Ive been playing this map a lot lately and feel like the T-spawns are way too close together. Today I was dealt two teammates who liked to go afk frequently and the rest of us would end of getting stuck on them in the first second of the round.
I feel like if you moved them about 16 units or so away from each other it would result in less bumper car movement without impacting the encounter timing too much.
Quote from Lizard2 minutes ago, Lizard said: Can you finally realise that foreign special forces do operate on foreign soil very often?
My point is the GSG-9 fit better. Yeah the SAS probably have operated on German soil before, doesnt mean they fit the map better then the GSG-9. I also believe the GSG-9 would have better visibility on the map then the SAS.
I really liked the use of the animated props to show the car assembly line, I cant think of another map that has done big animated set pieces like that before. The map really drives home the feeling of a modern car manufacturing plant. I also really like how you put a lot of detail into the ceilings and upper levels, its very nicely detailed especially since most players wont look up.
However I do agree the map starts to get confusing with its color coding choices. I also noticed the out of bounds area were bizarrely low detail, such here outside of ct spawn where the grass tiles way too often and most things seem to made out of basic blocks. I get that getting the map released was more important then spending time on area most players wont look at, but they do contrast harshly with the extreme level of detail in the playable areas.
This is also an extreme nit pick but I found the choice of factions for the player models to be really odd. So this map is set in Germany, but the British SAS are the cts for the map, when there are German GSG-9 models in the game. I think the GSG-9 might even improve visibility a bit since they are a way darker shade of blue then the SAS who almost match the shade of blue used most commonly around the map. The Anarchists also seem to be a bit odd of a choice for the Ts, obviously they have great visibility on the map, but some young Americans trying to bomb a German car factory seems a bit odd. To me it seems that the Professionals faction would have been better suited for the theme, they seem to match the workshop story much better then the Anarchists.
"As a last resort, the other manufacturers have contacted "experts" who will try to destroy the Mass Cars factory"
Im not sure how well visibility would be using the Professionals do to them use a lot of white in their color pallet, but I do think it would be worth looking into.
Overall though, its is definitely your best map yet and I like to see that you have continued to improve as an artist after all these years. Im excited to see your next project.
Small update, I havnt used this thread to document progress as I was hoping to. Ive found working on this map tends to be a lot more multiple small iterations as opposed to larger individual ones like im used to. So far the map seems to be playing well and ive received a lot of valuable feedback via Mapcore's playtest system. The layout has evolved for the better entirely because of the feedback I received from those playtests.
Here are some WIP of the art stage. A lot of the things are still up in the air lighting wise. Obviously a lot of areas are still very dark as im not quite sure how im going to light the interior places. Im also having trouble getting rain to act consistently and im unsure how successful an overcast sky will be, players tend to like their sunshine. I may end up dumping the rain for a sunrise/sunset if testing continues to prove unsuccessful.
Outside/yard
T side upper
Bombsite from ct main
Bombsite from upper
T spawn
Quote from blackdog9 hours ago, blackdog said: I guess there’s not enough to do (no vehicles, no special traversal), and that the formula is a bit too harsh (compared to say Apex Legends where you can take more damage and respawn).
Have you played DangerZone since march 2019? It has special traversal in the form of the exo jump item and bump mines. It also has respawning, some would argue the most forgiving respawn system out of any BR game.
You know the grand majority of competitive pool maps were maps were made by hobbyists in the 90s right? Nobody back then knew what constituted a good map, they just made things they found fun with the very limited level editor they had for goldsrc. Nobody but the community chose what maps would still be popular today. Dave Johnson didnt sit down and think about 25 layers of level design theory when he made dust2, he just threw shit at a wall and found things he liked. He didnt set out to make the definitive CS map layout, he stumbled upon it.
