cp_sandtrap, tf2 map just finished.
polycounter lvl 9
EDIT - Ok the map has been updated! check out the new screenies below!
Hi guys,
Not posted here in a LONG time,
Unfortunatly its not art im posting this time,
I've just recently finished up a tf2 map and was wondering if anyone is interested.
It took 130 hours to complete and im DYING to try it out with a full server.
http://www.fpsbanana.com/maps/64266
I painted some posters in it too
Hi guys,
Not posted here in a LONG time,
Unfortunatly its not art im posting this time,
I've just recently finished up a tf2 map and was wondering if anyone is interested.
It took 130 hours to complete and im DYING to try it out with a full server.
http://www.fpsbanana.com/maps/64266
I painted some posters in it too
Replies
Crits without playing it:
- Looks a bit like an achievement box. (Brome told me what they look like) With a little bit of work I think you can slap in some TF2 style buildings and help segment the map. It would help performance and keep spammers to a more reasonable level.
- You should also think about varying the materials and construction methods for each side so players can more easily tell which base their at. Red base farm/wood. Blue base is concrete/steel.
- There is a lot you can do to change up the look of structures without changing the actual gameplay.
- It seems a little unbalanced for a few classes. The beauty of a really good TF2 map is making it so every class can play. Right now it looks like a sniper duel map.
- You could make this feel less like a box and more like a map by doing a 3D skybox & switching out the wood fence with canyon walls.
The ground could use a bit of breaking up with some of the blend textures (scattered rocks), decals or some minor debris. I know you've done a bit of this with the weeds and the odd crate here and there. Just that the ground is looking very sterile and uninteresting.
The skybox could use a bit of love... Some of themed buildings protruding from behind the fencing could be interesting.
I know its a little late now (seeing as you've spent a good deal of time making it), its good to block out your map and test it in early stages to see if it is fun before you dedicate the time to pimping it out.
-caseyjones
How is this not art?
Anyway, looks cool. Will play when I get a chance. Only crit I have is that the wood planks surrounding the level are ridiculously huge. Or at least they look that way in these screens. If you aren't going to change them in a way that has already been mentioned, you could at least scale them down. Nice art.
Did you know hammer prior to making this map?
The posters are great!
The whole sentry thing was pretty cool. We had a lot of fun with that.
We all liked the detailing in the spawn room
My crits still hold true and we have some new ones:
- It looks really open from the screen shots but that's because they are taken from an elevated potion. Once you're in there its surprising how much cover there is, but still the center is wide open and it gives snipers and rocket spammers too much power.
- The map is long. There are some big areas that could be shortened and some things should be placed to help block line of sight. I have a feeling you mostly play tested with the scout and the scouts increased movement speed lead you to make things longer then they should be.
- Some classes felt useless, like pyro, heavy. In the end we had scouts, snipers and demos. Some people tried eng but there where very few places to set up a forward base.
- Demomen had easy times raining death down on people behind cover, making engies near impossible to play. Horizontal cieling cover in some areas would help. Maybe not full cover but a few sheets of metal at an angle would do wonders.
- Some of the hallways where kind of tight and it was easy to get bottle necks. No lateral movement in a firefight makes for really uninteresting combat, so most people stayed out of those hallways. Most people when the encounter an enemy the side step and dance around the person, can't do that in the confied spaces. if the spaces where wider then a person they would be used more often.
- It wasn't easily explained what the switches did. Putting the death symbols that are on the boxes, on the switches would help tie them together. As well as sounds coming from the boxes when the poles are raising.
- No one could figure out how to get up to the center flag at first without rocket jumping. The path could be more clear.
- The center flag took a really long time to cap and was easy to defend. The only way one team capped it was to spam the spawn room keeping them pened up.
- Snipers had an amazing amount of power standing on the switches. They had open lines of sight to each side of the spawn room exit paths. Two snipers could pretty much lock down the spawning of the other team. There needs to be more ways out.
- It wasn't clear what needed to be done in order to cap the last point. We never figured it out... The description says to blow away the barn? but we couldn't figure out what this was. We thought it was the shield around the last cap point so we unloaded on it, but nothing ever really seemed to happen. So we unloaded on the sentry boxes, nothing happened. So we stood on the enemies switches nothing happened.
If this is what is destructible, maybe have it destruct in stages because it seemed like everything else, indestructible.
