Posts by JorisCeoen

This map of mine is also part of a real-life location: http://csgo.gamebanana.com/maps/177542

You can see that the gameplay is stale and it's too complicated, but I'm sure that I can make it more balanced would I spend a few days of tweaking to it. Right now T arrives a little earlier than CT's at bombsite A, but that's basically it.

What I want to share with you as a tip is that you can really make it look like the real thing, it's just that you sometimes should make a few exceptions here and there simply because trying to recreate it a 100% is simply impossible. For instance, the middle part of the court of my castle was supposed to be a cutoff in real life, which I could have added but it would just obbliterate the A site, instead I designed an imaginary japanese terrace that openly seperates the incourt from where you can plant and where not. All of the interiors are also imaginated, since these where hard to see from pictures (the style is to be found everywhere, but the layout is hard, except for some plans which are unsuitable for gameplay).

Anyhow there are many things I need to do in order to make it playable, such as removing the entire upper floors, balancing T spawn etc.

I'm sure you can bring this to a good end, but start now in Hammer to see what goes and what doesn't.

I have personally found this to be one of the recent visually most impressive maps I have seen. I remember I played this a few months back and I was surprised it hasn't yet gone in an operation, as the gameplay seemed very solid already. Given that this contest is about may the best map enter an operation, I think this is one of the biggest contenders in the contest.

Good luck man!

This reminds of something Though this looks like it could be more promising. Since I was going to finish my cathedral later in the future, perhaps this one can inspire me on how the building can be integrated into gameplay (as that failed in my own project).

Well... I'm still stuck at the greyboxing phase. Better get my shit done in what... 2 and a half months? I suppose everyone gets the point. But yea, I mean, if there are no rules (= moshpit of chaos), then there's nothing that can stop you. Obviously the looks are ahead of everything that is possibly imagineable in the contest. There's absolutely no way that anyone can beat that.

The layout though is as has been said many times, very complicated. My guess would be to simply cut off any rooms that are unnecessary. Admittedly I haven't played the very last version, but I remember playing one of the middle version that were simply incredibly complicated. I had no idea where to go even with a minimap available as there are so many ways to go.

The biggest problem, however, is that because you already finished/detailed so many of the rooms and layouts, and probably tried to make it reference as much as possible to the real thing (which is something I have experience with), it's going to be a hell of a lot of work to move or change stuff. However, considering that Valve has even done the effort to contact you means they are interested in your submission for an operation. There is, as far as I have had contact with operation mappers, no godly reason Valve would even look into your direction let alone contact you if they don't want your map in an operation. That is the simple truth. So, if I were you, and I guess that's what you're going to do, I would try to do everything to simplify the layout.

So yea, on paper if you change a few rooms, and move a prop here and there, I'm sure you can run away with a first or second prize, and get into any of the future operations.

Haha, nice church going on there! Reminds me of my own map xD

Quote from FMPONE

Incorrect. Any map which has not been featured in an Operation, by a mapper who has not been featured in an Operation, is fair game.

Ok that clears it up, thank you!

I'm sorry but I though old projects where fair game, not completed maps?

Hey, finally man, you got your place in the operation you damn well deserved it!

The version on GameBanana can be found here: http://gamebanana.com/maps/185591

Space Marble Unlimited

So, this is a little bit of an exotic spin-off gameplay type in the CS:GO world. What I'm talking about is my Marble Track that was entered for the GameBanana's Marble Track Redux Contest (http://gamebanana.com/blogs/17823).

The idea for this marble track comes from nothing more than the fact that planets are round, making them one of the most perfect marble balls to use (and a big thanks to James Hastings-Trew of which I received permission for using the planet textures in my project).

Before we hop onto the images: Support this map on the workshop (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/fi…s/?id=449205537)

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It currently features:

• An unlimited supply of marble balls that can manually be added
• 9 planets and sun + moon totalling 11 different marble balls
• An extensive track that is completely regular and looped
• Fully automatic. Add balls and enjoy!
• Anti-stuck & anti-fall systems (which are as good as they can be)
• 5 soundtracks which are played randomly

Regardless of efforts, these are some of the things that could happen:

