Posts by text_fish

Holy macaroni.

Is that going to be a playable map or just a scene FMPONE?

Thanks Malachi! The cliffs will probably be the very last thing I fix, partly because I keep adjusting the gameplay area around them but also because I absolutely loathe displacements.

Here are a few progress shots to show the direction I'm going:

[Blocked Image: http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/3318337467244798734/4F64B487A373D3EBF8D3EEEDA45CE1BBA72EEC74/]I've rotated the bridge slightly to allow T's to reach cover faster. You can also see the new T-Spawn in the background, lifted up on to the cliff and given some more substantial cover. And pretty party lights, which are pretty but may end up getting the axe if they jar too much with the theme.

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This is "Upstairs" which is now a one way drop for T's since I removed a catwalk from CT side. Happily this means I can introduce a little more darkness, although I'll probably still lighten it up a little bit.

[Blocked Image: http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/3318337467244807938/3BC225358DB6F5C9451091733F10B7E2B5FE4A17/]Connector, with ladder to "Upstairs". The old chainlink fences have been replaced by corrugated iron to simplify sightlines.

[Blocked Image: http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/3318337467244810614/367C03A8AE508713AD69C1E233C6ED7DA56C7827/]Here's a view down "middle" from the CT approach. CT Catwalk used to cut across it.

[Blocked Image: http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/3318337467244809255/C34FE7E170E736D1342EB6697C118382E746415F/]I reduced some of the clutter at B-site (now also CT-spawn) and put some lights underneath. I like the glow they produce but it's possibly a bit too "shiny" for the rest of the theme.

[Blocked Image: http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/3318337467244804654/866B05DAE7FDF685AFE5F875B9217DCAA2E772C2/]Last and most definitely least is this shot of middle and double doors viewed from "lobby". Not much has changed gameplay-wise, but I've been working on this bit this morning so it gets an honorable mention.

[Blocked Image: http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a155/text_fish/de_88mm_v2_blargh_zpsabc3a8af.png]

Oh and here's the latest overview! The most notable change to me is the catwalk beneath A-site, which now extends further around to catch clumsy players and has been extended to create an alternate route.

Most of the boosts from T-Spawn towards A-site have been nerfed. I find routes like that fun, but I get the impression most players see them as exploitative if they're not signposted for everybody, and also they reduce focus on the chokepoints.

The righthand door of "Lobby" has now been partially blocked so it can't be traversed but CT's can lob grenades through to T-ramp.

All in all gameplay (with bots) feels a lot tighter at the moment thanks to the moved spawns but also cleaning up sightlines, blocking peepholes and tweaking cover. Obviously a playtest with real, hard working folk is the only way to be sure so I'll "book" one when I get some time in an evening.

Thanks for reading/looking.

I really like bombsite A, it's exciting running around on roofs and such and there are all sorts of interesting grenade possibilities. For me bombsite B felt a bit out on a limb for both teams, mostly because both teams have a more long/complex route to get there but also because it's on the other side of mid which as people kept saying feels like a really dangerous route. I would completely redesign mid to start with -- maybe the building with bombsite B could extend further towards CT spawn or something, and I never really understood what game-play purpose the scaffolding serves.

If I were getting more experimental I'd try moving bombsite B out in to the courtyard to the north and scrapping most of the southern parts of the map, but it would be understandably painful to say goodbye to so much work!

Overall the playtest proved fun! I look forward to seeing how this map evolves.

Yeah I know, I was being facetious about the fact that they've said they won't be releasing a PC version (I guess they don't have enough money to produce the kind of highly polished, not-at-all-half-arsed PC ports they did for Halo ).

Not that I'm bitter or anything.

