Team Fortress 2 CTF level [image heavy]

#90

Do a quick read on how visportals work and/or how to use the hint brush texture. Glass shouldn’t cause many problems unless your brushes are either A) Concave, all brushes MUST be convex. Use multiple brushes to create a concave shape. Or B) You have two verticies on a horziontal line between two corners, as in ±--------±--------+
Weld the third vertex to form a single line ±--------------+

It might not hurt to turn your glass into func_detail entities, if they aren’t already to see if that allieviates some problems.

Vertex manipulation in Hammer can be a cruel mistress at times. In most cases I generally just layer brushes up to make the shape I want rather than carving and vertex editing a single brush. The end result SHOULD be the same, but sometimes might result in strange brush cutting.

#91

Any updates? I want to put your lastest version on the server for Friday night.

#92

No updates yet. I just finished my finals and also just got back from dealing with family stuff five hundred miles away from home, so things have been hectic.

I’ll see if I can get something working by Friday, though.

#93

I’ve updated the map again:

http://www.fpsbanana.com/maps/download/38993

#94

can TF2 levels only be designed in hammer? or how about Max?

#95

If I remember there used to be plugins for HL1 map building in 3ds Max however even if you COULD I would recommend against doing so.

The way quake-style engines compile maps would make map building in max a real pain. When I first learned Hammer for HL1, I learned it alongside 3ds Max and found the two to be similar enough that it was a pretty easy learning curve for me. You probably wouldn’t have much difficulty in picking it up either.

#96

Hey Swizzle, we were playing your map last night and found a bug. Sometimes the red team will spawn in the forward blue spawn room. This traps the player in there. You might want to check all your spawn point properties.

#97

Crap. I was worried something like that may happen again and I wouldn’t catch it.

#98

After playing your map during the CGtalk match last night I must say Im pleased with its progress. Although, I did prefer the original intel rooms you had designed. I understood the reasoning for changing it. They were too easy to defend I’m assuming?? I think once you get an alternate route that leads to the intel it should make it a lot harder.

If I remember correctly you also had 3 100hp health packs sitting close to the bases entrance/exists. It seems a little much for those areas. I think 1, maybe 2, would do the job. Just a suggestion.

There were also spawn problems last night again by the way, which I think you might already know about.

#99

I think there was consensus over the intel rooms last night in preference to the original design. I think you could do a good combo of both, though. Have your current sinister desk and vault, but behind the desk is overlooking the NASA room (as many put it).

I think we proved pretty adamantly that a pair of engineers (or even just one, probably) can effectively control that room as is (that is until they get bored of camping out). As I suggested in game a ceiling drop would be very useful in getting those campers out. A demoman could drop down some pellets of doom and flush them out. The room was too small for a single spy to really take anything out if an engineer was still hiding out there.

I’m really curious about the spawn problems that plague. You’ve got more than enough locations so that shouldn’t be the issue. I’ve found that if you’re short spawn locations for a player on one team, TF will put him onto the other team, regardless of which team it was set to be a spawn for.

Here’s a suggestion, use the entity report menu option to bring up a list of every entity, filter it down to info_playerteamspawn and select them, entire teams at a time and set them to the appropriate team. Hoping that made sense, I have some reports to write (and it’s only been the first class too).

#100

I’ve been trying to figure out the layout for the insides of the bases for a really long time and it’s proving to be a nightmare. I really don’t have much aptitude for industrial or architectural design, so that’s part of why the insides of the bases have been weird. I’m definitely going to add a vent to the top of the intel rooms and I still need to get the caves done. Once I get those things in (along with some other tweaks), the intel rooms should be better balanced. I’m also going to add background scenery like the big control room, but it needs to play well before I do that.

I figured out the spawn point issues as soon as I heard about them. I apparently had two spawn points set to red insead of blue and that was the problem.

Here’s a paintover of the front of the bases for the next iteration:

#101

Looks nice man! I havent had time on Fridays to play your map, hopefully tonight. I like how you have the mine cart tracks on the path.