1. Balls can get stuck into the collision at the divider. They will be thrown out until it's free again.
2. Balls can get piled up in the blockpart just before entering the first ferry wheel. They WILL unpile them, it could even take up to a minute, but thanks to the extra siderooms added they can now unstuck themselves. Happens rarely.
3. Balls can potentially get stuck in the ferry wheel ONLY if it's overloaded with 3 or more balls in a slot. Happens very rarely but if it does, don't worry as it will spew them out until it rotates again.
4. Rarest case (only saw it happen once) is when 2 balls collide at the opening slot at the second extremely long push up (after having gone down the starspiral in the cylinder. It DOES undo itself but could take over 10 mins (as it was for me). If you don't want to wait that long, restart the map (or kill yourself).
5. Very rarely, a ball may block the rotator before the long star cylinder, causing a pileup in the previous track and blocking all balls. Waiting out more than 5mins is possible, but it WILL unstuck.
6. Randomly, a ball might lose collision. This is a CS:GO specific behaviour and cannot be fixed. It happens so rarely that you'll probably won't even notice unless you were close by.

Load up the map, and noclip yourself (enable sv_cheats). You can remove your HUD and viewmodel with the button(s) below the planetary spawning platform. (Where also a (useless) noclip and music muter button are).
Enjoy as you go along the track. Observe the balls and how they travel through the tracks. You cannot move the balls nor block them in any fashion. The balls are server sided, henche why there's only one human slot...
You can add extra balls as many as you want! There is one button per planet. Additionally, there is a large button on top of the spawning platform to spawn 10 marble balls at one time. Spawning until the entity limit is reached is at your own risk as it will crash the game and send you to desktop.
Music will not play if you have music on 0, but if you have music enabled and want it muted anyway, there's a button for that.

I tested up to 500 marble balls at which point my FPS runs at a stable 100 (as opposed to 224). As soon as balls pile up somewhere (see aforementioned points) it can go to well under 5fps. Waiting out helps in almost all cases, except for one of them listed as well. Other than that, you can keep on adding until your PC is satisfied. Depending on the CPU, it can vary wildly.

I hope you'll like the map. If there is anything you'd like to say or bring feedback, that's always appreciated!

Quote from Pampers

the van also illustrates that the overall scale is wrong

Yea that's spot on. After having received that same opinion from multiple other people I have decided to retake the entire Bombsite B. The 2 main reasons that it currently looks like this is because of the house on the right (on that picture) and the giant door. I will keep the door although lower the height and size, and the house on the right was a creative block during the development phase so I will completely remove that one and see what I can replace it with.

Quote from tomm

that is a very odd place for a van.

Indeed, it's gone for the next version Like I said (or at least on GameBanana, ALL the giant crates are currently placeholders. It's still BETA so I have to use something for cover which in this case were those crates, the bombcrates and that van over there. The truck is ment to be there though (the longnose one) and normally the back of that gate is open, but I had to close it to hide the fact that right now there's no 3D Skybox.

But you're right, it's out of place there.

Quote from TheGuma

I love the idea of pink in your map, but unless it's Japan full of sakura trees I don't think it fits well.

Haha, you should do Attack On Titan theme, that would be amazing. Imagine the skybox being huge walls around the map.

One more thing is that on the second picture the balcony to the right has no platforms to support it. How does it hold on cinder bricks? Add some wooden beams, they would also serve as detail.

Map lacks some trims as well.

Lastly, if you work with custom textures you might want to look into adding normal maps and $detail to them.

Go to Valve Developer Community to look these things up, it will make your map 10x better.

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Hey thanks for your feedback! I am currently redoing the whole map with baking textures, normal maps, specular maps etc. I agree the red/pink slate textures aren't the best choice, that's why I'm redoing the whole scenery it's gonna take a while, but in the end it's going to look 100x times better.

That balcony doesn't make sense indeed. I kinda ended up on a dead end for that house and didn't have time anymore to correct it before the deadline (literally submitted until the last second).

The trims where planned as info_overlays, but again, I didn't have time. On a 31-day period there are things you can and can't do, and those fine details unfortunatly had to be left out

I know the SDK Docs out of my head In the past when I was still working with Hammer I looked it up everyday. It's just that currently I didn't really see the greatest benefit in adding bumpmaps with the size of the textures (in other words many other things were at that time more important). Shaders can be added by matter of minutes anyways. (badly generated ones yes, which I won't do now, but I could have done that)

The 3D Skybox is on its way. It will be visible through the doors of the bombsites (technically I had to cover them to hide the fact that there's none right now) as I will remove them once it's built. I will definitly make houses pop up above the lower city walls, but right now it's more important to refine the houses which now imo look too bland. (I kind of want to head towards an art style similar to FMPone, or at least to the Texture and Model artists FMPone hires).

