MapCore CS:GO Playtesting 3.0

['RZL]

Hey Guys,

 

We'd like to setup a playtest for our upcoming CS:Go map. We started a new topic few days ago here ==>

 

 

Name is just a temporary one of course. The available map on the workshop is super straightfoward with less art as possible. We just want to experience as much as possible the layout before to go deeper into the art job. Map is located in Paris. We woul'd especially appreciate any feedbacks related to the layout such as feeling / balancing/ teamplay experience etc 

 

We have a huge preference for Sundays at 21:00 GMT+1 but if that's not possible we can try it any Tuesdays or Thursdays.

 

Cheers 

 

That is alright with us, your spot for this sunday is reserved then and leaving one more open spot for that day. You'll just need to send me the version you want to test (.bsp and .nav)  at least two hours before we begin either here in this topic or per PM.

 

Cheers

[leplubodeslapin]

I could also be able to playtest a new version of my map cs_opera, which had a lot of improvements. It's also located in paris (damn, why did you also have chosen this location ? ^^) but currently it's still in dev textures anyway.

 

About your map esspho (de_twinstar_a2). As i told you, i think it's currently an excellent deathmatch map, because it's kinda small and has lots of short paths that allow you to easily get around ennemies and kill very quickly a lot of people. Also i think that this is going to be beautiful, it's a great start.

But if you want to make it more like a serious bomb map, maybe you should change things, starting by deleting some paths.

 

This path has 2 issues : it makes the other path (with the conveyor belt for seeds or garbages i don't know) useless and it allows CT to rush immediatly the middle at the terrorists positions.

 

This path is also not needed, terrorists shoud be able to climb in the middle if they want to rush the middle, so they don't need it. Also, counter terrorists can jump from the middle catwalk.

 

It's true that terrorists must be able to rush the middle but this thing makes it too fast and easy for them. Instead, put some crates and stuff on the ground to let them climb and reach the CT position.

 

This path is also something complicated that doesn't really make things more interesting. Instead of it, you can make a recess in the wall with some obstacles to make some covers in order to defend the bombsite.

 

 

I'm not completely sure with this one but i think it's not really needed (because it's possible to access the corridor behind with the path on your left or the one from the bombsite B).

 

Here, there are 2 ways to get out from the corridor behind, i don't think it helps and it makes things more complicated as usual.

 

 

There are also a lot of tight paths that you should enlarge, keep in mind that in any paths players should be able to run with at least 2 or 3 players easily, without getting stucked. So here are some examples of tight corridors :

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is also that sightline that might be overpowered in my opinion, maybe you should make it smaller.

 

 

 

That's it for today, i hope it helps !

Edited November 19, 2013 by leplubodeslapin

[esspho]

About your map esspho (de_twinstar_a2). As i told you, i think it's currently an excellent deathmatch map, because it's kinda small and has lots of short paths that allow you to easily get around ennemies and kill very quickly a lot of people. Also i think that this is going to be beautiful, it's a great start.

But if you want to make it more like a serious bomb map, maybe you should change things, starting by deleting some paths.

 

This path has 2 issues : it makes the other path (with the conveyor belt for seeds or garbages i don't know) useless and it allows CT to rush immediatly the middle at the terrorists positions.

 

This path is also not needed, terrorists shoud be able to climb in the middle if they want to rush the middle, so they don't need it. Also, counter terrorists can jump from the middle catwalk.

 

It's true that terrorists must be able to rush the middle but this thing makes it too fast and easy for them. Instead, put some crates and stuff on the ground to let them climb and reach the CT position.

 

This path is also something complicated that doesn't really make things more interesting. Instead of it, you can make a recess in the wall with some obstacles to make some covers in order to defend the bombsite.

 

 

I'm not completely sure with this one but i think it's not really needed (because it's possible to access the corridor behind with the path on your left or the one from the bombsite B).

 

Here, there are 2 ways to get out from the corridor behind, i don't think it helps and it makes things more complicated as usual.

 

 

There are also a lot of tight paths that you should enlarge, keep in mind that in any paths players should be able to run with at least 2 or 3 players easily, without getting stucked. So here are some examples of tight corridors :

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is also that sightline that might be overpowered in my opinion, maybe you should make it smaller.

 

 

 

That's it for today, i hope it helps !

 

 

wow thanks man!

this is REALLY helpful.

the deathmatch-character showed especially during the warmup imo. i'll look at the mentioned shortcommings and try to change the gameplay

to a more de-ish style.

 

thank you for taking the time

 

 

DE_Twinstar

 

damn, the first iteration was gigantic, the second now is kinda small, very interconnected and terrorists can swarm out and push the CT's in like 5 seconds, it really felt more like a fight yard (fy_) map than a defuse map. I would suggest to put the T spawn further back and close off a few routes to make it work. Otherwise it was a very nice setup and already showed how beautiful it's going to become.

 

moving the t start sounds like a good idea. thanks for playing everyone!

