[OPEN] Tiftid's Sketchbook (Definitely not a front for my deranged ramblings)

Tiftid · Aug 5, 2022

This post was mostly prompted by the fact that I thought I had lost a bunch of VMFs forever, but as luck would have it, I had uploaded many of them to Discord, which allowed me to redownload them. In order to make sure I don't lose them again, I've decided to share them with the world, since it's not like I was doing anything with them anyway.

That means pretty much all of these are unreleased and untested, but I think plenty of them are actually good-quality maps. When I make maps, I tend to gravitate towards the ones that break the mold in some way, and leave the ones I make that are just good with not much interesting stuff going on in the dust, so you might be getting the gold here, not the dregs you might get from another mapper orphaning their stuff.

Most of these are "control point sketch vmfs" - single control points which can be dragged and dropped into a shared VMF to create an A/D or Payload map, only requiring you to do some work on the spawns and connectors between the points. I've also written guides informing you what you should look out for when doing just that kind of work.

Some of these revolve around only the backward hold, while others also propose where the forward hold and BLU lobby will be.
There are even some weird ones that only give you the BLU lobby and forward hold!

So, I've split them into 3 categories:

Single Arena maps will only be one fightspace, like only the forward hold of an A/D point, or just the mid of a KOTH map.
Two Arenas will refer to maps that have a lobby and forward hold, or forward hold and backward hold, or all 3 because even though 3 =/= 2, I'm feeling generous today.
Full Map will be a full, but not necessarily playable layout. It might need more logic, or clipping and sealing, or a layout rework, or being mirrored.

All the VMFs are attached to this thread. I honestly don't give a shit whether or not you credit me for whatever you do with these, I just want someone to get some use out of them.

I also attached some "gravelpit shack" VMFs that I like to use as instances. You'll need to put them in a subfolder named "instance" in whatever folder you put the other VMFs you downloaded from this thread in, otherwise some VMFs will be missing these gravelpit shacks, which are very important for gameplay.

[Single Arena]

Map \| Month/Year \| Image	Ramblings (Please ignore for your own sanity, these are all like 400-500 words long, some longer)
cp_firstpoint2 \| Dec 2021	Oh mannnn, I thought I had lost this one forever. Which would have been a shame, cause I really liked the ideas here. In December 2021, I was madly experimenting with trying to make an A/D control point right in front of BLU's first spawn. It was probably the most diligently I've ever worked towards developing an idea, aside from when I made pl_boatload. You see, I had recently played someone's first map that featured a control point like this, and I was in love. It felt like it brought out all of the 2007-y, Dustbowl-y parts of TF2 in a way that's impossible for people to justify making with modern mapping knowledge. But just making modernistic maps all the time is so boring! So I sought to make something truly evocative of the worst best parts of TF2. But before that, let's start with some good. This map puts BLU's spawn exits really far apart and on different height levels, so it's near-impossible to spawncamp them and stop them from reaching the point. To make this not horrible for RED to defend, RED also spawns pretty close to the point, and the point has a long captime. What really kickstarted (and also literally began) the VMF was the point area: BLU can come from one of two directions, and there's no single position RED can stand at to stop them from reaching the point. They also have a couple of sneaky hiding spots (the blue dots) on the point, thanks to the little metal structure. This means it's easy for BLU to get onto and stay alive on the point, which in turn forces RED to push onto the point and flush them out. I liked the idea of it a lot. Still do, really. Another area I liked is this underpass. If BLU is uncontested, it's a really powerful flank that lets them undermine RED's strongest defensive position - the bottom of the metal ramp seen in top right frame. But RED can put a sentry in a little alcove under the ramp to stop BLU from using it against them, at the cost of easier corner-peeks from BLU's teammates on that sentry from the doorway, and less visibility onto the point area. The visual style was actually pretty quaint too. I had lots and lots of complex metal structures in some kind of vague industrial/construction theme. RED spawn would almost certainly have been some kind of brick building with how low and nostalgically framed in the scene it is. Speaking of RED spawn, it's actually the biggest sore point of the VMF: It's just two doors that exit into the same area. I think I meant for BLU to basically capture the point for free if they could reach RED spawn. In hindsight, that would have been really really unfun, and I'm glad that for later control points of the same archetype I chose to split RED's spawn exits more into different areas. I think ideally you would move one of the spawn doors up to here; And the other to this doorway, so it's harder for BLU to spawncamp. I was scared to do this back in Dec 2021, because it would have meant that RED could have stickycamped the point directly from the safety of their spawn door. And rightly so, but I think the alternative is worse. I think the main reason I never continued this VMF was because I was worried it would be too easy for BLU to capture. Plus I hadn't really built anything that could plausibly become a connector to the next control point. But there are some good ideas here. Maybe if you moved BLU spawn further back from the point and mashed the disconnected tunnels together into more of a concrete forward hold area for RED? Or maybe you could just fully commit to the "point outside of BLU spawn" design and give RED wayyyyyyy stronger defensive positions. If you do that, I recommend a respawn wave time of 6 seconds for BLU. Trust me.
cp_test2 \| August 2020	Just a simple yet good area right outside BLU spawn. The multiple height levels mean that it's reasonably hard for RED to stand in any one place that watches all of the BLU spawn exits at once. The connectors between BLU spawn and RED's forward hold are designed around classic TF2 gameplay elements like corners and ramps with health packs nearby that favour RED, but keep them constantly on their toes. The height adds a touch of spice to these simple spaces, where while you're trying to push up a corner or ramp, you might catch flak from your enemy's teammates who are on a different part of the highground or lowground. I keep looking back at this one and being surprised at how solid it is. I don't know why I didn't continue it back in 2020. Clearly I had bad taste. Maybe it can act as a good start for your A/D map. It's one of few vmfs here that'll let you design your own forward hold and backward hold for the point that follows, instead of just being something self-sufficient you can drag and drop in. But I would recommend it with a grain of salt, since the brushwork is not so good compared to the many newer vmfs in this sketchbook. It's not bad, but if you ever end up having to detail or displace it, you might regret it...
cp_test2_modernised \| The upload date says March 2022 and I'm not sure I believe it but that's what we're going with	cp_test2, but I looked back at it and realised that it was worth expanding. Now, instead of just a BLU lobby, I also added a RED forward hold, where they have health and ammo under a little concrete ramp thing. I also turned it into payload and made it a little harder for RED to watch all of BLU's spawn exits at once, because it was still possible in some spots in the 2020 version. This VMF is really sketchy, mostly because of this doorway: This lets BLU do something uncomfortably close to skipping RED's forward hold. But if they couldn't, RED would basically never be forced to rotate, which would make for a pretty easy hold as far as first points go. I think it's fine, but you definitely need to keep it in mind as you build further. There was also a version of this map where I had also built a backward hold. Unfortunately, I no longer have that VMF. A shame, cause I liked what I had built.
koth_waterpark_test1 \| May 2022	In May 2022, I would release B1 of cp_bruhstbowl. It was a big milestone for me - my first map with not-forced and not-rushed detailing; so not-rushed it had taken me over a month to make, even though I had only detailed stage 1! I was so excited to get it tested that I could hardly wait the 3 days it would end up taking. So I decided to make some KOTH A1s. I had recently participated in Microcontest 21, where I had made a CTF map in about 6 hours, thought "man wtf do I do now" and just slapped a second entry (a symmetrical 2CP map) onto it as a second stage, which also took about 6 hours. This taught me that I could make maps in a very short space of time, so I figured I would release daily KOTH a1s until cp_bruhstbowl_b1 was tested. That's a pretty rich backstory for such a tiny VMF, huh. Well, basically, I wanted to make daily KOTH A1s, and I wanted each one to have a unique gimmick. For this one, it would be the relatively unexplored niche of underwater gameplay, which had nearly infinite potential to spice up the gameplay spaces I was building. So I built this. The grey platforms can be swam under. It was pretty complex, and it had a decent amount of potential to not suck. But I scrapped it quickly, because I feared the water would make it way too quick and easy for the team who owned the point to rotate between watching the attackers' entrances into the point area. In hindsight, that might have been a bad idea, so I'm giving you the chance to give this the new life it deserves.
pl_firstpoint1 \| November 2021	In my opinion, this is really a huge step down in quality compared to the other VMFs I've given you so far, but it's worth mentioning, since it serves as a companion vmf to pl_secondpoint1 and pl_lastpoint1 later. This would have been the first point of a payload map called pl_desperation. The map idea was a symbol of the worst excesses of my misled mapping knowledge at the time; I thought it was important to have as few forward spawns as possible in Payload, so I wanted a map where BLU could attack all four points from a single spawn. In order to achieve that, A had to be really close to BLU spawn physically, so that the walk to B, C and D from BLU spawn wasn't unbearable. The layout would be all compressed and convoluted and give BLU shortcuts and stuff to help them along on the path to D, so that they didn't have to experience the misery that is attacking Mountainlab C. The problem is that having A be so close to BLU spawn is terrible. BLU is guaranteed to have an uber right out of the gates if they have a medic, and an uber-push usually guarantees RED loses their forward hold. But if A is that close to BLU spawn, RED has no forward hold. They just lose the point. At the time, I tried to justify this by making the cart path long and winding, so that after BLU takes the A area, they have to spend time bringing the cart to the point to actually capture, which would give RED time to retake. The problem with that was that shortly after making this VMF, I tested another, similar A/D concept which asked RED to retake a point area they'd already lost, and they consistently failed to do it. And especially for an A point, where RED spawns so far away - asking them to retake the backward hold after losing it is lunacy! So, yeah. This will probably never work without massive changes. But it's here, as a not-so-proud part of my mapping history. Also, I would like to point out that it's really easy for RED to stand in one place to watch both of BLU's spawn exits, whereas the time it takes BLU to walk between those exits is really long: So maybe RED could have a chance of getting a forward hold on this point if they spawncamp hard enough? But I wouldn't hold my breath. Oh, also, it uses the cart model from the pl_snowycoast asset pack. For some reason. At least I used the one without the snow.
mvm_ridiculoustower \| March 2022	Now this is quite the VMF. It started out as a simple prefab; I built a little skeleton, and some modular bridge pieces that branched off it. They were based off the infamous "bridge of death" from my map sd_nowhere; a gameplay space that was intentionally designed to be as deadly to exist in as I could possibly make one. The idea was to make an MVM map where the bot spawn area was the tower, and bots would spawn from distant mineshafts that led into the bridges which led into the tower, whereupon I could use func_nav_prefer to make them exit the tower from different doorways, which would lead into other bridges that would lead to the normal gameplay space. That way, it would make for a very complex bot spawn zone. I liked this as an idea, because I hate Valve's MVM maps where the bot spawn zone is a single uninteresting corridor and you just end up spamming it for the whole game. So I built a tower with the prefab, and built a bot spawn zone around it. (The missing textures are from the Bulletcrops content pack which Billo made me download to help him detail and optimise cp_caribbean; I have since moved to a new computer and not redownloaded those textures) The snipers represent long-range bots, the Combine soldiers represent basic bots and the Combine elite represents giants... probably. The Strider would have represented some sort of ambitious custom non-robot boss made through map logic. There are a bunch of func_nav_prefers already set up, space cleared for a tank path, and even the beginnings of a more simple lobby where players would retreat to hold off the robots when it became obvious that the bot spawn zone was near-impossible to hold. I think the idea of very tight gameplay spaces like these bridges in MVM maps is interesting, because it basically removes players' ability to dodge, so the gameplay changes more towards not putting yourself in a dangerous situation where you're stuck in a tight bridge with a Soldier-bot. But it was kind of ruined in this map by the tower mostly being a bot spawn room, so the defenders can't even go in there. Well, I say it was "kind of ruined", but it's not like the map ever got far enough to be played. The tower prefab is meant to be used like this; you grab and copy the basic skeleton pieces: Then you grab any of the branching side-pieces that strike your fancy, and copy and paste them onto your skeleton tower. You need to copy and paste them exactly as they are; don't rotate them or you'll start to run into ugly texture alignment issues. Also, several of the straight bridge pieces don't come with a chickenwire ceiling, so you'll either need to add it manually or copy the part of the straight bridge that does come with it. As long as you make sure the wooden octagonal base of the tower is aligned to the 64-unit grid, it's also really easy to build around the tower: Fun fact: I wanted to host an unofficial microcontest that required players to use this prefab to create a tower that housed one of their map's objectives. I would've made an extensive video tutorial on how to use the prefab, and even provided two pre-built example towers with gameplay areas that micrcontestants could copy and use if they found the prefab too intimidating. The bonus punch would have been to build a single tower 3 or more stories tall, or to have more than one tower with a map objective in it. That's why there would've been two example areas - one 2 stories tall, and one 3 - so that even people who were defeated by the prefab could still use the bonus punch. ... I think it would have been awesome, but it would have been a 6/5 difficulty microcontest for sure. And anyway making the video tutorial would've been a pain since I live in a very lively house. Lots of background noise.

