Shared Map

[Magnus]

What about a pk3-file of the current version so others can giev it a try more easily?

Don't know whether that's due to my hasty compilation of the map, but the JPs didn't work for me.

Yea I noticed that some of the JPs did not have the trigger_push connected to the target_push. No big deal. :icon25:

I like what you did with the floors in the bases ix-ir. Very nice! :icon14: I think we should stick with that.
I re-puzzled it a bit though.

OK, here is what I hope to be my final attempt at a rebuild of the alpha version of this map.

I made the middle room much bigger as was suggested and I also added some more pillars to fight around. They make a nice little duel area below the beidge in the RA area now.

I made all of the halls a minimum of 256 units wide and 256 units high so they are now plenty wide and tall enough and built for any style of gameplay a person may favor. Also none of the halls are more than 512 units long so there are for sure no more long halls to be a problem.

I refined where various halls connect to the pre-middle room to make a more balanced flow and to encourage the use of all possible paths.
All of the halls that were on a slope are on nowhere nearly as harsh of an angle. they feel nice now.

I simplified the entire map even further by removing even more curves as it has been pointed out that they are not needed in the alpha version.

I made sure there is plenty of vertical play, but balanced not turning it into a bouncy map as well.

Every area has a purpose and there are some good solid item placement and plenty of room for some more immaginative item placement as well. In fact I think it could use just that as it is a bit bare.

I cleaned up my construction to try to conform to a grid of 8 as much as possible, but in my haste to get back to this I left quite a few joints unmitered and some spots with poor faceups. I just really didn't want to mess with it and wait any longer.

I did mess up and texture nearly the entire map in the rock texture instead of having everything caulk and only textureing faces that will be seen. Not sure how (still getting used to what buttons I need to be careful not to accidentially smash in this new GTKRadiant 1.5) and I am not going to go back and retexture the entire thing again seeing that it is an alpha.

I made the pre-middle room and all of the rooms along the side halls much larger as has been suggested for plenty of skirmish area when players meet up in those areas.

There is still plenty of paths to take that will allow for good strategy and doubling back and taking corners to loose players that are hot on the tail of the FC so he has a good chance to get away, but there is also plenty of room for the FC to have to cover so the defenders have a chance to catch the FC and return the flag.

All in all I think that this is a excelent alpha to move on from.

I compiled it with -meta only again and I did create a .aas for it and the bots again seem to use it fairly well already for those of you that want to play it with bots. :icon25: and of course the .map is in there as well.

ctfptmalpha4

The .pk3 is inside the .zip. So download it try it and lets get on with it.

[boilingoil]

I played 3 vs 3 with bots and it was a bit lonely, but at least there was plenty of space. 6 on 6 would have been more suitable. Plus it was a quickie. I like it though, I think it's a solid alpha.

[wattro]

i'd call it a solid pre-alpha and i'd definitely leave it open to people to make some wholesale changes... there is a lot of potential with what you have there

alpha means feature complete... that would be when everyone has gone through the rooms and made a couple passes of the map

[Magnus]

Sounds good. Pre-Alpha it is then :icon1:

I agree it is not for small teams at this point. Making the halls wide and tall enough to be comfortable for big jumps and straf/bunny hopping ended up requireing larger rooms in order for the halls to fit up to the rooms well. This was OK because it was suggested many times that the rooms needed to be bigger so there would be more room for small battles in them. Also it was suggested that the middle room be made bigger because in the privious version the FC was able to come out of the halls on the enemy's side and in a couple of seconds vanish into the halls on their own side.

I rearranged the halls that connected to the middle room. The former arrangement allowed the FC to get straight to their flag room for a capture far too quickly if you went right up the middle. I figured why would anyone ever use the rest of the map in this case. So I fixed that, but now the lower areas on the sides of the middle room seem a bit bare to me now.
Perhaps some item or feature placement will fix it.

Anyway hopefully we will hear from the rest of the team and some of the Q3W community on this version soon.