- The elevator going up is hard to get onto and its easy to get your head stuck when it raises. Personally I think it should be big enough to hold a few people, not have beams on the edges and use a piston lift type mechanic.
Well, im going through some changes with the map now, fiddling with the layout and looks.
Oh the barn at the end, all the four walls open out when shot at, i did mention that in the description. Tbh it would be hard not to notice it because of stray fire would open out the doors.
i placed alot engie spots, tbh i thought i placed too many.
But anyway i've already adressed some of the problems you mentined, i'll update the screenshots later on today.
thanks again for going to the trouble to test it out.
Most of them are just big enough for a turret, the engie and his dispenser.
Most of the places the turret has to be positioned in a place where it takes constant fire, which means the engie has to constantly repair it.
Most of those engie spots are easily taken care of by demomen.
EDIT:
As for the barn door/gate things, because they are doors, demo stickies bounce off.
As for the stray fire, the way the map is, its loaded on the sniper end there was very little stray fire hitting the barn doors. When we unloaded on the barn we where using soldiers, because you can get ammo from spawn and shoot across the map.
I loaded the map up on lunch and went to test the doors. For some reason rocket fire doesn't always effect the doors.
Suggestions to help players know what to do after capping the next to last point:
- Have a set of target decals over the doors, that turn on when the second to last point is capped.
- Turn the doors into draw bridges held up by cranes. Place shields around the cranes that drop when the second to last point is capped.
- Crack the doors open to show a weakening in the barns defenses when the second to last point is capped.
- Add gunnery positions to the barn, so the barn can be used by the defending team, and the barn is more likely to take damage during that final push.
Oh and btw,
There are some good improvements. But most of the major issues are still present. Those issues would keep the map out of circulation on many servers.
For the canyon walls I was thinking of doing that with a 3D skybox. It's kind of tricky to wrap your head around it the first time, but after you do it once, its a great way to knock in some cheap details. When you fly outside of a valve map you'll see 3D sky box disappear, in its place you'll see a tiny version floating off in the void. It's also why some probs have two versions, a tiny (skybox) version and a regular up close version. That's what you'll need to read up on and recreate, in order to really sell the out of bounds areas.
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/3D_Skybox
You dont have to be so pessimistic about the map, i've tried my best to fix the problems.
I've fixed the cabin doors they now open faster as well as work when being shot from any angle.
Made ALL the corridors wider so two people can fit. Enlarged the engy areas so people can setup easier.
Enlarged the parting in the center to stop spamming.
Added more interesting visual dynamic. i know how to use 3d skyboxes but for the mountains there really isnt necessary
The map isnt really that open area, no more than badlands or granary.
You've gotten the cart before the horse and called it done with very little play testing. Technically I'd say your at the Alpha stage and you need to be open to making some major ground breaking (literally) changes to the core structure of the map in order to address the issues.
Major issues:
- 5) Fatal flaw. Sniper line of sight, leads to class imbalance. One sniper can guard both spawn exits and the center cap point. 2 Snipers in each corner can lock down a teams spawn. TF2 is a rock paper scissors game, the way the map is right now there is no way for scissors to take down paper.
- 4) Lifts should be no brainers. The lift needs to be bigger. As it stands one person has to fidget into the dead center (while dodging fire) just so their head doesn't catch on the 2nd floor. See above post for more detailed suggestions on what type of lift would work best. Or if the piston idea doesn't float your boat, you could wall off 3 sides of the lift so the players position on the lift is managed easier.
- 3) Move the sentry positions to higher ground and only have 2, 4 was a bit of overkill and made engies pretty useless. A single sniper could summon 4 turrets to defend their base making engies useless for base defense. Engies if they are to play must rush forward and set up a teleporter base, without a proper forward base type area, again think the sewers in 2-fort. To help avoid confusion make the tunnels on each side unique. Blue concrete tunnel, red mining tunnel.
- 2) Think about adding another way into the center and expand the side routes by putting in some tunnels that meet in the center on each side of the map. These center rooms could be the forward bases.
-1) This should be a building that blocks line of sight from base to base. I see this as mission critical to making this map playable and balanced. Personally I would make this a building much like in the train yard of well. It's own mini arena. The easy fix would be to wall off the lower section where the big health pack sits. Or adjust the terrain so the center cap point structures are higher or lower and block line of sight, so the map viewed from the side would be shaped like a W or U.
