Team Fortress 2 CTF level [image heavy]

#41

Check out the Team Fortress 2 thread in General Discussion.

#42

Well Swizzle, I’d say your first playtest went well. The control rooms weren’t so easily protected as I had imagined, and the confined yet still openness of the valley made it challenging for snipers to get a clear shot and let me step in carefully to the bases.

However, it became quickly frustrating if you left the base on the ground floor or fell off from the upper levels as there was no way back to the top except by returning to your base and running up the ramp again.

I didn’t get to try to exploit the level much since I played the entire round as an engineer so I’ll see what I can “break” on my own sometime for you. I’m sure that most people found the areas you’d missed in skywalk protection and the like. Rocket jumping is grand, but the Demoman’s grenade/stickybomb jump is far more effective when done right.

You’ve got a pretty good balance going already, just needs a little more tweaking.

#43

Swizzle, I downloaded your map to take a look. I think you got a nice start. I love the idea of the bases joined between a canyon. It reminds me of WB Road Runner cartoons for some reason. Very nicely done.

A couple of issues though:

The canyon needs more routes, which I believe you said you were planning on adding. As of version 1.0 there really isn’t much choice if you end up on the bottom level. You either keep going towards the enemy base or you backtrack to get back on the upper levels. When you add caves, I think this would be a great place to transition between the levels.

I think the canyon would also benefit from a stronger “S” curve allowing you to open up the paths a bit more to allow for dodging of projectiles. If you dodge on a topside path, you’re most likely falling because of the sidestep.

I think something other than the “V” shape of the canyon would be nice as well. By transitioning up/down or left/right through the canyon rather than running straight through it you add more interest, better cover and more ambush locations. I’d check some ref pics of the Grand Canyon and see if that doesn’t provide some inspiration for the design.

The bases seem like a lot of loop back to get to a point of interest. The ramps are the main culprits here. You run one direction to catch a ramp, then backtrack up to the next location. I think you could cut some of that out and make it more interesting to transition the levels.

The intel room seems too large and out of scale with how Valve’s maps are constructed. The nice thing about 2Fort is the couple of different routes into the intel room, The various size of hallways leading to it and the break in monotony with an occassional room that opens up the space for combat. I don’t think you should create a map with all hallways or all large rooms. It’s just dull (IMO).

I didn’t like that you basically have to run all the way to the back of the base (near the opposing team’s spawn) then all the way forward to get the intel. And then … run all the way back and then forward again to get out. Ugh! That seemed like a chore after the second time. Move the spawn room to the front of the base and make the route to intel more interesting.

I like on 2Fort that you’re passing the spawn location to get to the intel and if your intel is snatched while you’re in spawn mode, you have an opportunity to intercept. I think on your map, once the opponent is at your base’s front door the intel is as good as capped unless your team is heading back.

One last thing (see attached). I was able to crouch+rocketjump out of your map. Take the path to the left out of your base and ‘crj’ at the apex of the first turn to get to the top of the cliffs. Then just drop down behind and walk leisurely to the enemy’s base. Yes, you can fire rockets through the backside of the cliffs also. :smiley:

Weeee … I hope this helps with the development of your map. I only wish I could have played with you folks. Sadly, at work they block TF2. :frowning:

#44

I had a real fun time playing your map. I dont think i have much to add to the comments of other people. But i would say that as the map is now with out the caves it is a little to easy to defend the lower entrance to the base placing a turret or a heavy right behind the center pillar is all you need to do. Ammo and medkit are right there. But i think the caves will add another entrance to the base thus increasing the surface area to be covered which will completly change how it is balanced. I look forward to playing it more.

#45

Just to drop in with my few comments. I agree with a lot of what Kirt said, though my biggest gripe would be that the intel room is much too large. To combat this I would say simply cut the intel room in half (or more) using the extra space as scenery (ala 2fort intel room). Perhaps bring the entrances to the intel room close to the front of the base and have the intel sitting at the back side of the intel room (closer to the spawn) so that when it is captured one can make a quick transition through either door cleanly traveling toward their base, never back tracking.

That being said I think the caves/tunnels will add a lot more depth to this map. That in mind you could even get rid of one side of the intel room entrance utilizing the tunnels as a second entrance/exit. This would give the interest, and still provide the flow of exiting and entering the intel room.

