20 Brush Challenge Voting: LAYOUT/GAMEPLAY

Anyone else having problems getting the unreal maps to play ingame? Also are any of the Source maps setup for bots?

Vilham: for the Source maps, probably not, especially since HL2DM is such a blasted mess these days

I think everyone deserves some feedback for their effort so I'm gonna try and go through all of the levels and share my thoughts for each voting category. I think it'd be great to get more discussion going on about the entries, so share your thoughts people!

Siteless265 by callguinness

I was a bit disappointed here, as I thought it looked like it'd play pretty well from the screenshots and I liked the look of it to boot. In the end I felt the optical illusion of the black faces against the black skybox confused and annoyed me more than adding to the fun, but that's always the risk with adding novelties like that. I also felt that it was a bit too cramped for UDKs movement based combat. Maybe it'd be better with human opponents though, as I found with the bots that almost all the action took place around the shock rifle which just became a spot to rack up splash damage kills. I easily snagged a monster kill in a 4 player DM just camping overlooking the shock rifle and repeatedly firing, which I don't imagine would happen against human players.

20b_Barragan by CampaignJunkie

Well you clearly didn't set out with gameplay in mind here, so I don't have too many qualms about dissing it There's at least the central wall to provide a bit of cover, but otherwise this is essentially an empty room with some spawn points and weapons, so I don't see it getting much rotation time on servers (do those still exist for HL2DM anyway?).

Unnamed by Dmx6

The layout is a bit too simple and lacking in ambition for my liking. Could have used more variation; once you are in one of the 4 "compartments" that the walls slice the map into your only option is to head for the ramps to get out. Which ramp you take is of little consequence, as they ultimately lead up to the same place. Lack of choice for players leads to pretty boring gameplay, so always try to give them non-trivial decisions when it comes to route planning. Maybe one set of corners could have been left as is, but the other 2 could have lead to a higher walkway that bridged over the top of the current one? Then, as a player, deciding whether to pick the left ramp or right ramp would be given more meaning and consequence, which ultimately makes the game more fun. Just stuff to keep in mind for the future I did like the overhangs on the cross walkway that you could hide below to elude your opponents temporarily though - they made it more interesting than if the whole walkway had just extended straight down at the edges to the floor.

Shard by JamesKing3D

The huge scale probably works against the gameplay in this level. With so few brushes to use but such large distances involved, there's a whole lot of time spent travelling in a straight line with no cover. This is particularly true if you go to the rear pathway, which is just completely featureless and exposed. It looked like there was a doorway cut through the crystal leading out from the hollow to the middle of the rear path, but in-game it is blocked from the hollow side with a solid missing texture for me, so I can't tell if it is meant to be open or not? Assuming so I guess it would have played a bit better, but as it was for me it didn't work too well.

VR20 by killertomato

I think choosing to make this for CSS was a good plan, as it's about the closest in gameplay style to MGS as any FPS. Being entirely restricted to a flat plane is never gonna make for the most rivetting gameplay so I don't picture this being great in this category, but in CSS it could be quite fun to quietly stalk your foe and lay in wait in some of the little alcoves, so I think it probably holds up as well as plenty of AIM maps do.

Don't Mess With Hexas by KungFuSquirrel

Like most hex based maps I think this one looks to ask a lot of the jump key I do like the arrangement you've gone for though, and I think having the 3 distinct islands (well, kinda 4) is much more interesting than bunching them all into one. I wish I had Q3 installed to play it as it's tough to really get a feel for the scale and flow from the pics alone, and maybe there are more freeform routes around than I'm giving it credit for, but it looks like players are quite restricted to the jump pad paths you've set, and that in turn would lead to player movements being too predictable for interesting gameplay. Could be wrong though.

DM_20B by Leon Kilean

What a strange level this is I imagine it would be fun to play on by virtue of that strangeness alone. In the end I think it is a bit too gimmick driven for any sort of serious gameplay though, and the moving parts - of which there are more than I'd expected, and more major in terms of size - I feel could get pretty annoying in the end, particularly the ones that can crush and kill you. I also didn't really get the thinking behind the weapon placement, particularly the lack of anything at all on the somewhat difficult to get to rooftop.

