CP Proletariat

[JeanPaul]

These heights scares me, be aware of the fact that in tf2, the height is very important, and these doors on the top seems really hard to reach, but the playtest will say more.

Also, I already wich you good luck to balance this map with all this height variation, did you already made some test with bots to see if it's not a steamroll for a team ? But, it's already a really good project, and has a level designer from BMS, i'm sure you will turn this one into a solid map.

Well some of these door ways ARE supposed to be too high as to create a one way path for players to go through.

Also how did you know I work on black mesa?

 

[RaVaGe]

I saw you on mapcore, i'm not really active there but sometime I take a look on this cool forum

 

[JeanPaul]

Well I was going to apply to test on tf2map's server for thursday, but I just checked and it looks like I am way late to that party .

Anyways, I finished getting all the gameplay stuff down and ready, so last night I thought I would just detail one area for a little and see what happens. Here is the red spawn area and first two points. (the last screenshot is taken with noclip on)

 

[GPuzzle]

Why do this looks like so awesome?

 

[RaVaGe]

Looks good.

Those two points are really too close each other, it will turn into a spamfest when you see how this corridor is tight, also these days we are running a lot of impromptu playtests, just ask an admin to upload your map.

 

[JeanPaul]

It might be a spamfest, this is true, but I am banking on it not for several reasons:

1. There are 4 COMPLETELY different paths to get to these areas.
2. The focus will be on both points at the same time, not separately due to my layout
3. I can always open it up absolute worst case.

Also, how do I just go about asking an admin to upload my map?

 

[RaVaGe]

PM Frozen, or join the steam chat and ask for testing your map, I don't think they will refuse .

 

[JeanPaul]

Thanks to everyone that helped test, it was a jolly good time. The map seems to be pretty balanced in terms of class to class differences, but I have a lot of comments and things to go through before I upload a2! Red has a very slight disadvantage, but I was almost certain that was going to happen, so I have plans on what I can do to give red a little boost. A few screens from testing:

Everyone seemed to enjoy it, so thats cool

 

[C00Kies]

All in all, this map was a lot of fun!

I think one of the main reasons why Red had a tough time fighting back is because red's 1st and 2ed points were close and had a direct connection/sight to each other when coming from mid were as Blu's cps were on 2 separate routs from mid. This lead to red getting pushed back to last and if blu had enough momentum, they could just roll through down the hill.
I think what may help a lot is if from mid, red's cps were down opposite paths like blu's, not exactly like blu's just the same concept of 'you have to chose which path to go down to and it's respective cp rather then fallowing one path to get to one then the other. (I hope you understand what Im trying to say.)

Some thing else I noticed when I was playing scout for a bit, was perhaps make it so a scout could jump form this window to the ledge just a bit further down, on the top left of the cp (I love how that point looks by the way .) this could be done simply by adding a light post on the orange wall on the right or some sort of ledge/window in which a scout could hop to. I just found it frustrating as a scout because I REALLY wanted to jump there, but I couldn't.... Just a though for an extra rout

Final, just a thought about how to show people were to go in the seance of signage is to make the CPs glow like the PL cart and Intel do, similar to how cp_Konkreet and Upland do it. Its a simple thing which may help point people in the right direction when they are playing it for the first time. Granted, the more we all played it,the more we grew custom to the layout of the points. Here is how you do it if you want.

your off to a great start!

 

[JeanPaul]

Yeah will do thank you.

I think I have a few ideas I can use for making red's second point harder to cap/easier to defend. I also have a few ways I believe I can make blue's second point EASIER to cap and HARDER to defend.

 

[Hype]

Things that annoy me in the TF2 mapping community:
-Flat maps
-Mirror layouts

Without having played the map and only glanced through this thread I must only say this:
- In my experience, typically the best enduring official and unofficial maps (other than orange) are quite the opposite of flat. Those that do have most ground play on the same horizontal plane also typically have a great deal of vertical play involved.
- For multiplayer maps were both teams have identical objectives (in Team Fortress; plr, 5cp, ctf, koth) a "mirrored" map is more or less required for truly balanced play for both teams. My greatest concern about this map is actually being able to balance the map for both teams, such that two equally matched teams have equal chance of winning.

 

[Sergis]

as a gunboats solly, i had tons of fun on this map playing a fun non-cookie-cutter map is damn refreshing. keep doing what you're doing

edit: best weapon in all of tf2

 

[GPuzzle]

The Rocket-Plan
Escape Plan good atributes
Can only have one rocket loaded at time.

 

[JeanPaul]

I am close to another alpha! I have really added some zany ideas in here and hopefully I got everything much better balanced. Hopefully we can test this thursday again because I am getting excited for this map now.

Alpha 2 changes/additions:
-Red's last point is now harder to cap/easier to defend
-Moved red's first cap further away from the main hallway to match blue's first point a little more.
-Opened up a lot of the map for more spaciousness
-Added sniper nest above red's first point
-new alternate path to blues last point to make capturing it easier. This new path is accessible through the main side path (crazy stair area)
-Added a ledge near red's first cap to allow sniper access to blue's first point
-More sniper friendly

Things I changed/added that dont effect gameplay:
-Changed lighting to nighttime because its what I originally wanted
-Some detailing in blue spawn because I was high/drunk last night.

