CP Goldwood a9b

[Aulli]

Goldwood - Night time forest, but a 5 control point map this time.

Symmetrical 5 cp map taking place in a midnight alpine setting.

Made for microcontest #13, Mode Shifter.

 

[Aulli]

This worked pretty well, so I think i'm going to continue it.

Mid:
Extended the platform under the point across the lowground into a bridge.
Changed the lowground doorway facing into the area into a highground doorway onto a platform.
Brought the lowground end of the area in.
Adjusted the ledge that was formerly at the edge of that area to connect the bridge, lowground and platform.

Second:
Displaced the terrain a bit to make it not as flat.
Added clipping around the train to make it easier to nagivate.
Added an open window to the side of the point, over the barrels.
Raised the ledge on the inside next to the point, and removed the path it would normally connect to entirely.

Last:
A bit of a rework; The area is as a whole a good bit smaller, and the back half of it was lowered down to the height of the front half, removing the ledge.
Extended the lowground further into the area, and gave a ramp to help climb up faster & easier.
The far side route through the broken wall has been re-routed to just go up through the floor above it; the outdoors portion has been removed.
Added some shacks to give a bit more substance to the approach.
Re-iterating, The route closest to second is now gone entirely.

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[Skye]

I really like this.
Take these complaints with a bit of salt. I am very, very biased. I tested this in a sixes setting with bots and humans, so if I say something that bots do, I'm sorry.
That being said, here we go.
Mid:
Full health kit.
Yeah, that's not very balanced. If you're a scout and you eat a pipe, then you can just drop down, take the kit, and then jump back up. If you're a medic, it's a riskier get out of jail free card.
I suggest downgrading it to a medium health kit, but the whole under-mid thing is interesting. Maybe have a flank route or tunnel
Second:
The attacking team has so many routes to flank and push, but with so little health near the point, fights tend to just be scouts spamming their scatterguns before soldiers jump in a sac wave.
Point elevation is a really nice execution, but the entrances from last to second are a little finicky in their chokiness.
Last: The point is elevated, meaning that medics have a harder time getting up and defending, and the defending team needs to either take time getting up the ramp or spend health explosive jumping up.
Also, the area seems to have very little to no use at all when you get pushed all the way back to last, and sentries work extremely well when placed in a corner.
Entire map:
The map seems to be very friendly to soldiers and snipers with its wide-open areas.
The map uses mirrored symmetry, which means blu has an advantage, assuming that your players come out of the right house (which is where the soldier rollouts usually go) due to TF2 firing rockets based on your viewmodel (rockets come from the right side of Soldier's model if you're not using flipped models).
There's little to no way to hide.
A lot of barriers and blockades are very small or see-through (case in point, broken wood fences between second and mid, beside the low ground), meaning that the team and medics in particular are very exposed, and can't make many surprise plays.

takethiswithagrainofsaltplease
imgoingtowatchthea1demosnow
ora2ifitstestedsoon
ireallylikethisthough
likeactually
itsverynice

 

[nesman]

I tested this in a sixes setting with bots and humans

Testing with bots is never recommended unless it is strictly for logic testing. They don't act the same way regular players do and can give a large amount of false positives because their programming isn't that great.

The map looks promising from the screenshots, I want to play this.

 

[Aulli]

Fixed some bugs, including a couple blu spawns in red's last spawn (WHOOPS).

Also decided to experiment with some shutters in a couple locations.

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[Skye]

If you're experimenting with shutters, one on the low ground on second or a Mercenary Park-Esque vent door on mid opposite the point might have potential, or it might be horribly unbalanced and removed immediately.
Trial and error, I guess.
alsoithinkthetunnelleadingouttosecondasanalternativeflankmightworkmaybe

 

[Aulli]

Mid:
Added a medium ammo on the bridge next to the point.
Changed the medium healthkit in front of the forward spawn to two small healthkits on the ledge.
Shifted the pickups in the boiler room to the other side of the doorway.

Second:
Reversed the direction of the stairway up to the point.
Added another entrance to boiler room.
Changed the bridge route into a wood platform on the point side, and windows on the side towards mid.
Added a shack & some geometry to let you climb it and jump from the shack to the wood platform.
Added a nook on the upper ledge by the point.
Added clipping to the doors in the containers to stop players from getting stuck on them.
Changed the wood fence towards mid into a solid wall.
Moved the small healthkit by the point to the ledge on the other side of the staircase.

Last:
Changed the full ammo into a medium ammo & health.
Added small health & ammo by the large shack, facing the cliff.
A small ammo pack by the attacker highground entrance, and a medium ammo pack behind the point.
Shifted the brush truck & barrels, and added some planks to make it easier to walk up.
Added a cellar area connecting the underpass and past the large shack with some windows.