[Two Arenas]

Map | Month/Year | Image

Ramblings (Please ignore for your own sanity these are all like 400-500 words long)

adctf_firstpoint1 | August/September 2021

Here's another one I was worried I had lost forever. This would've been the first point of my entry into sonoma's unofficial A/D CTF and A/D PASS Time contest. The flag would have been a UFO (custom prop from this pack), and it would have acted as a dispenser that also gave the flag carrier *checks notes* a speed boost, insane jump height and immunity to fall damage. The gameplay space has a lot of height to accomodate this. Although I really like what I built for the flag spawn area, it was unfortunately another victim of me trying to get fancy with A/D points:

The flag area doesn't act as the forward hold for the point, but instead the point and the flag area are equidistant from BLU spawn. This means that BLU could choose whether or not to rush the point area immediately, but in the end they had to go and take the flag area first, then bring the flag to the point through one of two small connectors:

Sadly, this would have SUCKED. It would have been really easy for BLU to just take the point area and totally prevent RED from accessing either the point or the flag area, making it basically a free capture for BLU after one good push.
BLU's spawn exits onto the flag spawn area were also terrible, they both just exited into the same area and would have been really easy to spawncamp.

The frustrating thing is that both the flag area and the point area are kind of amazing. It probably could have been a really, really good point if only I had just made the flag area the forward hold and the point area the backward hold like a normal person.

Also, before I forget to tell you, it would have used a custom skybox - sky_goldnight_01, and the map probably would have been called adctf_raid or something.
And I listened to this song a lot while making it. Such a good song that I was content to listen to it on repeat for hours without going insane.

I really hope that you can get some use out of this VMF. It has two of the best gameplay spaces I ever designed, and it would be really sad to see them go to waste just because I don't really have any map worth working them into.

adctf_lastpoint1 | August/September 2021

This would have been the... C point? of my A/D CTF map for the unofficial contest. Hang on, that doesn't sound right; I was sure that I only wanted to make two points! Ah well.

It was inspired by the C point of an earlier map of mine called pl_roofrack. That C point was in turn inspired by Snowycoast D. It had an obviously overpowered engineer balcony right in front of RED spawn, but there was a cave flank across from it that would let BLU snipers make the lives of the RED engis seriously hard if left unchecked. The cart was also an odd shape, which let BLU use it as an umbrella against the sentries - however, the engineer balcony did a full 180 curve around the entrance of the building, so it was impossible to shield yourself from all of the sentries with just the cover the cart provided.

This point is basically an extension of that. The screenshot shows an obviously overpowered sentry position over the point, but there's also a very long flank with a bunch of metal spytech supports that BLU can use to outrange the sentries. However, RED can build in a little corner under the C sign to make their sentry safe from that flank - however, there's a little section of capzone under that corner platform that the sentry can't watch.

This is a tried and tested methodology of designing last points that has worked for me right up until the very recent cp_fragment.

Another thing I liked about Roofrack C was BLU's lobby, which again I basically copied and pasted for this map:

BLU is given plenty of health and ammo, quick rotates between their two routes, and insane high ground over the exits of the 2012 building; all those factors in combination would hopefully ensure that RED will never push into this area.

But the forward hold is where this point falls apart.

You see, RED's forward hold is under the bridge in the following screenshot.

But if RED's under the bridge, there's nothing they can do to stop BLU from just using this side area to totally bypass them and get straight to C:

So this point doesn't really have a viable RED forward hold. BLU can just skip it.

However, there is one saving grace: It's A/D CTF, so BLU can't cap the point without grabbing the flag.
As it happens, the flag is on top of the bridge, so BLU has to walk past RED's forward hold area to grab it:

So, even though this point would never work as A/D or Payload, it might have a chance because it's A/D CTF. Which is kind of beautiful.

Something I also like about this point is the crate spam - it's cover that deliberately favours the UFO carrier, because the UFO carrier's bonus jump height lets them basically just ignore your attempts to take cover behind the crates. I just thought that was neat.

pl_secondpoint1 | November 2021

This would have been part of an ultra crackhead map called pl_desperation, where I would've aimed to make it so that BLU could use the same spawn to attack all four points, thanks to a whole host of layout gimmicks. Combine that with a semi-original theme (totally stolen from pont's cp_coppice) which fuses gravelpit's textures with the alpine textures and goldrush's lighting, and I would have an iconic, 2009-y map, right?

Well, it didn't exactly work out that way. Mostly because I realised the layout gimmicks were going to be terrible, as you saw earlier in pl_firstpoint1.

Also, you might have noticed the missing textures. They were basically blends of nature/rockwall004 and nature/gravelground001 with nature/grass_07. I lost them in the change between computers and can't be bothered to remake and attach them. Sorry!
Also also, I built a big array of tree cards, but they aren't in the 3D skybox or anything - they're scaled-up dynamic props. So if you aren't using Hammer++, you won't be able to preview the scale and it'll look off.

Anyway, here's a diagram of what the map would have been like - red and blue lines represent routes players would commonly take through the map, whereas the orange lines represent the cart path.

The main thing to notice is that the cart path was very long and bendy between A and B. I had planned to make it that way so B didn't roll, then give BLU a shortcut to B so they could feasibly attack it from the same spawn they used to attack A.

You can see elements of this in the screenshot. The cart path goes around a little rock outcrop and right on the edge of an Upward-style cliff, then into the building where B is situated.
I ended up canning the shortcut idea because it was terrible, so BLU would definitely have needed a forward spawn to attack this point.

I know this, because I specifically built a lobby area that they would need to spawn nearby:

It's a pretty standard lobby. BLU gets full health and ammo in the shack, and they can go up the hill to access a sniper platform, or back down the cart path for some close-range combat.

The forward hold was definitely the highlight of this VMF.

RED would have held up the top of, and down beside, this rock platform. They would use little doomsday fences and the curvature of the arena as cover, while their snipers would attempt to take out BLU's snipers who would be trying to climb this staircase to get an angle on RED's sentries:

I got so into designing this that I even marked out each team's dispenser spots with helper models, which is something that I've never bothered to do again since.

After taking this forward hold, BLU would have tried to assault the B building, which I'll now show you from RED's perspective:

It's a pretty bog-standard Payload point. RED has a few strong defensive positions for sentries, and BLU gets a couple of high-ground sniper positions that RED snipers are incentivised to counter-sniper.

It has a couple of issues, though. It's a little too easy for RED to see every entrance from anywhere they stand in the room, so it'd probably be a hard, hard hold to take.

Also, BLU has to go past one of the highground doors to reach the other, which makes it not very viable as a sniper position because the one they have to go post would be a common and safe place for RED demomen to hang out.

That actually wasn't a problem in earlier versions of this VMF, because BLU could jump through this window and use it as a shortcut. But they can't anymore. I mean, I guess you could change it back into a shortcut again and it wouldn't harm the point's gameplay that much.

But yeah, honestly a super solid B point. All you need to do is plonk a BLU forward spawn next to the lobby area (and ensure that RED can't just stand in one place and camp all its exits!!!), and plonk a RED spawn down somewhere in the B building, and it would play pretty well. I think.

pl_lastpoint1 | November 2021

This is another part of pl_desperation, and it's a lot more munted than the second point. I remember I really wanted to make a giant, open, Gravelpit-style gameplay space, with sawmill-related buildings on wooden foundations that you could crouch under, and extensive use of displacements to make it so that you wouldn't get feetshot from under those buildings.

... It did not turn out even remotely close to how I imagined it.

