ARENA Wilkes

[Eyce]

Education-filled paragraph:
Wilkes Station was an Antarctic Research base established by America in 1957, before its ownership was transferred to Australia in 1959. Five years later, the base was abandoned due to fuel seepage and being buried by snow and ice.

(Thought you'd ought to get learned, kids.)


Reasonably dry comment about the map:
Conveniently for you now, you can battle to the death on the leftovers of the site, in the midst of a mild whiteout. Glorious, no?


Custom Assets & their sources:

• Radio Antenna - Aly
• Waterfx ripples - Fubar
• Snow texture - Jonah; modified by Aly
• One particular concrete texture - TF2M Construction Pack
• Orange walls - Modified granary textures (Created by myself)
• Rock to Snow blends (Created by myself)
• Skybox - Modified sky_granary_01 (Created by myself)
• Whiteout particles - Modified stormfront mist from cp_coldfront, by Icarus

Thanks & Shoutouts:
Thanks to Aly for assisting me with learning how to edit particles and pack them, creating a Radio Antenna at very short notice, helping with decompiling and recompiling models, LeSwordfish for pack checks, & to Egan for throwing the map up on impromptu playtests on the TF2M server.

Shoutout to Phantom Brave for being really nice that one night, making orange dyed wood textures that I didn't end up using.

 

[Turbo Lover]

Wilkes, more like, Willies.

Because you suck them.

And have a small one.

 

[Berry]

I'd like to see some clipping on some areas (the rocks to the water-side of the map at the very backs are annoying to get caught on), I'd also like to suggest the wood pieces next to the cap either be filled in with a net/fence brush, or be moved closer and have the middle clipped, I've seen most people that fall down accidentally trip down there.

 

[Pocket]

The blowing snow effect is pretty cool. Really gives the map the feel of being a real frozen wasteland. Is that a custom particle effect?

 

[Eyce]

Alpha 3 released, have a gif in the OP!

 

[Eyce]

Bonus pics for Beta 1, which is out now!

 

[Obvault]

I did a quick run-through and it's a bit odd that you can hear a dog barking or owl hooting in the distance. Doesn't really fit the soundscape of an abandoned Antarctic research station.

 

[Eyce]

I did a quick run-through and it's a bit odd that you can hear a dog barking or owl hooting in the distance. Doesn't really fit the soundscape of an abandoned Antarctic research station.

Yeah, they're just temporary soundscapes until I can get some custom ones happening. I had to resort to using a Gold Rush interior soundscape, which has animal noises sporadically.

 

[GabrielWB]

Love the barren and frozen look of the map, it really sends chills over your spine when you are on it. I haven't found anything game breaking so far, but I have some nit-picky things that you could consider.

When the center door closes, you can see through the walls. Adding a delay to the areaportal should fix that.

If you look through the small stair hole in the side buildings, you can see through the nodraw wall upstairs.

A quick engie is able to build stuff underwater without dying.

At this point, it's a bit unclear which roofs you can and can't get on. You could add some random props and stuff to make that more clear.

For the rest, great map. Can't wait to see how it develops.

 

[Pocket]

I never understood why being able to build underwater is possible in this game at all. Like, why water doesn't automatically double as nobuild. Has there ever been a map where being able to build underwater is important?

 

[GabrielWB]

I never understood why being able to build underwater is possible in this game at all. Like, why water doesn't automatically double as nobuild. Has there ever been a map where being able to build underwater is important?

Well, there are situations where having engie stuff underwater is a great advantage. CP_Freight and CP_Well come to mind. Having control over the waterways can give your teams an alternative route to still safely reach mid if it is under enemy control. It's also great to hide stuff that an engineer can use as a trump card, like a teleporter hidden underwater on Sawmill. Imho the decision to let engineers build under water should be up to the mapmaker, not valve.

That said, in the case of this arena map. Having engies build stuff under water is pretty much useless. The best thing I can think of is griefing purposes, so I'd say func_nobuild that shit.

 

[Crash]

Any chance you'd want to release that particle effect you modified? I'm planning an arctic type map that could benefit from it.

 

[Eyce]

@GabrielWB thanks for that! I heard of somebody talking about that door issue, but in a vague way. I tried communicating to people that you can get on the flat rooves that don't have snow on them, but I'll see if I can work in something clearer that still looks right. Really not worried w/ the engies building in the ocean, it's a small arena map.

@Crash all the custom content that I've created/modified will be released shortly, got a huge heat wave here in Australia, so I haven't had the chance to use my computer for a bit. Hopefully the end of the week. The orange wall textures, recompiled mirrored rocks and the particles will be included.

 

[Eyce]

Some assets released for everybody's use!