NikiOo

I did not expect everyone else to be this good at environment art. The maps that are going to the finals are looking sick. I would have had to fully lock in and wreck my sanity in order to even have a chance of getting into the top 10. Anyway, I learned a lot throughout the way. I spent a lot of time exploring ideas that were ultimately a dead end, like the giant silos. I still want to finish the map because I think I have a really cool vision for it, but I don't have time right now so it'll have to wait. I'll be cheering for Jura and Grail. I'm glad that one very boring and formulaic map by a mapcore thought leader did not make it through ikyk.

I made a custom skybox texture. I think it's cool. It's inspired by Heaven. I want the colors to be bright and uplifting.

You cannot possibly be present for all faceit playtests. People can queue and play your map whenever they like. If you're not present, you can download the demo afterward and watch it on your own time.

I'm doubling down on the vibe is too surreal. This month's vibe is inspired by this white-Ferrari-in-a-sunflower-field poster, from my vibes folder -- To make a modern power plant that looks remarkably un-Nuke-esque, I'm adding flowers where one would expect to find grass, reflective textures where one would expect unreflective textures, and brick where one would expect to find concrete (the sky will also be remarkably less blue than Nuke). Now it looks like we're in one of those western-European countries that use a lot of brick for some reason, which irks me a bit. Now it just looks like middle-brow modern architecture. I'm hoping it will come into place when I add ventilation and pipes all over the place, or else I'm going back to webcore. P.S. If you're making maps, don't play on 120% brightness and 4:3 res, your map will end up with stretched doors and very saturated.

I'm going to Stage 2, in fact I am winning this contest. The map will be on the Faceit hubs from the 4th of October to the 18th of October. I didn't like A site, both structurally and thematically, so I reworked it. It is now set between 2 molten salt storage tanks, and the bomb target is a heat exchanger. This is more interesting visually and it's more flexible so I can move things around without worrying so much if the change I want to make will cohere with the theme or not. Here's some screenshots -- I want this to be a map where you have to keep track of what's happening around you and coordinate with your teammates in order to win, instead of just focusing on your duel and marching forward.

Or negative space, it's the same thing.

The steam condenser had to be enlarged so it was moved from bombsite A to bombsite B, because B required a rework and the condenser theme was more mendable. Bombsite A is now the thermal storage tanks. The reworked B site is right under the steam condenser. It has that rock-paper-scissors dynamic of every spot that counters entrance 1 being exposed to entrance 2 and vice versa. Here's yard (yard means mid but placed elsewhere but in-between the sites) -- Notice the lack of whitespace between B site and yard. That's right! I don't fuck with white space. Whitespace is for pretentious ivory tower designers. White space, get off my lawn!

I don't know if I'll go to the 2nd stage, the layout is still very undercooked. But, anyway, here are some changes I'm working on, which will come in the next update. Yard I did some decorating at Yard. The car parking is now a garage and the long sightline at the outer route is gone, making it safer for Ts to stand in the alley, but more dangerous for them to walk out into yard. There's also this elevated platform before yard, from where Ts can throw molotovs into yard. Reference -- I shortened the buildings as much as I could, to make it as easy as possible to throw utility over the walls. I don't know which side this will favor but I think it will only serve to increase the tactical depth. A Site I'm making A site smaller and changing the entrance. The entrance is essentially the same, but with different architectural elements and a bit less concealed. There's only one steam condenser on site now and I reverted it back to the way it was before, high above the ground. There's a really cool parkour section here. Once again, the sky has been made as unobstructed as possible. Reference --

Layout Update In the last day I rerouted control room into middle / short B, and I shortened the back CT route into A. This will help CTs more safely rotate between the sites, and will also help the Ts more more sneakily around the map. I liked having the long sightline cutting the map in half, like Dust2, but It didn't contribute to the overall idea of the map and it was constraining it in other ways so it had to go. I also reworked the vents. The radar looks much prettier now. I don't know why. Maybe I have evolved as a mapper from the intense stress of the crunch time. I think this is a pretty good foundation. On a macro level, the concept of the map is that there are -- apart from the routes through CT spawn -- two rotation routes between the bombsites, which are initially controlled by CTs but can be contested by the Ts, and they are connected by a risky vent route. On a micro level, the concept of the map is crossfires and rock-paper-scissors positioning. I will write more about it if it works as I anticipate. I need more playtesting to determine this. I also wanted there to be interplay between the different areas, think how B short on Mirage is a vantage point towards both B and A, oftentimes people connect zones by snakey pathways which inhibit this kind of dynamic. I had to revert some of the art to make it easier for me to make these changes. I think the vents are really cool and original. Here's the vents -- The signs on the walls were also a last-minute addition, and some of them are just plain wrong, so don't trust the signs! If they say you're going B, there's 20% chance you're going A. This also contributes to the fun factor, so I expect to get points for it.

It's fun to move around because of all the parkour stuff. Performance seems fine. You should try and make a better radar though, since the layout is very complicated and there are a couple of places where it definitely looks like you can go but you can't go because they're clipped off and that adds to the confusion.

It's working.

The final version is on the workshop. I hope I didn't break something with these last few changes. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3302009197

Connector Connector is themed after a surgical room, because you have to be surgically precise with your decisions and your shooting. I want to subliminally suggest to the players that everything is on the line. And if you fail, it's over, your license will be taken away and you will be sent off to a prison on an abandoned mining colony to serve your sentence among the worst of the worst. Radar Look at this ugly ass radar. I'm embarrassed to put my name on this. I should have listened to Razzle Dazzle and started by drawing interesting shapes on a 2d canvas. Now look what I ended up with. Oh god! However ... notice how original I was with having two separate A sites: first A and second A. Then notice how originally shaped B site is. This is something that's never been seen before.

