de_berth

    Heya, throwing my hat into the ring with de_berth by grapen.

    The map is set in and around a fictional dry berth in Sweden.

    Graybox is done and dusted. Below is the first day of env art to give you a general idea of where I'm taking this. No overview created yet.

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    The overall mood and gameplay for this area has been nailed down. What you see is CT spawn, and the tracks cut through the entire map on a highrise platform. In the second art phase I'll revisit this part to work on finer details and final lighting. For now I'm moving on to work on the area to the right of this shot.

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    Quote from Squad

    4 hours ago, Squad said: Not a lot we can see yet, but what is there looks promising! Also interesting sky choice :) Subject to change?

    Yep we'll see about the sky, I made it before I realized we can't have diffuse shadows. Derp. The clouds are moving but I could still paint a hole in the mask where the sun is lol. But yeah, anything but clear blue Nuke sky should be good :D

    I'm back again with my regular an update. Been working on Berth for about 15 weeks. There's plenty left to do in the art department with some placeholder props to replace and new ones to create, but the map is entirely playable. Currently in the clip shop, release imminent. Once on the workshop I'll continue arting it up. Hope ya dig.

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    Quote from gav

    6 hours ago, gav said: With seeing your previous work i guess its going to be amazing . very nice

    Thanks, hope I won’t disappoint!

    The map has undergone a complete overhaul of the lighting, mood and color palette since the above screenshots. Should be workshop ready after the weekend.

    Workshop: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/fi…/?id=1216945465

    There's plenty more to be done! I'll get right on it.

    Pics:

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    Quote from Serialmapper

    1 hour ago, Serialmapper said: The content cannot be displayed because it is no longer available.

    Hehe yeah at one point I accidentally turned the A bombzone into a world brush and then back again, forgot that messes up the order =) fixed in the vmf

    Hi everyone I recorded a YouTube video about the map and some of the problems I think it faces right now and how to improve them. I feel my criticisms are valid but my word isn't gospel. Hopefully I didn't ramble on for too long :)

    The video:

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    Quote from Franco

    9 hours ago, Franco said: Hi everyone I recorded a YouTube video about the map and some of the problems I think it faces right now and how to improve them. I feel my criticisms are valid but my word isn't gospel. Hopefully I didn't ramble on for too long :)

    Thanks for the vid! I thought it was great. You bring up some good points that others have as well, so I'll be rectifying those for sure. The next version will be quite different from the current workshop version, so be sure to check back again near the contest deadline. :)

    Hey there. The holidays have been very busy for me and I also managed somehow to catch both sinisitus and bronchitis. Ain't nobody got time for that, so I kept going and prepared one last update for the duration of this contest: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/fi…/?id=1216945465

    Before screenshots, I figure I'll just type down the story behind the map, for anyone interested. Initially I didn't think I'd even participate in the contest since I needed to wrap up my previous project. Yet when we were two months in, during the last days of July, I did a quick sketch for a layout on a piece of paper and got to grayboxing. Two hours later I had this thing:


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    Much of it is still there today with some variation. With so little time remaining (3 months at this point, before the extension was announced) I needed to make the map as small as I possibly could, within reasonable expectations of 5v5 gameplay. The theme had to be something I was comfortable with, and where I could borrow a lot of stock content. My goal was to rush it and not have any dev stuff by the first deadline, I figured I had to in order to even have a chance at top 10. Admittedly I was a bit surprised at making it.

    As for the layout itself, I wanted to take some inspiration from Mill and Overpass for some familiarity. liked the idea of having a slightly faster route to one site, much like Overpass, although making it scary to rush. I also wanted to give CT's the option of playing more dynamically with different positions and crossfires like Mill. During the old era of CS, Mill was my favourite map and I still think the A site of that map is the most exciting site in the history of CS. Despite Berth being so compact and simple, I feel good about the options currently available to both teams.


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    I consulted with an old friend and teammate alike, did some iterations and carried on. I really wanted to go for an overcast environment and ended up bashing my head trying to make it work. Spoilers: it didn't. There were just too many issues that I couldn't ignore, not to mention everyone hated it (hehe). After a LOT of palette iterations, I settled for mostly green and yellow, ironically inspired by the Mako reactor of FF7 after doing a re-run of that.

    I had some closed testing along the way and felt I was on the right track, though after the faceit playtests I got some good feedback that pushed me to change some things up. Thanks everyone who played and provided feedback, also a special shoutout to @Terri for taking the time to go so far as making a video and heatmaps. In the past few weeks I've cleaned up angles, removed some overly cheeky boosts and provided more art. Now for the update:


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    I think most notably, the map should feel a little less spacious. I removed accessibility to the giant metal stairs for both teams to prevent cheap boosts and awkward angles. B-site has received a makeover for a memorable look. It's now possible to reasonably hold "catwalk" while also removing a nasty headpeek. Underpass is now more fair for T's.

    Where does that leave the state of the map? Well, I'm not done, I want to continue workin on the art, but that will have to wait until after the contest. Thanks everyone who took the time to check out my map, also thanks Mapcore and Faceit for this opportunity. Already looking forward to the next contest, whatever it may be.

    This map was one of my absolutely favorites in the gameplay category during testing. I really enjoyed all the wild and whacky elevation changes, sniper angles, playing jump-scout from CT spawn, a lot of memorable engagements and fun experiences to be had. In terms of criticism, if you want to do a level this fun and experimental with the angles, IMO you have to communicate what angles to look at and what angles to avoid, where threats are lurking, etc. In the last image above this post, for example, players have the ability to look down into the gutter area for information, but players in the gutter will rarely notice that. I felt that there were many situations on this map where it was possible to die without completely understanding how, and if you'd like me to go through and take comprehensive photos of that I will.

    On the art side, the only thing I really struggle with on this map is a sense of inconsistent grime. Some areas of the map feel more dirty and industrial, others feel artificially clean and empty. It seems like it would be smart to decide on an overall, consistent level of dirt that the level should have, part of that will be in deciding what kind of theme you're actually going for. I had a lot of fun playing this map.

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