Now 20 years later you cant really change the basic foundation of a map very much before it becomes something new entirely. Even though it is easier now to make maps at non 90 degree angles, they cant just go back and adjust old maps to be less square. Nobody here chose what maps would be in the tournment pool, no one here likes how stagnant csgo maps have become. We have to cater to a community who doesnt like new things, You can ask anyone here and they probably at some point had some new, revolutionary design that played well and would be a total refresher to the map pool if added, what happens? Players see a map they dont understand from the first 5 seconds in game, then quit and downvote on the workshop.
About the only game changing map to ever make it into the game was Insertion. Want to know what happened when players who didnt like new things played insertion? They left negative reviews for csgo and then went to the map creators profile and left him angry messages. You can look at Insertions workshop page and see in the months when it was in game people leaving essay long rants about why it sucks and massive dislike spam.
Its not our fault that the only new maps the csgo community want are old ones theyve already played. Mappers have tried their best to make less blocky and more out-there layout ideas, but the more you deviate from the dust2/mirage layout, the less an average player will like the map. And when theres a total 8 slots max a year for new maps to get in and half the time those slots will be filled with old maps from previous operations, you can see why mappers have just stuck to the standard layout because its their best chances of getting in the game.
To some it up, no one here wants to keep remaking dust2, they just have to in order to get players to play their map.
Quote from Slimek20 hours ago, Slimek said: I'll let others address the other issues you mentioned but this one specifically caught my eye. Every snow texture on our map is custom, we don't use Monastery or CSS snow.
Well I looked at it again and you are right the snow on top of the tunnel is custom, I thought it was the css snow.
I also noticed that all of the ski lift hubs are missing either a top texture or a continuation of the beam so you can see through the bottom half. Also despite clearly being metal the hub prop itself just makes generic step sounds when you walk on it.
The map is definitely great, however the amount of chefs in the kitchen definitely starts to show. I feel there is a lack of cohesion between certain areas. Some buildings feel out of scale in general, somethings are overly detailed, some things are empty. I also find it strange how different snow textures are used and their implementation, you have nice custom hd snow, the that one hd snow from Monestary and those are usually worked in really nicely through blend work and custom props. Other times you have the low res snow from css that its just plopped on top of something with obvious edges from where the displacement go underneath a surface. The tunnel in particular has a basic geometry and no finer details while the rood is just a snow textures applied on flatly with no transition between it and the walls and no depths of the snow itself.
I also worry about areas that look so similar. The ski lift hubs in particular lack identifying details. Something like a different colored paint stripe and a number to make them distinct would be nice, I also noticed how the bakery building with the militia food stack in the back was used twice with next to no changes in between the separate buildings. I honestly though I had somehow gone in a circle the first time I exited one and entered the other. Them being that similar is not good for gameplay.
Lastly I noticed a large discrepancy in asset quality. For most of the map you have a lot of nicely done custom models and well crafted structures. Others use older, extremely low quality props that are just sort of crammed in. I noticed how the church uses so many Vostok assets and just sort of sticks them on, its honestly hard to tell the church is more then a basic cube at times because of how little depth he building has. Like wise the crusty food stacks and DoD Source breads in the bakeries contrast harshly with the HD assets used around them. I think using old assets is fine usually but they just dont work here, something as simple as upscaling the textures would go a long way.
I applaud you for not making an island however where the boundaries of the map are could be better defined, alot of the slopes meant to be too steep to climb I know I could climb if the invisible wall wasnt there. Something simple like a barbed wire fence or hedge would mark it better.
As a last note, not something necessarily important. But I found the location to be a little inconsistent. I would assume its set in Germany based off the German language signs. But so many areas also have signs in English and while I guess the assumption is that English speakers have set up shop to make the place into a Danger Zone test area I find a lot of the sign work to be unnatural, like there a lot of red Dangerzone signs put in areas that dont seem to mean anything. Like why would they just put up random Signs related to Danger Zone around town and in the ski lift hub, the signs work in the under ground areas but not so much in the old civilian areas. Like wise the amount of signs telling you to watch you step or put on your respirator outside of the under ground areas seems nonsensical. Again its nothing major but it comes off as uncanny running around in game.