I haven't made a proper radar yet, but the layout looks something like this -- And here's some more screenshots --

I like long-ranged fights. Long-ranged fights show who is the better aimer. Map renamed to Lux. Site A The idea here is that the site is very defender-sided if the attackers are coming from only one of the entrances, but the balance skews more towards the attackers if they're coming from two directions at once, so tactical decisions are a strong determinant to winning. The entrances are at opposite ends, like A site on Train. I want it to work such that players can have strong positions but need to be aware of what's going elsewhere on the map, otherwise they'll get shot in the side of the head. You have to coordinate to watch each-other's backs and trade quickly. Site B Secrecy is pathetic, so I will show you how far I am into the construction of site B. This is it, not much to see. Just a pipe and some catwalks. Connector This is the first of the two routes between the sites that will be contested by both teams. It has an emerald green color for the same reason terrorists spawn underground in Terra -- because it looks cool. Control Room This is the second of the two routes between the sites that will be contested by both teams. It has computers that run Windows XP. Tower The solar receiver tower used to be one of the bomb targets, but that was too constraining, so now it's just sitting in T spawn for eye-candy. Yard Crossfires. Deep crossfires. Many of them. Layers upon layers. Brat/brat-tamer dynamic. Teamwork, utility. Win fights, pounce on space, shoot guys in the side of the head. Clear left side, get backstabbed from right side. Etc. I call this composition The Transmission. It's super hardcore. Super frustrating, it's designed to maximize frustration. It's masochistic. It's anti-consumer.

Here's some data from existing maps which I collected when I started designing my layout — Tick is mean across all maps, error bar is 2 standard deviations. I haven't collected any data from bad maps like Anubis or Vertigo. I haven't collected data from beloved community map Cache, designed by Sal Volcano Valarante, because I just needed 7 maps. A loopdy-loop is a closed circuit that takes 8 or more seconds to go around. Choke is time the moment where players will physically touch, which is not the time it takes to first engagement but it's a proxy. I have hypotheses about how some of these metrics affect gameplay. The most useful ones are probably number of loopty-loops, time to choke, choke to site diff, and A to B though T/CT spawn. If you do some arithmetic, you can determine where the post-entry fights / fights with rotators will happen.

Art Update I made this cool custom skybox using GeoGen. It took 2 iterations to arrive at something I'm satisfied with. The white substance is supposed to be sand, not snow. I don't know if it's maybe looking a bit too snowish. I switched to the other Italy sky texture, because the one I was using previously looked a bit too surreal.

What I meant by "operation maps" is — among other things — maps that seem to reduce the amount of team-play and tactics and general pro-active thinking that's required to win, in what seems to me like an attempt to increase the feeling of agency and reduce the feeling of frustration when playing the map with random teammates. I'm not talking about Anubis. You know which maps I'm talking about. You play the map and you get a general operation vibe. Also, I find it really condescending when mappers place invisible walls in places where you should be able to jump off the map and die. You know the saying, the cream rises to the top, and the dregs plunge to the bottom and die from the kill trigger. Imagine if Vertigo's ledges were clipped off. That would be so pathetic.

Here's a view through the airlock — I've been playing around with different kinds of silos, to see what works and what doesn't work. Here's Mars silo — Here's (purple) Neptune silo — Here's Saturn silo — Everything is soaked in a massive cooling pond, which means you drop off the silo wherever you like. I know everyone likes to post their mood board, so here's mine — Here's the spray pond pipe — This pipe above is specifically made to counter zont1x — it's impenetrable and it covers your upper legs and torso so he can't shoot you in the body. It's also just tall enough that you can jump onto it without crouching, but only if you time it right, so all the noobs will be left in the ditch.

As part of my design process, I decided to rank all the maps in the current map pool, based on how good their layout is. Here's the ranking : I'll have more stuff to show you soon.

It does miss some flare in that T spawn ngl. I don't get enough vitamin D there and my anxiety is flaring up. Maybe that's why the hallways feel claustrophobic.

You're putting words in my mouth. I never implied anything like that. I meant that you're trolling me with these comments. It kinda looks like you're trying to rally the CS community at me, because I off-handedly said a bad thing about Anubis. So please stop. Besides, the fact that Anubis won the last competition doesn't mean that it's infallible, nor that it has won some sort of undisclosed glazing rights. I hope Skyline brings good things. It already looks more interesting.

What if I'd said "Vertigo sucks for competitive, guys, we gotta make better maps than Vertigo. Maybe try making better maps than Vertigo.", would that be trolling? Maybe this was just a teaser for the extended Anubis critique. I think you're confusing teasing with trolling. I can't release the extended Anubis critique right now, thought. I need more time to collect some data. Some things about Anubis are really great! How about that? It's the prettiest map in the pool. The fights at the bombsites are really fun, mid is really fun for 1v1s. I like the fast rotate through water, it's kinda like Inferno in that way. Maybe think about what you're doing and see if that's maybe trolling.

You don't have to take it any way. This wasn't addressed to you. This is not a feedback thread for Anubis. I don't have to qualify everything I say here.

Thinking that Anubis sucks makes me a troll? I've just been analyzing the maps that are in the pool and I think that ... it kinda sucks by comparison. Your new map looks more interesting though. Maybe don't take things personally.