Looking for a Map Artist

[Pocket]

Actually I just now remembered a gag that would be a good thing to work into a map eventually: Smart follows an enemy agent into an ordinary-looking city building, only to fall straight down into a back alley. He looks back at the façade behind him, as fake as a movie set, and gets on his radio and says "Chief, something tells me this facility is a front."

 

[Riptide651]

That's fantastic. That'd actually be a really neat TF2 map. Maybe a CP would work well for it, like the opposing team is delving further into a secret headquarters that was disguised as a front.

Btw, would it be better to have the stairs on a 1:1 slope or a 2:3 slope? Right now most of my steps are 1:1, and it works smooth, but the vertical incline is a bit steep. problem is there are a lot of little steps everywhere at the moment, so if I make it 2:3, it'll take a while to fix and will require editing the map, and I can't fix it in only a few places since it'd ruin the continuity of the design.

 

[Pocket]

If your whole map was already made with 1:1, I'd recommend just leaving it for now. Unless the dimensions of some areas are too narrow to support 2:3 stairs, it's something that can be fixed in the detailing phase if need be. Heck, a lot of maps, including the map I'm working on for the contest right now, just use ramps for everything during the alpha stages. Never be afraid to underdetail when you're first starting out; you never know when testing will reveal a major layout problem that needs to be completely redone.

The biggest problem I have with 1:1 stairs is that they're hard to make look right. If you use the 8-unit scale that most staircases use, they look too shallow; if you use 16, they look too tall; and if you try to be a maverick and make them 12×12, you'd better be prepared to make all your height differences multiples of 3. For what it's worth, I can only think of one map that uses 1:1 stairs, Gorge, and it only uses them in one or two spots outside, a mix could work.

 

[Riptide651]

Converting to ramps at the moment is a good idea. I know of only one are that would need to stay stairs, and in 1:1 since it's basically a dodecahedron of steps going down into the CP. All of the rest can be turned into ramps. Outside of that, there's only one place that requires 1:1 steps, but we can probably find a way around that, it's just the room is narrow in length and I needed space underneath for a sort of blown out tunnel and 1:1 was the only way to make the turn radius between the floor and the stairs bearable. Not a big issue though. if anything they encourage vertical lift.

The map is very interesting in layout. For the CTF Adaptation, the opposing team can see the intel they need to secure from the get-go, since there is a clear line of sight to it, but in order to get to it, it requires going through a series of tunnels and stairs and elevated walkways, so it seems easy but in reality it is quite difficult.

There is an actual opening directly to the intel, and it's designed so that a scout can make a straight beeline through the map and hop a large gap to secure the intel, but it's designed in such a way so that if secured lightly-moderately, the scout would no doubt be shot to pieces before the player even had a chance to leave the room in intel was housed in.

Even though as a scout it's extremely easy to run to the intel, it requires running right in front of the spawn area, so its difficult for the scout to make it to the intel until the game has already started and the engie no doubt already has a sentry gun set up, although if timed right, there should be a couple second window where grabbing the intel early on is, in fact, possible, but it requires waiting until the match beginning has died down and taking advantage of those moments when a sentry gun is still spawning. Even then, it requires running through the center of the battlefield in hopes no one shoots you first.

So while it seems easy, it leaves taking the long route and storming the intel room as the only concrete option.