Posts by text_fish

Game Designer.

Aha. I would strongly advise building WIP geometry using dev textures.

Quote from Lelouche

Hello.

I've been staring at these stairs, trying to figure out how they work. Why does half of the upper-set of steps just end in certain death? (or at least broken ankles).

The slope of the stair clips should match the angle of the stairs, as if you were laying an invisible plank over the top of them. It's to smooth player movement. You should also use toolsclip rather than toolsplayerclip, so that the nav mesh doesn't ignore it.

• Mazes are designed to make people feel lost.
• Players don't like to feel lost in Counter-Strike.

Your map shouldn't be designed to challenge the players, it should be designed as an arena within which the players can challenge each other.

Quote from ScottehBoeh

... why not have something new and different? ...

Something new and different, like a map where CT's teleport to various points around a cluster of buildings in deep fog, to rescue the hostages.

Honestly, I don't mind that you're making cs_insertion2 and kudos for getting Oskmos' blessing, but please stop arguing that you're trying something new.

After the obligatory pen and paper sketch, I block out all of the floor brushes, then I do a quick compile and run around (without bots) checking that the timings and encounter points are pretty close to what they were in my head. Then I throw down some basic walls and ceilings where necessary, and test with bots. Once I have this version, I'll often set a massive round limit and just let the bots play each other for a while whilst I'm doing something else, just to get a basic idea of balance. I'll then probably start blocking out a few details that might end up effecting gameplay (windows, cover, etc.) and then do further testing with bots and if possible with humans. In an ideal world I would then do a first pass optimization, blocking out the 2d skybox and a few hint brushes etc. but in reality I usually end up cracking on with more detailing and lighting than I should at this stage.

Quote from ScottehBoeh

My map, My rules.

I don't think anyone's accusing you of "breaking rules", or trying to tell you what to do. It's just honest feedback, and you ignore it at your peril.

The thing with "realism" in games is that most players' knowledge/expectation of many parts of the world has been informed by the pop-culture references that have gone before, so sometimes in order to suspend disbelief you have to bend or normalize the truth. If a few people on this forum think that your visual direction is a bit off, it's likely a lot of players in the wider community will as well, and that could hurt its chances at success.

What's more worrying to me is that it seems like you've borrowed the two most distinctive features of insertion (teleportation and fog), so you map is always going to be somewhat hamstrung by associations with that map (negative or positive). If I were you I would just take the teleportation idea and do something completely different visually to make it distinct. If you're trying to encourage players to invent interesting new strategies, copying another map that already did that probably isn't the right way to go.

But hey, your map your rules, so what does it matter what I think.

TBH I think that's fine, because it's clearly just a bit of a tribute to inferno, rather than trying to rip it off or ride its coat-tails.

Quote from besprutad

The most popular cs:go map de_dust2 has only one safe way to rotate aswell (through ct-spawn). I really don't see the problem. Same with inferno

Err, no. On Dust 2 you can (and most people often do) rotate pretty safely through xbox/tunnels.

Looks really nice so far.

The only visual problem that jumps out at me is that many of your light sources seem too high to adequately light such large spaces. This is most noticeable in the second screenshot. Were this real life, those light strips would probably be pretty useless when the sun goes down. They could also do with a couple more env_glows to really sell the feel of a lightstrip, I think.

Quote from pB.

This thread is so lonely

I often see people lamenting a lack of feedback. In my experience, slow/nonexistent feedback can be attributed to one or multiple of the following options:

1) You've not provided ample material (with sufficient info, such as labeling/describing overview features or design choices) for people to comment upon.

2) Somebody else has already provided all necessary feedback and it hasn't yet been demonstrably acted upon.

3) The project doesn't provide a sufficient challenge to people's expectations for them to feel they can provide valuable feedback. I.E. it's either "adequate but not remarkable in it's current state" or it's "terrible beyond the point of being savable" (I can assure you just from looking at your screenshots that it's not the latter in this case).

