Konkreet

CP Konkreet b4

honeymustard

L9: Fashionable Member
Oct 26, 2009
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573
cp_konkreet is a 5cp map made by Arnold and honeymustard.

Arnold is doing most of the layout and I'm doing most of the detailing.
 
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gamemaster1996

L13: Stunning Member
Sep 30, 2009
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The Layout looks nice with and the height variation is good whilst not too over the top.

Screenshot A looks good though i feel as if there should be a platform above the Cap.
 
Mar 23, 2010
1,872
1,696
where's the 2-layered/separate caps?
 

honeymustard

L9: Fashionable Member
Oct 26, 2009
698
573
a6 - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6591985/map/cp_konkreet_a6.bsp.bz2
*increased captimes for mid and cp2
*decreased spawntimes when capping cp2
*added a wall to cp1 upper route
*rounder the mid choke for better flow
*reduced sniper sightline on bridge going from cp3 to lobby cp1
*added a route up to bridge
*made it possible for scouts to jump up the higher route leading to mid from cp2
*added patches to pickups
*changed models on some doors
*change of textures to make it less gloomy and have a unique visual style
*further detailing
*added at least two trains

Been having successful 6v6 tests, along with 16v16, and will be playing some tests on the Hampshire Heavies servers shortly. Looking forward to getting it played on TF2maps too.
 

Arnold

L6: Sharp Member
Jul 18, 2008
283
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grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
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Mar 4, 2008
5,441
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One of things things i never really liked about your map designs are how long and linear they are (applicable to both in a ways). It's just long-path>wide-arena>long-path>wide-arena. There's very little interesting geometry within combat areas besides "obvious soldier platforms".

Paths are always segregated behind solid geometry/impassable terrain and combat arena's are just open spaces with the occasional ledge in the middle or on a wall somewhere.

I always end up playing sniper/soldier/scout on your maps because i'm forced in a ways to fight against your maps subtly over-scaled and simplistic design.

Scout because i want to quickly close the consistently medium-long distances between doorways/corners, objectives and enemy players; sniper because you have consistently medium-long range linear combat and soldier because you always have an advantage ledge at objectives that are instant soldier win spots.

It's like you're still designing for quake circa 1999.

Exempli Gratia:

Here are some of the most interesting structures and gameplay focused map structures:

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These structures provide important balance in gameplay, bringing close quarters and long distance fighting into balance. Whilst your maps are monolithic, linear 5CP - scaled in comparrison to cp_well which has some of the most boring and tedious gameplay in any 5CP map. Whilst i appreciate some of these examples aren't 5CP the lesson learnt and concept of geometry intergration is the same.

You don't need to seperate paths with massive concrete structures or thick blocks of cliff rock. Have more ramps and ledges that are also less dramatic than huge 256-320 + drops. Drop downs are good too, especially when they're only 128 units high.

P.S. The sky-train-bridge is just plain silly. Tracks are built to be as straight as possible so trains don't derail. Here they have tight turns that appear to be there for no real reason at all other than to align to the pillars that reach the floor in the gameplay areas.
 
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Arnold

L6: Sharp Member
Jul 18, 2008
283
242
I think you should take another look at the map though :p
But hey if that's your opinion I can't change much, I find that there are plenty of interesting areas in my maps.

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Also my mapping process is like this -> make it as simple as possible, really really simple. Add obstacles as necessary. In general i try to avoid making big sniper sightlines.

Aswel croissant is still beta, i know that map is very clean i am adding props that will eleviate the problem but i honestly don't think the geometry is to blame.

all routes are pretty much connected on this interwoven, really take the time to take a good look.

And a last thing to add; comp does not equal pub so in general i will have less areas so 6 players can cover it with good coordination.
I'd also like to add that on any map you can play spy, on any map you can play medic and if you can play soldier you can certainly play demo. that leaves us with engi which isn't really used in comp or we rather avoid being useful as much as possible heavy which only slows the game down so rather not have that guy be too good and pyro which also isn't used in comp but is useful enough. So I think I nailed it if every map plays this way you say. I have yet to see a map of mine where sniper totally dominates though since i really try to avoid sniper sightlines because a good sniper doesn't need sightlines.

