Posts by dmu

Поздравляю с выпуском карты в игру!

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Quote from Soldat Du Christ

2 hours ago, Soldat Du Christ said: make it balanced enough to be taken seriously

Balance isn't the most important thing when making a map. A map is defined by its encounter design and the way areas build up those encounters, see my previous post for a fairly thorough explanation of what I mean.

This is why some maps may appear repetitive, mappers are making new and original encounters but sticking to the roots with 'set up' areas. Can you really blame them? Making a set up area too complicated overwhelms players and disrupts flow. Very good maps design their encounter areas as potential set up areas, simplifying the design and adding depth to the gameplay.

Dust 2, a classic de_ map can be broken down into three categories of areas: Examples of encounter areas that can potentially serve as setup are: B tunnels, Mid, CT spawn, catwalk, and farside A long. Examples of pure setup areas are: T spawn, outside B tunnels, and the area outside long doors and top mid. Examples of pure encounter areas(also setup areas when on the defending side): Bombsite A and B

Most important thing to mention is that in the average round you will have four terrorists doing all this checking against one or two ct players. This gives the terrorist team a great advantage in firefights because they can easily trade if any player goes down. Additionally, you can have different players checking different spots on the site, meaning that all of these positions will be cleared in mere seconds.

Bomb site takes (and retakes) are ALWAYS the moments your players will value the most. In a single moment, the fate of the round is decided as players exert themselves to push their team closer to victory. The push through a chokepoint onto a site is the most important design of any good counter strike map. Most other things on the level must than be built to add more importance to the choke point. What areas of the map do teams need to control to stop or mount a push? What space do we give players to set up before going in (on either side)? How do players get to the chokepoint in the first place?

A counterstrike level is about exploring and exploiting the level to gain a firm grip on your chokepoints, and then blasting through them to secure victory against the other team. It's important to remember that the defending team should also gain something once they push through a chokepoint. Usually this is flanking options and rotation paths against the enemy team, but this could also be intel on where the enemy team isn't.

A good chokepoint is also usually not just a single doorframe or hallway. My two favorite examples are A long and catwalk on Dust 2. As the defending team is pushed back, they get multiple safe areas (corners) that they can duck into in order to try and stop a push. The enemy team also gains cover positions that allow them to hold their newly gained ground and push defenders away from the next safe area.

TLDR

In summary, when creating a chokepoint you shouldn't focus on making it work in a 5v5 scenario with no utility, because no one will ever be playing your map that way. Make developed paths with planned cover positions along them. Make interesting set up areas that allow teams to take a breath before getting into a fight. Create positions that are exposed and hard to get to, but can allow a team to swing the round if they take the risk of taking that ground. Perfecting these areas is what will make your map interesting to players, because these areas are what create those amazing clutch moments that players will remember.

Quote from Soldat Du Christ

10 hours ago, Soldat Du Christ said: You can do a lot of cool stuff by segmenting these fundamentals. Like opening up the lines of sight while still having linear pathing to empower players who want to gather intel by taking up certain advantageous positions.

A lot of good maps do do this. Look at B cat on Mirage. This is a powerful central position, that dynamically shifts in purpose depending on area of control of each team. Good map makers do rethink the fundamentals, but an original twist needs to be implemented in a way that the player doesn't feel like abusing it is the only way to play the map. A lot of good ideas in a single map does not make a map good. Careful, well thought out maps can be beautiful.

Most maps in the competitive map pool right now are completely different from each other. Inferno has three lanes leading to A and only one leading to B. It's a wacky design but for many people it's their favorite map. Why is that? Because if you really break it down it is still a simple four lane map that feels different not because it throws out the fundamentals, but because it puts them in a new perspective and orientation. Even nuke, the wildest map of all, has the same principle design philosophy behind its layout. Yet nobody would even think to call it a Dust 2 clone. Ultimately there is no specific rule that creates 'great' csgo maps, but keeping the fundamentals in mind is what ensures that you create a balanced (and thus fun) experience.

Imagine if Halo level design was approached like it was CS. I don't think that map would be very fun to play for a full match.

P.S. I feel like we have derailed the point of this thread. Can we please move this conversation to @Soldat Du Christ's "CSGO community commentary from an outside perspective" ?

I've lost my excitement for Legion. Watch Dogs 2 is my most played singleplayer game, and I feel like this one isn't going to live up to that experience. While they are introducing a lot of cool new features, I'm just not as sold on the world as the previous games. Watch Dogs (to me) was about fighting against a system that quietly suppresses society. There was something cool and scary about the idea that the enemy could destroy someones life not by killing them, but by simply clicking a few buttons in their system. Now the player is fighting against obvious bad guy who oppresses the people through physical force. Legion seems to be taking away what made the themeing of Watch Dogs so unique. While choosing your character is an original feature that expands npc profiling, it also means the player will have less freedom at any point in time. The player is no longer the swiss-army knife of gameplay we had in Watch Dogs 2. Instead, you have to choose your approach way ahead of the moment you actually engage your enemy, and if it fails you can't have a back up plan at the tip of your fingers.

I hope the boy is the main character. I feel like it would make for an interesting dynamic kind of like in FC4.

I'm really excited because I enjoyed FC5 and FC2 a lot. Maybe with the new setting we will see the return to some of the elements they had back in FC2.