Ludonarrative Dissonance by Lunaran

MY VOTE

I felt a bit uncomfortable doing so without having actually seen it in-game, however I voted for this map as strongest gameplay. It just looks like it'd be a load of fun to have a 1v1 battle around. Even though it is essentially a single pathway spiraling its way around, it creates lots of little ledges and nooks and crannies to leap around on and explore. It's nice and tightly packed so you never have long to travel before your next route choice or opportunity to switch tactics, which I feel quite a few of the other competitors suffer from. It's also a floater that doesn't look horribly treacherous for accidental suicides, as despite the holes there are lots of surfaces to hit upon if you do tumble of many of the edges. It just looks very polished and very well thought out. It doesn't try to do more than 20 brushes is capable of like some of the more ambitious entries, but because of that it isn't stretched thin. Very nice, and earns my vote.

Satmush by quazilin1

Didn't play this as I don't have Q2 installed. From the look of it I reckon it seems a bit exposed on the upper platforms though. Having some of the platforms overlaying others was a good call and should help provide some cover down below but I wonder if extending some of those columns up through the platforms to create some sort of obstacle on top of them might have made it more fun.

dm_reflex_contest3 by ReFlex

I don't know why the low gravity surprised me, as I was baffled at how gameplay was gonna work when just looking at screenshots and it totally makes sense once in-game. As an open space low-grav arena I imagine this is quite fun, but ultimately I think any level needs a bit more cover and opportunity to elude then ambush their foes, and here you're pretty much always in view of your opponent and thus denied that opportunity.

InCubed by sarge mat

I played with bots and had some fun on it. It's a bit open and featureless around the outer edges, but the central "building" breaks up line of sight nicely, and the little corridors give a bit of breathing room to take a little break from the carnage. Weird glitch (or even weirder design choice!) though; one brush that makes up the central building doesn't have collision, meaning you just fall through the floor and can run through the walls. Weapon placement seemed pretty good, I was definitely making use of all the ones on offer, and the bots performed well.

Miniature Sun Observatory by sentura

Could be more fun than I'd given credit for by looking at screenshots. The alternating gradient paths just feel "nice" to hop or drop between. I imagine quite a lot of suicides though by virtue of how narrow all the surfaces area. Trying to run around while focusing on combat is bound to result in a lot of blind drops off the edge.

VCTF-Glitch by skysilcox

I had a 4v4 game on this, which it handled pretty well, and could possibly even handle more. That is pretty impressive for a level made of 20 brushes! I can't say it was the most exciting CTF map around but it was certainly playable. Part of the problem is UDKs measly weapon set of course, but I did think that having just the single jump pad route between the bases made it a bit of a brute-force effort to fight through the bottle-neck rather than encouraging any tactics. After I'd captured their flag I had no choice but to just leg it along the mostly exposed, fairly straight and option free path home. I reckon a second route joining the bases would have made the level more interesting to play, but it is certainly playable as it stands, so good job. Oh, but that teleporter confused me - sent me through 3 times before I realised why I was appearing somewhere totally different! Looks kinda obvious once you know what it does, but before I did I was baffled! Also, once you've taken the teleporter there is an invisible wall blocking bullets you fire toward the enemy base, which caused me to suicide with a rocket. Oh and trying to jump onto a clearly accessible tower bit from there back toward my base saw me hit an invisible wall and fall to my doom. So a bit rough around the edges there.

Dolphin by SNDXR

I find this one hard to judge because I haven't been able to play it and I'm not experienced with L4D2 survivor mode. It looks to me like it's a bit linear though. The gameplay seems to be mostly limited to a single floor, which might be ramping upwards on a gradient, but it's still the same surface. The chunky ramp type thing near the rear looks to break that a bit, but I feel you coulda done a lot more like that. For example, making that white, windowed section near the front wider and putting another floor of it on top with a walkway around it. That'd be 1 extra brush but it would have added a pretty significant section to the layout.

Unnamed by Term!nator525

Sadly this one looks a bit too simple in floorplan to be much fun to play. No real choice in route at any point, so there's no real tactical decision making other than "shoot them if you can see them". I think if you'd had a few more brushes to play with it coulda gone a long way to improving the playability, but it definitely appears more of a screenshot map than a gameplay map, so don't take that too harshly

DM-Crystal by Vilham

I really wanted to check this one out in game but I don't have UT3 installed. It looks to me like a lot of fun! Perhaps a bit too much reliance on jump pads for movement but I can appreciate why they're needed, as there was no real alternative if you wanted to use this layout (which I've already acknowledged looks fun!).

ctf_20cubes by WhiteDevil

Creating a fun CTF map in 20 brushes is never gonna be an easy task, but it looks to me like you've done an admirable job of it. 2 distinct main routes, and some obstacles and connectors that provide rough variations on those routes, should mean there is room for a bit of tactics rather than a simple bottlenecked collision of armies. I did get a bit annoyed at getting snagged on the curves at the bottom of the ramps but it's understandable as clip brushes weren't free in the rules.