It's a toyBox exclusive, isn't it? Fourteen year old boys would throw their pocket money at a picture of a turd if you put $500m behind it and slap positive reviews all over the marketing material, conveniently quoted from the official platform magazines that have a vested interest so you don't even have to bribe them! Then, once it's reached "critical mass" the slightly less gullible consumers start pissing cash all over it because if it's sold X amount and the publisher can afford to show the trailer during the world cup it's GOT to be the best damn picture of a turd EVER!!11 And then once you've got the slightly less gullible consumers on board their friends will need to buy it as well so that they can all sit around in their living rooms looking at the picture of the turd and calling each other fagn00bzors over their headsets because, y'know ... that's what they do, isn't it?

Not that I'm cynical or anything.

Sathor, "Playtesting sessions are scheduled on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays", so I imagine the original schedule was an oversight as the 9th is a Friday? I might be wrong though!

Yeah, that's what I was thinking too, but maybe open it up to props as well as texture packs so that we have more to play with in the mapping challenge. So maybe in challenge #2, entrants choose from a small list of themes and then choose whether to do props, textures or both? I don't really see Challenge #2 as a challenge with a "winner", but I guess Challenge #3 would show whose work for #2 was most well received!

So I went a bit mad and posted a massive WIP thread for DE_88mm I got some really helpful feedback in the playtest, but I'd appreciate anything else you have to add as an afterthought as well! Thanks again for playing.

Vilham I can't see a thread for CS_Mass so I'll sum up my thoughts here! Firstly, I really like the theme. I've often wanted to make a church/cathedral level but never got past the initial layout stages, so well done.

At the moment I find the game-play a bit too spread out for my tastes, but TBH I have the same issue with Museum and Downtown, because I find they both lack any real "stand-out" conflict areas by dint of being a level designed around a setting rather than a setting designed around a level (seemingly). Both of those maps have gone on to be really successful though, so what do I know!? The only changes I can suggest to address this would be to add more signposting (hostages this way etc.) and add some complexity to the hostage areas, which don't really get defended because T's are pulled to more interesting areas. I don't know if I explained that well, but I hope you catch my drift!

Hey guys. Firstly, thanks for the play-test tonight, it was very enlightening to see how real people played this map (very differently to bots, but no surprises there!). Some of the criticisms were expected and and others I hadn't thought about, but they were all very helpful! I hope we can continue the discussion in this thread, which I'll aim to keep up to date regularly as I progress.

For those who weren't in the playtest, the version played tonight can be downloaded here! Please do have a run around and let me know your thoughts.

Now for some pictures to recap:

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This is the overview that you would see in the current build if I'd packed the BSP right!

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And with some annotations to make more sense of it. The red stars show entrances to "Underpass" and the white stars show entrances to "Upstairs".

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Bombsite B seen from above Middle

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A Bombsite with Double-Doors (DD in overview) below.

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Middle, with Catwalk on the upper left and bombsite B distant right.

[Blocked Image: http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/3334097529769080332/C8576180E74450D787FEE054E4BBD0894D18FAAE/]

Underpass from T-side entrance, looking towards windows with entrance to Staircase on the right.

[Blocked Image: http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/3334097529769082310/BCB456D9700FD3EC0822C532709218955C4203EC/]

Underpass seen from windows. Steps to the right lead to Bombsite B.

[Blocked Image: http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/3334097529769078440/E12BD0FC33D9229F930DA987A212E8A374D58654/]

Bridge in foreground. Underpass and "Side" to the right, T-Spawn to lower left and A-site top left. Steps and ladder in middle lead from Double Doors to Upstairs and Stairwell.

So ever since I decided to design a level around the idea of a bombsite really close to T-Spawn but out of reach I knew that it would divide opinion, so I have no doubt that it will never be really popular with the more "traditional" players, but level design wouldn't be fun if I didn't try out new gameplay styles, so much of my work to come will be in balancing the map more in T's favour than it is right now. I believe the two rounds played tonight ended on 7-8 and 3-8 in CT's favour, but the overwhelming opinion seemed to be that T's felt somewhat "oppressed" in the early stages of a round, due to the CT's achieving high ground too early, and long sniper routes from both bombsites. The options I plan to play around with tomorrow are:

• Move CT spawn to B site so they can't reach A site so quickly.
• Move T-Spawn up to ruins area and build huts/cover around them so that they're less exposed early on.
• Provide more cover on bridge from underpass windows, as well as smaller cover to dash between on side leading down to underpass.
• Block the underpass window closest to CT-Spawn and place high-vis background behind the other window so that snipers are easier to spot.