The gameplay purpose this point needed to fulfill was being really close to C so that BLU could reasonably attack it from their first spawn (since C was also really close to A), but it also had to give RED a chance to defend it and not just get steamrolled by BLU after they cap C. So I stole another idea from a Rule of Threes contest map, this time from pl_dayspring. That map had a finale where you had to hold the cart in the path of a sawblade so that the sawblade would slice, and explode, the cart.

I saw potential for a finale like that to basically simulate a control point with a long captime. So I implemented it into this D point (note: I do not guarantee that the logic for it works) and basically just called it a day.

But the design of the area around it is pretty crap. It's in a very nostalgic, very Gravelpit-like building where it's assumed that RED will sit in it, try not to poke their heads through the open windows for fear of getting sniped, and crouch behind the stacks of wood planks for cover.
That much is good, but it's not really the kind of thing that makes for a hugely defendable area. It's the same problem as cp_firstpoint2 earlier; for an idea like this to work, RED needs really, really strong defensive positions that are really, really hard for BLU to take even with an Ubercharge.

The area RED uses to approach the point is another example of "cp_firstpoint2 syndrome":

If BLU ever takes RED's singular hold, it would be easy for them to push into this area and start spawncamping RED, basically guaranteeing a capture. Which is not very fun. I even gave BLU a route under the building, directly to this area... for some reason.

So, yeah. This point would need a lot of work to make it work, even if you wanted to can the sawblade finale and transform it into a typical Payload point.

cp_3ad_lastpoint1 | Upload date says April 2022 but I'm not convinced it was even 2022 at all

This was a little experiment that's very close to my heart. I aimed to replicate what old 2009 TF2 maps are like as closely as I possibly could.

Since I was only 5 years old in 2009, it wasn't easy to make something that felt authentic, but I think what I ended up with here is pretty damn close.

That's not to say I intentionally tried to make it bad, no.
RED has a clearly defined forward hold and backward hold:

BLU has a clearly defined lobby area with quick access to health and ammo, as well as a cover block that lets them safely get to the window flank:

In fact, I regard this control point as one of my best works. Then why am I orphaning it? Well, unfortunately, I needed a 2009-y A point and B point to pair with this, and I just didn't have the inspiration it took to make them live up to the gold standard this point had set. So maybe I can outsource that work to you.

Also, I just want to show off how 2009-y I managed to make it. Like, look at the inside of the building.

pl_lastpoint2 | Upload date says April 2022 but I'm not convinced it was even 2022 at all

This is basically the Payload version of the previous vmf.
In fact, this exists solely because I "modernised" cp_test2, which you saw earlier - I developed it further than the versions you got into a Payload A point, which was super 2009-y.

But it wasn't compatible with cp_3ad_lastpoint1, because, well... it was Payload. So I had to make a 2009-y Payload last point to replace it.

You can observe a couple of things about the map immediately - the cart path encourages close-range combat with some corner-fights around super tight concrete obstacles, which is a 2009 classic, and the "Payload last" part of the map comes from trying to push the cart down a single empty hallway knowing full well that there's a sentry waiting for you at RED's backward hold through the little doorway at the end.

For this point I chose to separate the close-range and long-range combat less than I normally do; only a short walk away from the RED backward hold is a sniper position that directly watches the cart path!

Thankfully, this doesn't totally invalidate BLU's attack options, and not even their close-range ones, because they get this platform just after their lobby:

This lets them safely cross above the sniper's sightline into a building where they can enjoy some close-range combat while totally ignoring the sniper, or alternatively they get a flank route they can use to try to sneak up on the sniper.

This VMF also uses the finale ramp from the pl_snowycoast asset pack, but it's not really a hugely necessary thing. In fact, the icicles make the ramp prop pretty hard to use as anything other than a placeholder.

cp_ms_lastpoint1 | October 2021

This was meant to just be a generic last point that could be dragged and dropped into any multi-stage A/D CP map I happened to be making. It used the same "alpine with gravelpit rocks" theme, and blend textures, as the pl_desperation collection, although before they existed.

Some of you might already recognise that getting "dragged and dropped into any multi-stage A/D CP map I happened to be making" actually did happen to this VMF. So why am I orphaning it?

Well, this has a number of significant differences from its months-newer, much more tested current version. And the funny thing is that those differences don't necessarily make it worse.
The differences are as follows:

In this old version, RED spawn is much bigger and they spawn much further back
The point is significantly closer to RED's spawn doors in this old version
The new version gives BLU access to the roof of the white shack pretty much for free as they round the corner from their lobby, but this old version forces them to use the stairs
The new version has another shack on top of the white shack that acts as cover and health for RED, which this old version lacks
This old version makes it MUCH harder for RED to get up onto the high ground
This old version doesn't have a BLU lobby, leaving you free to design your own

Those first two differences in particular are fascinating to me, because the reason they were changed in the newer version was because A was just so far from RED spawn that it was impossible to defend, so RED got a smaller spawn and a shortcut to A.

But if there's a different A point preceding this one - maybe even with a forward spawn for RED - we'll get to see how history could have been different.

Also, even if you know where this point came from and pilfering it makes you feel uncomfortable, you can at least use it as some kind of reference. It has some pretty cool gameplay spaces, its scaling is alright, and it played pretty well right from the get-go. I think? It was several months ago now...

[Full Map]

Map \| Month/Year \| Image	Ramblings (Please ignore for your own sanity, these are all like 400-500 words long, some longer)
pass_scaryball_test1 \| June 2021	Oh man, this one has a whole world of context. It was made shortly after the end of the Rule of Threes Major Contest. A little map called Smalltime got made for that contest. Smalltime was basically the conclusion to a long PASS Time renaissance that had been going strong ever since Microcontest 5: PASS Time Panic, or June 2020. The reason why that's relevant was because for the entire renaissance, people had somehow been limiting themselves to the context of standard, gigantic PASS Time maps. Making the map smaller was a simple change that greatly improved the gamemode, although didn't make it perfect (or even particularly good, in my opinion). I had a lot to say about Smalltime. Mainly, it seemed to suffer from the standard CTF problem, where either there are 3 engineers on each team and nobody can capture, or there are no engineers and nobody can stop scouts from capturing. So to solve that, I would make a map that did all of the following things: You can see the throw-in goal, doors to the underworld and the run-in-goal (the lava) in the screenshot I provided. Instead of the ball getting spiked into the playspace by a hammer, it would also instead come flying out of a painting in mid. The map was nearly playable (apart from the missing texture, which is a frontline cobblestone texture that's easy to replace with any other cobblestone texture). All it needed was a proper BLU spawn room, a little bit of logic work and then to be mirrored and it was ready. (Sadly I no longer have the vmf for the scary ball and resistance logic so you'll have to figure that one out yourself) If it was so close to being done, and so seemingly fun, I have no clue why it sat around not getting finished for the past 13 or 14 months.
koth_nowhere_test1 \| February 2022	The reason why this VMF exists is kind of silly. Basically, in February 2022, I got a reply on one of my old guides (this one): I believe they were referring to this image: So I replied: Well, the "might be possible to make a super-fun KOTH map" thing kind of got stuck in my head. And a few days later, I had a full KOTH layout (although it still needs lighting work, logic and mirroring). In my opinion, it has potential to be an alright KOTH map. It has pretty good lobby areas, and the connectors outside spawn are uninspired but they do the job. Where it kind of falls apart is the point. You basically have to go up this ramp while exposed to demo-spam and a big sniper sightline. The only real other option is taking a one-way door to lead you directly into the cave area people on the point use to take cover: This isn't too bad. It could work as a KOTH map. But it fails as an experiment, because it invalidates everything that was fun about the original area in sd_nowhere. Peeking around the side of the walls instead of going up the ramp isn't a good idea anymore, unless you want to get your head taken off. The walls by the sides of the ramp are still raised, but they don't really give you cover from anything anymore, unless you're using a very specific sniper window. Hiding in the cave area isn't a good idea anymore because you can get ambushed by the one-way door. So, if you want to take it up and give it a little polish so it works better as a design, or if you just want to release an aggressively average KOTH map, be my guest.

Tiftid · Feb 16, 2023

Announcing a new content pipeline: A new page for the sketchbook every 6 months!
Since Page 1 was 08/2022 (mm/yyyy), Page 2 will be 02/2023, and Page 3 will be 08/2023.

