- Jul 6, 2009
- 261
- 110
Deep in a valley between two mountains RED and BLU run seemingly normal power plants. But deep inside their headquarters lies their real purpose: reanimation experiments. Struggling to find how to beat death itself [respawn system? lawl] both companies are suddenly made aware of each other's presence during during expansion processes and proceed to deal with the situation the only way they know: By hiring mercenaries to kill the beegesus out of each other and take over the enemy's station, in hope of claiming their research.
...Also there seems to be weird new cult going around, something about a future savior... /easter egg
Feedback appreciated.
22/11/2009 update New!
After being sick for a while, and having college work pile up, I had to put this on hold for a while. Alas, finally releasing a10, which hopefully will cover a lot of the old problems.
Still not entirely happy with a few things, namely the "entry" into the point 2 area... But wanna see how the current changes affect gameplay before introducing more changes.
Focused mostly on the third point area, both around, the "accesses", and bellow the point as it seemed like the most "open/uncontrolled" place. Did a few changes, to control the flow around that area, along with some visual improvements, let's hope that did the trick.
I'm particularly happy with the middle point right now, although open to changes. It's not done yet and it's already the kind of stuff final screenshots are made of.
Cheers
9/10/2009 update:
I'm currently stuck regarding an issue with my map and I need your assistance to fix it.
See, the moment you spawn on the map, there's a very practical one way door directly on everyone's right that people seem to be missing entirely. It's not hidden by anything. It's directly to the right, up a flight of stairs, you can even see the "EXIT" sign above it from the spawn. But people seem to be focusing mostly on the big main entrance and completely ignoring this one.
This path is not, by all means, to become "near mandatory", but it does carry some interesting advantages to some classes at least, and it seems people just don't notice it more than "don't want to take it". Should I just let people learn it by themselves? After all it's not hidden and after a couple of games there they should learn where it is and where it leads. Did you notice it yourself? Any ideas?
Feedback necessary.
Cheers.
2/10/09 update:
Major update to the actual gameplay this time around. First thing that was bugging me about the map was that people weren't using the very convenient sideroute I built from and into each team's final cp building. At first I didn't get why. Generally speaking it was faster and more direct. Then I realized there were two very obvious reasons:
- People weren't using it to leave the base because they couldn't see it, and while it was ultimately faster or maybe safer, it was very convoluted. I didn't notice this at first because... Well, I made the map... I know it inside out. To me it was obvious. But on a more careful examination, it really wasn't. The problem then was: how to make it easier to go out, but not in? So I added a one-way door here (hopefully, clearly marked as such) in a place where it should be pretty obvious for people leaving the spawn (considering it's right smack in front of it). Not only does this make it easier for slower classes not having to go around, but it gets more traffic into that middle-building area. Hopefully get people exploring it more.
- On the other hand, people weren't using it to go in for a very similar reason. The only path into the "fake stairs" was only obvious for someone who knew the map... Added a new set of more obvious stairs will have, hopefully, made the path a more attractive, and viable, alternative.
Hopefully this new "streamlining" of that area will also add more movement to the whole middle buildings.
Another thing that was bugging me was the sniper "porch". I wanted to keep a high area of visibility and a good ability to snipe, but apparently went overboard. Good snipers wouldn't go anywhere near the middle, resulting in a lot of wasted space. Blocking the whole thing with a wall removed the visual sightline I wanted, thus glass windows.
On the other hand, something was "amiss" with the whole area. Specifically, while the actual point had decent cover, the whole area around it was rather lacking if a sniper positioned himself properly. Also the point itself lacked cover from above. That said, I didn't want to cover it up too much. Thus I found my solution in vertical space. A vertical building with openings would both provide some level of vertical defense, break up horizontal sniper sight line across the middle, but still allow some openings, and provide a better ability for better more (although risky) vertical combat. It also makes it possible for non-FaN using scouts to go across the whole thing. It was previously possible for ANY scout to transverse the entire map from one team's second CP to the other team's second CP without ever touching the floor. However, only FaN scouts, with triple jump, were able to do so through the middle. This could potentially overpower scouts, if not for the fact that up there, they gotta deal with their vulnerability to snipers, effectively making it a tradeoff. Less vulnerable to "ground units", more vulnerable to snipers.
