silo_c b4a

[Swiftmind]

B3 Dev Update: Round 3 Layout

Round 3 layout was alright except for these few issues:

* The map is named Silo C, yet when the players finally get to the Silo it ends up being a side attraction.
* Main route for blue is not as clearly laid out as it can be. The top level flanks are a long round about way compared to the lower route.
* It is very hard for red to retake the top level of the Control Room once blue has a force on the top.
* Defense is difficult for a final point since blue can come from all sides.

Keeping this in mind, here is the new layout for round 3.

Note: This is a simple representation.

The ICBM Silo is now the staging point for blue. It is the first major area blue will enter and it is where blue can split off to assault the control room (CR).

A new path to the CR has been added on the lower floor. This is the left side hallway to CR. This will basically be a mirror image of the right side hallway to CR.

The upper level right flank from the Silo to the CR has been removed.

Main Route: Blue pushes and takes over the Silo. Then can split off into the following three routes to get into the control room:
* The left or right hallways on the lower level.
* Get up to the second level within the Silo using the beams and use the right side hallway on the upper level. This is a "backdoor flank" and will be the longest travel time.

Once blue gets into the lower level of CR, they need to fight up the stairs to the control point.

Red will now spawn on the upper level of CR in a split spawn. This is similar to Dustbowls last point spawn. Red will also be allowed to enter the Silo during setup.

That is it! Next update will be about Round 2 area changes.

 

[SlayerBlitz]

All sounds good, can't wait till its ready to test, but is it possible to set up some testing of just the first round?

 

[Hellfire]

Only thing i realy disliked in stage3 (visualy) were that support thins around ICBM. They looked bad and made the whole plae abit cramped..i suggest removing them and also adding a rotating red beams on walls. Its goin to launch soon, right?

 

[Swiftmind]

B3 Dev Update: Round 2 Area Changes

Time to show progress.

Travel Tunnels:
Only blue has these tunnels now and the conduit is a detail only area.

Living Quarters:
This area had the most changes.

As you can see the lighting has changed a lot. The "Red Ledge" has been moved closer to the other ledge. One can see that the "Red stairway" has been moved next to the restroom. This will make it easier for blue to run up the stairway if needed. In the 'after' picture, near the bottom right, an in lit has been added for a new sentry spot.

A third floor has been added for detail, it is inaccessible. A forth floor may be added.

The upper floor was completely rebuilt and detailed.

This is a areal view of the upper floor. The two ledges of the upper floor are now connected via the hallway near the bottom right. Blue can now run up either stairway and be able to access both upper floor areas without going back down to the lower floor. This greatly reduces the power of the sentry spot on the top floor and forces red to be more clever about defense and spread farther apart. Red also now enters LQ from the right of this picture, no longer from the left.



Fuel:
Fuel's overall layout remains the same. The changes made are lighting, the hut around the point is now a metal shack, new textures and a new models. Red now enters the Fuel area on the other side.

The top of the fuel silos are buildable again to give Red more areas to place sentries. This has to be tested to see if it is a good idea or not.

A new metal shack has been added. This was added to give Red a remote base area with more cover on the top floor.



Engineering:
Engineering has been moved to the other side of the round. It is now directly connected to Fuel and LQ to mimic a Gravelpit layout. Red now spawns in the back of Engineering.

Living Quarters has two ways into Engineering:
1) Stairs going to top level
2) Hallway to mid level

Fuel has two ways:
1) Hallway to mid level
2) Ramp down to lower level.

A new catwalk has been added between the mid level ledges. This replaced the orange wall in the 'before' picture. Now players do not need to run all the way around past the Red spawn exit to get to the other side. This ledge makes the stairway to the top level a lot more accessible and opens up a new sentry spot.



Red Spawn:

The new Red spawn is split between two levels. Red spawn exits on mid and top level of Engineering. Since top level mainly goes to LQ, we wanted to give Red an easier way to get down to the mid level spawn exit. Thus a large elevator hole was added to allow red players to jump down.

