[WIP] tc_meridian

[Ida]

Well, the description of this map says that BLU are invading the RED island... I agree, however, that while these messages make sense if you know the backstory of the map, they are usually reserved for attack-defense style maps which this one obviously isn't...

Yeah, regardless of the backstory, neither of the teams have the objective of only attacking or only defending, excluding in the last round.

 

[Shmitz]

Seems like the spawn room doors in the village will be permanently opened by being touched by BLU when RED owns the village. Not only do they open up, they stay open too. I assume the same thing will happen the other way around, but I don't know.

The messages at the start of the round told me at least once (when the "teams" were switched after I won the map) that "You are now defending", which seems wrong in this situation.
Also, these messages call the teams "Red" and "Blue". Sorry for nitpicking, but every detail counts.

This is something the game decides to do when there's a team switch, as it seems to think anytime the teams switch one has to be attacking and one has to be defending. There's not really much I can do about it.

I think it was next to that rock that opens up like a door - which by the way is floating when it's closed

It's not floating. It's resting on its metal base. It's supposed to be obvious that something is up there, so that players waiting for the end of setup time are less likely to think it's a dead end and start running around confused.

 

[Ida]

This is something the game decides to do when there's a team switch, as it seems to think anytime the teams switch one has to be attacking and one has to be defending. There's not really much I can do about it.



It's not floating. It's resting on its metal base. It's supposed to be obvious that something is up there, so that players waiting for the end of setup time are less likely to think it's a dead end and start running around confused.

I may have missed the metal base, then. :S

I think it's ok to give obvious hints in TF2, ie. giant arrows, so I dunno if that's enough to show players the correct way.

 

[[SpA]Lim-Dul]

I think it's ok to give obvious hints in TF2, ie. giant arrows, so I dunno if that's enough to show players the correct way.

Oh, don't get me started... There are giant freaking arrows ALL OVER cp_science(2) and people got lost all the time anyways... Some of them even didn't NOTICE the arrows until I pointed them out... I guess that's just the way the human brain works, especially if you concentrate only on your crosshair. You have to simply learn the map layout and the directions can only help you initially and you have to CONCENTRATE on them.

 

[Shmitz]

Incidentally, there is a giant arrow pointing at that rock. I don't want players to see the arrow pointing at what looks like a normal wall and assume it's a bug. They should see the rock and see that it looks off, and stick around long enough for it to rise up off the ground.

 

[[SpA]Lim-Dul]

I've got some initial impression by one of our community members. I won't be commenting on them here so they come through unfiltered. If you have any counter-arguments you can list them in our dedicated forum thread. Remember, though, that the map hasn't entered testing on our servers.
I know there are a lot of points that are known issues and that some of them seem to be more connected to a lack of experience with the map in question or too vague but you will probably find something that needs looking into.

I just played the map, and I must say that it is UTTERLY terrible.

First off, the problems with the game mode(s?):

* Is it TC, CTF of CP? Take a pick, you can't be all of them.
* Basically, you need to capture the intelligence. However, it is impossible to setup defence due to the small start time, and the close proximity of the bases. And when youDO get defence up, there are always 3+ entries to the intel, which makes it impossible to defend.
* When you DO lose the intelligence, it is impossible to stop the carrier, since there is no UI for this gamemode, with an intel-arrow pointing towards the flagcarrier.
* The game is set to a ONE CAP LIMIT. Which means, one cap and you move on to the next round. Meaning a round takes 30 secs of setup time, 30 secs of playing and 15 secs of waiting for the next round to begin.
* Some of the intal bases are CP's, meaning that if you stay on them, you cap them and win the round.... Hold on... SOME OF THEM. It's impossible to tell which of them, as they look the same, and there is no UI to tell you that you are capping.


Next up is the layout.

* The game layout seems half-assed. It's basically a few cool rooms connected by below-mediocre passage ways, whereof most offers no cover at all.
* In some rounds, it looks as if you are able to scout- or rocketjump onto a small alcove on the opposite side of a ravine... .Guess what, it's blocked by an invisible wall.
* Will I die if I jump in the water? Good question, you don't know. In some rounds, the water in the ravine is part of the map, in some rounds is not. If you jump into it, and it's not part of the map you die.
* No arrows, 100 arrows, no arrows, 100 arrows. On some parts of the rounds, you will run around as a headless chicken. Each rooms seems as if it has 10 exits... Only one or two of them will actually lead you forward. On other part of the rounds it's pretty obvious where to run, yet the map designer has put 100 pointing arrows around you, JUST to makes sure you don't get lost in the one-way hall.
* I didn't find ONE single room that was decently designed from a gameplay perspective.


Finally, the scripting.

* I mentioned lack of UI, didn't I?
* Did I mention the thing about some intel-points being cappable, while others weren't?
* Intel disappearing. I played a couple of rounds, where the intel didn't properly spawn, meaning that there would be no objective for one or even both of the teams, since the intel-points weren't always cappable.


But yeah.... It's nice that some map developers try and take another line than the wasteland theme. But if all those maps ends up like this one, don't!

 

[Shmitz]

Yeah, not very helpful. It's either a known issue of a singular instance (that he tries to make out as being prevalent in the entire map), it's unhelpful blanket statements that don't pinpoint any specific problems or potential solutions, or it's obvious he hasn't actually played the map.