One last thing that was bugging me considerably was that people seemed unhappy with their own ability to defend the second CP. On top of that, I personally wasn't too happy with the visual effect of that point, so I decided on a makeover, adopting a visual style I had already used in the map, that fitted and that I was happy with (metal beams, grating and concrete), and reworked the point's layout to make it more defensible from the inside as well, like gravelpit's point B. This teams are able to both defend it from the inside and the outside. Hopefully this will, again, stimulate more combat in that area, and less "cap-recap-rinse-repeat" attitude.
That's pretty much all for now, I'm still looking into messing with the middle area a bit more, but wanna know how the map currently plays before I mess with it any more.
16/09/09 update:
While the update notes on this are rather small, the difference playing it should be huge. I've been waiting to do this for a while now, and in the last gameday the gameplay seemed solid enough to "1-up" it. So I did. Hopefully the added details will not only make the map more enjoyable to the eye, but the extra layout "tweaks" I was able to finally do through them will make the gameplay even more enjoyable. We'll see. As usual, comment please!
PS: Yes, I forgot to change one texture on the blu side's middle point! Mea culpa, but it's not important enough to warrant a new release. It will be fixed next release.
21/07/09 Update:
Biggest update to date. After last week's gameday a lot went on in this map.
First, and as much as I hate to, I've taken the painful decision of removing the lifts and reworking the final CPs. I thought having lifts would be acceptable so long as they weren't the exclusive route to a point, but turns out they don't really work as a secondary route either... People just up fucking around with them too much, usually leading to either griefing or people playing around the lifts instead helping their team. So, goodbye lifts.
Second, I took the decision of removing the final CP from the roof because it was far too hard for the defending team to reach it while under assault. Specially considering some side routes available to demomen and soldiers. It would lead to the anecdotal situation of having the defending team take longer to reach their own defense than it would for the attackers to climb it from the outside. As a compensation, the roof is now easier to access for other classes (although still faster for soldiers, demomen and scouts). In turn this helped solve a problem that would inevitably arise: sentry camping the ledge above the main door. Players on the roof will have a shoot, although not a very safe one) at sentries (or their engineers) on that ledge, making them less "turtle-friendly"
The entire second CP was also reworked. My biggest issue with it was that the whole moment surrounding the second CP seemed very... fleeting... People would cap it and move on. Nobody would even attempt to defend it. This happened due to three main reasons I tried to address:
First, again, it took longer for the defending team to reach the CP than the attacking team. Although the difference wasn't colossal, it was enough so engineers (and other classes) wouldn't even bother setting up a defense, as they'd have the enemy on their heels before they could get anything safely setup. As such, the entire second CP was moved closer to the defending team's "HQ", allowing them a bit more time to setup some form of defense.
Second, there were no decent sentry spots. It seems that in my attempt to avoid "corners of death" that inevitably get nested to hell and back, I forgot to include SOME safe spots for an engineer to setup... This has been fixed by a few small additions and "reworks". There are now 2 "main" sentry spots, each can easily out a sentry and grant the engine good cover, while remaining vulnerable to an ubercharge or an unchallenged attacker. Also, moving the whole cp/tower closer to the HQ helped give the same team's battlements less of an angle to safely snipe the entire CP, this could be used to build offensive sentries on the second ring of the CP's tower.
Third, a lot of the time neither teams cared much for the point as it was rather unnecessary. Another anecdotal situation arose where it was usually faster for the attacking team to reach the enemy's main base than it was to reach the second CP. Thus, capturing (or protecting the second CP felt like an unnecessary and even tiresome detour. Adding gates to the secondary (previously used as primary) path turns it into what it was originally meant to be: a secondary path to the enemy's base. The necessity to hold the CP to keep the gates open turns it into an unreliable path if the CP isn't defended. It also helps engineers setup in that area while the CP is uncapped, as the doors remain closed, and while they CAN be opened from the outside, they're not permanently open and require the enemy to move well within sentry range to get a shot.
