CP War Factory

[Vincent]

The list may seem daunting now, but i assure you, every one of us has one that long from our mapping infancy. Mine had "Crashes the server" and "2x too small" at the top. Ah, nostalgia.

My first map suffered from being incredibly assymetric, and I cut up the middle point a bunch to get a "destroyed shack" effect.

Eventually I couldn't even open the map, at least it had lighting and stuff ha. I still have a video sitting on my 1TB of me running through it for a good minute just showing it off.

Side note: I had read up on wiki a bunch before I had even attempted my first map, that and I had a friend I could ask when I had a question.

Guess I was lucky.

Sorry for my off topicness. My first assumptions were correct when I was running through it for you. To big, to dark inside the buildings, and the predetailing was a little bad.

Not terrible for a first though, a little tweaking here and there and it'll be fine.

 

[kwp20 pitts]

You got all the problems with the map , on a possitive note it was quite suprising/ awsome how the spawn exploded at the end. We as red were walking out when blu capped and got murdered D:

This is a feature that I thought would motivate, and make more fun out of the experience. The factories were supposed to be secret weapons factories, but I'll elaborate as I go. By the way, thank you.

 

[kwp20 pitts]

My first map suffered from being incredibly assymetric, and I cut up the middle point a bunch to get a "destroyed shack" effect.

Eventually I couldn't even open the map, at least it had lighting and stuff ha. I still have a video sitting on my 1TB of me running through it for a good minute just showing it off.

Side note: I had read up on wiki a bunch before I had even attempted my first map, that and I had a friend I could ask when I had a question.

Guess I was lucky.

Sorry for my off topicness. My first assumptions were correct when I was running through it for you. To big, to dark inside the buildings, and the predetailing was a little bad.

Not terrible for a first though, a little tweaking here and there and it'll be fine.

This would be considered a first for a map that focused on game-play however is It's my twenty-some "th" map .

 

[kwp20 pitts]

The first four designs clearly failed horribly so I'm going to start from scratch again. ( Ditching the original base) I'm taking a different approach to planning so the future tests could (hopefully) result with better game-play. I would like any advice from experienced tf2 mappers, Veteran Players, and or anybody that knows the Whole TF2 story/plot before I begin.


The planning was terribly flawed due to the fact that I never got good opinions of the designs (This was back in early November). Most of my opinions were from some that never played TF2 before (bad Idea), and of tests with only five different people (again this was back in November). The actual public tests proved that the map was practically junk.

I'm always up to learn better ways to improve upon my current skills. I do know how to use hammer however I'd like to know how to plan better than my previous tries. Any help here is greatly appreciated.

I apologize for those that suffered through the earlier builds and hope to come up with something fun out of the development process.


I will post the new rough plans eventually.

 

[Sgt Frag]

The main thing you need to worry about is size.

What I've been doing lately is opening up a decompiled Valve map of a similar play style. Obviously you're going for a Well layout.

So open up cp_well.
hide everything except world spawn and maybe func_details/props so you can tell where players can/can't go.
Drag brushes around the main areas. Spawn, cp 1, cp 2, cp 3. Copy those in a new map and put a transparent tex on them like player clip.
This is only for a really base rough idea. But now you've basically got the areas you need to use in a map. If you go beyond those limits you're going to big.
if you're way under too small.

Now the main thing is heights, connector areas. For heights use Valve stair models. Doesn't matter if that's the final stairway, you can make ramps, your own stairs, whatever. But a staircase will give you a very good idea whether or not your levels are too far apart. More than one staircase high in most cases is too much.

just use blu red and grey dev tex, block in a basic layout, maybe a few props like trains or rocks that give you an initial impression of what the cover will be.

Keep the first layout very simple, just working caps and spawns/doors. Basic cover and terrain.