thinking about making a new KOTH map and I need to know. how big is a usual KOTH map?
sorry for the dumb question. I'm kind off new to mapping and scaling isn't my strong point.
scaling is really tough, because a lot of the time 2 very similarly sized areas can feel completely different in terms of actually moving around and playing. something that i do occasionally if im struggling to understand a space is just to spawn some bots on the map. seeing a variety of characters standing in the space goes a long way towards getting the map to make sense physically in your mind. you can also do this with familiar props. a lot of maps use the big shipping containers, so if you drop one of those into your map in hammer for scale you will sometimes realize that an area is too large or small compared to what you were attempting to do with that area.
its also not a bad idea to try to replicate an existing map, whether through exact measurements or eyeballing it, and pay close attention to your brush sizes. just spending a quick hour or 2 trying to block out the proportions of a smaller valve map can go a long way towards giving you a better sense of scale on all of your projects going forward.
you should probably avoid using hard rules as far as dimensions go, but general rules of thumb (like twistmapper posted above) can help a lot in keeping your map in line with the general feeling of similar maps