Also this map is a tiny bit bigger than gullywash, so i don't know where i overscaled it, croissant is less big than badlands. The reason the map feels so big is because of the visuals atm and the fact that I move spawns back instead of at the point, because it proves to be a lot more interesting and flows better in every way possible.

About the train, you might have a point but I'll have to think about it, atm though i don't mind the somewhat tight turns, I know trains tracks will never really be designed this way but that's not what we wanted to achieve. It is silly but I don't believe it's overly silly at this point in time, i'll sleep on it.
 
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grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
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Mar 4, 2008
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Well, you argue that you like to make your maps simple for 6 man teams but then your maps are so big... Badlands is a fairly small map, most of the areas have 3+ routes and it's the most favoured map being played in comp. Why? Because it's well scaled. There's a harmony between the number of paths, doorways and area scales. There's no wasted space, the structures are hollow and make way for paths within them. It's also relatively interesting, paths range from low and wide to tall and narrow.

Whilst my point in your maps is that your paths are the same size, square in width and height and long winded with little to no detail-cover; winding around large blocks of solid geometry to out lying flanks, they're essentially just a long path. Whilst your structures are overscaled, blocky and basic; wide platforms/ramps make for long winded travel times up ramps for any class other than scout or demo/solly. Look at your stairs in image 3, the ramps in image 4 and 6. They're those uncomfortably wide things that take up so much space and make closing height difficult and convoluted and area denial fiddly. Every time i play your maps there'll be a sniper on the 6 man comp team; or 4 in pub. But in maps like badlands or granary teams will often stick with assault classes.

Your use of space is just generally odd, look at every image you posted there. Each area is about the same size. It's not interesting at all.

I've played all of these maps and the only two that are remotely interesting are the first and last pic locations; and each of your maps suffer from the same sympton of long linear winding flanks seperated by solid geometry and samey open, wide scaled combat areas.

Your maps need more structures like badlands CP2-3 building, golrushes 2.2 structure, dustbowl's 2.2, gravelpits last. Not just a massive square room with a couple uncomfortably wide ramps and unimaginative catwalks around the place and less novel-gimmick CP's to make up for the fact that the surrounding areas are generally boring.
 
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Arnold

L6: Sharp Member
Jul 18, 2008
283
242
oh well I can't say I agree with any of your points grazr,although I can see that sometimes my paths may be a little too simplistic and you feel the need to use some ledges or props but that's more of a side-effect of the way I map, keep in mind that all maps are still WIP except gullywash.

The fact that you call all my combat areas samey in terms of size and lay-out just isn't right. I'm sorry but you are being overly critical. Same goes for when you say my pathways are all the same. I can assure you they are not. Of the few times you've played my maps you've got a very strong opinion. I've watched loads of matches rarely was a sniper used on bazillion, gully sees an ocassional sniper on mid but that's it, croissant isn't even being played comp because it isn't ready and konkreet is just alpha right now.

How can konkreet even be square when cp2 is an L shape? or when mid is an 8? the hell are you on about?
Mid bazillion is rectangular, croissant is a banana, mid konkreet is an 8 shape with pillars in the middle and what shape would you call croissant cp2?

I do appreciate your opinion but I have the feeling you are just being critical for the sake of it.

I also want to say that i keep my maps visually clean as much as possible to boost fps, it's of utter importance in comp or anywhere for that matter it's not easy doing that.

I would also not call those ramps big, those are just normal sized stairs and ramps. maybe 2 players wide, anything smaller is just fidgety and i see no reason to make it so.
 
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grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
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Mar 4, 2008
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Well most of your area sizes are 2,000-3,000 units in length with very few indoor areas. Whilst current stock-comp maps like badlands, granary, gravelpit vary their scales and utilise the majority of the space on offer in the world. Those spaces that do exceed 2,000+ units often feature a hollow structure to combat over/within.