The overall themes of the bases are still very similar and misses one of the biggest points in TF2. The clash of industry VS farm, corporate power VS the average Joe. When you view your map from the air (like in 5), its near impossible to really tell what side is what unless you hunt around for clues. If you step back across the room it should be night and day what side belongs to what base.
In other words, the neutral textures meant for common areas are used as main base textures. This is the main reason I said the map looked like an achievement box. People who make achievement boxes don't care about red vs blue. They don't care about the humor and themes of TF2. They want to get teh gunz that let them pown noobz.
Do you want people jump into this map to think:
"oh crap when did valve release a new map?" or "Ah crap another one sided custom map..."
Your map has some really cool ideas and can be a lot of fun. But needs to blend into the themes and theories that make TF2 awesome.
At the bare min you should swap out some of the wood textures on the blue base side for concrete and steel. Its one of the easiest things you can do and it would take the map and tie it into the game so much more. To do this, save your file in two files, red/blue. In each file delete the opposite base. Then on the blue side use the replace texture. Merge the files and your done. To take it a step further incorporate the humor and themes of each side into their bases. You touched on that in the posters but it needs to be oozing from the structures.
Thing is there is some problems with your edit.
1 - The cabin at the final point, the four doors open out to open up pathways to it, in your edit the side paths wont reach the cabin anymore.
2 - In early testing, i had the sentry places in the same place as your edit and people couldnt cap the point or move forward because the sentries were too close and were spamming the cappers, i had to stretch out the map away from the sentries because i dont want the team to worry about getting rid of the sentries until they've capped the middle.
i dont think the sentries are too over powered because it takes about 20 seconds per side to open them up, and only a few shots to take the sentries down again. any class can take them down in no time.
The edit is FAR too cramped, there wouldnt be any space to fight, a bit like a maze.
I DO like your ideas for making alternitive routes outside the map and making the elevator larger (however i made it small to stop too many people from getting up to the killswitches straight from spawn)
Also yeah snipers can see straight down the map, but it pretty impossible to get a headshot from that distance, plus there is passages down the side to avoid snipers. 2fort has the same element. yeah there is a bit of a sniper choke but there are passages to avoid it.
Yeah also i did want to add a industrail feel for blu but i wanted the map to be wood and sand only, its very easy to tell what side your on, theres a huge coloured bar ALL around the map stating your teams colours.
I like your suggestions but i cant help feel they are more opinions based on your gaming style than facts.
But overall i am grateful for your suggestions. I will make some changes to the map when i have more time, i've spent 2 weeks non stop fucking around with this stupid fucking waste of time map.
My play style does factor into my comments as varring play styles and classes should filter into the design process. Its why play testing in the early stages is so critical. Before you start to commit to the awesome details.
RE 1: Ahh I didn't even know the doors on the side came down. I've hardly ever been over there let alone shoot at the door. I guess moving them back into the corner would create some more open space, since the corners are kind of dead zones anway why not use that space better?
RE 2: It wasn't really clear what took the sentries out when we where playing we thought it was another trigger or it was timed. Our fault for never shooting at them directly like normal sentries... duh... I guess that does balance things a little better.
About their placement. If the center cap point was enclosed the sentries would only need to be dealt with when going for the next to last?
The edit might be a bit cramped, but increasing the bounding box overall size of the map 25-50% would open it up a bit more while still cutting travel time down for some of the slower classes. If you didn't decrease the distance from base to base, but increased the width.
Maybe I work with some really good snipers but they didn't seem to have too much trouble keeping us penned in. I think they might have moved up closer to the mid point then the position I took that screenshot from. But two of them where all it took to keep us tied up for a few spawns until we did a mass lemming rush. The center point was really hard to cap with snipers constantly watching it.
You shouldn't have to look in a specific spot to tell what base your in. The floor, cieling, props and walls should all be dead give aways. You don't always have time to stop, look up and find painted boarder. But seriously its your map make it how you want
Random idea to give function to the forms...
What if this was an oil field, the center cap was a oil derek and the long elevated walkways where pipelines? Probably too much work now but still something to keep in mind for later.
I think you have a pretty good map, but you could make it an awesome map with some work. I'm a huge wet blanket so I'll shut my trap.