Without further ado, let's see the unseen things I've been getting up to over the past 6 months! (And a little more that I didn't release in Page 1)
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Map \| Month/Year \| Image	Features	Ramblings
cp_saltpit_test1 \| June 2022 \|	Lighting: Some GameLogic: None Spawns: None Arena Number: 2	cp_saltpit is an idea I've had since around 2021. The basic idea was that it would be like cp_gravelpit (the original idea was to have it be a gravelpit reskin!), but A and B are teleportation devices, and instead of using a risky single-choke rotation route, RED could instead teleport between the two points for an instant rotate. Well, as it turns out, teleport triggers suck, because you can't predict what's on the other side, so it easily could just be getting sticky-camped. So I eventually settled on the idea of it just being really quick for RED to rotate between A and B, and really hard for BLU to contest RED's rotation route. RED would have extremely powerful high ground above both A and B, and BLU wouldn't be able to get up to this high ground. So, if BLU was pushing B, the RED players on the A high ground could quickly rotate to B and still be at a position of advantage. The reason why I abandoned this VMF was because I built a forward hold area for A. A and B on Gravelpit-like maps shouldn't have a forward hold, because the long captime and easy rotation for RED are better for making them defendable. You could probably repurpose this as a pretty good linear A/D point with relative ease.
cp_saltpit_test2 \| July 2022 \|	Lighting: Some GameLogic: None Spawns: None Arena Number: 1	This is another crack at the cp_saltpit idea. I was brainstorming ideas for how to make it quick and ssafe for RED to rotate between A and B, and one day I thought of the idea of having B set on an angled bridge above the space leading up to A. I abandoned this VMF because I forked it off into cp_saltpit_test2b, which received slightly more development.
cp_saltpit_test2b \| July 2022 \|	Lighting: Some GameLogic: Some Spawns: None Arena Number: 2	A fork of cp_saltpit_test2. This version added two one-way doors and cover to B so that RED could enter with more advantage. It also generally reworked BLU's approach to A and rotate to B. At that point, I got disappointed with the gameplay I was building and abandoned the VMF.
cp_NAMEME2CP_test1 \| July 2022 \|	Lighting: None GameLogic: None Spawns: None Arena Number: 1	This was part of my long quest to make a good version of symmetrical 2CP, which lasted until I made tc_babel and was satisfied. This VMF would have been mining-styled, and would have had the attacking team going from mid to the area you're seeing in the screenshot, and attacking the area the sentry props are guarding. In practice, it's a nice little arena that you could easily use for a number of purposes, and have the players approach from a number of angles.
cp_NAMEME2CP_test2 \| July 2022 \|	Lighting: Some GameLogic: None Spawns: None Arena Number: 2	This was another step in my quest to make good symmetrical 2CP. The design behind this VMF arose from me observing that if you take a step of 48, players can jump up it easily without having to crouch-jump, and if you add another step afterwards, it kind of becomes cover you can fully hide behind. In practice, this is worse than just doing displacements, because revved-up heavies cannot jump. So this VMF is really just crazy to no real end. Still, I can imagine it being posible to find the combat enjoyable.
arena_tiftidlava_a1 \| July 2022 \|	Lighting: Full GameLogic: Full* Spawns: Both Arena Number: 3	This is a port of koth_tiftidlava to Graveyard-style Arena, complete with sky_wildfire_01 and models/props_viaduct_event/house_hat02.mdl for that extra spoooooky atmosphere. I believed pretty strongly in this one. Everyone loved the lava mechanics in tiftidlava, but the layout performed poorly and was surprisingly difficult to fix, which is why I scrapped it and made tiftidlava2. But before I made tiftidlava2, I had thought that the lava, being mainly a deathmatch mechanic, would really suit Arena. And, being a halloweeny mechanic, it would also suit Graveyard-style Arena, which in my opinion is a lot better than normal Arena. The reason why I abandoned this VMF is because... well, I remember the logic being broken, but I'm not exactly sure in what way. The mechanic that kills you if you're a late joiner is kind of iffy. It spawns you out in the lava field underneath a very hot roof that damages people who stand on it. Under that roof, you'll repeatedly lava jump until you die and become a ghost. But I think I remember it being escapable, or broken, or something. There's also kind of a conflict of interest. The ghosts want to be healing people who are damaging themselves with the lava, but people damaging themselves with the lava are moving so fast the ghosts will probably have a hard time following them.
arena_msgraveyard001_stage1 \| August 2022 \|	Lighting: Full GameLogic: Some Spawns: Both Arena Number: 3	This was part of a collab with a mapper whose name I no longer remember. The plan was simple. Graveyard arena is fun, but it gets repetitive quickly, because it's Arena and you have minute-long rounds on a tiny map. So, make it randomly choose between three layouts and it no longer gets repetitive quickly. And it will win the Unofficial Spookfest contest. I would make two stages and the other guy would make the third. Unfortunately, they never did. And that's ultimately why I abandoned this VMF. I think it's a solid Arena layout, but the map it was meant to be part of never became a reality.
arena_msgraveyard001_stage3 \| August 2022 \|	Lighting: Full GameLogic: Some Spawns: Both Arena Number: 3	This was part of a collab with a mapper whose name I no longer remember. The lore and design behind it is mostly the same as Stage 1. However, this stage would be set in Hell, and feature the lava and layout design philosophy from koth_tiftidlava. Fun fact: This is the only VMF I've ever made while drunk. I think it's alright. At best. Clearly I don't have the ZUN touch (the ability to compose amazing music while drunk).
ctf_ghostscroll_test1 \| August 2022 \|	Lighting: None GameLogic: None Spawns: None Arena Number: 2	This is a VMF I'm kind of ashamed to lay claim to. It follows similar design principles to ctf_tiftid_mc21. The mid structure forces you to go one of two ways to approach the enemy flag. The idea is that your team splits into two squads. Your large squad encounters the small enemy squad and beats them, while the enemy large squad beats your small squad. Each team advances to the enemy base and grabs their flag. When your team's flag is grabbed, your team gets force-respawned. Since the flag slows down the flag carrier, you can prevent the flag from being run out of your base and captured if you win the fight against the flag carrier and their teammates. The map attempts to use what I think is the single unique, interesting and inspiring feature of ctf_hades - the fact that snipers can swim out way far in the water to gain a really long sightline. The intel room was thus designed to be engi-unfriendly, both by scattering lots of small cover enemies can use against sentries about the arena, and by letting distant snipers kill sentries from the water. To prevent these snipers from being horrible and obnoxious to fight against, the ground is hilly, so if you stay at the bottom of the hill, you're safe from the water snipers. The reason why I abandoned this VMF was because it was horribly built and unprofessional (imagine really poor usage of the Greek asset pack) and the intel room looked horrible to have to play in.
mvm_doomed_test2 \| August 2022 \|	Lighting: None GameLogic: None Spawns: None Arena Number: 1	The concept behind this map is inspired by damaging floors in DOOM. Specifically, I was watching Dario Casali's playthrough of the mappack he co-developed with his brother Milo Casali in 1995; The Plutonia Experiment, and something in MAP23: Tombstone caught my eye - the main path was really thin, making it hard to dodge the demons' projectiles, but there was a damaging floor players could dip out onto in the emergency scenario that a high-damage projectile was coming straight for them. I was immediately inspired to build an MVM map around this concept. There are a few thin paths the players can traverse, but if they're willing to dip out into the damaging lava, they can get quick rotates, access to health packs and the ability to dodge robot rockets. The main reason I abandoned this map was that I just couldn't be bothered to build a full MVM map and also write a DOOM-themed popfile for it.
mvm_doomed_test1 \| August 2022 \|	Lighting: None GameLogic: None Spawns: None Arena Number: 1	This is the first arena I built for the "mvm_doomed" concept. It leans a lot harder into trying to look DOOM-like. I was trying to build a very complex bot spawn zone where the defenders would need to be constantly on their toes if they wanted to hold it (and so realistically wouldn't hold it), because I hate Valve MVM where teams just hold the bot spawn zone for the entire mision. The main reason I abandoned this was because I felt it was too complex and too alien to what TF2 players are familiar with. This uses the same custom assets as koth_tiftidlava3_test1, which is a couple of maps below this.
cp_NAMEME2CP_test3 \| September 2022 \|	Lighting: None GameLogic: None Spawns: None Arena Number: 2	This was another step in my quest to make good symmetrical 2CP. This VMF started when I built a cool underground tunnel. Players could walk above the entrance to avoid any sightlines it created, like a window set into a 45 degree slope, which is a layout feature Fortnite used to have but never really used. From there, it kind of just naturally expanded until I had a couple of fun-looking arenas. The reason why I abandoned this is explained in the hard-to-read editor_text. It would be way too hard to come back from behind, since the enemy team has so many routes into your base that you can never hope to clear all of them, push out and capture mid, let alone the enemy point. If you're not so committed to the 2CP dream as I was, you could probably repurpose this as a cool A/D forward and backward hold.
koth_tiftidlava3_test1 \| September 2022 \|	Lighting: None GameLogic: None Spawns: None Arena Number: 1	Yes, I really did have plans to make a tiftidlava3. The central idea behind this one was much the same as the central idea behind tiftidlava2. Each team would have a number of separated approaches to the control point. That meant that if the team who owned the point tried pushing into one and getting a forward hold, the attacking team could push the other route and backcap. So the team who owns the point is forced to defend it by standing on top of it, where there's no health, or by retreating and letting the enemy team take it. And this is good, because we want the point to change hands as often as possible in KOTH. I abandoned this VMF primarily because it was just like tiftidlava2 but way harder to optimise. It has quite a lot of custom content, at least by my standards. The skybox is mpa95, and the stone wall texture I made myself. Here's the VMT in text form: Code: `lightmappedgeneric { $basetexture "concrete/concretefloor003" $surfaceprop concrete // $envmap "env_cubemap" // $envmapcontrast 1 // $envmapsaturation 1 // $envmaptint "[ .75 .75 .75]" $normalmapalphaenvmapmask 1 $bumpmap "brick/brickwall001_height-ssbump" $ssbump 1 // $detail "overlays/detail001" // $detailscale 1.9 // $detailblendmode 0 // $detailblendfactor 1 %keywords "tf" }` The stone wall texture looks best at a scale of 0.5.
pl_northpole_test1 \| October 2022 \|	Lighting: None GameLogic: None Spawns: None Arena Number: 1	This VMF evolved from a diagram I drew on paper, which is pretty rare for me. I usually plan my maps via text descriptions and measured walk times in a private Discord server. It's a pretty standard "area outside BLU spawn". It's designed so that RED can't watch all four BLU exits by standing in one place, so they have to be on their toes and will probably be forced to fall back to the forward hold area. Although, if RED spawns close enough, this area could be used as the forward hold, but that was never part of my plan. I abandoned this VMF because of the difficulty of building a forward hold area with the way I'd set up the routing.
ta_suburban_test1 \| October 2022 \|	Lighting: Full GameLogic: Some Spawns: None Arena Number: 1	This was created as an attempt to make a map for the ill-fated Time Attack! contest. Pretty much the only interesting thing about this arena is the area under the house. It has a health pack, but players can't fit under there. Why? Well, I knew I only had time to make one arena, but I also knew that woul get boring for players fast. So, I planned two "modifiers" that would occasionally trigger and spice up the gameplay. One was flooding the map with 256 unit-tall water, the other was making the players tiny. Flooding the map with water would let players swim above previously impassable obstacles, whereas making the players tiny would let them hide behind shorter cover than normal, and crawl under thin gaps that served no purpose in normal rounds. Even if the modifiers aren't present, the space under the house serves some kind of gameplay purpose, since you can shoot under there. The ground all around the house is intentionally raised. If you go downhill, it means you want to shoot people through the gap under the house, but it means you're also opting into being shot by enemy players trying to do the same. The lighting wasn't chosen by me. The displacements are a custom blend texture I made. Here's the VMT in text format: Code: `WorldVertexTransition { "$basetexture" "nature/dirtground001" "$basetexture2" "nature/grass_07" "$blendmodulatetexture" "nature/grass_blendmask" "$bumpmap" "nature/dirtground001_height-ssbump" // "$bumpmap2" "nature/mudground001_height-ssbump" $ssbump 1 $surfaceprop dirt $surfaceprop2 grass "%detailtype" "tf_forest_grass" "%keywords" "tf" }`
tc_tundra_test2 \| October 2022 \|	Lighting: Full GameLogic: None Spawns: None Arena Number: 9	Wow, looks like we've stumbled upon something interesting! This would have been a multi-stage arena map, with a random stage selected until all three have been played. For instance, if A was being played, the door to A would unlock, whereas the ones to B and C would remain closed. The really interesting thing is that B and C are still accessible in the A round. In fact, the whole map is accessible! The original concept behind this map was an Arena map set on a massive tundra where you could do a full circle around the map and go to the enemy spawn if you wanted, and that would be fine because it's Arena and you can't spawncamp. The tundra itself was conceived as a massive open area where only Snipers would prosper. The idea was that most players would stay in the caves and buildings that house the main fightspaces of the map, but the occasional intrepid Scout or Spy would dip out into the tundra and risk getting sniped, with the reward of a sweet, sweet flank and med pick if they didn't get sniped. I had also planned to make it nighttime and make the points themed around spooky ghost-containing objects or whatever, so I could use the Graveyard arena logic, because that's more fun than normal Arena. I built the entire map, but ended up abandoning it, because I thought players would extend rounds for too long by not wanting to attack the point, because attacking the point means they can get pincer-attacked by enemies using the main map and enemies getting behind them via the tundra. With hindsight, I should have pushed out an A1. But I justified not doing it with the idea that it "didn't match my original vision" and "how the hell am I going to explain the graveyard ghosts". This map uses the artpass_timberghost textures. It also has a couple of custom-tailored instances you'll need to install along with it. You just need to place them in a subfolder called "instance" within whatever folder you put the main VMF in
cp_sym2cp_redpoint001b \| November 2022 \|	Lighting: Some GameLogic: Some Spawns: None Arena Number: 1	This VMF was created because I knew I wanted to create a map for the Territorial Domination contest, and I knew I wanted to create a traditional TC map. So, I started sketching ideas for symmetrical 2CP points. Eventually, after creating enough control points, I ended up with tc_babel. But this control point wasn't a part of it. In truth, I had really wanted to include this control point in tc_babel, but tc_babel had really strict walk time requirements that this control point just couldn't meet. I really like this control point, if you can't tell. It has lots of clever use of height, and - depending on how you route the attackers into it - lots of options for how you approach it. This map uses the artpass_timberghost textures. There's an older version of it that didn't, but the TC map I had originally wanted to make was arctic-themed, so this VMF got converted.
koth_tiftidguide_a1 \| January 2023 \|	Lighting: None GameLogic: None Spawns: None Arena Number: 1	This VMF exists because in January 2023, it was starting to get close to 8 months since I'd written my last guide, and I was beginning to feel the burning desire to write a new one. The guide would be about "how to make fun arenas". It would explain the fundamental purpose of videogames in encouraging player choice, then it would have a massive table with a bunch of design elements that can be used in a playspace, then a few examples of playspaces made from them. The finale would have been a full KOTH layout, made to replace the old "yard, connector, yard" or "Viaduct formula" model which led to so many boring, boxy maps over the years. It would have lots of interesting playspaces, properly segregate close-range and long-range combat, and encourage player choice by letting players take whatever route they like without having to pass the sightline of other routes. In the middle of making this layout for that exact purpose, I realised that I liked what I was making, but it was way way way too complex from an overhead view and I could never expect this to be widely adopted by new mappers. Eventually, I canned the guide entirely and wrote "[GUIDE] Following the Golden Rule" instead. Although I will have to write another guide in October.
pl_point010 \| February 2023 \|	Lighting: None GameLogic: None Spawns: None Arena Number: 2	I made this just the other day. It's intended to be a generic last point for one stage of a multi-stage payload map (MSPL). It looks a lot like if plr_pipeline forgot to take its meds. RED spawn is quite bad and would probably result in the backward hold being way too easy for BLU to take, since BLU can watch both exits by standing in one spot. With some simplification and changes to RED spawn I can imagine it being quite fun. You need to be careful with how you route BLU into the arena, though. Make it so that they don't have to pass the cart path sightline to reach their alternate routes.