More general things on my to-do list:

• Cover up irritating peep-holes.
• Make wire fences separating middle from connector in to solid wall.
• Extend metal catwalk below A-Bombsite further around the site to make the site feel larger and reduce incidents of team-mates knocking each other off in solid mode.
• Generally increase the brightness/warmness of the sunlight.
• Fences around water/cliffs to catch clumsy players/bots.

I think the above changes will hopefully address most of the problems mentioned, although I may have missed some comments amidst the thrill of the fight so please do add suggestions and other feedback to this thread!

Here are some changes I'm thinking about, but not sure if they're really necessary at the moment:

• Get rid of Side-Hall to reduce complexity of B-Site when defending. It seems underused anyway.
• Move partition between "Middle" and "Connector" so that "Stairwell" leads to Middle instead of Connector.

Thanks again for your time.

Hm. The only time I've ever had black props was because I had the name/dir of the material wrong in the QC. Is it only when you pack it that they go black, or were they already like that?

Anyway, it's still playable so fine for the playtest. Looking forward to it!

Can I reserve a spot on the 6th and give it to FMPONE because I want to play his map and Tuesdays are best for me?

Vilham I just installed cs_mass and the pillars/vault trims inside are pitch black. Obv it's wip so maybe you haven't finished them, but just thought I'd give you a heads up in-case you need to quickly repack it.

I was just talking to Tomm in chat about mini-challenges (thanks to Minos' status update to your right) that could feed in to this project. What's the latest development here? Is the MOSI a thing yet?

Broad-themed Mini-Challenges would be a great way to grow this resource if it gets off the ground.

Hi 'RZL. here are some files for my playtest tomorrow:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/aco3e91b3f3f0hj/de_88mm.zip

I included the .nav file in the BSP because Vide doesn't seem to corrupt them like PakRat was supposed to -- is that okay? I can send it separately if not.

If anybody's curious, here's an overview of the map (don't worry, A's not really that close to T-Spawn, it's just an optical illusion ) :

[Blocked Image: http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a155/text_fish/de_88mm_overview280414_zpsfe6de038.png]

de_88mm's a working title, left over from when A site used to have a big ole WW2 era gun emplacement, but it got in the way of gameplay. Anyway, I'll make a proper WIP thread tomorrow and stop filling this place with rubbish!

Seriously?

At least get a placeholder up, you're losing valuable hits and bookmarks!

This looks really cool. I've joined on Facebook, but you guys really need to make a website because there are a hell of a lot of people out there who don't use Facebook or Twitter and you're missing out on their support!

Hi Vinneri. The layout's good fun -- I especially like having a bombsite in a big hole, you don't see that often!

The main problem with the map is still the theme (it was my first time playing the map, so not sure whether this has improved or not recently), in that there just doesn't seem to be a theme in the first place. You have a strange jumble of agricultural (tractors, barns, etc.), corporate (the big cube statues), urban/industrial (the hole bombsite and surrounding building site), rural (the cottages, clock tower and bunting) and airfield (the two control towers at t spawn?). I think you need to decide on just one theme and then think long and hard about how you can apply it to the rest of the map. If I were you I'd go with the agricultural theme, because at the moment those are visually the most polished bits. Once you've made that decision you can research real-world agricultural settings (google images and pinterest are both great for this sort of research) and that will give you an idea what to aim for. It may mean losing cool things like the cube sculptures and the control towers, but it will help the map overall. I think to do this you'll need to strip out most of the props and textures and go back to dev textures so that you can start from a clean slate.

So this evening whenever I hit the Chat Room tab I'm taken to a page with the following error:

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There was an error connecting with the chat room. Please notify an administrator. [#CSTART-0]

I can see that there are 6 people in the chat, so clearly it's not broken for everyone! The "Notify an Administrator" link is also broken, helpfully.