I'm only going by what i've observed, experienced and understand about TF2 gameplay and your maps and i know i can sometimes if not usually push my opinion hard, but i'm only iterating the physical parameters of your map and the results; why i feel strongly about it is that it's not a matter of theory because those parameters are hard data.

Maybe you don't want the level of critical feedback i'm providing. I understand that with each creative project someone undertakes there are aims and goals and often these are experimental for the sake of discovering new ground. My interest in this is i don't want to see this map fall into the same mold as your previous maps as you wont be adding anything new to the game by making the same mistakes/successes and only changning out the CP capture area shapes as a gimmick.

I actually really enjoy mid in crossaint, it was one of my favourite CP's out of the contest entries, partly if not perhaps for my partiality towards mirrored maps. Also, gullywash has one of the most successful mid-points of any custom comp map. But these facts don't detract from mistakes made elsewhere. Having spoken to tens (not a huge amount, but ~80) comp players about 5CP, they agree that nobody has ever really made a quality CP1 or CP2 and part of that reason is the poor area dividers and typically winding flanks.

My alarm bells rang when i saw you throw this map up with the same kind of open, wide scale areas seen around your objectives and soldier ledges that litter the walls; consistent 256 unit height differences and wide ramps/stairs. I just thought i'd warn you and try to motivate you to take scale into consideration more and even reduce the amount of soldier-only spots. To reduce this subtle over-scaling you might consider hollowing out solid geometry and putting paths there rather than having them wind around solid blocks of brush/displacement work.
 
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Arnold

L6: Sharp Member
Jul 18, 2008
283
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Grazr, i've got my own ideas and i don't see how konkreet falls into the same place it is very different from the other maps i've made, I say we should play it first and then talk about this map again.

I don't understand where you get the idea that my gimmicks are always the cp itself, take croissant cp2 for example, it's a completely different cp because it forces you to commit and the shape is more of a triangle with slanted edges all over the place. if anything that thing is frankensteins monster with the only issue maybe being the sightline from valley. which i'm working on.

croissant cp1 is in the middle, spawn on the other side. has that ever been done? the height advantage is on the other side, the side where you attack from. I really don't see why the cp shape is a gimmick here.

Bazillion has a dropdown practically onto last cp. cp2 is inside a house where you can fall off the sides making you fall back. How is that gimmicky? only mid on bazillion is "gimmicky" but mid is actually liked by many players so there's no real problem there.

The problem is grazr, that many players don't know what makes a map good and don't take the time to really truly understand a map many many customs are just disregarded after a single playtrough or general consensus, i've played high level comp tf2 for over 2 years i hardly knew what made a good map back then and i'm still trying to figure it out now but why would anyone that's not even mapping or hardly takes the time to look at anything other than a badlands clone be any more right than you or me?

I make all of my inside areas have high ceilings, that is why they feel the same, croissant is practically entirely outside for that reason, it makes for more interesting combat because soldier vs soldier or any explosive push class can't get dicked by a single shot, they still have a fighting chance and deathmatch will often prevail over just being in an unlucky spot at the wrong time. it is still punishing to be caught in a choke but far less than with low ceilings.

Not to say I don't use them, but i try to avoid them. Also the reason why my maps feel overscaled. The scale pans out if we just calculate it but it feels a lot bigger. I understand that and it's just the way I want my maps to play it is hard to get people to understand this though.

My combat areas are often accessible to all classes fairly easily, I don't want people getting stuck on all kinds of things it's annoying so i try to keep all the mess out unless it adds to the experience.

I don't mind the level of critical feedback you are providing but i've thought about the issues you mentioned and some of the things you say I just can't agree on. The fact that combat areas are all about the same size is because that size works well, granary cp2 is often disliked because it's inside, badlands last isn't particularly fun to push out from either. But those maps have been there since the start they have issues of their own they are far from perfect. I just try a different approach.