I kind of agree with Shawn to an extant. I dont think anyone would try to argue that you need to pick 1 specific town and only use that for references, but just using "rural America" is way too wide of a net to cast. To me it would sort of be like early games that would just make a level set in general Asia with no 1 specific country in mind. The result is that you got the theme across and most people wont care, but people who live there will be confused by the strange mix of cultures that dont really go together.
Same thing applies here. If you just pull from anything that can be considered "rural America" you'll get the point across to players, but people who live in America will know somethings off. And yes obviously the CSGO playerbase isnt exactly a group to care about how accurate a theme is but I dont think thats an excuse not to try to make the theme believable. I think youll get a more consistent feel if you narrow it down to 1 specific state and take reference from there. Everything you've done far certainly feels like a Montana/Oregon type town. You could maybe make Indiana work as well. The main problem im seeing comes from both the houses and the trailer park as presented.
Trailers dont look like that, anywhere in the US. I get that you might just be using a place holder material, but that type of metal is not wasted on mobile homes. Likewise you'd be hard pressed to find a trailer park thats as run down as you've presented but also has a concrete foundation for nearly every trailer. But while Trailer Parks are pretty ubiquitous to any US state those houses are not. You would be hard pressed to find those houses in any rural area, let alone ones that feature buildings like what you've shown. Those type of houses are generally found in newer suburbs in large groups. Not in older rural towns. And yes both of those are nitpicking but as someone who lives in America I know those things dont look right.
Something similar to these houses are about what youd see in a rural area in America.
You cant really take a house from northern Maine and make it work in southern Arizona. Likewise you cant take a house from just anywhere in rural America and expect it to just work in any area. For instance, houses in Rural Montana tend to be flatter and have a wider area while houses in Rural Iowa tend to be longer and have more focus on strong foundation and basement with little or no second story. They are both designed this way to account for the weather that affects those 2 very different states.
Now granted it could be if you threw all the elements youve shown into a layout and terrain they might work better, I imagine there some missing element we arnt seeing that could tie all these together.
I am how ever concerned about gameplay in the haunted house. A 3 story house with multiple tiny windows for people to snipe out of on every floor coupled with inconsistent dark lighting through out the complex will not lend it self to fun gameplay. In my own DZ map I had a 2 story building with lots of windows to shoot from and a darker interior, it just didnt work because people on the outside would never be able to realistically counter people on the inside who could come from any number of windows. Unless the haunted house is the center piece building equivalent to the Kasbah on Sirocco or the Military Base on Blacksite I dont think it could really think its going to work outside of a major overhaul to gameplay and visual design.
In any-case you're a very talented artist and im sure it will at the very least look great when the final product is released.
Quote from blackdog6 hours ago, blackdog said: I haven’t followed much but they haven’t been dominant this year and last part of last year. I would like to see them back and competitive just on the basis that Thoorin was moaning and criticising them skipping tournaments, and had already declared the Liquid era… guess what them guys started chocking hard and (as I had my money on) they came back big with Vertigo.
having them win a fourth would cement the status without this kind of stupid arguments
Is proving thoorin wrong really worth ruining another major? Hes wrong all the time, he said it was the liquid era last major and then they bombed out. Adding another point to the already triple digit "Thoorin being wrong counter" does not make up for a 4th boring major in a row.
Quote from blackdog1 hour ago, blackdog said: Wow the Astralis team is being shaken as of late:
hope they can return in time for the next major
I dont, them not being a complete team means it will actually be interesting to watch the major. For the first time in years we might have an exciting finals.
Sawmill (which may change names over time) is a CSGO wingman map im working on for the source discord wingman mapping competition. Its currently in very early greybox stage and im hoping to improve on how it plays before I move on to decorating it. The greybox is currently avaible on the workshop and will be having a playtest soon. The overview looks pretty square right now but I will make it more interesting as time goes on. Ive been having a lot of fun playing against bots testing it so im interested to see how well that translates to real players.
Radar, CTs spawn bottom, Ts spawn top.