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[Aulli]

Mid:
Changed the map to rotational symmetry instead of mirrored symmetry, drastically changing how mid works.
Sloped down the highground into the lowground a lot more, hopefully helping to make the lowground easier to use and less disadvantageous.
Full healthkit has been changed to a medium, the medium ammo pack by the point has been changed into two smalls on both sides.
Two smalls above the point have been removed.
Elevated the platform the point is on just a tad.
Had to relocate forward spawns at mid since the area they were in before doesn't exist anymore, they are no longer one spawn and are on top of a dropdown by the saltbox roofed shack.
The deck on the other side of the bridge has been replaced with just a ramp, the platform/ledge above it is still accessable via a propjump to the rock.


Second:
Gave it a similar treatment to mid merging highground and lowground.
Shuffled around three sets of healthkits to be much more in the open.
Removed the high window by the point, widened the doorway instead.
Extended the point area slightly, made the platform larger with more ramps to just walk up to it.
Added a small health & ammo in the room above boiler room.
Extended the platform behind the shack and added another ramp to make it easier to climb up.
The cellar leading to last now has a door that's closed until last is being attacked.


Last:
Drastically lowered the point, stump & surrounding platforms, removing the area underneath it but making it much easier to access.
Removed the ramp up out of the lowground, Propclimbing is still possible.
Pushed the right spawn exit (defender's perspective) into the building around the corner to not now open looking directly at the point.

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[Aulli]

Mid:
Added a little building onto the point, providing more solid cover instead of fences & rocks.
Extended the highground houses more into the area and shifted the front facing doorway to the side to hopefully help players enter the area more easily.
Added a rock to the side exit to the aforementioned houses to give them a tad more cover.
Placed a chickenwire fence inside the house to block a sightline.


Second:
Added a plank from the window room in the boiler building connecting to the back entrance to the depot.
Re-added the window on the far side of the point, kept the doorway the point is in the same width.
Fixed the broken doors on the red container forward spawn, whoops...
Deleted the closing door in the cellar room.

Last:
Shifted the shutter leading from the depot to last further towards last, onto a small extension with an open side.
Added a fence on the far highground facing towards the pit.
Placed a shack on the far side of last, extending off the concrete patio out of defender's right spawn.

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[TheGhostThatWas]

I played the last test (or whenever it was before you fixed the train car doors) of this map, and had a fun time on it. it seemed like it was quite difficult to push between the second cap and mid, and I believe we stalemated on it both rounds. The route behind the train car spawn for people to push between the second point and mid seems like it was under utilized. Not sure if that was because players just preferred the main route or because of another reason.

 

[Jacov]

Heya! Checked the a5 version of Goldwood and found some pixelwalks and other clipping issues. I made a video of what I was able to find. Check it out:

Looking forward to next updates.

 

[Aulli]

how you're able to stand on this I've no clue. It's one brush

 

[Jacov]

how you're able to stand on this I've no clue. It's one brush

It's displacement! They are always janky in terms of clipping. I advise you to never rely on built-on collision and just clip it all yourself.

 

[Skye]

Some (possibly) helpful things:

maybe add Swiftwater-style shutter windows

Sneaky sentry spot with the rescue ranger

maybe make the cap outline a little bit clearer (sorry for my hud showing in the screenshot)

I don't really see the point of this, other than blocking sightlines, but then you could just have windows

maybe make this a smoother slope, the middle bit slows you to near-nothing, but still allows you to hold w to get over it

only really usable for scout, soldier, demo, and a wrangler engineer who isn't running gunslinger

again, maybe make the capture area a bit clearer
Hopefully this helps

 

[Skye]

maybe make this a smoother slope, the middle bit slows you to near-nothing, but still allows you to hold w to get over it
Hopefully this helps

This might have seemed unclear, let me specify:
if you hold forward straight at the middle part (in between the small bit on the left and the larger part that needs a jump on the right) you first slow down, then slowly climb over.

 

[Downstairs]

May I ask how you got the sky_midnight 01 to work. Every time I try and use it, the sky in my map looks like there is a leak.

 

[Aulli]

Mid:
Tweaked mid point's structure, No longer a roof, more open.
Extended and connected the concrete between the point and the houses on the high ground to prevent falldamage from forward spawn.
Cap time from 11s > 10s

Second:
Closed off second story of lower building;
Removed plank to the windows.
Lower half of that building is still accessible, but different.

Added a wood structure at the base of the awkward displacement ramp to make it easier to walk up.
Moved container forward spawns back into the gate.
Placed more cover for defenders to work with where it used to be.
Closed up lower route that winded around behind the point.
Cap time from 6s > 5s

Last:
Added more cover to the point.
Closed up the low ground leading under the building entirely.
Marked the capture zone more clearly; slightly increased cap zone radius.
Cap time from 3s > 4s

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[Aulli]

I forgot to unhide a point trigger lmao

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[Aulli]

Will write later.

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[Aulli]

Aulli updated Goldwood with a new update entry:

Alpha 8

Bwomp, It's been so long I've forgotten what the changes are, for the most part.

2nd forwards are now below the roof instead of above it.
tweaked last, lowering the platform it's on.
various small bug fixes and tweaks.

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