Waffe · Feb 16, 2023

Holy moly you've made maps

Tiftid · Aug 20, 2023

Here's the newest sketchbook page!
Since Page 2 was 02/2023 (mm/yyyy), Page 3 will be 08/2023, and Page 4 will be 02/2024.

This one might look a little disappointing when compared to the others; that's because much of my past 6 months has been occupied with artpassing pl_boatload, artpassing arena_exhaust, and building and artpassing a new KoTH map for the One in The Chamber Tournament.
Oh, and building cp_bruhstbowl2.
I also suffered an incident where around half of the files on my desktop were deleted for some reason, which includes many files from my VMF folder. All the more reason why I should upload what remains here!

Excuses out of the way; let's launch into the maps!
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Map \| Month/Year \| Image	Features	Ramblings
arena003 \| March 2023 \|	Lighting: None GameLogic: None Spawns: None Arena Number: 1	A simple and small VMF, built in 30 minutes and unlikely to be much use to anyone. It's intended as a semi-symmetrical arena for an asymmetrical map; the backward hold of some control point in an A/D or PL map. The ramps offer a basic hill shape with cover from the other side. People at the top still get some cover thanks to the low stone walls or whatever you'd theme them as. The houses offer a passage below the whole arena, but you can circle around over them if you want to cross the arena without getting sniped through them. The top of the house has a little annex to act as more interesting cover for players who are at the top of the hill. I imagined snipers playing on a distant platform and trying to snipe each other past the house annex, whereas close-range combatants would try to use the underground or bottom of the hill to protect themself from enemy snipers. That's why I specify a "backward hold"; it wouldn't be fun if players had to get past this arena to reach an objective, cause then they'd be forced to peek the enemy snipers. There's also the potential issue of it being perfectly fine for snipers to play at the bottom of the hill.
arena004 \| March 2023 \|	Lighting: Some GameLogic: None Spawns: None Arena Number: 1	I designed this arena as one where players would be given some route on top of the roof, and would try to shoot players through the holes in the roof. But, if you weren't a fan of getting shot through the roof, you could play at the bottom of the arena, where there's a little overhang that protects you fully from the roof-holes. The low height of this little overhang would also protect you from the very open outdoor area, which is where each team's snipers would go to try to flush the enemy team off the roof and get some cheap kills on anyone foolish enough to peek the doorways at the side of the arena. I designed this, again, as some kind of A/D arena (more of a forward hold than a backward hold), but come to think of it, it could work reasonably well as a KOTH point or something. You would, of course, have to make it so that you don't force the entire team to enter the arena through the massive open plane; there would have to be a route straight from your lobby to the roof or underpass that would never even intersect this plain.
arena005 \| May 2023 \|	Lighting: Some GameLogic: None Spawns: None Arena Number: 1	This started as a serious arena, but eventually turned into some kind of detail map. I wanted to create an arena where snipers would naturally go for the above-water, whereas players who didn't want to get sniped would go for some enclosed tunnels within the water - with some places to dip your head back into air, of course. These little reservoirs act as that place, but they're also open to the outside, letting either the snipers come in to fight you, or you come out to fight them; either way, that fight will be at a range that's a lot more comfortable for you than them. You'll notice that the top of the arena isn't totally devoid of cover either; that's basically so the snipers don't completely fall asleep attacking each other. This part of the map I feel I could have done much better, though - it requires the context of "where do the snipers enter the arena from?" to really know whether it's gonna feel like two flat planes facing each other with some stuff in the way, or something better than that. The water around the reservoirs is also pretty devoid of purpose. Of course, it makes it more fun to cross the arena than if it was a flat plane and the reservoirs were just holes in the ground, because you can dip down and use the underwater objects and reservoir tunnels as cover that you can swim over, but why would you do that when it's implied that you don't even want to be out here unless you're a sniper? What I should have done is carved some low-down holes in the reservoir walls that let you exit out into the main body of water, but if you want to keep going through the reservoirs without using these holes, the holes are placed in such a way that doesn't expose you to enemy snipers. Incidentally, this is yet again built as an A/D arena. The perspective I took the main picture from is meant to be "BLU's perspective".
pipeball_ad_pointab_002 \| April 2023 \|	Lighting: Some GameLogic: None Spawns: None Arena Number: 2	The inspiration for this VMF was that while artpassing pl_boatload, I had built a building on the C backward hold: This building was fully out-of-bounds and only ever intended as a detail area, but I looked at it and saw some elements that could be repurposed for fun gameplay, so I copied it into a new VMF and started trying to build those elements into an arena. This was my first attempt. I created a circular, sloping roof surface, with BLU entering from one side, RED entering from the other, a health area at the side and a pit in the centre that was intended as the Pipeball goal. Yes, this really was intended as some kind of "Attack/Defense Pipeball" map. But I didn't like this arena. I figured being on the low ground would feel like crap, because the roof support beams would make it hard for you to move around the circle as fluidly as players on top of the roof could: So I scrapped it and restarted with a bigger roof. This let me build a network of circular tunnels under the roof, allowing RED to make a full 360 around the point even if on the low ground. The pipe across the middle of the roof protects BLU from (most) sentries until they drop down to the low ground. It also provides a way for the ball to cross the roof without falling in the hole, and makes it harder for BLU to just dunk the ball directly in the hole without RED getting a chance to shoot it out of the hole. A major oversight I made was that once the ball was down in the pit, it would actually be very hard to get it out. You could shoot it up the four ramps leading out of the pit, but two of them lead to a doorway that isn't tall enough to fit the ball. By the way, I'm sure this goes without saying at this point, but the roof area is intended for snipers, while the low-ground areas are intended for everyone else. BLU would have had separate routes to attack the roof and attack the tunnel network. The little area in bottom left frame would have been RED's leadup to the point, letting them quickly and safely rotate between the roof and the tunnel network. I think any of this map's three buildings, in the right hands, could be made into a really fun arena. If you want to download only one VMF from this page, make it this one.

And that is, unfortunately, all for now.
To be honest, I'm not too fussed about the small quantity of VMFs this time around, because I really, really like the design behind each one, and I'm kind of confident that even if no one cares about them, I myself might be able to use them for something cool.

