheap 2D clouds are there to block the view of snipers, along some more natural cover. Obviously, I'm trying to avoid a sniper fest, but I'm not sure if I've done enough to stop that yet.
- Capture time is really fast, something like 3 seconds I believe.

Other things to note: the map currently supports 24 players, HDR, and is fairly optimized (room for improvement though).

Anyway, I hope some of you find it worth a look. Any feedback is appreciated!

 

[Leminnes]

There's a WORKING sentry guarding the Spawn? :O

 

[Firest0rm]

• I don't thing having mountains as a spawn is that great of an idea, because it gives crazy height advantage to the attacking teams
• a sentry guarding the spawns? i think not
• maps should have room for 32 players, because they're fairly common and it feels weird to spawn on other players
• yay, i love fast cap times in KOTH. Just make sure that it's long enough that the attacking team actually has to have control over the area, because it's no fun to have the enemy team cap it if they don't mean it
• I'm loving the theme, and the clouds are a nice touch. Just make sure that you make them look and feel realistic (somehow visible from below and thick enough, and bullets can pass through)
• get rid of those hl2 textures as soon as you can
• It doesn't look like you have any healthkits/ammo packs anywhere, except for that one under the point, so add more. If you do have them, then ignore this because i didn't look too carefully

 

[Penguin]

I like the clouds over the mid.

 

[absurdistof]

In later versions you will need to implement a 3D skybox, but for now I would suggest continuing the map a bit past its playable boundaries so that it looks a bit more natural. Also, the pillars holding up mid look to be made with hl2 textures, which in most cases (including this one) is something to be changed.

 

[honorum646]

The 3d skybox is not a helpful comment though, absurd. Though the HL2 textures SHOULD be changed to suitable TF2 textures (even if it is just to avoid those kinds of comments).

This is a really NICE LOOKING map, but being highly detailed has two sides to it.

THE GOOD SIDE: It's visually pleasing to look at and give the player a good impression on the map.
THE BAD SIDE: If there are even minor gameplay issues, you may be forced to rework a heavily detailed section, therefore giving you a lot more work.

I hope for your sake that the second side is not as prevalent in this map.

 

[E.B.]

-The layout:
The map is really, really open. I see that you put those clouds to block visibility, but you still have many long range sniping places.

(http://imgur.com/CaD7f.jpg) (http://imgur.com/VIfEA.jpg) (http://imgur.com/SdfPR.jpg) (http://imgur.com/tvsSd.jpg)

-A few random things:
I was messing around without doing anything to capture the point, and I got the "Mission ends in 10 seconds...5, 4, 3, 2, 1!" message. Then nothing happened.
There's a random, seemingly operational teleporter in the fall-to-your-death area on blue side. Bizarre.
The ice underneath the bridge is a cool idea, but it's almost invisible and looks like smoke-flavored jello rather than ice. Also, why are the thicker pieces off to the side destructible if the ones in the middle aren't?
There's no indication that the water hurts you, might want to make that clear to players.
These wooden roof beam thingies (http://imgur.com/u6LN7.jpg) all need a playerclip covering them, I got stuck in one somehow and had to kill myself.
The stairs here (http://imgur.com/HpqCf.jpg) need a slanted playerclip so that if you jump while moving on them, you don't freeze in midair.
For some weird reason, I couldn't pick up this ammo pack (http://imgur.com/ZcCNw.jpg) on the blue side.
The magical ladder that shoots you up to the top as soon as you touch it is bad. If you make the slopes smaller and non-hurt-causing, maybe you won't need it?

-On falling to one's death:
The trigger for this doesn't do enough damage. You can survive the first blow as a heavy, especially with healing.
It's too easy to accidentally fall to your death. In the valley, if you just walk around the edge of the (very incomplete) boundary fence, you'll "fall to your death" without ever leaving the ground. Just put up a little fence wherever there's a deadly fall zone; players should be worried about the objective and the other team, not the environment.
When you do fall to your death, you wind up on an invisible brush, hovering about 10 feet above the mountain. This looks pretty weird. Also, projectiles can hit the brush and stickies roll along it.
Relatedly, there are a lot of drops in this map before you get to the control point, and too many of them make the players take damage. The Valve wiki says that any fall less than 269 units doesn't cause damage, so see if you can re-do some of the drops to fit under that limit.


All in all, I like the idea of your map; most of the issues here are easily fixable, but your biggest problem is gonna be snipers so long as you have that big, open mountainside. If you can come up with a way to fix the sniping issues without changing the whole mountain thing, more power to you, but at the moment nothing comes to mind...