KotH precipice

[timberghost_paintball]

This is my map koth_precipice

Precipice takes place on a Mt. Rushmore style cliff-face featuring the charming visage of Saxton Hale. Inside the cliff is the Mann Co. corporate headquarters.

Precipice features a large amount of custom assets I made for the map, including an original skybox, a ski-lift assembly, modern furniture, lots of new windows, an elevator, and a large model of a saxton hale cliff sculpture. I also modified many existing models and made a few custom brush textures as well.

I greatly appreciate all feedback and criticism and in particular would appreciate it if you let me know about any exploits you might find as those are the hardest problems for me to find on my own.

map overviews

ski lift area

cliff face

blue tower

red tower

spawn rooms

corporate headquarters

 

[Prestige]

woah this detailing is pretty busy. a lot of props, feels kind of claustrophobic around mid from the pics, might not as bad in game. might have low fps too....

 

[owly-oop]

This map seems to crash my game whenever I try to play it

 

[timberghost_paintball]

really? I've had no problems on any pc I've tried it on, I'll have to take another look. perhaps something went wrong with the paking process... I did test it post pakrat though...

thanks for letting me know

edit: tested it here again, no problems for me... I'm very curious as to what is happening. if anyone else experiences anything similar please let me know.

 

[tyler]

That doesn't look like Saxton Hale

and that furniture is great, but Hale would hate it because it's for girls

 

[Micnax]

Good god that's beautiful.

Especially the corporate headquarters. It's like a freakin' evil lair.

 

[Pocket]

>first post
>Map Version: Release Candidate

I believe you misunderstand how our map submission section works. Or more accurately, how it does not. We are not a place to show off finished or nearly-finished products. We're here to provide mapmakers with feedback on their in-development maps, and while a release candidate technically counts as "in-development" since it's not a final release, we generally expect to be able to give suggestions on major things like layout that are expected to be set in stone at an early stage.

Also,

Cliff face

What's the standard number of lashings with a wet noodle for a pun that bad?

 

[DaBeatzProject]

You think that was horrible? You did it youself too!

... that are expected to be set in stone at an early stage.

 

[MangyCarface]

-Use the medieval stone instead of the alpine stonewall inside the base
-Make the face look like saxton hale to some degree
-Different floor texture in base
-Different rockwall texture in base (the green swamp one doesn't work here)
-Skybox is interesting but currently looks like its colors were inverted. address
-Make the skilift carts representative of each team's KOTH progress; i.e. put some intel or a bomb in them, and then move them forward as each team caps

 

[timberghost_paintball]

thanks for the feedback all.

My intention was not to show off a final map. It is still a work in progress even if it is mostly done. This particular map started as a thesis project on wayfinding in 3d games so many of the early design elements were critiqued and discussed with professors and fellow game development students etc. At the end of that process the map was "technically complete" but many elements aside from the navigation and gameplay design were fairly rushed to meet the deadline so I decided to go back and rework the visuals quite a bit.

I would have liked to have posted here sooner but time was a premium when I was working on it at school as I was in constant crunch mode for about 6 months. Additionally I had the benefit of receiving lots of good feedback from sources outside of tf2maps.net. Now that I've been out of that environment for a while I no longer have as much access to those points of view so I appreciate what the tf2maps community offers.

In the past when I have posted wip maps here I also got a good mix of useful feedback and points of view I had not considered and comments that just told me to do the obvious or things I was already planning on doing when I had a chance to get to them. My intention this time was to build my map to my vision and then when I felt I had completed what I intended to do I would check here for some second opinions to see if there were any glaring flaws I had missed. or grown accustom to, to the point where I did not notice flaws that were obvious to others

Saxton Hale's face might be one of these flaws and I thank the people that mentioned it. Taking a 2d cartoon character making them a 3d representation of a person can be tricky as their proportions are offen distorted in a way that does not easily translate to 3d. Adding the additional abstraction of making it in a stylized "cliff sculpture" aesthetic as added to the difficulty and apparently so far it is not close enough.

I also am interested in any stability or straight up crashing issues people might be having. It runs perfectly fine on my pc but evidently some other people are having problems. I realize my first post was of a map that is more developed than what is customary, but information like this is something I need to learn before I can make a final release and I don't know where else it would be better for me to post. I've been around here periodically for years but stuff changes and I don't always know where to post stuff on the rare occasions I start a thread.