Spoiler
Bombsite
CT spawn
T Spawn
Outside path
Upper Path
Upper path view onto bombsite
Quote from FMPONE8 minutes ago, FMPONE said: Here's my new Unreal Engine 5 hostage rescue map
How fitting that your first CSGO map was a hostage map, and now what seems to be your final map is also a hostage rescue. Gone full circle.
Quote from blackdog8 hours ago, blackdog said: what have I missed?
Youre a viking this time. Vikings are so cool and epic. Buy the promotional Vikings TV series DLC mission pack™️ to be even more cool and free like a viking. Pre order now to get 5 in game currency points.
I find it a bit odd that the assassin this time around is a viking while the villains are the English, at least I think thats whats happening in the trailer. The vikings are pretty much unanimously the bad guys in any story that isnt by the vikings, they had no mercy (and definitely would not have spared the mother and children like he did in the trailer), slaughtered and destroyed anything and everything and would go back on their word in just about every instance.
They are invading England here, its not exactly a great time to live there but the vikings are definitely the more oppressive force. They are invading and slaughtering peasants and the king seems to be fighting a losing battle, yet the protagonist is on the vikings side? It would make way more sense if the Assassin was English. From what I understand about AC is that the main protagonist is living through lives of his ancestors. Of course the sheer diversity in his lineage is a little out there, but I somehow doubt a viking came in to play. They were pretty hegemonic until they started pillaging other lands. Given that other games list Ancestors who seem more pure English it would make more sense for the Assassin to be English in this time.
It would make for a more interesting story too (granted we dont know anything about this ones story yet and its a yearly franchise game trying to do a narrative which never works out). The assassin wants to kill the corrupt king whos trying to bring all of England under his rule, but has to set aside this vendetta and ally with the king to defeat the common enemy, the vikings, who will wipe out England and enslave the survivors. Add some story beats here and there about the how the king somehow brought the vikings to England in his stupidity, show some vikings who arnt monsters, throw the player through a loop about who to support.
Instead it seems more, king is pompous and bad, vikings are epic and free, go kill knights and soldiers and king, vikings are really cool arnt they. Heres a 40 minute unskipable cutscene intro for the modern day descendant, now we wont do anything with him until the last 5 minutes of the game where its revealed that in fact there will be for sequels.
My personal prediction is that Valorant will be similar to Overwatch in how the game feels. Itll feel good with quirks for the first 6 months or so, then itll be really good for about a year, then the constant cycle of needing to add a new map or hero every other month to appease the hyper side of the playerbase will takes it tole on gameplay until even the biggest fans and pro players think its gone to full shit.
Ideally Riot would learn from Overwatch, but it doesnt seem that way. Im also not looking forward to the ultra pander cosmetics they seem to be hinting at, having death animation cosmetics is a low bar thats now been set.
Quote from Interfearance48 minutes ago, Interfearance said: @fewseb I was going to make an argument that the long que was due to the maps being in scrimmage, but then I checked my csgo. Anubis, now moved to "competitive maps", has a significantly shorter que time. Better than 3 active duty maps in fact. It seems that valve has given this map some limelight and it has spoken for itself. However, with the way valve has operated, and coming back to my original point, the map will probably be cycled out like workout and such. They need to make it active duty; its outperforming vertigo, train, and nuke in que time. If only they gave all maps this chance, moving to the map pool based on performance, the active pool would be dialed in with awesome maps.
You have to remember the pro scene threw a fit when they added vertigo into the pro pool, A map which at the time was constantly being updated based on feedback and still had 7 months before the next major. Pros are the same type who look at community maps and think they are all about looks with no thought into layout or grenade throws. Id like it if another community map could earn a permanent spot in the game like Agency or Cache, but I dont think well see a new community map ever end up in the pro pool.
Quote from Interfearance1 hour ago, Interfearance said: There is no excuse for them not to introduce fresh maps.