Tiftid · Feb 4, 2024

Page 4 - Legacy Maps Edition

Since Page 3 was 08/2023 (mm/yyyy), Page 4 will be 02/2024, and Page 5 will be 08/2024.
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Map \| Month/Year \| Image	Features	Ramblings
cp_absinthe_a_test2 \| January 2024 \|	Lighting: Some GameLogic: Some Spawns: None Arena Number: 2	This was intended to be the first point of an A/D Pipeball map codenamed "cp_absinthe". The main event of this VMF is the angular func_instance building, inspired by The Man With The Golden Gun. On top of looking cool, it makes it so that you can easily decide whether or not to peek the building's windows just by moving up or down thanks to the slant of the building. The main reason I abandoned this VMF was because of the awkward connection between the forward and the backward hold, which ended up giving me a lot of extra work in making it fun. I do think it turned out as a really cool arena, though. Also, why would anyone use the half-pipe ramp for the ball when taking it down the side of the building is a much easier way to get it into the goal?
cp_absinthe_b_test1 \| January 2024 \|	Lighting: Some GameLogic: None Spawns: None Arena Number: 1	This point was designed by one of the earliest ideas I ever thought up for A/D Pipeball - a point where the ball travels along a death pit via the top of a pipe, and RED can easily shoot it off into the pit from either side. This VMF is a little bit of a nicer implementation of that same concept, where RED has to put in a little more firepower to actually knock the ball off the pipe. The pipe also has chunks torn out of it, so BLU players can't simply crouch behind the ball and be perfectly safe all the way to the end of the ramp. The main reason I abandoned this VMF is because the definition of where the backward hold ends isn't very clear, and because RED doesn't have a lot of good places to hold - it's a little too BLU-sniper-favoured.
arena007 \| September 2023 \|	Lighting: Some GameLogic: None Spawns: None Arena Number: 1	This was intended to be part of the mid of a CTF map... or something. It's a little, uhhh... "freeform", but it has some cool ideas. The most interesting and usable part is probably the theming (which uses one of my custom skyboxes). It's what the London theme should have always been - which is, of course, a snowy, nighttime, depressing industrial scene.
arena009 \| January 2024 \|	Lighting: Some GameLogic: None Spawns: None Arena Number: <1	TF2 has several types of negative space. The most common is space that you cannot see through, move through or shoot through - this would be called a "wall". A more rare and interesting type is space that you can see and shoot through, but not move through - this would be called a "pit". The type that has lately interested me is space that you can move and shoot through, but not see through - this is a "cornfield". The trouble with this type of space is that even if players can't see through an arena, Sentries can - so, this arena is designed so that any Sentries placed in the corn cannot see you as long as you stick to the grassy ground. Since this relegates the corn to a role of being a sneaky side route for chads only, I hid a full health pack in there for funsies. The wood structure acts as crouch-cover for players using the grass; the higher tier that houses the corn acts as full cover. This is most interesting when used around a corner, as in this VMF. The slope down to the cave windows can be used by players standing on the grass to use the crouch-cover as full cover temporarily. The cave itself is a nice alternate route that lets players on the attacking team sneak past players on the defending team - so long as those players aren't using the grass to defend. By the way, I generated the grass texture in Stable Diffusion using my Team Fortress 2 Textures LoRA, so you can't have it. Sorry!
detail_aqueduct series \| October 2022 \|	Lighting: Some GameLogic: None Spawns: None Arena Number: 0	I don't normally upload VMFs that have no gameplay, but these were gonna sit on my hard drive forever, so you can have 'em, for whatever use you'll get out of them. A series of brush-based aqeducts, for use as a distant detail object to silhouette against the sky. I originally made these in hopes that zythe would use them in ctf_chimney, but he was all like "fuck off dude I'm not using your shit fucking aqueduct" except he's too nice to say that so he only thought it and didn't say it. Good memories!
pipeball_ad_point002 \| October 2023 \|	Lighting: None GameLogic: None Spawns: None Arena Number: 2	An A/D Pipeball point. It's much too large to really be of conceivable use to anyone. The basic idea is that no matter where there ball goes, it'll always roll back down into the centre. The ramps and pipes are cool to fight around, but something tells me that the Sniper players of the server would be really happy and everyone else would be really sad. Still, I hope it can deliver inspiration.
pipeball_ad_pointb_001a \| November 2023 \|	Lighting: Some GameLogic: Some Spawns: None Arena Number: 2	The B point of a nondescript A/D Pipeball map. The basic idea is that since the point is on a slope, BLU really only gets one chance to knock it into the goal before it rolls down into the pit and resets. The reason I abandoned this should be incredibly obvious. The forward hold is way too wide for RED to ever defend it, and the backward hold is way too thin, so RED would get camped out and prevented from re-entering the point area, and BLU would have a hard time going from B to C. I hope for your sake that you don't try to do anything with this VMF.
pipeball_ad_pointc_002b \| November 2023 \|	Lighting: Some GameLogic: Some Spawns: 1 Arena Number: 2	The C point of a nondescript A/D Pipeball map. The basic idea was that since the ball is at the top of a hill, it makes it difficult for BLU to get it up to the top. It's not actually that difficult, so for this final point, we have a set of slow-opening doors that force BLU to also keep it up there to win. Unfortunately, the design of the arena doesn't really facilitate that - RED isn't given defensive positions that let them stay alive even if they don't have control of the point area, and it's not that easy for them to re-enter the arena after losing control over it. Plus, there are lots of awkward stuck spots for the ball. So this point was a big fat fail.
koth_zeptiftid_af_mid_test1 \| January 2022 \|	Lighting: Some GameLogic: Some Spawns: None Arena Number: 2	The skeleton of a KOTH map I was designing with @Zepavil for April Fools 2022. Technically, I should need his permission to upload this, but I'm sure the two years of no one working on this map have waived that restriction. The basic idea is that the point is on a boat, and when you cap it, the boat moves to the enemy team's side of mid, and two doors on that side open. This would make the cover of mid generally more advantageous for the team who doesn't own the point, as well as giving them more routes into mid and quicker access to the cap point. This map was made before I had made pl_boatload or even turned 18 years old, so its use of water wasn't fantastic. For instance, the waterbeneath texture z-fights with the bottom of the boat, because the bottom of the boat and top of the water are at the same height. Also, its layout isn't amazing, but it is at least serviceable on some level. I think it would be a decent back-and-forth, but that mid would sort of suck to fight in. I also remember the logic being broken, and not fully implemented. I wanted stickies to stick to the boat, and Engi buildings built on the boat to be parented to it, and although both things have been possible since 2020, I never got around to implementing the sticky fix, and I remember the building-parenting fix not working. The missing textures are from... some pussy-ass content pack, who gives a fuck? Replace them with something in the base game files and call it a day.
cp_firstpoint1 \| October 2021 \|	Lighting: Some GameLogic: Some Spawns: 1 Arena Number: 2	I'm not sure why I never uploaded this, despite uploading its sister VMF all the way back in Page 1. This is a sketch control point I made in 2021, back when I first thought of the idea of making control points in isolation. It would receive massive changes and eventually become Bruhstbowl 1-A. It was essentially intended to be "pl_roofrack2". I think BLU spawn is even copied geometry from pl_roofrack, which is why it has a note written that it needs a rework, which it eventually got when it was added to cp_bruhstbowl.
koth_slums_palette \| June 2023 \|	Lighting: Some GameLogic: None Spawns: None Arena Number: 0	This was a quick detail map I made to persuade the Fortress Faceoffs team that I had what it takes to artpass the map koth_slums which I had made for them. The little metal shack in the bottom left actually ended up getting used in the final map! And before you ask, I have yet to watch Breaking Bad.
koth_epiphany_tiftidedit002b \| September 2023 \|	Lighting: Some GameLogic: Full Spawns: 2 Arena Number: 2	A brief, highly unfinished artpass of the map koth_epiphany. It has all the things you've come to expect from an artpass by me. The simple reason I abandoned this was cause I just eventually came to my senses and realised I don't really give a fuck about this map. The guy who made it also thought it would be a cool idea to hide him and his lover's initials in a secret room, which irritated me immensely. Flexing your wealth does not make you cool.
cp_fragment_a2a_test1 \| December 2022 \|	Lighting: Some GameLogic: Full Spawns: 3 Arena Number: 6	A brief, highly unfinished artpass of my map cp_fragment. I've always thought that out of the maps I've made, cp_fragment is very high-ranking in terms of design - surprising, since I originally made it in just five hours! So I tried artpassing it, but I ended up just being very unhappy with the results. There are several areas where I chose, like, optimally bad textures, and also lit them poorly. The basic concept is this very brick-building-heavy, New-York-y city, but I didn't end up really carrying it out in a capacity that satisfied me. It also has, like, a trillion func_instance pipes that I cannot be fucked to upload in these posts, so if you want them you're gonna have to message me.
cp_fastlane_ad_test2 \| October 2022 \|	Lighting: Full GameLogic: Full Spawns: 3 Arena Number: 6	In mid-2022, YouTuber shounic was having mappers convert 5CP maps into A/D maps. I was interested in the concept, since I had toyed with it before, but with cp_badlands. In my mind, the best way to do it was to make BLU last BLU spawn, BLU 2nd the A forward hold, mid the A backward hold, RED 2nd the B forward hold and RED last the B backward hold. It didn't really turn out that way in this map, and A sort of ended up without a forward hold and way too easy to capture. I think it could have been salvaged if RED had a forward spawn to defend A, but I never got around to implementing that.
sd_rotational_test1 \| October 2021 \|	Lighting: None GameLogic: Some Spawns: None Arena Number: 1	An experiment with the Special Delivery gamemode, heavily based on the map sd_snail which I had recently released at the time. With the Australium and capture point being so close to each other, the Special Delivery inclusion is a joke and should be swapped out for ordinary KOTH. As far as KOTH point areas go, it's not bad. The route on the far left should be removed since it makes it far too easy to intercept the enemy team before they reach the point, but otherwise it's solid. Good job, 17-year-old me! By the way, the skybox is from the Frontline pack, and looks nearly identical to the base-game sky_hydro_01, so use that instead.
sd_mid1 \| Uploaded April 2022 \|	Lighting: None GameLogic: Some Spawns: None Arena Number: 1	A simple midpoint for a Special Delivery map. It's okay, I guess? It's basically a much worse version of macherocketbarn.
mvm_gpit_test1 \| Uploaded April 2022 but almost certainly from late 2021 \|	Lighting: Some GameLogic: Some Spawns: None Arena Number: 3	I've always hated MVM maps where you just hold the robot spawn zone for the entire mission. So, I wanted to bring the aspect of choice from cp_gravelpit (my all-time favourite TF2 map) into MVM, by having two robot spawn zones side-by-side and forcing the players to choose which one they defend. The missions for this map would have been special in some way. I don't remember how. The sky texture is sky_goldnight_01.
mvm_lake_test2 \| Uploaded April 2022 but almost certainly from late 2021 \|	Lighting: None GameLogic: None Spawns: None Arena Number: 1	This is another attempt to break up the monotony of defending the bot spawn zone in MVM, but using a different method. The idea is that the players hold in the building, and bots swarm in from all directions at once, making the players constantly and individually choose which direction to defend. Obviously, the main incentive for players not to just hold down in the water would have been swarms of pyroshark bots with boosted speed and health. In case the mission was designed poorly and the water isn't dangerous enough, the building contains a gate. So, if the players don't bother defending the building, the bots will capture the gate and get a forward spawn. The sky texture is sky_goldnight_01.
cp_test1 \| Sometime in 2020 \|	Lighting: None GameLogic: None Spawns: None Arena Number: 1	A nondescript control point. In many ways, you can tell that I made this when I was 16 and much less experienced as a map designer. This was also before Hammer++ even existed, so you couldn't see the sky texture in Hammer and leaving it as sky_day01_01 was common.
pl_test5 \| February/March/April 2021 \|	Lighting: Some GameLogic: Some (Broken) Spawns: None Arena Number: 2	I wanted to make a map for the Rule of Threes contest in 2021. After all, they were so romantically minded that they had announced the contest on my birthday; how could I not rise to the challenge? I would eventually end up producing pl_roofrack, but this map would be made first as a sort of prototype for that one. It has a horribly broken payload cart elevator, and a sort of generic, uninteresting design with an easy-to-camp BLU spawn. This was before I had written the A/D guide, after all... By the way, those cubes in the sky are for aligning displacements. I would eventually decide this wasn't worth the trouble and just switch between the X, Y and Z axes to manipulate my displacements.
koth_fan_a1 \| July 2021 \|	Lighting: Some GameLogic: Some Spawns: 1 Arena Number: 2	A map I was making in collaboration with zythe in 2021. Since the "average X fan \| average Y enjoyer" meme was popular at the time, zythe had the idea of making "koth_fan" and "arena_enjoyer", both of which I ended up working on. It was moreso that koth_fan was my work and arena_enjoyer was zythe's work, though. The main idea with this map was that each team had a highground above the point, which directly connected to the other team's highground. This would be like the two buildings beside koth_bagel's point, and I can't be bothered to explain why that's beneficial. The lobby leading up to the point was decent. The cool stripes on the window and the random-ass jump pad that takes you up 2 metres were zythe's ideas.