Thats it for round 2. As for round 3, changes are around 50% complete. The next dev update will be the last before B3 release!

 

[Hellfire]

yay for the changes! actually wanna see how Fuel Storage changed, was my least favorite point

 

[Swiftmind]

B3 Dev Update: Round 3 Area Changes

What has been going on with Round 3 you ask, well here you go.

Blue Spawn:
Blue spawn as been moved to the new layout position.

Now blue must fight their way into Silo C and take it over. Through the Silo Blue has three ways into the Control Room, seen in the background of the screenshot. The Silo beams will still be used to get up to the second level for the flank path. The lower floor has two ways into the Control Room.

This is the new route into the Control Room. It is very similar to the other lower floor entrance. Behind the screenshot includes a small hallway and security office with some ammo. Each team could build a base there.



Control Room:
Basic layout of the CR has not changed. Lighting increased, more health on the lower floor. The main path for Blue is to enter the CR through one of the two lower floor entrances and fight their way up the stairway. This has been tested with bots and it seems to work well...for bots hehe.

Here is the new way into the CR. Notice the dark tile on the floor. This subtle way to show the path to the CP has been kept.

Red spawn has been moved to the upper floor and split into two spawn rooms on opposite sides of the upper floor. Both can be seen in this screen shot. Red has resupply lockers again. All ammo/health packs around the CP have been removed. Notice the handrails have changed. The handrails are props again, not brushes, which means players can shoot through them once again. Also the HL2 prop on the ledge has been replaced by a simple brush based control panel with a custom panel texture.



That is it! We are now just running around and making minor changes. We plan to have B3 out within the next few days!

 

[Swiftmind]

Great new Dev update for all of you!

Beta 3 Released!

Enjoy.

 

[brick]

Game day bump

 

[lucky]

So, I'm a bit late for the gameday feedback, but that's because I needed to dedicate a bit more time to it than the others.
I love the looks of the map and the detail, but my goodness, it just felt so complex. Personally, I don't mind those hl2 textures, or whatever you used, because you managed to make them look nice (IMO). I had to actually disable the timers so that I could look around the map and soak it in properly. Anyway, to start off, I am going to quote some of the previous feedback you have had in this thread, and explain my reiterations of them.

Engineering feels like a very *final* point, as it is absurdly hard to take provided RED has more than one engineer. A number of play testers were surprised that the map didn't end after that cap.

The engineering point has potential. I appreciate that you have given it a lot of height levels to play on, but accessibility of these levels is one of many confusing points, and with the possibility of a sentry on multiple levels, behind a lot of different pillars, it's crazy. I'm not sure if the detailing of the point makes it hard to see where the enemys are, or is distracting, but that point was hard for both red and blu. Hard to know where anybody is.

Think now, I've got to say that, to summarize all of its gameplay issues, a player doesn't know where to go, where they can go or how they can get there, and that once they get there (assuming that they do) they're bound to get distracted by lights and sounds.

It is definitely hard to know where to go and how to get there, but I'm not so sure on the being distracted by lights and sounds part . The next few quotes will elaborate on why ^

You need to rename the points to stuff like A and B. After that, change the signs to A and B and such. Please provide lots of arrows, I didnt even know the airshaft entrance was there for a while, and its super easy to get lost.

This point I felt very strongly. You may have signs, but you have SO MANY signs that it's confusing. Also while the names like living quarters and engineering bay etc are nice, they add to the confusion of the signs and layout. See cp_steel where the points still have the names in the hud, but are primarily labeled A B C D E. It's simple, efficient, and when you want to know where you're going, so much less confusing. I think the fact that you felt the need for so many signs shows that the layout needs working on, since it should at least be _somewhat_ intuitive.