[wattro]

you can have both

i'd probably still make some of the areas larger - especially on the side...

but I'd also make it tighter by not having the hallways jut out so far to the outside of the flag bases. If you tighten up the hallways and rooms so they are closer together, you can come up with some pretty unique ways to interconnect the pieces together

this also gives you more options in effecting how entrances into/out of rooms affects gameplay where you can have almost seamless multi-tiered entrances/exits, cool cross-overs, etc

right now you have a lot of room/hallway/room stuff going on, which doesn't usually create interesting gameplay and tends to isolate the action, IMO

[dichtfux]

right now you have a lot of room/hallway/room stuff going on, which doesn't usually create interesting gameplay and tends to isolate the action, IMO

While this may be true for other gametypes, CTF needs a bit of this imo. You want different paths (corridors providing cover and some options) AND places where they unite (rooms where FC can be caught, especially when you know a priori - due to good teamplay - which path he'll take into that room).

[ix-ir]

Up to a point, I think we need to dissolve some of the corridors into rooms and parts of larger areas.

[boilingoil]

Is this map going to use models?

[maz0r]

Just another small hint: (competitively) ctf is played 5vs5 (europe) respectively 4vs4 (us). Keep it in mind while testing and sizing the map (i'm stating this, 'cause boilingoil played 3vs3 and complained the map was too spacious, so he suggested playing 6vs6).

Oh and I just wanted to expand the list of good example ctf maps played regularly in leagues: q3wcp9, q3wcp1, q3w3, q3ctf2, q3wcp15, q3wcp5, q3w2, q3w7, ctctf3, ctctf2, q3wcp14, q3w5 (ordered by something between community acceptance, league uses and personal preference (just a bit )). If you are interested I could give you some short statements for each map's characterics (e.g. why is it played at all, popular parts it is played for, what's bad, etc.). FYI I played ctf competitively and followed the european scene for years and would be glad to share my experiences and knowledge with you.

[Magnus]

I would think it will use models. Just to round a few things out and make it feel a bit more organic.

I would figure a capture cavern would need to feel kind of rounded and caveish in at least some places.

As far as more rooms as opposed to halls or expanding halls into room type areas make the changes you mean and lets have a look, but use this version of the latest pre-alpha. The one above had a nasty offset in the two halves that I noticed after I packed it up. Oops!
The bots seem to want to use more of the map now though even without item_botroams.

Here is the proper version.....ctfptmalpha4

Oh, and yes I have been testing the map with 5v5 all along. Feels fairly comfy as it is with 5v5.

[wattro]

ok, i am going to spend some of my free hours tonight making a go at this.

some things I noticed that make it hard to work with the existing map is a lot of stuff is on small grids meaning that changes to these parts are a bit time consuming.

i'm doing a fair bit of reworking paths/rooms trying to keep the original ideas in mind, expand on them, and keep the geo so that it is easily workable.

whatever i have, i'll post some screens and a link at the end of the night for you guys to pour over.

it might come back somewhat broken as I've already killed some jumppads and any items and what-not that i've come across. i'm a game designer and not a level designer, so we'll see what kind of mileage we get. =)

[wattro]

actually i didn't get very far tonight - i'll come back to it tomorrow night and see how it all fares

stay tuned

[dichtfux]

I felt a bit lonely at 4vs4. Will give 5vs5 a try later.

Using different textures for floor, walls, ceiling would be great imo. It hurts my eyes to just stand somewhere, stare at the screen and jump up and down.

You could also be a bit more generous with items for a map of this size. Maybe a MH for each team or even a powerup in the center of the map could add some spice to the map.

[Magnus]

Yea as I said above I "tried" to stay on a grid of 8, but my focus this time was on puting out a version the team and community felt had halls that were wide and tall enough for straf/bunny hopping and room areas that were big enough for small skirmishes when players on opposing teams met up.
I can clean the map up to have everthing on a perfect grid of at least 8 or 16 and miter all the joints now before anyone gets started as long as this version is OK with everyone in size.

The textures or better said texture is really nothing more than something to cover the brushes in this pre-alpha stage. I was not about to go into any quality texturing in the alpha stage. The team will get into some nice textureing once we have a beta.

The items placed so far are just for suggestion purposes. I see many more oppertunities for item placement and I am sure the rest of the team do as well, but there is no need for too much item placement when we are still changing the layout of the map so often.

I have to get back to work. I'll check back later today to see if everyone agrees that this version is on a large enough scale and then I will go in and clean it up on a perfect grid and you guys can go from there with whatever you like.