Another interesting idea, if you didn’t want to add the ‘S’ curve to the valley is to shorten its length (by half?) and open it up a bit further to intentionally allow for snipers to pick off targets. This wouldn’t be a bad thing because of the shortened distance between bases. This is (I believe) one reason why 2fort works so well, even having the wide open area in the middle of the map snipers still can get shot down by anyone trying.

Anyhow, I had meant this to be shorter so I will end it here, but I am definitely stoked for your next update. I am also contemplating making my own map, you have inspired me :slight_smile:

Awesome work so far!!

By the way swizzle, I was curious, are you modeling the whole level in the hammer editor?

#46

I made it in sort of late, but I made it.

First thing that happened was I wanted to go switch characters and when I did, it killed me like I was not in the spawn.

The intel buildings are too big if you ask me. its a LONG walk to get out of the building, especially if your a heavy or soldier. I didnt like how there was glass running up the sides of the intel rooms - if the room were smaller, senturys would be able to cover those and you could leave it open.

Needs a little more variety, I think the caves will add it.

Good job so far!

#47

Wow, guys! Thanks for taking the time two write all that.

kromano:
I’m definitely going to be adding more routes up to the cliffs; that seemed to be one of the things that was bugging people the most. Hell, it was even bugging me and I made the thing!

Kirt:
I’m going to add some ramps to get up to the cliffs for the next build, so that should ease the pain of falling or getting knocked off.
After last night’s test, I knew almost immediately that the scale of the entire thing was an issue. The first thing anybody said when the map finally loaded last night was “That’s a hell of a jog.” I’m definitely going to be cutting down the size of a lot of things and adding intermediary rooms that are smaller.
A couple of people last night found the areas where you could jump onto the cliffs, so that’s going to be the first fix I do.

Sycar:
The base entrances are definitely due for a major overhaul. As soon as I saw people putting turrets on top and camping down below, it was apparent that they needed something to break them up. I’m going to make the base entrances asymmetrical next time around, and probably something more to make them a bit more interesting visually as well as gameplay-wise.

Geta-Ve:
Just like I’m planning with the front entrances, I’m going to make the intel rooms asymmetrical next time around.
I’m certainly considering shortening the canyon to make the level play faster, but the first thing I want to do before that is tighten up the bases. For the next release I don’t think I’m going to be shortening the canyon because of how much the bases need to change, but if it’s still a problem I’ll certainly make them shorter.
Yes, I’m making the entire map in Hammer.

Auctane:
One of the things I realized last night right before the game was that all the default maps let you change classes even in the anteroom to the spawns, so I’ll fix this immediately.

So, with all this in mind, here’s what I hope to have by the next build:

-The caves
-Smaller bases
-Asymmetrical base entrances and layout
-Lots of smaller rooms in the bases for variety and strategic possibilities
-Ramps and more alternate routes through the canyon
-Fixes for the spawn and skywalking issues

More updates soon!

#48

I was just thinking if you made the canyon wider & with the caves and such, maybe you could just do away with the center ground/make it a dead fall… it would also make it appear to be a larger canyon. Ohhh that would be cool if they were like 2 bases suspended in a canyon…

#49

On that idea, having the canyon wide enough for only the scouts to jump accross would give a lot of interest, having routes (tunnels) off to the sides of the canyon leading to the other side. Almost like 2fort except without the bridge in the middle…

I am always amazed at great WIP’s, the amount of alternate ideas that come out of them are astounding. There are so many great ideas in this thread I have little doubt 2 or 3 different maps could be made from them.

Swizzle, I have a question pertaining to hammer, specifically if a sphereical level would be possible?? I was thinking it would be contained inside a giant cube (skybox). Though as I think about it now I have my doubts as gravity just popped in to my mind. Dang.

Definitely can’t wait for the next version of your map! :slight_smile:

#50

So like a space station or someting where gravity matches the sphere? Thats a wicked idea man, glad I thought of it :D. That would be a sweet modificton to make… We should talk about that.

#51

With my experiences with Hammer, there is no gravity direction controller. It’s basically down. I have seen one map where the whole level was rotated to change the direction of the gravitational pull. But it killed performance.

You can however, adjust the amount of gravity that pulls downward.

#52

I really have no idea if altered gravity is possible in Source without some modification to the physics engine. A quick look through the Valve Dev Wiki shows that there’s a brush-based entity that lets you control the force of gravity within it, but I think it’s unidirectional so you could only affect what the gravity might be like up and down but not side to side.

