Fight through zombie-infested New Orleans in another Team Fortress 2 x Left 4 Dead 2 crossover of The Parish. Waterfront is made for Super Zombie Fortress.
Features:
Gorgeous reimagining of The Parish's first two chapters!
This thread will be an open journal on my development for Waterfront. I want to present my thoughts concisely while making it.
I love seeing L4D2’s expansive world in the lenses of TF2. Simultaneously, each new project I start on I have the goal of pushing myself a little further and to make it a little better than the last. With critiques on Dead Center being too easy, I wanted to remix a difficult level from L4D2 to be more challenging, tipping balance towards Infected. I also wanted another art project to inspire me set dressing ctf_4tokyo.
The first two maps of The Parish were chosen as excellent candidates for SZF gameplay. Originally the two maps c5m1 and c5m2 were one level as evidenced multiple times internally, they were likely split due to difficulty and length. I liked this idea of reanimating history and the technical side of stitching the two maps back together. Thus, Waterfront was made whole again.
Since Waterfront was a distraction to me from 4Tokyo, it also served as my set-dress playground. Something I struggled with in dressing 4Tokyo was departing from the Suijin temple style and creating something new and urban while also distinctly Asian. Waterfront gave me an artistic outlet with the bonus of supporting the SZF mod again.
Transitioning, Waterfront has a lot more ladders compared to Streets. Infected occasionally got stuck inside ramps, so I phased them away and focused on catapults this time. Ramps were still useful, but were reduced to climbing small obstacles outside survivor space so they can be clipped traditionally. There has also been an improvement to the catapult code to run edict-lean allowing for liberal use, something Waterfront benefits greatly from.
The Last Stand update changes have also been implemented. The goal of porting any map to me is to preserve the feelings from the original. Players familiar with the map should need minimal adjustment to strategies and flow in the level. This design philosophy drives decisions like infected spawn locations, Control Point placement, Infected catapults, and TF pickups. Sometimes, there are map features that don’t transition smoothly from one game that require a reinterpretation.
For example, the sanitizing space in L4D2 is used to trap survivors for a mini-finale and also acts a narrative point for the military’s evacuation process. The cooperation demanding all survivors inside a small room to proceed was deemed non-vital to the map, and had far too many variables for it to pay off quick and consistently with a large player count. It now acts as an automatic event so long as a survivor entered the room. Players left behind can queue in line for the decon to end and rejoin their team.
All of these decisions were made to create a comfortable, easily understood process for TF2 while retaining the core concept of the L4D2 space. Speaking of space, below is the dictionary I discerned from both maps:
c5m1+c5m2 dictionary:
Wide flow (dock street)
Capillary (T-junction)
Wide Flow (main street)
Fork
(4a) King of the Hill + Capillary (apartment rafters with item room)
(4b) Narrow flow (behind the fallen truck)
Fork (choices decided by Director)
(7a) Close Quarters (bar through backroom)
(7b) wide flow + narrow flow (through street to alley)
(7c) wide flow + return (through street over porch fence)
Close Quarters (restaurant)
Wide flow (park road)
Fork
(13a) Wide flow (Gazebo park side)
(13b) Narrow flow + wide flow) (park center)
(13c) Wide flow + capillary (Bathroom park side)
Capillary (dead end street with supplies before alley)
Narrow Flow (alley to freeway)
Wide flow (abandoned evac center)
Sanitizing (decon trailer)
Narrow flow + king of the hill (evac maze, rooftops for infected, scaffold for survivors)
Close Quarters (bus station interior)
Wide flow + high cover (station exit with buses for cover)
Narrow flow (depot alley)
Capillary + high cover (area before safehouse)
On my mind has been the satisfaction of a map. CS:GO recently featured cs_insertion2 in Operation Riptide, and according to the author it was never playtested. I greatly enjoyed Insertion2, the final result was highly praised by others and Valve alike. 4Tokyo had a mixed reception, its final result of an unfinished map meant it wasn’t treated so well. It got under my skin when a new version released and players RTV’d it before I could finish loading. One can take it as feedback, if very insensitive feedback to improve (without playtesting..), but I wouldn’t recommend it nor to myself to give to others, to which I apologize for.
