Idolon said:
This map is close to working, but parts of it fall flat.
A isn’t great for similar reasons that A isn’t on Boondoggle – the middle area isn’t all that useful, relegating gameplay to the linear flanking paths, and red has a lot of good cover behind the point, making it a bit too easy to retake. In addition, blue has a very difficult time even getting into the area.
I haven’t spent enough time to have an informed opinion on how B plays, but what I have seen is good. Entering the area is awkward, but playing in the area seems to work. I don’t know if it’s fun, but it isn’t broken.
C is probably the most interesting point, but some of the general ideas don’t seem to work. The two side entrances make it pretty difficult for red to establish a defense that isn’t easily flanked, and the middle route offers some really cheeky sniper sightlines onto both of red’s major high grounds. It’s probably the place of the map that I’ve had the most fun, but it still has some functional issues.
The detailing is fairly well polished, but the overall style of the architecture doesn’t make any sense to me. Everything is dominated by this outside grid of structure that’s just… you might see it as a structural scheme for a modern art gallery, but definitely not at an industrial facility. There’s also some troubling distinction between interior and exterior, where an area is floored in polished tile with a large, almost uninterrupted opening to the exterior.
Gameplay: 5
Aesthetics: 5
Sword said:
There’s definite competence here. Points are interesting creative arenas - i like the idea of Last very much - and it’s not un-fun to play like some are. It’s not great, though. Firstly, the “flow” of the map is nearly non-existant. Everything is identical and red, so it’s hard to navigate, and the natural flow out of spawn directs people into a dead-end path to C. The natural path to A seems to lead me into a narrow, spammy corridor, instead of the better route. There’s also a lot of dead space in the middle going unused: look at how tight Gravelpit’s points are packed, and how there’s only a handful of paths between them, not a whole arena equally the size of the points.
A and B are very poorly balanced against each other. A is much harder to cap than B - I’ve never seen a round where B wasn’t swept in seconds and then A several excruciating minutes later, and i’ve seen several promising pushes to A (two heavy-medic pairs and two others, in one) driven back or off the point and away by far less organised counter-pushes. Cap times are high throughout the map, but at A it’s most obvious, when six people cram themselves into the tiny space and watch the counter crawl up, waiting for a single demoman or pyro to spam them into oblivion. There’s no good defensive spots at B, and lots of routes for blue, while A offers either a spammy corridor, a killbox low route, or a useless unintuitive flank thats practically hidden. C is a nice idea but the implementation doesnt live up to it - there’s no cover or good defensive positions for red, forcing them to constantly hurl themselves onto the point itself - where they can be attacked by blue coming from anywhere on a 180degree arc.
-
This is one of the more fully detailed maps, and I’m impressed by it. You’ve detailed one of the larger maps in the contest lavishly, however I rather suspect you had to do it quickly. There are lots and lots of little niggling issues - visible nodraw, shadow bugs, wierd reflections, props half-sticking out of walls. It’s a real shame, since there’s definitely something here, but these little mistakes keep letting it down.
Overall there’s some other, larger missteps. I find it hard to feel out what any of these buildings are, what they’re doing or who owns them. Why is this room flooded? Why has a pallet of barrels been loaded onto that dump truck? Why are there grubby milk crates in a spytech room. Each room seems to be entirely it’s own thing, and so there’s no sense of progression: A, B, and C, all look exactly the same, with none of the transition towards industrial and spytech that sells TF2’s environments so well - this is just a place, with a rocket. I can assume it’s a power station from the “McJohn Power” overlays all over the place, but nothing seems to generate or transmit power: instead there are cranes to nowhere, satellite dishes (and an observatory?) on every rooftop, and computers on the roof. You’ve clearly put a lot of effort into the brushwork of the map, but these massive, clunky 32-hu pillars are actually pretty ugly, and absolutely everywhere. None of the windows have frames, random props have their own concrete supports… it doesn’t make any sense! You’ve clearly spotted where things go in official maps, but don’t seem to understand why they’re there, or how they got there.
Find Grazr on this site, and read through all of his tutorials. You’ve worked hard on this, and they’re just the thing to push this from an intermediate map to a great one.
Gameplay: 4
Aesthetics: 6
Muddy said:
There are some good ideas here, but the execution is... not bad, but weird. The Gorge-style theming is nice, but the thick concrete beams you've plonked everywhere look really strange and unfitting. The environment lighting is blindingly bright even with HDR turned off, and your cubemaps are a little screwed up (as evidenced by the VERY SHINY floor tiles found throughout the map).
The spawntimes appear to be equal for both teams, rather than being long for RED and short for BLU, leaving things a little unbalanced and favouring RED when defending C. The deathpit around C is also really annoying because it's so small that there's no way you can knock anybody into it - the only way someone can fall into it is by walking into it by mistake. Honestly, the map would not lose anything if you just patched it up and made it walkable.
My last main complaint is that all of BLU's spawn exits are easy to spam, particularly with stickybombs, since all the exits are tiny and there's very little visibility coming out of spawn. What made Gravel Pit's BLU spawns work was that they were far away from the action and in places that weren't easily reached by RED team, so they were hard to spam.
Gameplay: 5
Aesthetics: 6
"Well that went asymmetric shaped fast." 