There were also some minor fixes added: The displacement bellow the third CP was pissing me off for 3 versions now, creating an irreparable "hole" that would just move from one side to the other when I tried to fix/flatten it. So I just redid the fucking thing and now it's gone (as far as I can tell).
Also did some changes to the secondary respawn points of reach team. Fixed the "jerky" stairs there were a pain to go through and caused people a lot of grief and made the underwater exit a lot more obvious. Hopefully that's all it takes and I need not add neon signs...
That's about all for the changes right now. Let's see how that before I change anything else.
Old Update: Yes, I knew there were hl2 stuff in there, placeholders. They are gone now. There is 1 left, but it fits, so help you god if you complain about that one.
Credits/Thanks:
- A Boojum Snark - For his libraries and assorted assistance with entity-based conundrums.
- Jamini - For his assistance with a functionality/design based conundrum.
- Broken:Tripod-Turret - For his assistance with model-posing based conundrums and other assorted conundrums.
- Immortal-D - For his assistance with time-space continuum related conundrums and assorted entity and optimization conundrums.
- Other people whose names I've forgotten or forgot to check from the tf2maps.net comunity because I forget names easily - For putting up with my incessant questions, help map testing and assistance with assorted conundrums.
Old changelog: (due to char limit)
...Also there seems to be weird new cult going around, something about a future savior... /easter egg
Feedback appreciated.
22/11/2009 update New!
After being sick for a while, and having college work pile up, I had to put this on hold for a while. Alas, finally releasing a10, which hopefully will cover a lot of the old problems.
Still not entirely happy with a few things, namely the "entry" into the point 2 area... But wanna see how the current changes affect gameplay before introducing more changes.
Focused mostly on the third point area, both around, the "accesses", and bellow the point as it seemed like the most "open/uncontrolled" place. Did a few changes, to control the flow around that area, along with some visual improvements, let's hope that did the trick.
I'm particularly happy with the middle point right now, although open to changes. It's not done yet and it's already the kind of stuff final screenshots are made of.
Cheers
9/10/2009 update:
I'm currently stuck regarding an issue with my map and I need your assistance to fix it.
See, the moment you spawn on the map, there's a very practical one way door directly on everyone's right that people seem to be missing entirely. It's not hidden by anything. It's directly to the right, up a flight of stairs, you can even see the "EXIT" sign above it from the spawn. But people seem to be focusing mostly on the big main entrance and completely ignoring this one.
This path is not, by all means, to become "near mandatory", but it does carry some interesting advantages to some classes at least, and it seems people just don't notice it more than "don't want to take it". Should I just let people learn it by themselves? After all it's not hidden and after a couple of games there they should learn where it is and where it leads. Did you notice it yourself? Any ideas?
Feedback necessary.
Cheers.
2/10/09 update:
Major update to the actual gameplay this time around. First thing that was bugging me about the map was that people weren't using the very convenient sideroute I built from and into each team's final cp building. At first I didn't get why. Generally speaking it was faster and more direct. Then I realized there were two very obvious reasons:
- People weren't using it to leave the base because they couldn't see it, and while it was ultimately faster or maybe safer, it was very convoluted. I didn't notice this at first because... Well, I made the map... I know it inside out. To me it was obvious. But on a more careful examination, it really wasn't. The problem then was: how to make it easier to go out, but not in? So I added a one-way door here (hopefully, clearly marked as such) in a place where it should be pretty obvious for people leaving the spawn (considering it's right smack in front of it). Not only does this make it easier for slower classes not having to go around, but it gets more traffic into that middle-building area. Hopefully get people exploring it more.
- On the other hand, people weren't using it to go in for a very similar reason. The only path into the "fake stairs" was only obvious for someone who knew the map... Added a new set of more obvious stairs will have, hopefully, made the path a more attractive, and viable, alternative.
Hopefully this new "streamlining" of that area will also add more movement to the whole middle buildings.
Another thing that was bugging me was the sniper "porch". I wanted to keep a high area of visibility and a good ability to snipe, but apparently went overboard. Good snipers wouldn't go anywhere near the middle, resulting in a lot of wasted space. Blocking the whole thing with a wall removed the visual sightline I wanted, thus glass windows.