I'd also like to say that croissant isn't being played in comp atm because i don't really want it i feel it needs to be adjusted for comp. Bazillion is the only one that's being played but has seen some controversy it is getting closer to being accepted but it'll probably take some time effort and tweaks. Konkreet is just new atm, so we'll see how the playtesting goes and i'll judge based on that.
 
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grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
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Mar 4, 2008
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Just to respond to your comment about players as you've made your mind up on your approach to the map but players don't necasserily know what makes a good map, as you say. But they know what they enjoy and do not enjoy. You try and balance out that enjoyment in your map between classes so they all stand a fair chance and acquire equal amounts of enjoyment.

As a player your maps weren't very interesting because each area was a repetitive task from CP3 to CP1 because the scale was always the same, the chokes were so basic and height advantages at predictable scales. It would be nice to have some gameplay other than flakking people head to head from mid-range waiting for an uber or player advantage. Otherwise what's the point if it's the same experience throughout the map. You know? Ambushing is a key feature of TF2 gameplay and the only part of your 3 feature maps which allowed for this was gullywash's mid; which, incidently, sees a reasonable amount of spy play in comp. I consider this a positive.

I feel like i've put you on a defencive foot though by continuing the debate. I'm not trying to force your hand here. I just want you to maybe think about it a bit more and wonder if there's potential in not just conforming to a consistently medium-long scale; crossaint's mid was so interesting because it wasn't your typical 256 unit high ledge and you could ambush the point from through the building at close range. The occasional 128-192 or 320 high ledges break up monotonous gameplay, as does providing small objects/structures to climb over or around within a combat arena. It'd be nice to see more of that.

I'll leave the topic alone so you can conentrate on other stuff now.
 
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Arnold

L6: Sharp Member
Jul 18, 2008
283
242
Well grazr let's not take croissant into account here because croissant was made more with the public in mind and is still in heavy development (b3) just the deathpits and mirroring alone could be enough to not be viable in comp players eyes so i'm holding of the boat with this map.

We're only left with bazillion in which i experimented with the longer chokes because I wanted them to be more combat heavy, there are possibilities to flank the enemy but I agree that it's pretty hard to do between 2 and 3 (you can use the tunnel and small ledge though) in the longer choke/valley. The rest of the map gives you the ability to flank fairly easy, you just need to use the right pathways.

Now let's say we play konkreet a few times first before we come to conclusions, i really don't like talking about a map without ever having played it.

I've also checked the sizes of combat areas on bazillion, they are all around 2000 units cp2 and cp3 have a building in the middle and cp1 is now practically split up into 2 halves.

Konkreet atm is 1000 on last 1400 - 1800 max on cp2 and 1500 on mid both have structures in the middle.

Bazillion used to have way more small and little ledges like the ones you mentioned but it played better without.

You know i really appreciate the time and effort you took typing all of your thoughts out. I hope we understand each other and i don't entirely disagree with you but i just have different ideas. And like i said adding small ledges and props to be used during combat is something that my maps will always lack at the start and gradually get added.
 
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waxpax

L5: Dapper Member
Feb 25, 2011
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Cap zones seem way too big to be very interesting or fun, they seem like they'd be a nightmare to try and cap since the enemy can essentially be at mid range from you on mid (if I remember right) or worse, around the corner from you on 2 and still be able to block the capture.

Sticks are going to be completely worthless to hold the point on last, so pushing out could be problematic. With such an elongated cap zone, I think pushing out of last at all might be a little difficult since the defender would have to shut down the back capping opponent from such a large area. I mean, yeah, all you have to do is stay on at least part of the cap zone and you'll have more room to move and dodge since it's so large, but, that goes both ways. Idk, just seems like it would be very frustrating from a game play point of view to have to always try and control such a large cap area but maybe you have the cap times at appropriate lengths?

