Microcontest #15: Robot Destruction

14bit

14bit

L14: Bit Member
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Oct 5, 2014
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Welcome to Microcontest 15: Robot Destruction

mc15.jpg


Get ready to blast off, we're on our way to destroy some robots! And not the kind that fights back either; we're here to destroy those small, screaming ones RED and BLU sent off to the moon that never shut up about errors.

Your mission today is to make a map for the least-mapped for mode*: Robot Destruction! The only requirement is that it needs to use the tf_logic_robot_destruction entity. You're free to remove the flags, remove the robots and spawn cores manually, or even add multiple flags, but power cores need to be involved in some way.

Here's the game mode logic, courtesy of @worMatty:
https://tf2maps.net/downloads/robot-destruction-rd-prefab.917/

IMPORTANT NOTE: This prefab is slightly outdated, and does not include the setup time that Asteroid has. Additionally, Asteroid uses three bots in the final group, not two like in this prefab! You can fix this by copying one of the final bot spawns and renaming it. (e.g. rename red_bot3b_spawn to red_bot3c_spawn)

MORE IMPORTANT NOTE: the gamemode logic is quite unstable. I recommend not renaming important gamemode entities like bot spawns and the spawn group managers if you can help it. Also, trying to set a bot spawn to the "Finale" style of bot will cause the game to crash instantly as soon as the map loads. Be careful!

MOST IMPORTANT NOTE: RD does not work without a navmesh! Make sure you make one and pack it into your map!

I also highly recommend grabbing the decompiled version of Asteroid for reference as well:
https://tf2maps.net/threads/valve-maps-decompiled.5952/

If you'd like to spawn robot cores via map logic, they are an entity called item_bonuspack with their model set to models/bots/bot_worker/bot_worker_powercore.mdl. They will appear as Red by default, so for any that need to be blue turn off SmartEdit and add the key skin with a value of 1 to make them blue. item_bonuspack will appear as an ERROR model in Hammer but will function correctly.

Here's some notes on Asteroid's layout that seem useful, since we don't really have many other RD maps to work off of:

  • Asteroid is roughly 9984hu from intel room to intel room, almost as long as Brickyard. However, instead of being as wide as a PASS Time map, the map consists of three stacked layers; tunnels and water routes at the bottom, the main floor with most of the bots and both intel rooms, and an upper level with the spawns and final bots.
  • The spawn rooms are located between the third set of robots and the intel room, with the spawn room and third set of bots being on the floor above the intel room.
  • The intel rooms are easier to enter than they are to leave, but can be left very, very quickly with the right timing due to the lasers. These are not in the template, and will have to be copied from Asteroid or done manually if you want to use the lasers.
  • Asteroid uses setup time and blocks access to mid until setup is over. This is not in the template, and will have to be copied from Asteroid or done manually if you want to replicate this.
  • Asteroid has a ton of lights and sounds that go off when someone is stealing the intel. This is not in the template, and will have to be copied from Asteroid or done manually if you want to replicate this.
Please note these are observations that may be useful, not guidelines on how to make a good RD map. I'll be very sad if we get 10 Asteroid clones that just do all these things verbatim.

The bots in RD won't move until you've generated a navmesh for them, you'll need to pack that navmesh into your map. The easiest way to do this is to make one during a test compile, then pack that one into the map without adding generate navmesh as a step in CompilePal.

If you've not worked with Navmeshes before and you're participating in this, oh no and good luck. Here's the documentation on them:
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Navigation_Meshes

For full Microcontest rules and submission procedure, check out the 2021 Microcontest Megathread: https://tf2maps.net/threads/the-microcontest-megathread-season-2.43572/

Today's Bonus Punch:
Include a non-death-pit hazard somewhere in the map. This includes things such as:
  • Grinders
  • Trains
  • Sawblades
  • Lasers
  • Crocodiles
Regular water you can drown in does not count as a hazard for this punch. Electrified/boiling/cold water that damaged you over time does count.

*Our site only has 12, and GameBanana only has two. Territorial Control, the next lowest, has 11 on the site but 9 on GameBanana. I am ignoring the Workshop as 90% of things tagged as RD are not actually RD or are Asteroid reskins.

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Quick Info:

Difficulty: 5/5

Planning starts at 10:00 AM EDT (14:00 UTC) on June 19th, 2021.
Mapping begins one hour later at 11:00 AM EDT (15:00 UTC)

Maps must be submitted to this thread no later than 10:00 AM EDT (14:00 UTC) on June 20th, 2021.
Testing begins one hour later at 11:00 AM EDT (15:00 UTC)

Countdown to deadline here:
https://www.timeanddate.com/countdo...0&p0=43&msg=MC15+Deadline&font=sanserif&csz=1

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Important Notes:

Name your .vmf:
rd_<yourname>_mc15_a1

Don't forget a Navmesh! If you don't include one packed into your .bsp, your map will be skipped.

The Speedmapper punch only counts time working on geometry. Planning, compiling, bug fixing, lighting, logic, clipping, sealing, and other things that aren't physical playable spaces do not count towards the four hours.

Good luck!
 