Change the doors that are actually doors to either not being there or to the metal style gates. most players just think those doors you have made are decoration, and the problem is, some are, but some arnt, SO YOU CANT FIGURE OUT WHICH WITHOUT WASTING TIME.

On the topic of confusing doors, one should note that the maintainance doors are practically ends of a secret passageway. Nobody ever seems to use those textures on actual moving doors, so you don't expect them to move, so they never get tried. I discovered them myself by happy accident.

Please please please change the doors. I think these are a heavy factor of confusion trying to find where to go. For non- seethrough doors, at least make them the metaldoor texture, and then feel free to pair them with some fancy frames or whatever, so long as they consist most visibly of that well known door texture. The huge blast doors I guess are not such a problem, but doors with the "maintenance" overlay over them is NOT a clear way of showing you can go through them. That is a general detailing overlay, so it will make the door itself look like detailing!
Glass doors... I suppose you should keep them, as it's clear that there's something on the other sidie you can go to. I don't think there were any instances of glass doors that didn't lead to something.
One way doors, now these are confusing, due to being in the mix with two way doors. Not a good idea! The only time they have EVER been mixed successfully is in those well rooms where you drop in to the water, and cannot jump back out (cp_well / cp_freight) - and those are vertical doors.
However, as I expect you to keep them, please make those one way doors with the relevant style (see cp_dustbowl). If it so happens that all of those one-ways are going to cause optimization problems then please consider changing the layout somewhat for them and using unlinked areaportals.





Now for some of my own original feedback.

The breakable glass, I don't really mind, it just seems a bit unnecessary. Maybe have it start broken, with some detail shards lying around. Doesn't matter hugely.
The lighting seems fine now as far as I can tell.

Stage 1 with the moving spawns is a bit confusing, as you have to re-learn where the hec you are on a map that is not particularly simple from the beginning.

Layout I feel is mainly the stage 2 issue, and most noticeably the living quarters. Second stage is too spread for red to defend effectively, especially with the layout maze!
I don't really know how to explain it.. the from an overhead view and looking through the nodraw ceiling, it felt like there were just a lot of corridors that split off and found each other again, allowing looping back, and not going to any different areas - just two routes to get to the same place (except they converge before it). They may aswell be a pair of brackets! () <---
Maybe it was the multiple levels? It just felt hard to know where you were at a given moment until you find yourself at some random capture point.


In terms of general play, as blu you do always seem to get to a point, which is not an issue since you want to be capturing them. As red however, you need to know where to be so that you can stop this happening, and you also want to know where blu will be coming from. This was really hard to do if you did not know the map, and I found that in itself to be challenging.
Also important for red is to completely understand where to go so that they can set up appropriate defences in time.

I found it really hard to learn the layout, even when noclipping out, and not having any issues of time (since I disabled the timers).

As a conclusion to my feedback, I was very impressed with the detailing but found the gameplay ...

 

[brick]

I like to thank you Alecom for taking the time to write this post. You obviously put some time into your post which is really appreciated.

It seems once again layout is the biggest issue. As with ANY new map players will be confused since they will not know where to go or how to defend or anything. I myself was very confused the first few times on all Vavle maps. On top of that in the playtest we did on Friday it seemed one team had no trouble locating the points. But the other team did. Is that a player issue or a map issue I am not sure. The layout is actually quite simple really. What we need is more playtests and watch how the players over time work with the layout.


Round 1 is the hardest in my opinion as once you cap Data Link the only confusing part is how to get to Security Hub. I guess the 1 way door is confusing but if it wasnt there it would be even more confusing so its a double edge sword. Look at it this way, the player runs to it once and says oh look I cant go through that, ok, dont have to bother with it again. While if it wasnt there he might make the mistake of going back to data link when this is not needed. Plus there is a sign right in front of the door to point you in the right direction.

But regardless, we will look into Round 1 layout and see if we can remove the 1 way doors and maybe the blue forward spawn while maintening the basic Sector C layout of this area.


