de_neutron

Neutron

de_neutron is a defuse map set in a modern nuclear research institute. After unsuccessful efforts to stop German nuclear power, the Balkans are hitting the the newly constructed facility, targeting either the research reactor (site A), or the military shipment in the loading bay (site B). The GSG9 have been sent in to stop the attack.

After a lengthy development, with a complete re-design or two, I'm finally releasing Neutron, and submitting it into the mapping contest. I gained quite a lot from my first Mapcore playtest here 6 months ago, and the /r/globaloffensive + mapcore competition playtesting really helped me nail some of the finer details.

Edit: Updated on 24 August 2015 with some newer screenshots, from version 1.1.

Link to the Steam Workshop: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/fi…s/?id=485441486

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Link to the Steam Workshop, again: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/fi…s/?id=485441486

Thanks everyone!

Thanks for the kind words guys!

Quote from jackophant

so this is finished, or...?

Yes and no. I feel like there is more that could be done to the map, but I've been working on it for so long, I feel a little burnt out about it. In addition, I start uni again next week, so I'll have less time to work on mapping anyway.

So I've decided to 'release' it, and do some visual upgrades/optimisation in future patches. No ETA on those though.

Wow, so much feedback! Thanks to everyone! Now, getting into it all:

Quote from Fnuggi

The map looks really good so far, but you definitely do another clipping pass.

I made a little video with some feedback.

More important tho, did you fix this issue?

(Note: I tried to remove the youtube video from the quote above, but I wasn't able to? EDIT: So, it glitched out, and THEN I could delete it. I don't know. Also, the quote in Fnuggi's post is not present in the quote above. Issues with the new forum software?)

Haha, clearly I didn't make it as Fnuggi-proof as I should have. I was aware of lot's of these boosts, but based on the Reddit playtest, and my own playtests, I haven't really seen anybody exploit them/show them to be OP. But you taught me about quite a few that I want to remove, simply for being gamebreaking. The boost at the end tho, thats absolutely insane. I'm so impressed with yours and everyones creativity in absolutely breaking the map!

With the windows above the rolling doors, I was happy with them being accessible, but lots of people on the Steam Workshop are saying they should be blocked out/made inaccessible. What do you guys think?

Quote from SotaPoika

It looks pretty cool with the simple and minimalistic style, but I just feel the bombsites look really boring and empty. They could use some more detail and geometry (that doesn't have to affect gameplay actually) to spice things up. For example, the platform at A seems like very basic geometry, no edges or trims. B-site's platform-to-ground transition is super simple too. The crates/boxes could have some other angles than 90 degrees to make it bit less "gamey". I know it might be realistic this way, but I guess it's a game so it could have stuff that makes it interesting looking even if it's not 100% accurate.

Yeah, a whole heap of the map is on the 90-degree map. I hadn't really noticed it until you've pointed it out to me, but I think you're right, I can 'spice' up some areas of the map by rotating things a bit. Thanks for the tip!

Quote from El_Exodus

When i look at the screenshots i always miss some contrast colour above headlevel. It looks too depressing atm. With some small orange/blue/green/yellow/(pink) textures you could create some interesting visuals in your level. Also the lighting looks like 50 shades of grey. Some spicey colourful spotlights could really make a difference.

I have totally no problem with clean looking maps. But it needs to look a bit more interesting imho.

€ Look at my PS skills, my PS skills are amazing!

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Quote from Squad

Have you considered using colors for player guidance? Here's a suggestion of what you could do (could be another color off course, I just picked something).

Also, I would add reflections to all the windows. Will make them look a lot better, as well as the overall area.

Other than that, this is coming together very nicely! Keep it up

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Yeah, I had been working towards making the concrete areas of the map a bit more colourful, but I wanted to avoid using too many colours in an area. Looking at the feedback that other people get here a lot is that areas should have a simple 1/2/3 colour scheme, with sparing use of contrasting colours for highlights. Looking at my scenes, I was trying to be conservative with my use of bright colours, so as to keep the aesthetic fairly simple. THAT SAID, some of the highlights you guys drew on I think would make great additions, so I'll definitely add some of them in the next patch. Thanks a lot guys!

Quote from onebit

Hidden Content

Wow, this is so thorough! This must have taken forever to do, so I'm very grateful that you went through and found all this.

• The first few screenshots are very useful, so thankyou for pointing those out to me.
• With the nav mesh issues, I wasn't particularly worried about the bots jumping the fence, because in my bot playtesting, when they try and jump the fence, they end up screwing around for ages, and end up walking around anyway. Given this, I deleted all the fence tops, and all the ramp-sides, to force the bots to take the long way around, because ultimately the long way around is shorter.
• All of these bomb-stuck places are terrific, thankyou! Were all of these bombs put there under normal conditions, i.e., without using noclip, and in only a couple of attempts? If so, then I have a lot of work to do, and thankyou.. If players need to cheat, or spend a lot of time perfecting the throw, then I'm not sure if it's worth fixing.
• With the floaters, lots of the prop_physics_multiplayer's are floating because if they are just 1 unit closer to the ground, shooting them makes wonky physics, where they sometimes disappear into the world. I tried to move things around so that the player wouldn't ever see this gap under normal playing conditions, but I'll have a closer look at the map to see if I can fix any of these!

Quote from tomm

Also, since the map is so clean looking I think you could make the top of the map a little more interesting and visually busy

lil photoshop

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I know it's kinda dumb to put electric towers on rooftops, but it's just an idea.

Not dumb at all! You reminded me that this was part of my initial vision. I used my university as a visual reference, and almost every rooftop on the campus is littered with smoke stacks, telecommunications equipment, or other greebles. This idea ties in well with Exodus's point that there isn't much visual interested above eye level, so this is definitely something I'm going to investigate.

Quote from Squad

No, indeed. But there are other possibilities:

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Terrific! Now I don't need to ride to uni to get reference images! Thanks pal!

Once again, thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts about Neutron. Looking over these comments, I feel more inspired to open up the SDK again. This is good for Neutron, but bad for my honours program!

I'll start working on a patch when I get some free time, which will hopefully be before the competition deadline!