I also appreciated Mangy's comments. I'm going to try out the stonewall texture you mentioned, I didn't think I'd like it but it is growing on me, going to run a compile to see what it really looks like shortly.

when you say "Different floor texture in base" do you mean the tile or the wood floor?

The skybox is based on the color palette from a photo and I'm pretty happy with it, you are the only person who has mentioned that the colors feel inverted so far... I'll keep this comment in mind as I show it to more people.

lastly the skycart idea is a pretty cool one but I'm not sure I can do it for several reasons
1. half of the lift wires and carts are in the real world and the other in the skybox. I could make it all the game world but that would add to the map volume significantly and likely would not help performance.
2. the lift would be going backwards and forwards which might seem strange, also I don't know how to animate acceptably realistic physics on the carts.
3. there are additional carts on the wire, some of which would move around in the game space and could conflict with sentries or even move in a way that gives one team an advantage (ie gives great cover in one spot or blocks a door) I suppose I could remove the carts but that would make the wire feel empty I think.

thanks again to all for your feedback

 

[waxpax]

Map crashed my server the two times I tried to load it up. Then I tried to load the map on a created server and it made my game crash :/

 

[MangyCarface]

Ah, the tile not the wood.

 

[timberghost_paintball]

thanks for letting me know, I'll start researching to see if I can figure out what is causing it.

 

[Cerious]

>first post
>Map Version: Release Candidate

I believe you misunderstand how our map submission section works. Or more accurately, how it does not. We are not a place to show off finished or nearly-finished products. We're here to provide mapmakers with feedback on their in-development maps, and while a release candidate technically counts as "in-development" since it's not a final release, we generally expect to be able to give suggestions on major things like layout that are expected to be set in stone at an early stage.

Also,



What's the standard number of lashings with a wet noodle for a pun that bad?

Hi,

You're an asshole. What gives you the right to approve whether people can submit their maps? You come in here, basically saying "we here at TF2maps.net exist to give feedback on maps" and then you don't give any constructive feedback on his map, none at all. You're basically disrespecting the creator of what looks to be a pretty decent, well-thought out map, just because his map is detailed and has the RC label instead of a beta or alpha label.
~
Now, about the map:
-I really like the aesthetics, especially because it all makes sense and fits within a consistent theme. You've even got the control point on top of Hale's cap.
-I really like the transition from indoor combat within an office environment to outdoor combat nearby a death pit. It's an interesting contrast.

That's about all I can say, I haven't been able to play on the map so I'm not going to do some theorycrafting and guess how it plays.

 

[tyler]

Are you kidding me dude?

 

[timberghost_paintball]

update

Made a few adjustments this week based on your feedback

1. stone walls inside the mountain
Changed the rockwall to a darkened version of the medieval rockwall
Changed the stone wall along the outside to better match the carved stone look on the sculpture

2. the tile floor in the headquarters is now a different tile without any specularity. I still like having a tile of some sort as it visually breaks up the area nicely and keeps the wood floor from being too much. The shine on the old floor didn't help anything and I'm glad I made the change

3. The cliff sculpture. This is becoming a bit of a pain and I'm not sure I'm happy with it yet but I figured I show my changes thus far. The annoying thing about Saxton Hale is that his proportions seem to change quite a bit among the various official art that there is of him. Additionally the comic book style does a better job of suggesting a form that clearly defining it in such a way that a modeler can work from. I decided to try using the model of the Saxxy Trophy as a guide but it is a pretty stylize caricature of a caricature.... I feel like the jaw and mustache are certainly closer to what they should be but I'm still not happy with the eyes and brow and not quite sure how to balance the accuracy to his comic book representation and the style of him being carved in stone.

Lastly, I've tripled checked everything I could imagine being the cause of it crashing for other people, and I'm still having no problems or red flags here.
A few people have told me it isn't working for them but no one has told me if it is working for them. It would help if I knew if the problems are only happening to some people or everyone but me. I suspect that if it is everyone but me that there might be a packing problem, whereas if it is only some people it might be an optimization problem.

thanks