Round 2 is pretty simple, it is a Gravelpit layout now. Are there not hallways in other maps that go around and loop back? Blue's routes are pretty straight forward. Red has to turn right to get to LQ point, which is marked with signs; same with Fuel. Right now it seems players just need to learn the map. It is a complex map, I know that and I expect player to be confused at first. As for red being too spread out, I feel this is just because they did not know the map. In Gravelpit, Red only defends one point usually. No one seems to complain about that. Observing this, another issue is how to equal the gameplay between Fuel/LQ.

One point Swiftmind wants to bring up, Vavle's Gravelpit would be a lot more confusing if it wasnt for the large open outside space in which players can view the entire layout at once. Sadly we are underground and can not do this easily. Something we will consider in future layout changes.

Swiftmind will be looking into the LQ maze issue. But more playtests are needed to see how players work with LQ.

We are not to sure about Engineering yet. There has not been enough play testing to determine what needs to be changed. We will keep your comments in mind! If you have any more suggestion we will gladly take them .


Signs: We have already discussed this issue at length. We will keep the current signs and try to polish up the layout to be less sign directional.


Door comments:
I think the texture you want changed is the red texture on the vault doors. I do not see how changing this texture will effect anything. But I do understand your point about staying within standards. But keep this in mind, all doors are consistant within the map. Those that will open, will. Those that do not, will not. So all the player has to do is try one of those doors and it will be the same for all. The one way doors are visually differnt from the two way doors so the players can easily understand them. There are no one way gates past Round 1. Also setup gates are marked with the blue gate overlay sign and remain open now once the round starts. Before, these red vault door gates used to open and close which did make it more confusing.

Perhaps this is what you are trying to say: There are so many different types of doors that it is hard to remember what does what. In a recent playtest a few people said this. Interesting comment and something we will keep in mind.

The maintenance overlay. The only time this is used next to an opening door is the foward blue spawn in round 1. The qoute you used no longer applies. This person was talking about the door inside the lockerroom, which is now always open. Now it is not much of a problem since if blue runs near the exit door on either side it will open, the trigger is decent size. Plus there is a Resupply gameplay sign above the door.


Overall the question we have is, after a few times playing the map what do you think? How quickly can one learn the layout? No one knows the layout right away on any new map...even Vavle maps.

You got some good comments we will keep in mind for B4. Thanks again.

 

[lucky]

I'll spend tomorrow playing on it some more, and we'll see how I cope
I will also give you some replies to your reply to my post. It's late now D :

 

[lucky]

Link to album.



I think the sign should be moved here



Personally I would have this as a hanging sign, as the angle you come from the door behind me (in that image) isn't the best angle for the wall. I'm not sure if there is a sign for "security hub" on the other side of the door too, but if there isn't then move that one I scribbled over to it. If there's already one, you don't need it.



I think I'll have to take back what I said mostly about the doors, and agree with what you said.
I think you might be able to get away with them, just about. Still, I'm not a fan of them!
Those vault doors ^ I like though



This is what I was saying about signs. Heat of battle, I don't really want to have to stand there and read what each sign is.. and then read the hud and see where I'm wanting to go.. double check with the signs. That's probably the worst case I could find, and maybe also if you are in the corridor to the left from the LQ, then there's also a lot of signs in sight.
I hope any changes you do make can prevent this happening, and eliminate this situation.

Serious business now, I disabled my viewmodels.


So this is what I was trying to say. It's nice to have multiple spawn exits, but very preferable to have them from the same direction (if they're going to the same area) Otherwise they can be confusing.
When we combine this with the layout shown below


then my goodness, we are looping back and forth all over the places.
As shown above, I don't like that dead end. Dead ends are annoying.


Not really necessary! There was also kiiiiiiiiiiiinda one in stage 3, left of a red spawn (I think?) and to the end there is a full health pack, with some breakable glass. You might want to look in to how often that actually gets used (once people know where it leads).