Fuck it, leaked zythe DMs as a reward for reading this far

the song:

Isn't it beautiful? A 19th-century Christmas.

Tiftid · Aug 13, 2024

Page 5 - I Know Failure Well

Since Page 4 was 02/2024 (mm/yyyy), Page 5 is 08/2024, and Page 6 will be 02/2025... but don't hold your breath.
============PAGE 5============

Map \| Month / Year \| Image	Ramblings
arena010 \| Mar 2024 \|	This VMF was intended to be 1-A of a 2-stage A/D map I would make for the Stack the Deck contest. Stage 1 would heavily involve lava, and Stage 2 would heavily involve water. I quickly scrapped the concept. Being an A point, this point isn't very nice to RED. It could use more entrances into the backward hold if you ever decide to utilise it.
arena011 \| May 2024 \|	This VMF was a concept for a map that would be set high in the sky... or something. I experimented with a lot of precarious platforms and sneaky ways to hide from your opponents, or get crazy peek angles on them.
arena012 \| May 2024 \|	A second concept VMF for the same map, this would have been an A/D point where the forward hold is at the bottom of an octagonal tower and the backward hold is at the top. Given the proper ingenuity, I'm hopeful that a very fun A/D point could be built around this VMF.
cp_daybreak_1a_test1 \| Feb 2024 \|	Another concept VMF for a 2-stage A/D Stack the Deck map, this would have been in a map where Stage 1 is set at night and Stage 2 is set in the early morning. I used a rooftop setting for this arena, since rooftops have been nice to me in the past. But I quickly realised this arena was perverse and unfun, and abandoned work on it.
cp_stolenart_1b_test1 \| Mar 2024 \|	After toying with several ideas for what Stack the Deck map I would make, and throwing them all out, I came up with the truly devilish idea of taking a control point from various other people's maps, reworking it and sewing them all together into a map of my own - "cp_stolenart". The first point I cannibalised in this way was a point from i dinne ken's cp_shortstack. I admired the point being in a sort of out-of-the-way building with a small Engineer room next to it, but I was less eager about many other aspects of the map - such as the lack of a real forward hold on this point, although this VMF doesn't really address that. I added a few features compared to the original, the most prominent being a balcony above the point, although only RED can really utilise it which is a bit sad. I think this is a fairly solid A/D backward hold for a 1-B of a multi-stage map, though.
cp_stolenart_1b_fhold_test1 \| Mar 2024 \|	This was intended to be the forward hold of the previous VMF, cannibalised from an area in cp_stacker. I changed this much more than the point from cp_shortstack, because I believed it needed more changes. Partially as a result of that, this VMF is a little contrived and obviously not very fun.
cp_stolenart_2a_test1 \| Mar 2024 \|	This would have been 2-A of cp_stolenart. It's not really recognisable from the map that originally inspired me, cp_sewerage. There would have been deep water on this map. It's a very "me" map, even moreso than the previous one.
pl_point011 \| June 2024 \|	After all my attempts and failures to make a map in 2024, I decided that what I needed was to stop trying to break new ground and just make a good old-fashioned PL map. So, I started with this backward hold. I s'pose it's fairly solid, although it will obviously be really easy for BLU. The edges of the map are basically meant to be rock walls in this VMF. It's very carefully calibrated so that the ground displacements restrict what is visible from where, so building new ground further outwards might break that balance.

And that's all you get as far as 2024 is concerned.
I haven't had a great start to the year, have I?
The problem is obvious - a natural desire to innovate has left me unwilling to go back to the basics.
After having already finished an A/D map and a PL map, both of which I'm exceptionally proud of, and a KoTH map which I'm less proud of but still kinda proud of, I am compelled to go in stranger and stranger directions, because if I just made a normal PL map that would be "boring".
Of course, since this year is secretly 2009, an ordinary PL map wouldn't be "boring" at all - in fact it'd be exceedingly fun.

Because of this, my motivation is declining, it has been declining, and it will doubtlessly continue to decline.
I want to leave one great parting gift behind before it diminishes fully; but it is, at this point, doubtful that I will.

SnickerPuffs · Feb 3, 2025

I appreciate your repeated attempts to make A/D Pipeball work, even if they all fizzled out in the end.

Tiftid · Feb 4, 2025

SnickerPuffs said:
I appreciate your repeated attempts to make A/D Pipeball work, even if they all fizzled out in the end.

My thanks for your kind words.

To be honest, I feel like I abandoned A/D Pipeball even a little too early.
There's an obvious reason why the VMFs associated with it aren't good enough, and that's because with Pipeball you have to employ special consideration with every inch of your map, to ensure the ball doesn't get stuck somewhere it shouldn't.
Simply changing the slope of a patch of ground can massively affect the gameplay of the map.
I did not employ this consideration as much as I should have, though I had some good ideas.
This was demoralising, since the main thing that had drawn me to the idea to begin with was the mastery it required to put in this effort.

A/D Pipeball reminds me of the process I went through to get to pl_boatload.
First, I made pl_tower in 2020, and it was bad.
Then, I tried to improve on it with pl_roofrack in 2021, and it was still bad.
Then, I further improved on it and mixed it with another concept with pl_boatload in 2022, and it was amazing.

The simple fact you can glean from this is that you have to put in the work as a prerequisite, and more iterations on A/D Pipeball may have made it into something beautiful.

Here are some of the thoughts I have about A/D Pipeball now:

RED will naturally try to abuse the system and get the ball into a place where BLU cannot reach it.
Furthermore, RED will also push the ball back towards the forward hold much faster than the payload regresses in PL - I originally thought this was fine since BLU would need to be all dead for this to happen, but I no longer think this is true.

There are some natural solutions to both of these, which I had in my mind even back when I was making these VMFs, but didn't apply fully.
Firstly, have frequent dropdowns for the ball, which act as a checkpoint RED can't regress it past. You can see this in cp_absinthe_a_test2.
Secondly, have it so that the ball respawns after 30 seconds of not being shot by BLU.
This acts as a system which is more analogous with the rollback in Payload, and prevents RED from instead shooting the ball BACKWARDS past where they're holding to make it inaccessible to BLU in a different way.

Furthermore, it would be a good idea to have the ball respawn near the forward hold if it despawns in the backward hold.
I think the standard "template" for an A/D Pipeball point would look something like this:

Ball originally spawns outside BLU's spawn, and there is a dropdown they can use to get it to the forward hold
After they get it through this dropdown, it now respawns in the forward hold when it dies, and the forward hold has a dropdown to get it to the backward hold
After they get it through the dropdown to the backward hold, it now respawns in the backward hold when it dies
Once it respawns in the backward hold, there is a boolean variable that turns off, and is turned on if BLU shoots the ball again
If it respawns with this variable off, it respawns in the forward hold instead of the backward hold
This allows RED to push the ball back in a more permanent capacity

To be clear, the dropdowns would be for the ball only, and players could move back and forth between the arenas freely.
You have to be very careful with where and when the ball respawns, since having it respawn behind BLU is essentially game-breaking.

One thing I was also very interested in at the time was having players interact with the ball from underneath it.
I wondered if the physics-object nature of the ball would allow it to float on water, and how beautiful it would be to design gameplay that took this into consideration.
Another approach you could take is making some of the func_clip_vphysics "forcefields" for the ball visible, and using those as a way to allow players to exist underneath the ball.

More sketches soon.

Tiftid · Thursday at 7:32 PM

SnickerPuffs said:
I appreciate your repeated attempts to make A/D Pipeball work, even if they all fizzled out in the end.

I would like to take back the thanks I previously gave for these words.
I don't like being the target of such condescension. I can tolerate it, but I do not like it.
If you'd instead said "You have achieved nothing in your attempts to create A/D Pipeball", I would have appreciated it more because at least it would have been honest.
Yeah, I achieved nothing. I didn't get a playable A/D Pipeball map, and I tried to pass on insight for a gamemode that nobody but me ever has been, or will be, seriously invested in. Way to rub it in by being like "well, it was doomed from the start, but at least you tried!!"

Tiftid · Thursday at 7:32 PM

Page 6 - I've been in Soul form for so long...

Since Page 5 was 08/2024 (mm/yyyy), Page 6 is 02/2025, and Page 7 will be 08/2025.
This time, I've elected to provide the VMFs and custom content inside a single ZIP file for ease of access and to better preserve the original "date modified". I may eventually retcon all the other pages to use this system.

============PAGE 6============

Map \| Month/Year \| Image	Ramblings
shrinkray_zoo_01 \| Nov 2024 \|	This was part of a map I planned to make for the 2024 72hr Jam called pl_shrinkray. The central concept was that it would be a 2-stage PL map with two points per stage - with the twist being that the second stage is the same as the first, except the map is four times as large and has numerous shortcuts through areas which were too small to access in the first stage. I made this VMF prior to the actual 72hr Jam period, to get a feel for the map's theme and lighting, and the ways I would balance the same combat space between the first and second stage. This concept was stolen from a map I once posted in the thread of, named cp_downsized. I planned to handle the prop problem I spoke about in that thread by scaling each prop up with Hammer++'s Propper++, and then baking them into one big static prop per area. I also planned to increase the lightmap resolution for the second stage so it didn't look horrible, and increase the fog distance for parity between the two stages. I chose the farm theme because the flatness allowed me to make spaces which wouldn't feel TOO overwhelming height-wise in the second stage - with the map being four times the size, a crouch-jumpable 64-unit-tall wall becomes an impassable 256-unit-tall wall, and a 256-unit-tall dropdown you can traverse without taking fall damage becomes a horrifying 1024-unit chasm.
pl_shrinkray_test1 \| Dec 2024 \|	This was the first geometry I built for pl_shrinkray, being the area immediately outside BLU spawn. I was leaning into the second-stage dynamic straight away, with a vent BLU could go in to get health in the second stage only, and pipes for RED to rotate between the high ground and build sentries inside. Other than that it's pretty unremarkable.
pl_shrinkray_cp_a_test1 \| Dec 2024 \|	This would have been the A point of pl_shrinkray. I intended for it to have sort of a "shanty town" theme, with a lot of complex geometry that would have been enjoyable for tiny players to navigate. I also added vent systems, pipes and a half-closed rollup door for the second stage. I'm particularly proud of the concrete pipes sunken into the ground. It's not really obvious without the displacements to support them, but this would have been a way for players in the second stage to avoid sightlines - the ground would sink down and allow players to go through the pipes. However, their collision doesn't natively support this, so I probably would've recompiled them with different collision for the final map.
pl_shrinkray_barn01 \| Dec 2024 \|	This was to be the B point of pl_shrinkray. I envisioned from an early stage a sort of barn or farmhouse where in the second stage, players could sneak around between the inner and outer wall. I also decided that the buildings should be set on a bunch of 64-unit-tall ramped concrete foundations, to act as semi-interesting cover in the second stage. Part of the barn that I'm proud of is the low brick wall running along the entire inside - this is to prevent sightlines out of the building in the second stage. The farmhouse was to be a RED spawn, obviously, and not a particularly fun one for either team.
pl_shrinkray_cp_b_fhold_test1 \| Dec 2024 \|	I had trouble envisioning the forward hold for the B point on pl_shrinkray. At this point I was pretty tapped out, and basically ended up just schizophrenically making whatever came to mind - in this case it was a rat maze of low concrete walls for the second stage. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but it achieves most of my design goals. I particularly like the short displacement hills, and the pipe which acts as both a means for tiny players to run through in the second stage, and for large players to shoot through in the first. With the height of the hill leading up to it, you can walk past it without getting shot in the second stage, and with the rock just beyond it, you can walk past it without getting shot in the first stage. There are a couple of things that ruin this VMF in my opinion: The upper fence route The ramp up to the part beyond this hold area Both of these things let you do something I don't really like, which is peek over the low walls. The part beyond this hold area is also pretty abysmal in general, and never would have connected well to the barn arena.
pl_shrinkray_test2 \| Dec 2024 \|	Making all these isolated arenas is good and all, but at some point you have to connect them. From the start, this was going to be the biggest challenge of pl_shrinkray, and so I embraced it at the very end of working on it with this VMF, which attempts to connect the A forward hold, A backward hold and B forward hold in a way that makes sense for both stages. What this mainly involved in reality was the weird room pictured - this is an underground room that connects the A forward hold and backward hold via a vent system, because it would obviously have taken RED and BLU too long to run to A in the second stage. It also gave RED a forward spawn to defend A in the second stage, though it's a pretty weird one. To be honest, when I was sizing up this project in my mind, I expected to have a VERY swirly, interconnected layout, and I'm disappointed that my actual efforts did not live up to that. Which is why I never finished the map.
pl_point011_test2 \| Aug 2024 \|	This is a slightly further-along version of pl_point011 from the previous sketchbook page. It has lighting and rudimentary artpassing, it has some better explanation of the edges of the world, and I hollowed out a nice space for RED to build sentries over the cart path so it wouldn't be so ridiculously easy for BLU.
pl_nuke_test1 \| Sep 2024 \|	A small PL arena. Immediately before making this, I had made a post on the thread of @nesman's pl_yucca, which I thought was really a brilliant little 2009-y PL map. The main complaint I had with the map was that it wasn't original enough, and I recommended building a new, highly unique first stage before the current one, and making the current first stage the second stage. Then I thought "hang on, who can do "highly unique" more than I can? I could make the first stage FOR him!" So I started work with this arena. I think it's a nice little arena, but I eventually just came to my sense and realised that nesman would be all sensible and shit and never accept my proposed first stage. The funny thing is that I was never really that adamant about the idea of his map having three stages. The only reason I recommended building a new first stage to begin with was because I thought he had intended the map to be three stages anyway, and if so this would be a better way to do it. I only found out later when he replied to my post that he intended the map to be two stages, which is what I actually wanted to recommend. Sort of a funny story.
cp_ordainment_a_test2 \| Sep 2024 \|	The forward and backward hold of a miscellaneous A/D map. One day I woke up still dreaming, and my dreams that night had been of a three-point A/D map where: The first point was like cp_bruhstbowl and was directly outside BLU's spawn The second point was around a cliffside The ENTIRE map was on top of a giant rock shelf which the third and final point was below I thought this was awesome, and immediately leapt into action trying to create it. This would have been the first point, but you may notice that it's not cp_bruhstbowl-like at all - it's just a normal A/D point. (Well, normal by my standards). Yeah, I sort of dropped the ball there. Still, I think it's a really elegant A/D point, and would be a good start for anyone's A/D map. It's also very 2008-y, which I like.
pl_boatload2_arena001 \| Feb 2025 \|	One thing that always bugged me about pl_boatload was that, even though I'd made the bold decision to include expensive water with real-time reflections, there really weren't many moments where the reflection in the water was a central part of a scene detailing-wise. This, and a craving to build new gameplay - something, ANYTHING - left me wanting to make a spiritual successor to pl_boatload, which is the VMF you see before you. I started with the idea of a warehouse sunken into the riverbed, with many interesting angles surrounding it both in and out of the water. I then built... some other gameplay. I don't know, it's pretty sloppy. Don't use this.

Thank you for reading to the end.
In all honesty, I did not believe that I would publish this sketchbook page, and I also do not believe I will publish another one.
In the case of this one, I just didn't think that I'd have enough sketch VMFs to make a page with, but evidently I was wrong. In fact, I have even more that I chose not to publish here because they're just that terrible.

In the case of the next one, there are different issues.
I began this thread out of a desire to provide useful, drag-and-drop sketch VMFs.
Having trouble thinking of a forward hold for your next CP? Just use pl_northpole_test1.vmf!
But after a while, I started to realise that the VMFs apparently weren't good enough for that purpose.
So, whatever, the purpose of this thread can be to archive my mapping attempts! And that worked for a while too, but if these VMFs aren't useful now, it just becomes harder and harder to imagine them somehow being useful 20 years in the future, when the greatness TF2 had in 2009 will only be even more forgotten.
You just gotta move on sometimes.

nesman · Thursday at 7:41 PM

Tiftid said:
nesman would be all sensible

It's rare but it does happen. Also your attachments are wacko.

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[OPEN] Tiftid's Sketchbook (Definitely not a front for my deranged ramblings)

Tiftid

the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

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Tiftid

the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

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Waffe

L5: Dapper Member

Tiftid

the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

Attachments

Tiftid

the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

Page 4 - Legacy Maps Edition

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Tiftid

the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

Page 5 - I Know Failure Well

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SnickerPuffs

(single chuckle)

Tiftid

the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

Tiftid

the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

Tiftid

the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

Page 6 - I've been in Soul form for so long...

Attachments

nesman

master of fast travel

If this is your first time logging in after the migration (Feb 8, 2022), you must reset your password to log in. Follow this guide if you're having trouble

[OPEN] Tiftid's Sketchbook (Definitely not a front for my deranged ramblings)

the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

Attachments

the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

Attachments

L5: Dapper Member

the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

Attachments

the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

Page 4 - Legacy Maps Edition​

Attachments

the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

Page 5 - I Know Failure Well​

Attachments

(*single chuckle*)

the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

Page 6 - I've been in Soul form for so long...​

Attachments

master of fast travel

If this is your first time logging in after the migration (Feb 8, 2022), you must reset your password to log in. Follow this guide if you're having trouble

Page 4 - Legacy Maps Edition

Page 5 - I Know Failure Well

(single chuckle)

Page 6 - I've been in Soul form for so long...