There's not really any meaningful way I can respond to something like that.

 

[drp]

Yeah, not very helpful. It's either a known issue of a singular instance (that he tries to make out as being prevalent in the entire map), it's unhelpful blanket statements that don't pinpoint any specific problems or potential solutions, or it's obvious he hasn't actually played the map.

There's not really any meaningful way I can respond to something like that.

i agree. it seems he saw some screenshots, started the map, ran around for 20 seconds and quit. hes doesnt point out any specific flaws of the map, just pointing out the obvious of what the game doesnst support, which is multi gametype huds.

 

[trainRiderJ]

Is being able to capture some of the points (as opposed to capturing the intel) intentional? My clanmates and I assumed it was a bug.

He's right about one of the ledges by the ravine appearing like you can rocket/double jump to it, and then falling to your death because you hit the player clip. Not a big deal but it needs a fence or something.

 

[Shmitz]

Is being able to capture some of the points (as opposed to capturing the intel) intentional? My clanmates and I assumed it was a bug.

It's listed under "Known issues".

 

[Dox]

One of the points he mentioned was valid, one round it looks like you can sticky/rocket/scout jump to the other side but there is an invisible wall blocking the area off since you arent supposed to go there that round... its by the ravine I think.

 

[Chilly]

We played it with a few people tonight. I think we'll get a much better playtest with a full server over the next few days. People seemed to like it, but got lost a lot which seems to be a common occurrence. One thing that would definitely help is putting the "no entry" overlays on doors that won't be opened for that round. I think there were some like that, but there were definitely one or two that didn't have it.

Second, I think the robot area lacks a really good sentry location. I'm not sure if this is intentional due to the size of the room, but we found we needed 2 engineers to protect that area whereas most other areas just needed 1.

Two people complained that they got hung up on "things" a little too much, so I'd just recommend looking for any areas that could use playerclips.

The only other problems are listed as known issues so I won't go into them. FPS seemed acceptable throughout the map. Excellent work.

 

[Vander]

I checked the OP for known issues before posting this. I was running through it admiring the scenery this morning. Red was defending the subbay and I was able to capture the point. The cap sound effect comes on, but no meter shows length of time to cap.

 

[Bonafide]

I checked the OP for known issues before posting this. I was running through it admiring the scenery this morning. Red was defending the subbay and I was able to capture the point. The cap sound effect comes on, but no meter shows length of time to cap.

Its a known issue, there was just an over-sight when moving this back to CTF from CP.

 

[Shmitz]

Yeah, basically I had two visgroups, one for CTF entities and one for CP entities. Unfortunately one of the cap triggers escaped getting added to the CP entity visgroup, so when I disabled that group, it remained.

 

[Noggin]

Shmitz I sent u a PM re: timers but figured I would post it here...

Did u have any problems with getting the SetUp Time working for the main timer?

Ive used it on another map of mine and it works fine, Im wondering if its a TC thing.

There seems to be an issue (a bug?) where setting the time breaks the Setup Time, I have it mostly working now but it seems to have broken the 'waiting for players' timer

 

[Shmitz]

Shmitz I sent u a PM re: timers but figured I would post it here...

Did u have any problems with getting the SetUp Time working for the main timer?

Ive used it on another map of mine and it works fine, Im wondering if its a TC thing.

There seems to be an issue (a bug?) where setting the time breaks the Setup Time, I have it mostly working now but it seems to have broken the 'waiting for players' timer

I do recall having strange problems with the setup timer, where it would use the length of the normal round time, but this was when I attempted to have a setup time for the defense rounds and not for the main rounds. As soon as I had a non-zero setup time set for all timers, I didn't have any issues anymore.

 

[Cerious]

So I gave this map a test, I actually liked it. I was running everything on medium, I got a good 50 - 60, and when I ran it on high, it made a steady 45 - 55 (hardly any differences for me). Good visuals, though some parts are a little bland imo (like the village) but offer nice differences compared to the vanilla desert style of tf2.

I don't understand why you can cap the sub-bay, makes it harder to defend actually. The ship, as previously noted, has the wheel away from the window. I loved the robot room, but it is very red. In tc_hydro's commentary, the developers aimed to create a neutral color scheme because either team could capture it, but it confuses me a little here actually.

When it goes to the screen showing the parts of the map, I noticed you used custom icons to represent where blu and red are. However, when I loaded tc_hydro, instead of the bomb and the wrench (the default icons on the minimap where it shows you what territories are controlled) it still shows the custom icons. Any way to fix it?

 

[Shmitz]

The materials used for the icons for the map screen, as near as I can tell, are hardcoded into the game. This means to have custom icons, they have to be the same name, overriding the default materials. The game then continues to use the custom materials until you restart your game or perform mat_reloadallmaterials.

I'm going to experiment to see if there is another way I can have custom icons on that screen, or at least get it to reload them after the map finishes, but if there isn't, it's a Valve bug that I can't fix.

 

[ColdFire]

Shmitz, about custom icons in the hud, Vilepickle use custom CP icons on dom_canalzone_b3. Maybe you could use the same way to recreate a tc/ctf hud? And the hud is correct on the next map, so there's no reload problem.
I'm not a mapper, so maybe what I say is stupid (or I did not understand which icons you are talking about)
But if it can help...

Well, my 2 cents.