Anyway, two more quick things,


You may want to align these (alt-rmb them)

This glass WAS annoying, since it's hard to see if it's there or not from any distance really. If you really want to keep it in, then I would suggest maybe create a custom modified texture of the glass, as I don't think the green tint would really suit. I can't really tell what green would look like, but a tinted glass would be good.



On to the reply!
On friday's test, my team had teleporters, which I think helped not having to navigate, and just concentrate on staying near to the control point

In round 1, red only had one really viable route to the first point from their spawn, whereas blu has 3, and COMPLETELY surrounds the point.
For the second point, the blu spawn felt really close to the capture point, and since they have a lower respawn time, they can simply overwhelm red given enough time. That's my theory anyway. I'm not actually sure on how close it is exactly compared to anything else.


I will definitely agree with swiftmind, being completely underground does not help! Unforunately, it's something you need to stick to for the theme of this map
I think this ties in with having difficulty learning the layout though, as when you can see the map more, you can figure out what goes where (if you see [nopunintended] what I'm saying?).

The point about the gravelpit layout is just that, one point is going to be pretty much ignored, which is not nice to have if you spent all that time working on it! I guess there's not too much you can do about it. I would say that there didn't feel like any decent defensive/sentry positions on 'A' and 'B' however. Given that I haven't played it that many times against other people, I may be wrong.

Layout I am going to really just stick with my last paragraph in the previous feedback post - red has the difficulty of the layout. They need to be able to know where to defend from, and where to go to defend. Stage 1 blu surrounds every entrance to the point, in both capture points. Stage 2, well the living quarters is the only part that really applies to.

Stage 3 I didn't feel had any problems, other than those security glass windows.

At the end of the day, I did manage to learn the layout pretty much, but it came to the realisation of how much blu surrounds the points! It took a lot more time to learn than most other maps I have played, but if this will be an issue for anybody in the future, and their ability to enjoy the map, I cannot say.

 

[SlayerBlitz]

Wanted to play this earlier during a impromptu testing, but they guy changing the map said you didn't have the map on the server. Is it and did I just tell them the wrong name?

 

[brick]

Im not sure, we tested it on the EU server.

 

[royalkiller]

Looks to be something really great, but to fight against the complexity, what about some signs, that show the way. Might be overlays with some custom textures: That would help alot and looks great too.

 

[SlayerBlitz]

well is it possible to have it put on the US server? I'm all for map testing , but not if it raises my ping to like 300.

 

[Swiftmind]

B4 Dev Update: Round 1

Round 1 layout seemed to work sometimes, then not other times. The main problem was the need for one way gates and blue's forward spawn. Futhermore the curved "hallway of death" sometimes became a great bottleneck.

A new layout has been worked out with these goals in mind:
*Remove blue forward spawn
*Remove gates
*Create a better "forward" flow
*Remove bottlenecks
*Decrease travel times

Blue Spawn and exits: Blue spawn has been rotated and moved. The vent will now be closed until Data Link is capped. When the round starts, Blue will only come from the lobby. This will help in defense since Blue will come from one general area. Movement flow for Blue will be far easier to understand since it will generally be a forward flow. The vent will open once Data Link is capped, but it may be fully removed if proved useless.

Here is what the new blue spawn layout looks like. A thrid exit has been added to aid Blue's unwelcomed entrance into the area.


Data Link: This area remains relatively the same. The backdoor by the engineer NPC is now bigger. The cap time has been increased. The glass has been removed in the projector room. The floor under the CP is now a white tile.


Security Hub:

NOTE: In the before picture, Round 2 can be seen in the background. This may be a little confusing to look at. In the after picture round 2 was not compiled into the developer version.

Security Hub has been rotated and moved to the start of the curved hallway. This allows a lot more flexability in the layout and decreases travel time. Blue forward spawn has been removed. The curved hallway is now a detail only area.