Outline by Zyndrome

Holy shit, that wasn't what I was expecting at all I figured the hexagons were fairly sizeable, and when you said moving I'd expected them to mostly stay still but occasionally shift around kinda slowly. Nope and nope! Absolutely tiny, this is like a bouncy castle of a level, and you feel pretty much entirely out of control as you surf across the top of this constant wave of movement. I actually think this makes it way more interesting! I wouldn't want to play it for any huge amount of time, but I think it'd be great fun for a short free for all melee battle. Seeing this in-game was the biggest surprise of the contest for me, so high five for that!

Quote from ReNo

Siteless265 by callguinness

I was a bit disappointed here, as I thought it looked like it'd play pretty well from the screenshots and I liked the look of it to boot. In the end I felt the optical illusion of the black faces against the black skybox confused and annoyed me more than adding to the fun, but that's always the risk with adding novelties like that. I also felt that it was a bit too cramped for UDKs movement based combat. Maybe it'd be better with human opponents though, as I found with the bots that almost all the action took place around the shock rifle which just became a spot to rack up splash damage kills. I easily snagged a monster kill in a 4 player DM just camping overlooking the shock rifle and repeatedly firing, which I don't imagine would happen against human players.

Thanks for playing and the feedback! I agree about the textures, and would put in "regular" textures with better lighting and a skybox if I had time (or decide to revisit it in the future). It would definitely be better with human players, as I don't think the bots will even jump up on the slanted pieces. Those positions are kind of important for getting the drop on people and sniping anyone going for or camping the shock rifle. Good point about it being cramped though.

Quote from ReNo

VCTF-Glitch by skysilcox

I had a 4v4 game on this, which it handled pretty well, and could possibly even handle more. That is pretty impressive for a level made of 20 brushes! I can't say it was the most exciting CTF map around but it was certainly playable. Part of the problem is UDKs measly weapon set of course, but I did think that having just the single jump pad route between the bases made it a bit of a brute-force effort to fight through the bottle-neck rather than encouraging any tactics. After I'd captured their flag I had no choice but to just leg it along the mostly exposed, fairly straight and option free path home. I reckon a second route joining the bases would have made the level more interesting to play, but it is certainly playable as it stands, so good job. Oh, but that teleporter confused me - sent me through 3 times before I realised why I was appearing somewhere totally different! Looks kinda obvious once you know what it does, but before I did I was baffled! Also, once you've taken the teleporter there is an invisible wall blocking bullets you fire toward the enemy base, which caused me to suicide with a rocket. Oh and trying to jump onto a clearly accessible tower bit from there back toward my base saw me hit an invisible wall and fall to my doom. So a bit rough around the edges there.

Thank you for taking the time to write all of this up! Unfortunately my aggressive brush usage began to give me some troubles near the end.

On my level (Outline), it is intended to be an only-melee level as ReNo suggests, but I couldn't get the damn weaponstripper and equipper working in time since it's been too long since I made any level (5 years of WoW does things to you) .

And since I like two/three-tone designs ... I feel like making more in the same style.

Quote from ReNo

DM-Crystal by Vilham

I really wanted to check this one out in game but I don't have UT3 installed. It looks to me like a lot of fun! Perhaps a bit too much reliance on jump pads for movement but I can appreciate why they're needed, as there was no real alternative if you wanted to use this layout (which I've already acknowledged looks fun!).

I did originally have the gravity low enough so you could jump between platforms but it made the players very floaty and slow moving when on the platforms, I realise now I could have just put gravity volumes between where you jump. My very original though was actually to use something like trigger pushes between them to act as giant jump pads, unfortunately at that stage I wasn't away of any volume that does that in unreal.

Quote from ReNo

Ludonarrative Dissonance by LunaranMY VOTE

I felt a bit uncomfortable doing so without having actually seen it in-game, however I voted for this map as strongest gameplay.

sweet! I don't have a clue how it plays either but I'm guessing "adequately."

Infinite brownie points for doing all these writeups, ReNo - classy and appreciated.