Remnants

evanonline

L420: High Member
Mar 15, 2009
485
273
A chance stumbling into a hidden cache of Egyptian treasure has caused excavation and demolition to occur (reliably!) in every temple, ruin, pyramid and weird dog statue known to Mann. Upon finding they had plundered every last bit of gold they could, leaving archaeologists and tomb raiders disappointed for the next five decades, the higher-ups at RED felt the most logical way to progress was to look for where all those uppity pharaohs got their gold in the first place and just start drilling gigantic holes into the catacombs of the ruins they plundered.

Naturally, their cooler-colored archrivals have obtained wind of the plan, in the form of a briefcase featuring the self-destruct codes for the drilling rig (as every megacorporation knows, EVERYTHING needs self-destruct sequences). Their mercenaries have been tasked with delivering the files safely into the confines of RED’s Egyptian headquarters and activating it. The home team has been tasked with defending the drill, and, when spare time arises, deal with the ghost their drilling has disturbed and take down all those giant arrows he’s putting up to show BLU how to get through the tomb.

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ctf_remnants is basically me being incredibly late to the A/D CTF party. But I was working on pl_floodgates when the contest was happening and I happened to take it VERY SERIOUSLY!! (even though it was pretty awful) All three of my previous maps were stepping stones to this one, which I think is the first one I'm doing "properly".

I've always been sort of enamored with Egypt's theme and I've always had a desire to try and combine it with more traditional TF2 ideas, which I think are explained in the intro pretty well. A/D CTF is pretty interesting and I think I have an advantage over the contest mappers in that I know how it plays and don't have to work from scratch making up a new gamemode! But if this plays badly I can always convert it to cp.

Credits:

Materials from Swamp Pack used
Intel Point Base and Baccarat Detector by Shmitz
Skinned Dynamite models, Forklift, Optimized Civilian bobblehead model and Intel Doors by Rexy
Drill, Stool and Chair by Acumen (akkushaver@gmx.de)
Golden Idol by Youme
Team-colored Egypt textures by Engineer
Novint Signs by Okrag
Jobbs Orchards sign by Aly
sky_dawn_01 by supersandvich

Special Thanks to:

Icarus and Jonah for help with the A/D CTF gamemode
My BROHAPS Beev, Slick, Trolling Girl, TYRANNOSATAN ALPHA, AlphaTM, Vivian, Doc, rhides, Dokudoku and a bunch of other cool people I'm forgetting for help with initial testing
 
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Keonyn

L2: Junior Member
Mar 27, 2010
56
17
I love that drill room, looks awesome. I'd seen the custom model in models forum but I had no idea just how freaking large that thing is. Definitely has some potential, and I like the mix of Egypt and a more modern them to give it that active excavation look.
 

evanonline

L420: High Member
Mar 15, 2009
485
273
I still need to work on the lighting in that room, I want it to look dark without it looking terrible. It looks a better in-game than it does in the screenshot but it still seems a little off. But I guess that's what alphas are for!

And oh man I didn't even notice that I accidentallly deleted two stairs. I guess I should've heeded all those warnings I heard about them.
 
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evanonline

L420: High Member
Mar 15, 2009
485
273
Bumping for A2!
...I haven't taken any pictures of A2 that have the cubemaps compiled though but I've been doing this ALL DAY. I'll show for my work tomorrow!

I got some good testing done with a small group of people and even though very little in the gameplay department could really be changed with 8-12 people I got a hold on a bunch of little errors I would have been incredibly embarrassed over had they been caught by tf2maps and not friends. NOW I think I'm ready to force this map upon the world! Er, TF2maps.
 

evanonline

L420: High Member
Mar 15, 2009
485
273
Ok so this got tested. I'm just jotting some ideas down while we play this so I have them somewhere and posting it so it's somewhere easy to access, so I don't have to keep alt-tabbing between this and notepad or distract myself with paper

Drill has a really odd collision model so I'm gonna need to fix it being something you can stand on. I'll need to do some clipping around it, I think.

The biggest problem was a need for more paths, apparently. This is a bit precarious, I think, because the balance between offense and defense seems pretty solid.
-For stage 1, a path to the little red shack for BLU seems sort of necessary, I'll definitely do that.
-For stage 2 it was recommended that I should add a new path for BLU to get around the water, I think I can pull off something like this simply but I'm a bit iffy on this, I might need a few more opinions before I go through with it

The CAVES. They were much much worse in A1 believe it or not, the second path was just a big long thing thing that extended halfway across the map. I like this current layout better but it needs to be widened up a bit in a few places, and the roof needs to be raised. It was a bit small because I was compensating for the whole area becoming displacements eventually but i'm beginning to realize that's going to be a nightmare to do. Maybe I should nix the entire area altogether for something simpler? It wouldn't be too hard to fix them up though.

Last area still needs more lights too.

There's a lot of stuff a lot of people said, and I couldn't quite hear everyone out but I'd really like some feedback if anyone has anything to write out!
 

Rikka

L5: Dapper Member
Feb 10, 2009
208
388
I found 2-2 really boring. All the fighting took place in the little pit outside the 2nd point and water entrance, so it was just spam until blu broke through and got a cap.
 

evanonline

L420: High Member
Mar 15, 2009
485
273
I found 2-2 really boring. All the fighting took place in the little pit outside the 2nd point and water entrance, so it was just spam until blu broke through and got a cap.