No one plays them. Thats the big problem, not that valve isnt introducing any, but that people wont and do not want to play them. New custom maps used to be the selling points of operations, but around bloodhound-ish and getting worse from there, there has developed a pretty common complaint that players dont want to play the community maps. They didnt want do it for missions then and they dont even want to try them now.
Its why the que times for chlorine and anubis maps that have been in for just 1 week have already gone to 5 minutes.
Why is this? Because the playerbase thats still left playing csgo 7 years in arnt the ones who made unboxing videos and showed off their flashy skins on ever account they own. The people still left are the ones who like to play competitively. Since Valve updates the map pool about once a century and usual the map being added is a known one. Being good at the game is no longer just having good aim and reaction time, its knowing ever hyper specific grenade throw and every weird trick for each of the 7 pro pool maps. Thats all people want to play, those 7 maps, usually less.
As if people not wanting to play maps taking up valuable server space wasnt bad enough. Prior to scrimmage, rank skimmers who used to inhabit the likes of old Vertigo and militia back when they were in comp play exclusively community made maps since people are less likely to know them and that allows for those ranks skimmers to rank up quickly since they have the home field advantage. Even now, scrimmage maps still fall victim to these types.
So really, Valve see no return on Community maps, and its essentially a money sink for them. Now you can say that Valve could do more to encourage people trying new maps and I would agree with you, but if they were going to do that, they would have done it by now. The obvious solution would be to punish people who play the same map over and over again and to reward people for trying unfamiliar maps. Getting more elo for winning a new map, while losing less for losing a new map. Meanwhile if you lose on a map that you play all the time your elo takes a bigger hit while winning adds very little elo. Of course valve would never do this because that would cause a large (and somewhat fair) backlash from the community. The most we might hope for is xp boosts and reductions instead of elo.
Quote from Vaya2 hours ago, Vaya said: the valve system for paying community creatives has ironically made a lot of people scared to get 'too creative' levels are beautiful but the gameplay is often on the bland side of safe in my opinion. YES LIZARD I REMEMBER THE FAN
Way back when CSGO first came out people really wanted new maps. They wernt too responsive to Valves attempts, but they seemed to love Operation maps. 7 years later and the demographics have changed, people dont want new maps, they want less of the maps they already have. Anytime people or pro players talk about what new maps they want its always "Aztec, Tuscan, Mill, Santorini, Season, Forge, Ruska, Sub-Zero" All maps that are either from the 1.6 glory days or were in CSGO at some point. Very rarely if every do you hear talk of adding actually new maps.
When Valve added Vertigo to the pro pool, that map had been in the game for 2 months and was being actively updated and there was 7 months until the next major, yet some how this was too big of a shift, pros somehow couldnt learn a new map in 7 months. The very idea of a map they had never set foot on being in the pro scene shook its very foundation. It seems so much of pro play in this era is less about aim and on the fly tactics and more about how to hold an angle most effectively and knowing every single possible grenade throw. On Vertigo where they knew little, some of the very best teams faultered because of how much they relied on grenade line ups and knowing common angles.
To me it seems there just isnt a market for actual new maps, the ones they do add are popular for about 2 weeks, maybe 3 if its really good. then players just go back to the active duty maps. Prior to scrimmage this allowed for smurfs, derankers, and vertiglobals to dominate these maps. Which was the exact problem Valve was experiencing with Militia, Italy, Assault, Aztec, Dust1 and Vertigo. The same reason why they were removed from comp.
I would like to believe Valve likes community maps, but they just dont show it anymore. There are big and obvious problems facing community maps, but Valve does nothing to curve it. If they dont care enough to stop the problems why are they adding maps in the first place, seems like a money sink if the playerbase as a whole isnt playing them. To me the solution has always been obvious enough. Players should punished for overplaying 1 or a small group of maps and should be rewarded for trying new ones. The first step would be reward players less XP for playing the same map over and over, while give them more for playing a new map. The more drastic one would be to have it effect elo. If you only play dust2, losses will retract more elo and wins will reward less, if you try Breach for the first time, you wont lose much ELO from losing but you can gain a lot by winning. This would be a controversial change and would be yet another thing the community would dislike about comp.