I know that in the Serious Sam 1 and 2 engine, you can make entire levels in which each face has its own gravity. I don’t know about the third one.

#53

I was thinking: it may be possible to program the SDK so you can assign gravity to individual brushes… Like gravity zones. If you could, then it would be possible to do lots of cool stuff in hammer, a worth while mod IMO.

#54

Back in HL1 I made a king of the hill tower (no mod, just a level where that was the goal) as one of the first maps I’d designed. The person at the top had a variety of time-delayed traps they could fire off to keep the players out of reach (one of which was the crossfire deathmatch level’s “nuke”). Anyway, there USED to be an entity that, once triggered, changed gravity for the entire map. I used that brush trigger on the bottom of the map across all the player spawns so that it would automatically triggered as soon as the match began.

In theory the same idea should be possible using the automatically firing logic entity (I forget what it’s called, logic_auto or something) or by placing the activator in the player spawn room so that it will be re-triggered every round, in case something might reset gravity.

You can also have an entity which will launch a console command, you should be able to use that to trigger sv_graivty 20 or something crazy. That may or may not actually work, however, because of server-side cheat protection. sv_cheats may need to be set to 1 in order for an entity to trigger a change to server state or the server may need to be reset in order to activate changed gravity from the console.

Geta-Ve, unfortunately there is no way to change gravity so that level could be a sphere and players could be running around it in a complete 360 vertically, so to speak. If it were possible, my map would indeed be making use of these functions. Nothing like defending a flag from people walking in from staircases on every wall.

If anybody manages to make a gravity mod like that, I will be making another perspective bending map to go with it. It really shouldn’t be that complicated as far as modding goes. If they could do it in AvP for the alien’s wall climbing, I’m sure it could be done in HL2.

#55

Wow, I didn’t expect this kind of response. It is unfortunate that it can’t currently be done as my idea was to have a moderately sized planet with a big tower on opposite ends. Climbing up these towers (stair cases and such around it) would lead you do the flag/intel.

Obviously the planet would have more interest with either ponds, fences, hills (perhaps even tunnels?) and such.

Too ambitious I suspect. Thanks for the feedback. Much appreciated!! :slight_smile:

edit: btw swizzle, sorry for hijacking your thread! :frowning:

#56

Today I found out just how many kinds of errors can cause Vbsp to completely crap its pants and refuse to compile. This was not fun. I do no wish to repeat this.

   On another note, I'm making progress. I spent an hour or so yesterday and about eight today working on the new base layout (the only thing I like about my job is that I can screw around with my own stuff all day). It's all a lot tighter and more interesting, I think, than what I had before, and there are more places to hide and set traps and stuff instead of it being completely open.
   
   I'm not quite ready to put up more screenshots yet, but I wanted to post this just to let you guys know that I only took the weekend off and I'm back to working on it. At this rate, I'll have the next build ready by mid-Thursday if the Thanksgiving holiday/gorging/gluttony fest doesn't get in the way.

Here's a rough layout of the new bases. There are a few things that weren't quite feasible, but mostly just slight changes to the locations of certain features on these diagrams.

[img]http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y29/xkostolny/baselayout1.jpg[/img]

If these are confusing, don’t worry. Things make a lot more sense in-game.

I think I’m going to be moving a spawn room to the second floor of the bases. That ought to add a bit more variety than there already is and it should make it slightly less frustrating for those that like being on the cliffs.

I’ll have screenshots up tomorrow, if possible.

#57

Nice! Alternatively with the spawn point you could always have 2 of them, ala 2fort. :slight_smile: Can’t wait to test out the new build.

#58

definately a good idea whoever mentioned to make the gap between the 2 canyon walls reachable by scouts double jumps and no other class… gives heaps more dynamic and makes scouts have a bit of fun…

that’s why i love 2fort atm simply double jumping from battlement to battlement

#59

Man I am totally having a blast making a map for TF2, I gotta ask though, as you said you have modeled the whole map in hammer how did you go about getting the mountainous curves and such? The only way I can really see doing this is in pieces?

Anyhow update, now! :smiley:

#60

Geta-Ve, those are made with Displacements. The quick of it is, you select a face with the face selection tool, click on the displacement tab and hit “create.” Then you can start “painting” relief onto the walls/floors etc. They’re simultaniously a fantastic and HORRIBLE invention.

I strongly recommend you run over to the SDK wiki and check out the piece on Displacements. You’ll go simply batty trying to figure it out without knowing what’s written there first.