Would it be better if the ground was just level through that area, do you think? When I was designing that area I felt it was too flat and it came across as very boring to play on, but I felt the same sort of thing when I actually played this out today and I know exactly what you mean about it. The stairs were very spammy.

I'm considering removing the fence that faces the water chamber and adding a little stairway to the side. Would it be better to add that extra path, do you think, or would it be better to just level out the land and keep it to just those two paths? I'm leaning towards a third path, but I'm not too sure yet.
 

evanonline

L420: High Member
Mar 15, 2009
485
273
Updated with A3, to be tested soon!

I should...probably start remembering to take new pictures every time I update this!
 

evanonline

L420: High Member
Mar 15, 2009
485
273
TRIPLE POSTING because I put up some spiffy new pictures. The changes I made to address the two big problems everyone had are visible--there's stairs up to the red shack at 1-2 now, and a third, non-aquatic passage into 2-2.

I chose to play Left 4 Dead 2 with some friends instead of testing tonight, but you know what, THAT'S OKAY. I'll get it done!!
 

Jack Riguel

L10: Glamorous Member
Jul 19, 2009
721
254
Crashed in the midst of the test, but primary thing is:

Let there be light!

Also I'm not a huge fan of the corridorish layout of stage 1 and 2, however we weren't really able t to test it extensively though.
 

evanonline

L420: High Member
Mar 15, 2009
485
273
Crashed in the midst of the test, but primary thing is:

Let there be light!

Also I'm not a huge fan of the corridorish layout of stage 1 and 2, however we weren't really able t to test it extensively though.

those caves in stage 2 have been going through a lot of revisions so I've been a bit bad about lighting them. Plus I've noticed that it looks much worse in there without HDR. i think it'll be better once it's not orange textures anymore, but those caves have been a source of contention for a while so i don't want to do anything with them until i'm absolutely sure that area flows well.

I think a lot of the problems that come out in testing wouldn't have been present with more people but one thing that feels obvious is that I need to make it a bit more open still.
 

evanonline

L420: High Member
Mar 15, 2009
485
273
I've been working on A4 pretty diligently and here are a few things I have to say about it I guess!

-I think I FINALLY have the light situation under control at 3-2, and I've added a few new lights in the underwater tunnel at 2-2.

-I consider 1-2 pretty balanced at this point, though I might need to work on 1-1 a bit. I've seen 1-1 defended pretty well, and yet I've also seen it just get utterly plowed.

-I've decided to expand the area from which 2-1 can be blocked by attackers. 2-2 feels a lot better with the new passage, but easy to cap still and might require further work to make it harder to penetrate for BLU.

-3-1 needs something for defenders, I might fortify the area around the back more. 3-2 feels like a tossup right now too.

I think I'm gonna give A3 one more test run to determine all of these kinks before releasing A4.
 

evanonline

L420: High Member
Mar 15, 2009
485
273
New version! A new skybox serves to fix all of the messy lighting problems, and it's really nice-looking too! You can thank supersandvich for it.

Aside from the bigger changes, I put in some detailing as well. While this is frowned upon in alphas, I a) wanted to get a feel for what I would be up against later, and b) wanted to give some context for the final stage's layout, which a lot of people said looked pretty bad. Plus, it might curb the amount of people asking WHY IS THERE A GHOST?? Oh and c) I was pretty bored the other night
 
Aug 10, 2009
1,240
399
Just to comment on the screenshots- a lot of your gameplay space looks really tight and compacted, you might want to consider opening things up to give players some breathing room (especially around that cap with four pillars)
 

Mr.Late

L7: Fancy Member
Nov 27, 2009
408
157
[1] These corridors are just too small and yellow. You might want to rework this area.

[2] No side routes here! Add at least one.

[3] Stairs down here don't work properly. You have to crouch in order to move at them.

[4] There is also a choke point without sideroutes. Easy to spam as demoman.

[5] Again, a choke

It looks promising, you just have to make some layout changes! You can make this a very good map :D
 

evanonline

L420: High Member
Mar 15, 2009
485
273
[1] [2] I've just deleted just about everything outside this area, because it is really sort of terrible. I'm going to start from scratch altogether here, I've been dissatisfied with it from day one.

[3] I am pretty angry at myself for not checking this! I had problems with these stairs in the past but they were fixed in A3. Something screwed up in Hammer after I pushed out A3 and blanked my entire map so I had to reload from an autosave, and I'm guessing the stairway got screwy again afterwards. This is a really stupid mistake and I'm sorry for letting it slip by!

[4] I honestly have no idea how I should fix this but I've noticed problems at this area too so I'll have to think of something. What I might do is add a second passage in from the shacks at 2-1 to the room with the hole into the water. Actually that's a good idea I'll do that.

[5] I've already added a new passage to fix up the problems here, there's a door into that room with the intel around where the red arrow is in that screenshot.
 

evanonline

L420: High Member
Mar 15, 2009
485
273
boop

just bumping quick for A5, dunno when I'll get it tested because I'm pretty busy with college