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SnickerPuffs

SnickerPuffs

(*single chuckle*)
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Apr 10, 2014
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Oh no!! I've been waiting for a RD microcontest for MONTHS, and I can't participate because I have stuff to do today!
 
DrSquishy

DrSquishy

we've all had better times to die
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Feb 10, 2017
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I'm excited to see the cool layouts and gameplay loops that people come up with for this microcontest
 
Tiftid

Tiftid

the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
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Sep 10, 2016
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14bit

14bit

L14: Bit Member
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Oct 5, 2014
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Feedback time! While we got less entries than many past microcontest, we got more than I was expecting considering the mode: 13 new RD maps! I am genuinely impressed by the quality as well; I think this might be one of the best sets of entries we've ever gotten. Even the maps that didn't play well had interesting ideas, and I hope this has inspired more people to try mapping for RD. With that, on to the feedback!

It's genuinely impressive that you managed to submit a map less than two hours after the contest was announced, but I think you probably should have spent more time fleshing it out. There's no clear separations between areas, bot paths are unmarked, and there's good places to set up to attack or defend from. In the end it's just a box filled with stuff without clear structure. Mid having high ground over spawns leads to one team claiming it and dominating by pretty much spawn camping the whole time. The location of the Reactor Core isn't marked well either; since they don't spawn until a team has 25 points it's hard to tell where the intel room is until it spawns. The layout also makes it easier to reach the C bots than the A bots, which means if a team wipes the A bots they just roll through and kill all three waves before the defenders can react. The drop down into the intel room is a neat idea though; I'd explore that further if you do manage to fix up the rest of the map.

You've certainly got a unique and recognizable style of map, but I genuinely can't tell if they're meant to be jokes or not at this point. The lighting is too dark to tell teammates apart, and the objective is very unclear. It clearly uses the RD logic, but for what I cannot say. Whatever is the case, this one was broken, so we had to skip. It is impossible for Red to score any points. Even in solo testing, playing as a Red player I still collect points for Blu team. I enjoy seeing these strange things you make, but I wish they were just a bit more playable.

Mine, and I think it's a decent start. Mid is too small and cluttered, but overall the map plays pretty well! I think the idea of having the C bots and the Core being about the same difficulty to reach worked pretty well. There were some complaints about it, but I think it's worth continuing to explore as a concept. I was worried about where the A bots were, but the response was mostly positive; routing and access to them for attackers was not great however. Overall, there just needs to be more room for teams to push and pull, and an expanded mid would probably do that. It's a good proof of concept that smaller-scale RD can work while still including the full suite of logic and mechanics, and I'll probably knock out a few more versions to see if it's actually good.

The point/door is a neat idea, but I think borks the HUD. Capping the point also harms your own team more than it helps long-term, since it opens an easy way for enemies to get to mid while also cutting of your own easy route to mid. The layout feels well-built, but not well designed. B being a dead end is not great, and the overall routing doesn't flow naturally. The whole door/B/Core area is confusing to process at a glance with the grate and the glass door, and it makes leaving the base (for both attackers and defenders) unnecessarily confusing. I wish the bot paths were marked on the ground, and that the areas were marked as A/B/C. There's something good and worth exploring here, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Almost like it would work better as stock CTF? Unsure.

I think this might be my favorite one of the bunch? Definitely too big though. Spawn times feel very long too, and should probably be lowered to Asteroid levels. B and C bot near each other is odd, but workable. At first I thought it might work better if you moved the B bots up to where A is and move A towards mid, but after playing a while I think just cutting out space to have the A bots connected right to mid and leaving them all where they are would be fine; stacking the B and C bots is kind of neat. The underground route out of the core room is questionable, since defenders can't tell it's there until they've passed into the room, turned around, and looked down. Cut the room between A and mid, squish A and B just a bit closer together, move Spawn forward towards C to remove a bit more space, and I think it might be scaled decently. I love the geometry in the spawns and core room, well done! Very solid start, I like it!

It's not obvious where the tanks are going, or where they are. I'd add clear markings on the ground to show the paths they take, and find a way to get them visible through walls. The smoke is good, but I don't think it's enough. The tanks are a neat idea, but I think it might be fundamentally flawed with how it's executed since there's only one tank at a time so one team has starting advantage. The layout felt a bit flat and lacking in smaller cover around mid, but I think a lot of that has to do with the tanks being so big so I'm not sure how much you can do to combat that without adding significantly higher and lower areas. I didn't particularly enjoy it, but a lot of other people did and I think it's worth continuing to see where it goes.

Very unique, though I'm not sure it works. People kept spraying over the instructions, ignoring them, and getting confused. The general concept of "big final bot with tons of points" is neat, but there's too much going on. Robots, spells, the horseman, pumpkin bombs, and the weird end-of-round thing combine into a confusing mess. The layout doesn't really work either; there's one optimal route over the top of everything with the A bots, and it lets you roll through all three waves of bots without stopping since you get massive height advantage over both the enemy spawn and bots B and C. Going for the spells at the bottom is the only real incentive not to take the high route, and even then you get spells from killing robots so it's not a huge deal to just stick to the top. Huge sections of the map don't get used since they don't have bots, and aren't useful flanks to reach the other team's bots. The bases aren't set up in a way that is conducive to defending them, and neither is, well, anywhere. A lot of the map is very dark as well, and it makes team recognition hard. I'd move the bots down to the main floor, get rid of enclosed bridge across the top of mid, and remove either the horseman or spells; both at once is way too much on top of RD. Impressive and unique, but not fun.