A new way into the SH area has been added on the left side of the After picture. This connects the DL hallway to the SH balcony overlooking the stairs and into the hallway leading towards the curved hallway.

A new overlook balcony has been added on the right side of the After picture. This will favor Blue more then Red and will give Blue a different point to drop down to the lower floor. It can also serve as an Engineer base. This route is the longest for Blue.

Here is the side route into the SH. The vent exit for Blue (lower part of picture), now serves as a easy direct route to this area. Even though this exits onto the second floor of the SH, Red can easily defend this entrance.

Here is what the player will see. The overpowered balcony that everyone used before has now been split up. This forces players to use the lower floor far more then before. On the left is the new overlook balcony.


Setup Time: Increased by 15 seconds to 1 minute, 15 seconds.

Minimum Spawn Times: During DL, Red is now 4 seconds, Blue 5. Once DL is capped, Red has 6 seconds, Blue 4.


That is it! The next Dev Update will present Round 2 changes.

 

[Swiftmind]

B4 Dev Update: Round 2

Once again Round 2 has gone through some major layout changes. Maneuverability and flanking routes have been sacrificed for very simple, direct paths. All routes that can be taken by a player will now always go to a CP. This means it will be far harder for blue to take a point and far easier to defend every point. After playing this round with bots, the layout seems to work far better due to its simplicity.


Cap Times: Fuel and LQ cap times increased to 40 seconds for one person.


Blue Spawn: Blue spawn has been moved back behind the travel tunnels.

Blue spawn is the Blue/White walled room. Blue can no longer reach the middle of the map out of spawn.


Living Quarters:

Blue enters LQ from spawn by these two doors only. The curved hallway has been removed.

Blue has three routes to the CP, the hallway, the men's restroom or the recreation room. All these routes end next to the CP as before.

The upper floor of LQ remains unchanged.

Before, this area was the intersection that contained tons of signs. It has been reduced to this very simple state. Straight on goes to fuel, going up the stairs to Engineering/LQ.


Red's paths to LQ is the same as before.


Fuel:

Blue has two gates into Fuel on the lowest floor.

Blue only has to go up the ramps. Now if any blue claims they are still lost in Fuel, they need to be slapped.


The corridor that went under the large fan has been removed completely.

Red Defense is now very simple, hold the top. Blue will come from one direction, unless Blue comes from LQ/Engineering.

Red enters Fuel in almost the same way. The mid level entrance remains unchanged. But the other Red way into Fuel has been moved to the Top level.

The metal hut seen in the center of the screenshot has been expanded a bit. It now houses the entrance to LQ. This LQ entrance used to be on the mid level, but for simplicity it was moved to the top level.

This is the back of Fuel. All old paths have been removed. This forces Red to always go up to the top, similar to what happens to Blue.


Engineering: This area had a major rework. It was way too small for the design of the place. Engineering has been expanded to form a large T.

One can see this adds a lot more floor space to move around. This also worked well with the connections to LQ/Fuel. Now the flow is VERY simple. Blue enters the area from the bottom of the screen shot, red respawn is at the top of the screen shot.

The top level of Engineering has been connected to Fuel. This makes navigation to the other points far easier.

In the background one can see the new connection between LQ, Fuel.

Mid level of Engineering. Much more room to work with and Red can clearly see where to go and where Blue will come from.

Bottom is larger now. The area next to the large fan can be used as a good sentry spot for defense. The CP was rotated to open up the point to this sentry spot.

The stair situation has changed. A new staircase was added between mid/bottom level. The staircase to the top level has been made one single staircase that favors Red.


As mentioned before this layout seems to work far better then previous. It is far easier to understand and navigate and will hopefully prove much more fun.

This is the last Dev Update before release of Beta 4! The changes to Round 3 are minimal.

 

[brick]

Beta 4 released

 

[Swiftmind]

Playtest reviews/comments bump.