The layout looks very pathy.
The bits connecting your bomb sites and spawns don't just exist to get from the one to the other.
You need more spacious areas outside of the sites that serve as the setup areas for both teams to take and retake sites.
You should look at some official maps. Look how much space and cover they provide just before each choke point so that the attacking team can gather, hold their position and prepare their attack.
@esspho has been working on changes from our first Mapcore playtest including a new design for outside A (thanks @Roald for the suggestions!) while I've been working on and off on bombsite B's main attraction.
Should be ready for another playtest soon![Blocked Image: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/785290765907001385/800822708978843689/unknown.png][Blocked Image: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/776190434892447754/800822116403511316/unknown.png]
That harp model would benefit a lot from a better UV unwrap and maybe some better defined shading. The geometry looks good but those aspects look very rushed and poorly done.
28 minutes ago, That50'sGuy said: I love the aesthetic you chose! Night-Time factories have always intrigued me. Lights casting across intricate industrial architecture with the start night sky as the backdrop is really atmospheric.
I feel silly for asking incase the answer is obvious, but what is that pretty red liquid in the canals? Is it some kind of chemical?
Its regular water that for sure no industrial waste has spilled into! I swear!
Quote from blackdog1 hour ago, blackdog said: You plant the bomb in there @csWaldo?
The inside is not accessible, so it's basically a sightlines through the cover.
We will need to see how that plays in the next playtest, but we thought the idea was neat.
another idea we want to try out on our next playtest...
[Blocked Image: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/785290765907001385/794312560626892880/unknown.png][Blocked Image: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/785290765907001385/794312837325389894/unknown.png]
Yeah makes sense. Guess I'll come back to this idea later. In the meantime, some bomb site impressions:[Blocked Image: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/785290765907001385/785290876544090132/unknown.png][Blocked Image: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/785290765907001385/785290948602232832/unknown.png]
Thinking about making some interactive frozen puddles. Of course the effect would be somewhat limited. Think this would be fun or annoying?
@esspho doing some greybox work ❤️[Blocked Image: https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/776190434892447754/784570476168871936/unknown.png?width=1063&height=598][Blocked Image: https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/776190434892447754/784570743970988032/unknown.png?width=1063&height=598]
@esspho and I are teaming up for a new defuse map. Welcome to Norilsk, a soviet mining city in the arctic circle shaped by freezing temperatures, high pollution and 45 days of night in winter.
Some of the mood and references we are going for:
Spoiler [Blocked Image: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/776190861482000385/776214814699290634/Kr8LWBn.png][Blocked Image: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/776190861482000385/776214457705562142/140819.png][Blocked Image: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/776190861482000385/776212956232810524/TASS29218646.png][Blocked Image: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/776190861482000385/776215021700775936/norilsk-nickel-red-river.png]
Concept art I made of how this could look in source:[Blocked Image: https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/776190434892447754/781496059825750046/unknown.png?width=1065&height=599]
3d concept for the layout, developed by esspho:https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model/3d130ab7…furnace-conceptConcept overview with pathing:[Blocked Image: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/776190434892447754/781642043431977032/unknown.png]
Greybox is in the works. Let us know what you think ?
Great progress for starting this hobby in spring :0 Love the color!
Use the expert full hdr settings. Make sure you don't have a leak and you have at least one functioning light entity. If that is a light_environment, make sure you have pointed it at your map.
You should honestly reconsider what you want this map to be. Your're hardly pushing boundaries and inspiring others here. Verticality, free movement and jumping puzzles are nothing new to cs so much so that the community has made entire game modes around those things and they have been popular through multiple instances of the game. Many old cs layouts feature large verticality, uncommon layout structures and other novel ideas. None of this is news to us. The idea of a fun, casual map is nothing new either. People have been making them to play with their friends and on LANs since forever. We have playtested maps like this here before. And they can be good fun. However, none of these maps claim or try to be competitive because they simply are not. What you are doing with this map in regards to competitive is pushing boundaries in the same way that playing chess with only kings would be pushing boundaries.