Too big, layout is confusing, and a very important train car is missing collisions. Very well built, and extremely impressive geometry for 24 hours, it's just a shame it sucks to play. It's very hard to orient yourself in the bases, and unclear which direction the exit is in from a lot of places. You can learn it, but I have a feeling a lot of people got lost. Splitting the A bots is very confusing, since you kill all at one location and push on to B before you realize you can't kill any of them since there's still A bots alive. In RD, teams generally make big pushes to try and wipe all three waves of bots in one shot (though they rarely make it all the way) but the split layout here means they have to push through two waves of low-value bots before moving on, meaning the push has to survive long enough to effectively kill 4 waves of bots. This slows the pace incredibly, since only the two lower-value bots ever see gameplay around them. The only thing saving it is that the train blocking the view between the A areas is nonsolid at the moment, meaning it's easy to rotate between those two A waves. This was clearly a bug, but I think it actually helped the layout. Additionally, there's no good path to rotate to C from B; the only clear one goes past an enemy spawn door.

A lot of people couldn't find the intel rooms; I suspect this is because the spawn exit to the intel is behind most of the spawn points. Mid is absolutely gigantic, and very hard to cross sometimes; you're clearly supposed to be able to jump up on the boats but the clipping on them is odd and it's really hard to actually do while in combat. Cut mid down by half at least and it might work, but still is probably too large. I hope you try to fix this, since I like some of the geometry here, but at the moment I don't think it's working.

Broken, with no navmesh, which is a shame since this one seems really, really neat! Having a saw on a final bot that has a lot of points in it is absolutely incredible, and I would have loved to play around it. I worry that the map is too narrow; at times there's only effectively two routes and they're basically next to each other. I'm unsure on how it will go with that many A bots, I'd almost switch half to B and make it closer to standard 3-wave RD, but this might work too. The control point mechanics aren't explained anywhere, and I don't know if they'll work well in RD. Getting points even faster via a mid capture just rewards whoever owns mid, who will likely already be winning. Very easy to spawn camp too, we found before it got skipped.

Impressive! I think it's hilarious, but a lot of other people didn't seem to like it. A few of the rounds didn't have a solid floor; I assume this is for replayability, like there's different possible types of rounds, but I might be wrong. If I am, I think having some variation between rounds is a good idea. I think lowering the win limit would also be a good idea since the rounds were very long and outlasted the joke. I'm surprised people actually managed to steal the core in the tests; I would have thought it almost impossible with how close to spawn it is. Neat idea, not sure what else to say.

Mid is boring, and teams can't pass each other easily, which seems to be the most pressing layout issue at the moment. It makes the map feel very one-side most of the time, since it's hard to push through once a team is holding it. I'd add a tunnel under mid so teams can pass each other and actually reach the enemy bots. The reactor cores seem very, very close to spawn, making them hard to reach and harder to escape with. The location of the C bots is interesting as well, but I think the whole spawn-Cbots-core area needs a rework since everything is very cramped and relies on jump pads to fix the massive height disparity between spawn and the bots. Seems decent enough overall.

I very much did not like this one at first, but by the end it was alright. The doors aren't used terribly well, I don't think, and they appear to be bugged. The reactor core room doors for Red never reopen after Blu caps, and while I can't replicate it for the other way around, I was sure it was happening to both teams during the test. This resulted in half of mid being entirely dead ends instead of quick ways into the reactor rooms as intended. Mid is the big issue here; I don't think it's fun to fight in, around, or across, though the broken doors might have been contributing. I almost think making it rotationally symmetrical might work, but that would take a lot of time and effort to figure out with how the bases are set up. I know this isn't terribly useful or actionable feedback, but I don't have much else to say on this one and I trust your skills as mappers to figure out what's best for this really quite neat layout.

It's very hard to get through mid, and makes the map not terribly fun to play on a full server. The sightlines though mid would have been preferable to the chokes we have as a result of the bridge's doorways being tiny in my opinion. Having the B and C bots being together is very odd, and I don't think it works. Teams just roll through A into B, then are already at the C bots by the time defenders respawn. Sure, it pushes the matches to be faster, but it doesn't feel good in practice when you can't properly defend your robots. I've got no clue where you'd be able to move the B bots though, since it's already so small. The map is quite small overall, so moving the B bots to A and making a new A area around an expanded mid might work? The reactor core rooms are kind of neat with the one-way exits opening on core pickup, but I think the core might be too close to spawn on a full server. We got a few steals during testing, but only because the player count dropped enough to make it possible. It's a solid base to work off of, and I look forward to seeing if you both continue this!

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And as usual for Season 2, here's the mode breakdown:

RD 13

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Thanks for playing along as a mapper, tester, or observer! You've impressed me once more with not only the turnout, but quality as well. I'll see you all next month for another microcontest!
 
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