Screenshots:

The additions to red's second point

Second view

Third view

View of first and second red points

View of new sniper nest I added above red's first point

Center point

Opened up the main side route

New path added to make attacking blue's second point easier, access to this area is immediately from the top of the left stairs in the previous screenshot

View of blue's second point from the new path

View of new path from blue's point

Added another exit out of blue's spawn

Just a shot from blue's first point viewing center

A shot of some of the detailing I did in blue spawn

The new spawn exit from inside spawn

And a shot of some of the hardest brushwork I have ever had to figure out. :O

Whoo

 

[ForbiddenDonut]

Height advantage is a very strange thing in TF2. With no height, you get an extremely boring map unworthy of the slightest playability. At 32-256, you get gameplay variation that can make the map unpredictable (and thus exciting) to play. However, once you start getting higher than 256 (which is, not coincidentally, the limit where players won't take fall damage), height starts to really diminish as a gameplay element.

Aside from fall damage, TF2's damage fall-off starts to really kick in and killing a player on the ground from such a height advantage becomes a much more fruitless task. In an environment like yours, covered in extremely narrow and tall structures, it isn't even that beneficial to obtain height just for the informative view advantage.

It's due to the cramped and tall nature of this map that demomen and soldiers are relentlessly powerful.

It's just a note to keep when moving forward with this map. Height is not really one of those things where more is better: it has to be purposely placed and understood.

PS: Dig the detailing on the BLU spawn. Some sexy spytech you got there.

 

[JeanPaul]

Height advantage is a very strange thing in TF2. With no height, you get an extremely boring map unworthy of the slightest playability. At 32-256, you get gameplay variation that can make the map unpredictable (and thus exciting) to play. However, once you start getting higher than 256 (which is, not coincidentally, the limit where players won't take fall damage), height starts to really diminish as a gameplay element.

Aside from fall damage, TF2's damage fall-off starts to really kick in and killing a player on the ground from such a height advantage becomes a much more fruitless task. In an environment like yours, covered in extremely narrow and tall structures, it isn't even that beneficial to obtain height just for the informative view advantage.

It's due to the cramped and tall nature of this map that demomen and soldiers are relentlessly powerful.

It's just a note to keep when moving forward with this map. Height is not really one of those things where more is better: it has to be purposely placed and understood.

PS: Dig the detailing on the BLU spawn. Some sexy spytech you got there.

Absolutely, I have definitely been aware of this, thanks for the heads up. I urge you to actually play it with me on my next test, it plays a lot differently than it looks. In my last playtest, the only class I found to be overpowered in this map was actually scout (when I played it at least). Even at the tallest point in the map, demomen and soldiers werent overpowering anything.

 

[Pocket]

Height advantage is a very strange thing in TF2. With no height, you get an extremely boring map unworthy of the slightest playability. At 32-256, you get gameplay variation that can make the map unpredictable (and thus exciting) to play. However, once you start getting higher than 256 (which is, not coincidentally, the limit where players won't take fall damage), height starts to really diminish as a gameplay element.

Aside from fall damage, TF2's damage fall-off starts to really kick in and killing a player on the ground from such a height advantage becomes a much more fruitless task. In an environment like yours, covered in extremely narrow and tall structures, it isn't even that beneficial to obtain height just for the informative view advantage.

Isn't that a good thing, though? Because it would be pretty imbalanced if the height advantage continued to get bigger and bigger as the height difference increased.

 

[ForbiddenDonut]

Isn't that a good thing, though? Because it would be pretty imbalanced if the height advantage continued to get bigger and bigger as the height difference increased.

It is a good thing and it dictates a lot of how TF2 plays today.

However, if you design your map to have a lot of height advantage that is 384+ units tall, you are effectively rendering that advantage useless. It's not bad because the engine should be changed to allow that height to be effective, it's bad because you have this whole portion of the map that is useless.

(I wasn't directing that at your map, Jean. I'm just clarifying what I meant).

 

[JeanPaul]

Saying any height advantage above 384 units is effectively useless is a bit of a sweeping generalization dont you think? I can think of, and give you, several examples where this is completely false. I mean do you think the demoman at the bottom of a 512 unit wall is going to win a battle against a demoman at the top? Probably not. I mean look at the first capture point on Egypt's second stage, that first tall ass wall used to be almost double the height, but had to be lowered because of the massive advantage Red had in the area.

 

[ForbiddenDonut]

It gives an advantage to the only classes that are already dominating your map: demomen and soldiers. It's because their projectiles are splash and, in the demoman's case, rely on gravity. The other classes that take advantage of a 384 Hu height is Engineer (as Sentry guns do not have damage fall-off - it's restricted by its spherical range) and Sniper (as a sniper rifle does not have damage fall-off).

However, it doesn't matter for those two classes because your map is also a convoluted, narrow piece of mess.

We play tested today and, as you can tell by the feedback, it wasn't received very well. Numerous members tried to RTV to switch the map early. It's extremely cramped (you have some hallways which are 96 Hu wide. I played Scout in this map. What are you supposed to do when you run into a Demoman/Soldier/Pyro in that scenario?), it's overly complex (some of your structure areas remind me of an Escher painting) and it doesn't make sense. Lasts that can be capped before mids? There's no signs on the entirety of the map. Someone in the test put it rather blunty:

"It's confusing at first. Actually, it's always confusing."