Idk, maybe I'm old fashioned, but I'd rather have reasonably sized cap zones that I can cap without having to always wipe the other team, I mean, maybe a wipe on every point to cap would be interesting from a spectator point of view, but I don't think it would be that fun from a game play point of view since it would be so punishing to one team all the time unless they started to play pretty passively or something. Maybe if you just had the one large cap point on mid or 2, it might work out, but I don't really see this map being that fun because the cap zones seem ridiculous and the blocking of caps would be really annoying. Maybe I need to play it or something, though.

Oh, death pits in spawn are really stupid, I mean, why even go to the trouble of having a spawn room if you put a mode of death inside something that is meant to protect the player from instantly dying? Sure, no one is going to die to it more than once or twice, but, nearly every person that plays the map the first time is going to try running back there, die, and either complain, laugh, or complain while laughing. I see the "novelty" in it since I only know of two other maps with insta death in the spawn off the top of my head, but, it's seems like a really negative way to get your map remembered. Or maybe I just don't see the humor in it since I'm tired, idk.
 

Arnold

L6: Sharp Member
Jul 18, 2008
283
242
Well you see that's just what makes it so interesting, is it easy to cap since it's so big or is it hard? is it easy to block or easy to cap? every point is pretty big so you can do the same thing on each point. You know this can go so many ways. I really wouldn't suggest you play it though you don't seem like you'd enjoy it too much so i'd rather have you not play it than force yourself to play a map you're already biased against.

If you really want to play it and give it a true and honest chance, and play it more than once, and try to play each iteration in a match at least a single time, be my guest i'd love that but don't feel obligated.
I will then listen to your feedback carefully but what you are saying now is basically what i've wondered and decided could be so very very interesting.

The death area in spawn isn't really a problem unless you're really bad though. that's about it.
 

honeymustard

L9: Fashionable Member
Oct 26, 2009
698
573
Can't be arsed to add any more words, but:

Well, you argue that you like to make your maps simple for 6 man teams but then your maps are so big... Badlands is a fairly small map, most of the areas have 3+ routes and it's the most favoured map being played in comp. Why? Because it's well scaled. There's a harmony between the number of paths, doorways and area scales. There's no wasted space, the structures are hollow and make way for paths within them. It's also relatively interesting, paths range from low and wide to tall and narrow.

Gullywash is the second most favoured map in comp (http://etf2l.org/2011/08/27/sweet-spice-season-10/) and it's smaller than badlands..

Anyway this in depth level of criticism is great but ultimately it's all bullshit when you haven't played it yet, and this applies to most things in life.
 

tyler

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Sep 11, 2013
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Pretty soon the arguments against Arnold's designs are gonna be right in the release post and hopefully after that they just disappear altogether
 

grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
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Mar 4, 2008
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...Anyway this in depth level of criticism is great but ultimately it's all bullshit when you haven't played it yet...

Bullshit, huh.

I'm inclined to believe you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

For the sake of arguement TF2 gameplay mechanics are what they are and have been but for the addition of new unique weapons/perks, regardless of the fact the pattern of brush work presented in a new map is unique to those which already exist and thus play differently. Having a wall one side of a ledge doesn't change the fact that soldiers are very powerful on high ground or that falloff makes long range combat less applicable or that water puts out fire. These are unavoidable facts. You can still predict and pre-emptively accomodate balance issues based on your experience in the game, Because those mechanics will always be true and play a very specific way in certain circumstances, regardless of your experience (or lack there of) in the map in question. It wont be an infallable prediction (the very nature of a prediction), but you can still make pretty accurate predictions through the power of simple deduction.

You wouldn't suggest otherwise that a typically huge area in someones first map would be sniper friendly because you know for a fact from experience that these circumstances make for unbalanced scout and sniper biased gameplay; you havn't even played the map yet but would this be an inaccurate prediction? In case you were wondering, no, it's not. It's entirely true despite the fact the map may never have been played. Just because a map may be more complicated than a big room doesn't mean you cannot apply the same thought process; adding and substracting variables. Scientists have been doing it for hundreds of years and look where we are now, but i guess they should stop because "it's ultimately bullshit". They should just smash rocks together and see what happens and take knowledge from the results of that instead.
 
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