But again, what is the point of adding community maps and paying their creators when Valve doesnt seem to get much value out of doing so. Why not take more drastic measures if community maps are so important.
All of this not even taking in to account most of the community and almost all of the pro scene think community maps are untested and focused more on visuals then gameplay (Which we know is not true, but they dont). I find it funny in nearly every example of a pro player trying to design a new map layout it ends up just being Mirage, yet somehow their built as being the only ones who know anything about map design.
Being that mapcore seems to have members from every game studio, ive always wondered why we dont see at least 1 Valve artist on here, I get valve is a closed book but it just seems unfortunate. In the rare event we get an interview with the devs is always the same god awful questions about competitive rankings and the pro scene and when will source 2 be added, when will old gun be added. Never about there feelings on community content, why they choose to do things the way they do.
Small Update on this, im still working on Grotto and hope to have it out before April, but thats not definite. I was really disappointed to find Grotto did not even make it into the runner up category. That would mean it did worse then my 2017 competition entry, which some judges told me was close to their top 10 (though that may have just been them being nice, Vermiel is really subpar compared to most of the entries in 2017). Looking back at it I can see why Grotto did poorly. Ultimately I think it came down to 2 things, lack of clear them and my inability to figure out how to fix dark shadows on props.
I first thought of a map set in grotto after the 2017 competition ended, the idea was a national park area in Israel, where bombsite B would be a crystal Cave with Inceptions on the Wall, while A and most of the other areas would be a fortress or administration type areas. There would carved statues and monuments typical of artificial Grottos. When working on the map for the Exotic Places competition, the theme slowly evolved into what it is now. It is a Grotto in Jordan, where the B half of the map is in both natural and manmade caves, while the a site is an old fortress overlooking the cliffside, the fortress would have different sections that would have been added on from its centuries of occupation.
I think many people were confused by many modern elements that appear on the current version because I did not do a good enough job of conveying what is happening in the map.
My take of the Exotic Theme was meant to be a bit of a twist on it. The grand majority of entries for the competition focuses on more Tropical, tourist areas and un explored countries in csgo. I did not want to make another Tourist Attraction like I did in 2017, and felt that even if I did it would not size up compared to what other people would do. So my twist on the theme was meant to be this: Grotto is a place that once was a Tourist Attraction, it would have once been a peaceful area to visit. However in the modern day, Grotto has begun to crumble under the stress of war. I did not want to do an Iraqistan esq, crumbled wreckage of a place. Instead the stress of war would be most seen on the man made buildings, while the caves would be more untouched. It is meant to be a place that is just beginning to crumble from war, so you could still see it once was a nice place to visit, but it is slowly decaying from a stalemate conflict.
That is also why you see so many military assets used around the map as the Coalition Taskforce (which is apart of the very small game story) is occupying the Fortress, trying to defend the city you can see in CT spawn, while a combination of Phoenix and Elite Crew forces occupying the war torn city seen from T spawn (Which I didnt manage to make very war-torn) The Caves and Fortress are notably more ruined on the T side of the map, while the cts have an almost pristine area.
The ultimate failing of this idea came because I was not able to establish what these things were and why they were there, there are no context clues on the entry version because in my rush to finish the B area I had forgotten to polish up the story elements (also why you see a sign advertising a law office in one of the cave rooms) It also still suffers from that dust-copy vibe. I tried to avoid using dust assets, such as making my own sets of double doors and crates, but I think a desert theme has tendency to look like every other desert theme. Ultimately im not very pleased with how this turned out, mainly from me dropping the ball in the last month of work time. I hope there is another competition in the next few years as I would like to make up for my respective failures in both 2017 and 2019.
I will say as a positive, this was the first map I worked on where I felt like I knew what I was doing, a large part of why my previous map Sonora took over a year and half to release was because I was unsure on how to handle certain areas and how to go about creating more advanced places.