Separating Waterfront from my personal maps lets me view both reception and feedback at a distance under a safety of sorts working with popular maps. Some of my popular maps I consider to be the laziest, low effort works I’ve done and do better than my original work. I think about Star_ describing this feeling of working hard for little payoff over less ambitious projects that draw more views or likes, and I don’t believe your average viewer understands that conflict. While I may find a leeching notoriety repurposing existing work, I see them like a mental oil change to ready myself for main projects, like 4Tokyo. The final result of Waterfront, I am happy with, and I hope others share the same sentiment. I plan to bring the lessons from Waterfront with me in 4Tokyo’s future.
Fun facts:
Bienville Park was called "Jackson" shown in early E3 videos, the sign texture is also named "jackson". Jackson is a real park in New Orleans with a similar hedge maze according to my research. This contradicts the L4D2 wiki claiming the park is based off Bienville Square in Alabama.
There are numerous minor visual inconsistencies between c5m1 and c5m2 transition.
The bridge is not visible in c5m2 when it should be.
The overpass curves have many brushwork holes ingame as well as some roofs from c5m1.
The TF2 decon is based off the sndscape beta map of Waterfront.
The bus depot teller has a gap at the top, and the garage street curve has a hole left of the exit.
Gauntlet changes (CP D):
Reduced D cap time from 20 to 3 seconds
Reworked some spawn placements to streamline Infected map control before and during gauntlet
Zombie rage timer adjusted to be shorter and give longer rest periods, rage lasts 8 seconds instead of default 20
Added rare weapon spawns inside decon
Added pickups on D tower
Added pickups inside decon
Added pickup cluster at first maze bend
Decon exit now opens like a typical shutter door for survivors: it stays open once the alarm is sound. Exit opens automatically if survivors do not leave the decon. Changed so survivors leave more on their own terms now.
Removed a spawn catapult depot street entry to D
Main changes:
Fixed soundscapes and level sounds not working when map is run through the Workshop
Doubled the default SZF rare weapon cap (default 15, doubled to 30)
Added a guiding arrow at A spawn for Infected
Added Medigun near C alley
Reduced A cap time from 60 to 50 seconds
Reduced B cap time from 60 to 50 seconds
Reduced C cap time from 48 to 45 seconds
Reduced E cap time from 60 to 30 seconds
Moved E Infected spawns and adjusted enabling events
Moved B Infected spawns to be further away from point and populate park more
Swapped a few weapon spawns into uncommon spawns
Added park archway to CP C
Added pickups inside bus station
Added new ladders in park from L4D2
Doubled ammo kits on A (2 small)
Adjusted E observer points
Minor clipping and prop orientation improvements for movement reasons
Added some privacy doors to bathrooms
Added roof texture to CP B building
Added ammo to evac line (before decon)
Changed Infected spawn placements for A
Added the Thermal Thruster to randomly spawn in a few places
Adjusted soundscape proxies
Fixed missing pickup patches on B
Fixed being able to hit underneath gazebos
Fixed some missing tree drain overlays
Fixed stuck spot at map start
Opened vista from A street to B and added an Infected ladder
Minor visual changes and fixes
Welcome to another update, bringing Waterfront to V2. After a much needed balance patch, this gives RED more tools needed to overcome the end of the map. I'd like to share a little bit about my process when tackling changes, specifically with heatmaps.
Heatmaps are a fantastic tool to use to judge statistics and notice consistencies. For any mappers reading, please give them a try over here.
(Left: BLU Infected deaths, Right: RED Survivor deaths)
I always wanted to try these out after seeing Valve mention them in CS:GO, and they help me study trends and info I can use to make balancing decisions alongside personal observations. Approximately never survivors capture D, and usually die on the way there. I underestimated the difficulty on this part, and the heatmaps back this up with the hot red dots.
Other than that, I tried out Hammer++'s new update for lighting and skysphere previews.
(Before and After in editor)
I'm very excited to continue using Hammer++, which was my initial reason for porting L4D2 levels testing the program. Enjoy the update.
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