I've not had any connection problems tonight, so I don't think it's a problem my end.

I really miss sitting mostly in silence with the occasional NSFW interjections!

I took the liberty of playing with a little section of the overview. Firstly, I adjusted the "U" shaped connector I was badly describing in the playtest thread to make it less awkward to traverse. Secondly, I suggested a good position for a boost (quite a dangerous but rewarding one) and a spot from which T's could suppress the defending CTs with nades and covering fire. I don't know if gunhole's a word, and if it is it probably means something filthy, but oh well -- any gun-nuts/military folk know the correct term?

[Blocked Image: http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a155/text_fish/de_piazza_overview_zps1b84c1ea.jpg]

OrnateBaboon, I've been looking forward to playing that map since you first posted shots. I know some people think the Italy assets are overused, but when they're overused that well I don't mind, and that's the first time I seen them mixed with the gothic elements so good work there.

Layout-wise, there was one connector that I found a bit too right-angley. The one leading from T's left-hand route back to the lower part of mid. You could simplify this path by making it a V shape instead of a U shape without damaging timings, seeing as it's a pretty dangerous route to take early in the round anyway.

Visually I think the easiest option is to stick with the warm version, but the snow did look really good in some areas so with a bit of work you could pull it off. It may mean you need to lose the palm trees completely, or make a few new assets to tie them in to the wintery setting.

There was a clipped doorway on the route between the bombsite with the climbable crates, and T-Spawn which could do with a gate or something to show why the player can't get in there. Also, on the T route to the other bombsite, near the U shaped connector I was rambling about there are some very low barriers blocking scenery parts of the level. I realise it's just scenery, but if it looks like it should be reachable a lot of players will be annoyed that it can't, so maybe use higher barrier props, or add some barbed wire or something.

Anduriel, I loved lost temple in source so I was pleased to play it again in CS:GO. Are you one of the original authors, or did you get permission to port it?

I don't really like the addition of the connector in middle. It essentially connects to another connector, so it feels a bit superfluous and it undermines that midway point that the original did so well, whereby it really felt like the two teams were clashing along a straight line cutting through the middle of the map.

The scale of the map seems to have changed a bit as well. I guess the Source version could probably be badly spammed by molly's so that seems like a sensible decision, but I think the swamp route could be made a little narrower for more interesting grenade action.

Thematically speaking obviously it's difficult to tell where you're going as it's mostly gray box, but it seems like you might be doing a more Roman/Greek temple than the old tropical/Aztecish one?

Oh hi! I'll just C&P this from the playtest thread, probably better to discuss it here instead:

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Cincinnati, I realise you're not looking to change much geometry-wise in de_disruption but there are some big improvements you could make with minimal effort:

-Block off the long dead-ends with fences or something. Namely the long corridors near the underground bombsite. Not only do they give attacking players too many dark corners to check, first-time players will always be put off by having to turn back on themselves to return to "the action".

-On the big staircase with the orange walls, fix the B arrow that points the wrong way. I get that it's a passage that's been narratively blocked off so in the real world the signage wouldn't just disappear, but it's frustrating from a gameplay standpoint.

-Make the strip lights in the underground bombsite in to func_illusionary or clip them off so that defenders can't perch on them -- it's just one more awkward place to check in an already complicated space.

-T's start out in that really long canal path followed immediately by another quite long sewer path -- maybe break them up a bit with some more corners so that it doesn't feel like a really long trudge.

-There are lots of neat little holes to shoot people in other areas from, but perhaps a little too many. Options are great and all, but it will always feel unfair to get shot by somebody you have barely any chance of seeing. The most irritating one for me was in the afforementioned big staircase, a little square window on the right-hand side as you go up. The one at the top of the stairs leading down to the outside bombsite seems a little unfair as well, especially given how far away it is from the areas it covers.

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All in all I did have fun playing the map, but that was mostly in the context of a playtest -- it threw up some interesting discussions and was fun to analyze.