On the other hand, something was "amiss" with the whole area. Specifically, while the actual point had decent cover, the whole area around it was rather lacking if a sniper positioned himself properly. Also the point itself lacked cover from above. That said, I didn't want to cover it up too much. Thus I found my solution in vertical space. A vertical building with openings would both provide some level of vertical defense, break up horizontal sniper sight line across the middle, but still allow some openings, and provide a better ability for better more (although risky) vertical combat. It also makes it possible for non-FaN using scouts to go across the whole thing. It was previously possible for ANY scout to transverse the entire map from one team's second CP to the other team's second CP without ever touching the floor. However, only FaN scouts, with triple jump, were able to do so through the middle. This could potentially overpower scouts, if not for the fact that up there, they gotta deal with their vulnerability to snipers, effectively making it a tradeoff. Less vulnerable to "ground units", more vulnerable to snipers.
One last thing that was bugging me considerably was that people seemed unhappy with their own ability to defend the second CP. On top of that, I personally wasn't too happy with the visual effect of that point, so I decided on a makeover, adopting a visual style I had already used in the map, that fitted and that I was happy with (metal beams, grating and concrete), and reworked the point's layout to make it more defensible from the inside as well, like gravelpit's point B. This teams are able to both defend it from the inside and the outside. Hopefully this will, again, stimulate more combat in that area, and less "cap-recap-rinse-repeat" attitude.
That's pretty much all for now, I'm still looking into messing with the middle area a bit more, but wanna know how the map currently plays before I mess with it any more.
16/09/09 update:
While the update notes on this are rather small, the difference playing it should be huge. I've been waiting to do this for a while now, and in the last gameday the gameplay seemed solid enough to "1-up" it. So I did. Hopefully the added details will not only make the map more enjoyable to the eye, but the extra layout "tweaks" I was able to finally do through them will make the gameplay even more enjoyable. We'll see. As usual, comment please!
PS: Yes, I forgot to change one texture on the blu side's middle point! Mea culpa, but it's not important enough to warrant a new release. It will be fixed next release.
21/07/09 Update:
Biggest update to date. After last week's gameday a lot went on in this map.
First, and as much as I hate to, I've taken the painful decision of removing the lifts and reworking the final CPs. I thought having lifts would be acceptable so long as they weren't the exclusive route to a point, but turns out they don't really work as a secondary route either... People just up fucking around with them too much, usually leading to either griefing or people playing around the lifts instead helping their team. So, goodbye lifts.
Second, I took the decision of removing the final CP from the roof because it was far too hard for the defending team to reach it while under assault. Specially considering some side routes available to demomen and soldiers. It would lead to the anecdotal situation of having the defending team take longer to reach their own defense than it would for the attackers to climb it from the outside. As a compensation, the roof is now easier to access for other classes (although still faster for soldiers, demomen and scouts). In turn this helped solve a problem that would inevitably arise: sentry camping the ledge above the main door. Players on the roof will have a shoot, although not a very safe one) at sentries (or their engineers) on that ledge, making them less "turtle-friendly"
The entire second CP was also reworked. My biggest issue with it was that the whole moment surrounding the second CP seemed very... fleeting... People would cap it and move on. Nobody would even attempt to defend it. This happened due to three main reasons I tried to address:
First, again, it took longer for the defending team to reach the CP than the attacking team. Although the difference wasn't colossal, it was enough so engineers (and other classes) wouldn't even bother setting up a defense, as they'd have the enemy on their heels before they could get anything safely setup. As such, the entire second CP was moved closer to the defending team's "HQ", allowing them a bit more time to setup some form of defense.
Second, there were no decent sentry spots. It seems that in my attempt to avoid "corners of death" that inevitably get nested to hell and back, I forgot to include SOME safe spots for an engineer to setup... This has been fixed by a few small additions and "reworks". There are now 2 "main" sentry spots, each can easily out a sentry and grant the engine good cover, while remaining vulnerable to an ubercharge or an unchallenged attacker. Also, moving the whole cp/tower closer to the HQ helped give the same team's battlements less of an angle to safely snipe the entire CP, this could be used to build offensive sentries on the second ring of the CP's tower.