It was obvious that this would be the case with your level from the start to a lot of us but when we told you, you acted like you know better than all of us despite barely ever having played the game let alone made maps for it. We still playtested it and everyone at the playtest gave you the same feedback: It was kinda fun, because it was very chaotic and wild. But it also didn't even rate as a competitive layout. The concepts youre trying to add to the game simply don't work on a competitive level on the scale you are trying them. If you want this to be a competitive map, you need to actually understand how competitive is played and build your level towards that. Dismissing this feedback from the entire professional community as "you guys just didnt learn the map well enough and you just dont care enough to figure it out" is silly and arrogant. So, figure out what your goal is here. Wanna make a crazy, fun map that has all the features a competitive layout is generally missing? Go for it. Just dont keep telling us about how it is actually the best competitive map ever and all other maps are stale and generic. Because by your own admission, you know nothing about that. Or try to make a unique, well working competitive layout. There is always room for innovation and new ideas. But if you want to subvert the rules, you must first properly understand them. People here are generally very helpful and give you tons of great advice and feedback. Just stop dismissing everyone and take some of it.
No, my objections do not come from a lack of comfortability. They come from years of level design experience in cs, playtesting experience, running playtests for another community for about a year and hundreds of hours of match making. I'm wondering where your confidence is coming from. Anyways, it playtested the exact same way as one would imagine. There was little to no structure each round. Chokepoints and meeting points of the teams are not really defined, so setting up a real attack or defense is pretty much impossible. In most areas, you are open to about half the map, so instead of methodically clearing areas, you are just kind of running through, running and gunning. The map feels much more like a general shooting arena, rather than a comp layout. Theres really not much more to it.
The map lacks structure. Competitive CS is all about control and information. Both teams are trying to either defend or attack one or both bomb sites at all stages of the game. Knowing where the enemy is, what options they have to reach their objective and how you can stop them is key to the cs experience. It allows all players to make meaningful decisions about where to push or where to hold. It removes unpredictable kills and allows each players decision making and aiming skill to decide the match. On the level design side, maps should be built to enable and emphasize this. The official map pool has a number of different takes on how a cs layout can look, but they all share some common design ideas, because they are simply necessary to allow for players to take control over their match. such as:choke points Pretty much all maps have roughly 4 choke points that seperate the T and CT side of the map. Controlling these choke points means controlling which team has access to what area of the map, so they are key in giving matches structure and players control.setup and rotation areas
Bomb sites are a given on any defuse layout, but these always need to be connected to a network of setup and rotation areas, that allow teams to prepare their attacks and move to other objectives and choke points on the map. Level designers need to make sure that the amount of options in these areas are fine tuned. Teams only have 5 players each, so for example, if each bomb site would give terrorists 3 options to attack from, the CT team will simply not have enough players to watch all of them even before any CTs have died. At that point, it becomes more about the luck to choose the right entry to defend rather than the skill to set up a proper defense.
number and type of angles Say you need to defend any given area. The number and type of spots you can position yourself in and the number and type of positions you can be attacked from need to be fine tuned. There is only so much that can fit on your field of view, so too many positions already remove control from the player, as there is simply no way to tell angle to hold. Verticality can add to this problem. Having to move your crosshair large, vertical distances is difficult. Having to do so gives the attacker pretty good advantage.plant zones
Plant zones need to be set up so that Ts get a good chance of planting when attacking the site and CTs get a good chance of defusing. Otherwise the game can end up very stale, where almost no bombs are planted or almost all bombs explode as they cannot be secured and diffused in time.In regards to your map: The ability to walk on almost all walls and roofs removes all that. Choke points become meaningless and rotations become unpredictable as players can move very freely across the map. At the same time, players moving on the walls are exposed to unmanageable amounts of angles from all directions. This is very high risk, high reward without much influence over the outcome. Neither team can really control when or where they will be attacked from. Skill, prediction and planning and overshadowed by trying to rush your enemy from behind with a p90 or jumping on their head with a shotgun. This also means angles all across the map are just unpredictable. You cannot properly defend any area, as you can never be sure where you can even be attacked from. Smokes and molotoves lose meaning, as there are no clear choke points you can block off. At the same time, flashes become overbearing as just throwing them towards the center of the map will flash 3/4 of the server. The plant zones dont encourage skill either. Having plant zones on multiple heights on both bomb sites makes it very easy for Ts to sneak in a bomb plant, as CTs simply cannot watch all possible points of attack at once. It also makes defusing hard and frustrating, as you first have to figure out where the bomb is even planted. Wasting 10-15 seconds just on finding the plant spot will doom most retakes, as there just isnt enough time to clear the site and diffuse the bomb anymore.
You could say this cliff is made out of rock.
Spoiler
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A little more space would be appreciated ?
Could you post the brightness and ambient settings of your light_environment? The light looks quite yellow and dark to me, making the map look very 2012.