The current version has improved graphics, a radar, cubemaps and more detail. I'm still working on a new iteration that will feature soundscapes, alternative routes and limited acces to the river (only for accessing alternative routes).

Whenever that version is live, I will scedule a playtesting moment on the testserver and hopefully we'll be able to work from that moment on towards a final version for competitive/casual gameplay

The next version will feature:

• Improved navigation file
• Improved radar file
• Soundscapes
• Improved lighting
• Improved cubemaps
• Completely realised 3D Skybox
• Gameplay: Alternative route to B from CT spawn to balance out extra T entrance to B
• Gameplay: Alternative route for T to A via the water towards the 'A arches hall'
• Gameplay: Complete cover between long B when CT and T almost instantly meet when using snipers (my last attempt to this still failed...)
• Gameplay: CT water wheel house will be refurbished for extra cover and better lighting.
• Optimisation

Quote from Nestakyo

I shall name this the Pokéball layout!

Haha, why xD?

Quote

Hey, I'm sure you meant the 19th and it's already fully booked, sorry. Take a look at the schedule to find a date that is open and fits you. Also, what deadline are you talking about?

Oh yes, indeed, I ment the 19th. The deadline, unless extended, will be this Sunday. I kind of expected it to be fully booked (though didn't see a scedule) so this is entirely my fault. I should've playtested earlier. I will playtest after the deadline of the contest instead and rely on the feedback of other testers first then

The deadline of the Building Bridges contest on GameBanana, which can be found here: http://gamebanana.com/contests/58

Thanks for the heads up, and I'll book for another date instead!

Quote from onebit

Seeing as you're two people to finish this in 4 days I suggest one of you do the brushwork and the other does the props, which are easily transferable between files.

Well Shawn Olson is the programmer behind the program in which I designed the level, but didn't actually work on the level (brushwork and props) at all, so for finishing stuff up, it's a one-man job However I'm confident that I'll be able to do all of that in time (at least what is necessary to have). It's more that I'm willing to have the most optimal gameplay feeling possible at the time of the deadline.

I'm not sure if it's free, but can I have a playtest tomorrow, thursday on the 18th March (at 21:00 CET) for my map de_pontifici? (). It'll be the only time I can playtest before the end of the deadline. Otherwise, no problems

(I'll make sure to have a radar and 20 playerslots ready by tomorrow!)

Hello everyone, I'm here with a new map called de_pontifici

I was adviced to bring my map here to get feedback on playtesting, especially since adding cover and decently putting props in is one of my weaker aspects. For other references to older work of mine, you can find this here. You'll instantly notice that making bombsites isn't particularly my talent and that's why I need the words of experienced users that are familiar with competitive gameplay.

I did prepare the timings it takes from getting to the bombsites on either teams and made sure that the bridge is currently the main advantageous way to go from Bombsite A to B or vice versa.

Workshop Link: TBA

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And the basic layout for the moment:

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Right now these are the following things I know that are left to do and should not be mentioned in terms of feedback:

• Graphical artifacts on some brushes
• Some visible nodraw faces, I know all of them, please do not mention
• Dev textures
• Missing props
• Non-reflective water
• No cubemaps
• No radar
• No sufficient detail
• No effort in lighting done yet
• No bumpmaps or shaders to fancy the map up
• No optimised navigation
• No optimisation at all

These are the things I seek feedback on:

• Gameplay flow
• Coverspots
• Bombsites
• Exploits and glitches
• Should the water be trespassable, or deep instead (deep = dying when falling into it)?
• Texture combinations
• What do you think are interesting types of props for a medieval theme like this one? You can mention a specific part of the map with a certain item in mind as well!

I should note that all of the crates and stuff currently implemented in the map are placeholders for where I thought cover needed to be. The final version will include custom made props that fit a medieval theme.

That's it for now, I hope that while people playtest the map, they'll have fun, and hopefully you can ignore the bombhiding spots as I haven't done anything at all right now to prevent this, so please do not intentionally hide the bomb in the many places where it can be done

Workshop link coming ASAP

I didn't yet say it here, but I released a small fix version that prevented an exploit to get onto the roofs a B.