BUT, if they show gameplay and it turns out they have brought back the stapled on rpg mechanics of FCND then I will be extremely disappointed.

I just hope the take out the RPG mechanics that they glued on to most of their library after ACO.

I just want a Far Cry game not a looter shooter (looking at you Far Cry New Dawn).

You can do it! Layout logic is probably the main reason I haven't finished a map in years, it's hard for me to get something that I'm happy with.

Congrats on the release, can't wait to play! ?

@ElectroSheep Did you work on hyperscape??

Haven't played it yet but it seems like what a titanfall br should have been. Also seems to feel a lot like an arena shooter with the fast movement, item system, and ttk. This game reminds me a lot of my favorite br game, Darwin Project. It was made by a indie team that ended development a few months back. Really unfortunate because the beta version the game had a huge skill ceiling and very little rng. The servers are still up on steam if anyone wants to check it out.

Quote from Zarsky

2 hours ago, Zarsky said: Compare Mass effect Andromeda with TloU2. The latter has those janky animations.

Do you mean the former or does Andromeda have some crazy fluid animations?

To be honest it's not surprising the game has kind of janky mechanics. It's a first person rpg, not a fps like titanfall, it would be weird to expect the game to work that smoothly. I hope its at least a little smoother than fallout/skyrim considering the lengthy development and modern tech.

One user, @Tynnyri, was banned for flooding a lot of map threads with criticism aimed at proving how much better his map was than any others. If a map had good visuals he would call the layout unoriginal, if it had an original layout he would say the visuals were poorly made and not deserving of praise. He never gave positive or even neutral feedback, and when someone pointed out his criticism was wrong or gave him feedback he would reply dismissing that person. For two months it was hard to post because you knew your thread would be flooded with pointless argument. I think a lot of people saw him as a troll, since his replies would come in within minutes. He clearly was just sitting on the site waiting to argue rather than interpreting any of the criticism that was made against OR by him. I think people debating on the forum is great, but @Tynnyri just made a lot of people be toxic towards each other.

On the map feedback side: I think that the core mapcore judges should be required to release their feedback publicly rather than to personal request. I understand that guest judges have other occupations, but the main judges are part of the community and should be invested in helping it grow. The 2018 csmapmakers wingman contest did this for every map, and helped me develop my knowledge as a mapper a lot.

Going to wait for those sweet black friday - cyber monday deals to upgrade my rig before playing the game. I can probably wait two weeks right? Maybe not :c

I'm going to be honest I did not enjoy the demo at all. The movement felt slow and sluggish and it was hard to tell if an attack would hit or why it did hit. The idea is solid and the game is pretty but the core loop needs to be polished a lot for me to truly enjoy it.

I'm pretty sure stickers are for steam chat while profile banners and frames are for your profile. You 'buy' these stickers with points you get from buying actual games. You can also choose to not spend your points, and save them for a future sale.

I really loved Boneworks, it used to be janky but the devs are still updating it even though its a singleplayer campaign. It's a lot of fun because unlike Alyx the game is open to letting you do ANYTHING to beat a level. I think its an excellent game to pick up if you have some experience with vr and want something with a lot of depth and freedom.

However, the prize for the best VR game has to go to Beat Saber. I'm not a huge fan of rythm games, but the physicality really makes this game amazing. I turn it on almost daily for exercise and I don't think I will ever get bored. It really is a must have vr experience, especially with the countless amount of user authored mods.

To me it seems that all the hype around Valorant has quickly died out. It seems like a lot of the esports orgs that had planned to play the game competitively are starting to pull out. It's really weird that this is happening, as so many people were confident this would be the cs killer. Even crossfire was able to maintain a large playerbase longer than Valorant. Obviously it is way too early to declare the game to be dead, but it is clear that the initial launch was a big fuck up. My personal theory is the game was too focused on being balanced and competitive. The game quickly grew stale because there weren't any fun strategies players could abuse. By making a game that removes any unnecessary and buggy aspects of CS, Valorant doesn't leave space for people to take risks and have fun with the game.

For example: In Valorant smokes are a solid ball that can be easily lined up from a distance. This means almost every smoke through will be perfect, blocking out any possible sightlines. This discourages players on the other side of the smoke from taking the risk of pushing through or finding a sneaky angle on the side. Meanwhile with the buggy sprite smokes of CS, you can never be confident in your smoke which encourages players to use silly risky tactics.

With every ability having a firm rigid 'competitive' use, players quickly get bored of the game simply because every round becomes a repeat of the last.

A similar problem is created by the starting walls. They make sure that all timings are always the same and predictable and balanced. But when every round is always the same and predictable and balanced, there is no reason to keep playing the game.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk

Quote from blackdog

54 minutes ago, blackdog said: or a horde mode that would have you switch between pilot and mech.

This does exist in the games multiplayer (Frontier defense) except they used mp maps as a base rather than sp ones.

Someone actually took the time to put into words the problems with the games maps

The only thing I would add is how uncomfortable most of the angles are on these maps. It doesn't feel like there is a good place to aim and I often get shot from off angles that don't really make sense. Maybe its because I am so used to cs, but even in community tests this happens less often than in valorant.

It really seems like the games marketing was all about being a competitive esports game, but all the updates they've done since have made the game more and more and more casual to play.