[dichtfux]

The textures or better said texture is really nothing more than something to cover the brushes in this pre-alpha stage. I was not about to go into any quality texturing in the alpha stage. The team will get into some nice textureing once we have a beta.

I wasn't talking about quality textures. I suggested using 3 different textures: wall, floor, ceiling to make it easier to test the gameplay and flow of the map. That's what an alpha is for, isn't it?

And it is barely possible atm (because it hurts). I also feel that using a single texture for everything makes guessing distances and thus getting a feeling for the size of the map very difficult.

This ain't mch work, I'll do it for you in the evening if you want me to.

[Magnus]

I also feel that using a single texture for everything makes guessing distances and thus getting a feeling for the size of the map very difficult.

This ain't mch work, I'll do it for you in the evening if you want me to.

This is true. I noticed the same thing. I will throw a couple of additional textures in there and clean up the brushes that are not on the grid. Be back with that in a few. :icon25:

[wattro]

hey all

i've been plugging away for a bit on the base and the surrounding area - i'm nearly done but doubt that i will finish up what i want to do tonight so i thought i'd post a preview

i've still got a bit of underground area to do - this goes up to just over halfway to the center zone

let's see how my html-fu handles itself:



comments welcome... it's considerably tighter and a bit of a venture from the original alpha. i'll upload a map file tomorrow night and maybe even bsp the whole thing if i get that far

[a13n]

OT:
I can't beleive you use such a consuming taskbar. :icon28:

[wattro]

ninja please. i'm more surprised that i only use one monitor at home...

surprisingly no problems with taskbar consumption going on... i haven't done anything to improve this pc in a few years now (maybe that's why!)

stay on topic or i'll have you burninated...

[wattro]

Just another small hint: (competitively) ctf is played 5vs5 (europe) respectively 4vs4 (us). Keep it in mind while testing and sizing the map (i'm stating this, 'cause boilingoil played 3vs3 and complained the map was too spacious, so he suggested playing 6vs6).

Oh and I just wanted to expand the list of good example ctf maps played regularly in leagues: q3wcp9, q3wcp1, q3w3, q3ctf2, q3wcp15, q3wcp5, q3w2, q3w7, ctctf3, ctctf2, q3wcp14, q3w5 (ordered by something between community acceptance, league uses and personal preference (just a bit )). If you are interested I could give you some short statements for each map's characterics (e.g. why is it played at all, popular parts it is played for, what's bad, etc.). FYI I played ctf competitively and followed the european scene for years and would be glad to share my experiences and knowledge with you.

I'd like to hear your comments, i think it would be beneficial for the map

[Magnus]

Your html-fu is strong wattroson. :icon25:

Good example of expanding hall areas to be room areas. Nice.

I really like what you did with the south side room with the jump over the lava to the cliff above. Nice idea to place block puzzle tiles over the lava like in the base room. That idea is soooo a keeper. :icon14:

See also the teleporter in that room is also exactly what I was thinking of in one of our early layouts that I came up with. I could see a player jumping up to the cliff above in the JP and then getting on a LP that sent them flying across the lava and room into a cave that went back into the wall and they would dissappear into the darkness and at the end of that cave would be a teleporter.
I thought it would be a sweet feature, but too many people seemed to think teleporters were a bad idea.

Some nice changes there. I'm just jealous that I didn't come up with them... :icon7:

Just kidding. :icon25:

I would also like to see what ix-ir had in mind when he talked about the same thing. Making some hall areas into room areas.

[Magnus]

Oh and there you are a13n. I was getting worried you had bailed. :icon25:

[obsidian]

Don't forget, I'm still working on stuff, but it's a little slow going concerning the amount of other work I have going ATM. I have multiple layouts sitting in the same map to test out different approaches. Since there will probably be a lot of polys (caves and all) I've started planning hints for optimization. A screenshot of what I have going...

[lvlshot]http://www.robotrenegade.com/q3wptmctf1/screenshots/q3wptmctf1_01.jpg[/lvlshot]

[Magnus]

Very nice obsidian. :icon14:

I haven't forgotten. Was just waiting to see what you came up with when you found some free time

[maz0r]

Another small hint: Just don't put a haste PU in the flag room! If you really want a pu there, take a regen and put haste/quad in the middle.