Are you going to try and squeeze some ICBM’s in there?

#102

Swizzle I really dig the concept painting of the exterior, especially the high-up bridges and the train tracks.

Interiors can be a lot of fun or a huuuuge pain in the ass. I stink at planning things out before jumping into them (and yet they often somehow work, i.e escherhaus) but what I’ve found that seems to work for me is to come up with a concept for a single room, some aspect that simply must be included and build the rest of the design from there.

Construct your intel room and then figure out the rest of the base after that if you can’t get anything down on paper. I really liked the new wood texturing to the interiors, but I found the new layout very confusing, I think there might exist a happy medium between what you had in version 3 and what you have in version 4.

#103

Swizzle, we need an update! Had fun playing the map tonight, but Red has a disadvantage until you can fix that spawn point problem. This was the first time I played it with more than 4 players. It was fun.

Love your concept drawing above. Are those tracks and high house going to be accessable?

Keep 'em coming! :thumbsup:

#104

Auctane:
I’m going to end up squeezing a lot of background scenery in there eventually, but first I have to make sure it plays nicely.

kromano:
That’s some really great advice, and I think you may’ve just helped me through a huge problem I’ve been having with the bases.

Kirt:
I’ll have a new build of the map with fixed spawns online very soon. I’ll post a link in this thread and the General Discussion forum thread as soon as I get it done.

Okay, I’ve just made a major decision that’s going to change the entire feel of the bases and, possibly, the entire map. With kromano’s tip about figuring out something I just have to include, along with taking another look at that sketch I posted, I’m going to be doing some huge changes.
First off, the bases are going to be mostly outdoor affairs. See that barn in the background? That’s going to be the intel room. All those bridges and tracks way up there are going to be functional instead of just for looks like I’d originally intended.

I just gave myself a ton of work to do, but I think it’ll be to the general benefit of the level; I suck at doing interiors and this is the first time I’ve been excited about doing the bases.

#105

Here’s a download link to the fixed version of HappyValley:

http://www.fpsbanana.com/maps/download/38993

The spawn points have been fixed so no more people should be spawning in the wrong base.

#106

How’s the map redesign coming along Swizzle? Haven’t seen any updates in a while.

#107

The redesign’s coming along okay, but I haven’t actually done much in Hammer since I last posted. I have a few promising sketches, though I’ve been too busy preparing for Dominance War 3 to get much done. I’m trying to figure out a good normal mapping workflow and I’m still working on really learning how to combine textures with normal maps for best effect. I’ve also been trying to import models and textures into Source, but I’ve not been having much luck.

#108

Importing models and textures to source was a pain until you learn the process. If you want, PM me and I’ll send you a package of all the models and textures I built for de_kneedeep (probably not all, there’s a few hundred MB in TGAs floating in there). Some good tips for you on compiling textures and models (ignoring QC programming)

  • use the sourcesdk_content folder and the mod name, ie sourcesdk_content/tf/materialsrc
  • create new folders to separate your work from the valve defaults sourcesdk_content/tf/materialsrc/swizzle
  • create a new explorer shell command for VTex
    > Open an explorer window, go to tools folder options
    > Open File Types tab, find TGA and click ADVANCED
    > Click NEW, give Action a name (Such as VTEX or TGA to VMT, or was it VTF?)
    > Point Application used to Perform Action to sourcesdk\bin\orangebox\bin\vtex.exe and append “%1” -nop4 -mkdir to the end, -mkdir will create a folder if it doesn’t already exist. By default VTex will just fail if the folder doesn’t exist.
  • You can use a simliar process for compiling your model QCs, but by default StudioMDL doesn’t pause when it finishes so you can’t read errors. I wrote a batch file to do the compiles for me with PAUSE at the end of the script so I can read any error messages.
#109

File not found. PM me a link so I can get the most recent version please. Thanks Swizzle!