My advice would be to keep plugging away and updating your thread until somebody finds something to comment upon.

Just from looking at the overview radar, my initial feedback would be that your paths/routes seem very long and narrow, which will have the effect upon the player of making them feel like they don't have much freedom of movement, and may make timings feel longer than they actually are. You should also label the bombsites and spawns -- I can adequately guess where each team spawns, but I shouldn't have to, and knowing which site is A and B would make it easier for me to provide gameplay feedback if I had any.

Santorini's looking great. Are the roof's traversable? I don't remember feeling like there were any particularly roofy feeling routes in the graybox but I guess it's hard to tell some times. My only slight issue visually is with the bell tower with the funny blue roof (first shot). I realise it's "true to life", but in the context of a game it looks a bit like you got stoned and threw some crazy brushes.

Good work on the skin too, I just wish it was on a gun that I'd ever use.

Personally I've only ever been shocked by video game violence once, and that was a Mortal Kombat X fatality move where some guy gets sawn in half vertically. I found it gratuitous and unnecessary, but the worst part was the sound of screaming rather than the visuals. I think if it had happened in the heat of gameplay I would have been fine with it, but there's something a bit weird about using that sort of imagery as an end-game reward. Other than that, video game violence has never really bothered me, but I guess I can understand people who are put off games by the violence.

Quote from D3ads

Because violence against faceless demons is sexist... or something. :???:

Breaking news! Well known feminist expresses opinion on something that isn't to do with feminism. Men everywhere scared and confused. Sarkeesian unavailable to comment at present, presumed busy having thoughts about economics, or something equally wacky and non-feminist.

Quote from DrywallDreams

sorry but consoles are able to do 60 fps now lol checkmate. w/e have fun with your spreadsheets and shit i'll be busy playing real games with a controller that was specifically designed for beat'em ups and platformers lol!

FTFY. :>

I guess pixel-walking might be the wrong term, but I think a lot of people would frown on that, as it seems more like an exploit than a designed game-play element. Personally I would say 11:25 has the same issue. These days players expect small details to be clipped off, so a lot of people who do use it may just find it by mistake and use that privileged knowledge to their (arguably unfair) advantage.

Just to clarify here, I really enjoy exploits like this and it's fun to jump around new maps looking for interesting ways to traverse them, but that sort of "wildcard" design philosophy isn't so well suited to the competitive scene.

Your voice is fine! Nobody likes the sound of their own voice though. I guess we're all just too used to hearing our voices from the inside, so hearing it from the outside is always a bit jarring.

Just a little warning, the boost you do at 11 minutes would probably be considered an illegal pixel walk in a lot of competitive tournaments, so you might want to consider clipping it off, or making it look more intentional.

Trailer feels like it might have been rushed out at the last minute. Choppy camera work, WIP (presumably) voice acting and a lack of coherent narrative or theme broke the immersion for me. Hopefully this isn't a sign of troubled development.

Hi Kaka. As many people expressed in tonight's playtest, this map is frustratingly complex. There are a lot of minor paths, many of which seem to double back on themselves (presumably in an attempt at controlling timings), which gets very frustrating and dilutes the action. I honestly think that in a 5v5 situation there would be a lot of rounds where some players just never encounter an enemy. It's so complex I can't even begin to make very specific suggestions, but I'd start by deleting the tunnel network in the middle and replacing it with a more traditional "mid", maybe some sort of courtyard that the teams can fight for control over. At the moment there are so many corners and narrow corridors all over the map that the action seems to come down to "who dares to peek first". This is okay to a certain degree, but you need to cater to a number of different play-styles, so try and hone the major routes down to 3 paths and decide on a type of player that you'd like to cater to i.e. snipers, rushers and creepers.

I think Doom summed up the general player-mood pretty well when when he shouted in to the mic "WHY ARE YOU FULL FLANKING ME ALREADY?" so loud that my connection went down.