Third, a lot of the time neither teams cared much for the point as it was rather unnecessary. Another anecdotal situation arose where it was usually faster for the attacking team to reach the enemy's main base than it was to reach the second CP. Thus, capturing (or protecting the second CP felt like an unnecessary and even tiresome detour. Adding gates to the secondary (previously used as primary) path turns it into what it was originally meant to be: a secondary path to the enemy's base. The necessity to hold the CP to keep the gates open turns it into an unreliable path if the CP isn't defended. It also helps engineers setup in that area while the CP is uncapped, as the doors remain closed, and while they CAN be opened from the outside, they're not permanently open and require the enemy to move well within sentry range to get a shot.
There were also some minor fixes added: The displacement bellow the third CP was pissing me off for 3 versions now, creating an irreparable "hole" that would just move from one side to the other when I tried to fix/flatten it. So I just redid the fucking thing and now it's gone (as far as I can tell).
Also did some changes to the secondary respawn points of reach team. Fixed the "jerky" stairs there were a pain to go through and caused people a lot of grief and made the underwater exit a lot more obvious. Hopefully that's all it takes and I need not add neon signs...
That's about all for the changes right now. Let's see how that before I change anything else.
Credits/Thanks:
- A Boojum Snark - For his libraries and assorted assistance with entity-based conundrums.
- Jamini - For his assistance with a functionality/design based conundrum.
- Broken:Tripod-Turret - For his assistance with model-posing based conundrums and other assorted conundrums.
- Immortal-D - For his assistance with time-space continuum related conundrums and assorted entity and optimization conundrums.
- Other people whose names I've forgotten or forgot to check from the tf2maps.net comunity because I forget names easily - For putting up with my incessant questions, help map testing and assistance with assorted conundrums.
Old changelog: (due to char limit)
changes in a2:
- Fixed all respawn room doors being active at all times, which allowed them to be used as permanent resupplies even if the team didn't hold the spot (they just couldn't respawn there).
- Removed the placeholder HL2 items in favor of TF2 ones.
- Minor tweaking to displacement bellow middle cp.
changes in a3:
- Massive rework of cover.
- Fixed second Blu respawn room doors.
- Fixed the door system so you're not stuck inside a room because a CP changed hands.
- Several major bug fixes.
changes in a4 - July 21st, 2009:
- Major rework of both CPs 1 and 2 for each team.
- Lifts removed.
- Each team's final CP is now off the roof and on the ground floor, near the team's spawn.
- As a compensation the final CP now takes 1 second to fully capture.
- CP2 has been moved closer to each team's HQ, making it closer to the defending team than to the attackers.
- Added sidepath, "jump stairs", on the side of each team's "fortress" to allow roof access.
- Added one-way gates to the tunnels. If closed, the gates can only open from the inside. Capturing the defending team's second CP opens them permanently (till the point is recaptured).
- Cover around CP2 reworked to better house sentries (without making them invulnerable.
- Displacement under cp3 entirely redone.
- Secondary spawn's underwater gates reworked to be more visible.
- Secondary spawn's stairs and doors reworked and fixed.
changes in a5 - August 2nd, 2009:
- Map basically remade from scratch.
- Overall areas were made smaller.
- CP2 spawn room doors were remade entirely.
- "Tunnel" area layout was changed.
- Added signs and such.
Known glitches I didn't have time to fix yet:
- On the red base, outside of player reach there's a "wall" (that doesn't really exist) that technically goes on forever.
- On the blue side, once you go bellow half the water line, the upper half becomes "transparent". Reason is unknown.
- The red sign "arrows" are wrong. Didn't have time to fix it.
Changes in a6 - September 1st, 2009:
- Some bug fixes including the sectioned off water in the blu area and the wrong signals being active at the wrong times in the red base.
- Hollow points bellow CP2 are now totally full with water.
- Some more cover added and adjusted.
Changes in a6a- September 3rd, 2009:
- Added visualizers to both team's second respawns.
- Added a bit more detail/content to the first CPs.
Changes in a7 - September 16th, 2009:
- Textured.
- Added some details.
- Did some tweaks to the layout.
- Added more signs.
Last edited: