Pl_Abandon (WiP)

[CC_ArK]

So, I started working on a new map design, alongside school work. I wanted to call it GhostTown, but that is already taken, so I reverted to Abandon.

It is basically an abandoned town controlled by the RED team. Blu has setup a temporary base and wants to destroy the Town Hall by way of explosion.

So, if you cannot tell from my sketch, it is almost a valley town, pressed up against a cliff. there are a couple cliff/hills for the teams to climb upon. this gives some jumping space for Demomen, Soldiers, and possibly Scouts. There will be some buildings scattered in an organized manner as they would be in a town. Some of these buildings will open and most of them will have available roof space. I put in a hollowed out cliff section for Pyros to hide or Engis to build in.

Other than that I think it might be a little too open, but I will most likely add tall models and make the buildings multiple levels to not have a clear shot for snipers.

This is the primary sketch for this map, so please fell free to give me some criticism.
Thanks and God Bless,
ArK

 

[FLOOR_MASTER]

I'm hoping the final product includes a lot of vertical elements. Frontier/Repository/Cashworks are excellent sources of inspiration on this front. It seems like such a linear layout would be a nightmare to optimize - you may need to introduce more elements that break up the layout into distinct regions (from the compiler's perspective).

 

[CC_ArK]

I was kind of thinking that as well, but I am still learning alot about optimization.
Thanks for the tip.

 

[Spike]

From picture looks very sniper friend, but let's wait until alpha is released

 

[MangyCarface]

The name is ominous... see it through to the end

 

[Ezekel]

i tend to find overpowering of snipers tends to go hand-in-hand with hard-to-optimise maps.
in otherwords, i think you should try to have 2 major twists on the map together with buildings/hills/rocks, so that you can never see more than 1/3 of the track at any one time

 

[CC_ArK]

I have started on the Alpha phases in Hammer. I am adding in a U curve as the first cap point.
Does anyone have some good Building prefabs or models? Im feeling a little lazy and don't want to make them all in Hammer.

 

[Acegikmo]

I have started on the Alpha phases in Hammer. I am adding in a U curve as the first cap point.
Does anyone have some good Building prefabs or models? Im feeling a little lazy and don't want to make them all in Hammer.

Make your own buildings, it's your map, not anyone else's.
Valve has a few skybox buildings you can use though.

 

[oxy]

I agree with these guys.... You really should get some turns in there. Look at the overheads of some of the successful PL maps. Look at what in the layout makes that specific map fun to play and try to implement some of those techniques. You should def. build all your buildings from scratch, it will make you better at your brushwork and also ensure that your map is unique.

 

[CC_ArK]

Alpha_1 Screenshot

Okay, so I already started building and alpha version in Hammer and decided before I get through too much work that I should post here. Oxy advised me to sketch it out on graph paper, but I was too lazy and figured this would be a quicker approach, while not being easy to revise.

What do you think?
My first worry with this is that I have a small sniper tower in the second building (coming from the BLU spawn). You can see to the other side of the map, so that is an optimization problem. I could get rid of it, but I like to give snipers an advantage as well, are there any suggestions to block the view?
If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask.

 

[Dustoxx]

long straight track...

more corners please.

 

[ProfFiendish]

I think your first sketch was looking better, and the open feel might make your map more unique. The overview of the first cap looks much more cliche and uninteresting than what you were going for in your sketch.

You can always try blocking with dev textures to make quick building faster.

 

[oxy]

I think your first sketch was looking better, and the open feel might make your map more unique. The overview of the first cap looks much more cliche and uninteresting than what you were going for in your sketch.

You can always try blocking with dev textures to make quick building faster.

I agree...


Ark, do NOT be lazy. If you are lazy then your map will be lame and people won't enjoy it. Some of these guys put in 1000+ hours and 5+ months on their maps.

Lazy = bad map.

So.. I think you should go back to the graph paper and revisit your first sketch. Make your layout unique, keep optimization in mind, keep posting updates, and consider feedback.

 

[Chilly]

What oxy said. Your sketch was very nice. Your Hammer work so far, not so much. If you work on transferring your sketch into Hammer (using graph paper is the easiest method) then you'll end up with a far better result.

 

[Vigilante212]

the s bend layous are overdone. I woulda stuck with your original design, except make the cliff angle in more kinda like a moon shape. and have a small section in the middle be like downtown, where the zig zag section comes in to break view more.

 

[Ida]

You shouldn't worry about Snipers being useless, so to speak. They could dominate this map pretty easily.

You should add some more buildings, cliffs...anything to break up the dead space! Snipers would still be able to do something useful because the good ones would find nice spots, but they wouldn't be overpowered like the current version suggests.

You'll also have to think a bit about height advantages and sentry spots. Provide some interesting places for people to get up to and use to their advantage, and make sure to put some corners and other small bits of cover there to give Engineers somewhere to put sentries.

It's a good start, you just need to add a lot of stuff to make it interesting.

 

[CC_ArK]

Okay, since it is between quarters for my school and I finally have a break, here is the second version of my map drawing.

I hope everyone can see the differences in it.

 

[CC_ArK]

Bump. Can I get some feedback, please?

 

[Owlruler]

That looks really nice, but in the mines, you should have an open area or esle it will be one big chokehole and almost impossible to push the cart all the way through. Apart from that, the idea could work.