Edited November 20, 2013 by esspho

[leplubodeslapin]

No problem, you're welcome.

 

My map cs_opera_alpha4 will be ready for the sunday playtest, can it be in ?

[Hashtag]

rolfzomglol> thanks for the playtest of de_streets_beta1

[Jpley]

Hey Guys,

 

Could we postpone the playtest of de_streets_beta1 ? We have few mapcore members that we know that won't be there tonight and we'd like to have them in the playtest. Tuesday would be cool, is that possible ?

 

Cheers !

['RZL]

Sure, it's possible, playtest on tuesday for de_streets it is. Anyhow, we are still playtesting leplubodeslapin's map CS_Opera today at 21:00 GMT+1! So make sure to join us anyway :>

['RZL]

OK, guys, the playtest of cs_opera by leplubodeslapin is starting now, come join us! 78.46.119.137:27016

[JeanPaul]

No problem, you're welcome.

 

My map cs_opera_alpha4 will be ready for the sunday playtest, can it be in ?

 

So, I forgot about this test and joined a bit late. But when I got into the test today, it was the first time I had seen the map and holy fuck let me tell you, its impressive as hell. Your brushwork leaves me green with envy man, just damn. On top of that, all the play spaces are immediately readable and the encounter spaces interesting and fun. 

 

I took the liberty of decompiling it to look around and I was even more impressed when I saw it in hammer. Straight up got a hammer design boner.  One last thing - your main stage is 24 solids when it really only has to be one. (just a friendly fyi) But I bet you already knew that

 

Insane work so far man.

[Nerve]

Really fun to play, can't wait to see it finished! 

[leplubodeslapin]

So, I forgot about this test and joined a bit late. But when I got into the test today, it was the first time I had seen the map and holy fuck let me tell you, its impressive as hell. Your brushwork leaves me green with envy man, just damn. On top of that, all the play spaces are immediately readable and the encounter spaces interesting and fun. 

 

I took the liberty of decompiling it to look around and I was even more impressed when I saw it in hammer. Straight up got a hammer design boner.  One last thing - your main stage is 24 solids when it really only has to be one. (just a friendly fyi) But I bet you already knew that

 

Insane work so far man.

 

 

seriously ?! I wasn't expecting a reaction like that, i didn't think this dev work could be appreciated as much !

Thank you a lot for this, it's really motivating, espacially from you because bms is for me the reference in terms of brushworking (curves and weird and really complex things on bms). So i'm happy that you noticed my work on brushworking and feel free to decompile and take a look at the map, it's an honor for me.

You don't really have missed anything, the last playtest was really different, the map has changed a lot and i already have restarted lots of things from scratch.

 

I have big issues with the 2D grid of the CS:GO SDK, frequently there are bugs that move just a little the vertexes (maybe just 0.01 unit) and it ruins the optimisation if i don't fix them. For some shapes, like the main stage, i just can't fix it because, every time i open the map on hammer, everything have slightly moved, and it's extremely annoying (this is for example the reason why i did the sloping floor in a model, because there were lots of bugs on it).

 

Thank you a lot for your post

[JeanPaul]

 

So, I forgot about this test and joined a bit late. But when I got into the test today, it was the first time I had seen the map and holy fuck let me tell you, its impressive as hell. Your brushwork leaves me green with envy man, just damn. On top of that, all the play spaces are immediately readable and the encounter spaces interesting and fun. 

 

I took the liberty of decompiling it to look around and I was even more impressed when I saw it in hammer. Straight up got a hammer design boner.  One last thing - your main stage is 24 solids when it really only has to be one. (just a friendly fyi) But I bet you already knew that

 

Insane work so far man.

 

 

seriously ?! I wasn't expecting a reaction like that, i didn't think this dev work could be appreciated as much !

Thank you a lot for this, it's really motivating, espacially from you because bms is for me the reference in terms of brushworking (curves and weird and really complex things on bms). So i'm happy that you noticed my work on brushworking and feel free to decompile and take a look at the map, it's an honor for me.

You don't really have missed anything, the last playtest was really different, the map has changed a lot and i already have restarted lots of things from scratch.

 

I have big issues with the 2D grid of the CS:GO SDK, frequently there are bugs that move just a little the vertexes (maybe just 0.01 unit) and it ruins the optimisation if i don't fix them. For some shapes, like the main stage, i just can't fix it because, every time i open the map on hammer, everything have slightly moved, and it's extremely annoying (this is for example the reason why i did the sloping floor in a model, because there were lots of bugs on it).

 

Thank you a lot for your post

 

 

Wow impressive improvement from the pervious version haha.

 

Source + Hammer's grid is really a strange ass thing. It has so many quirks that you cant honestly ever know about unless you spend countless hours trial and error-ing things in your map. Having your brushwork get re-snapped in hammer once you reload the map is a result of improper brush creation as oppsed to the (commonly thought) idea that any vertices off grid are automatically snapped on-grid. Hammer forcing or moving vertices around on the grid is a result of an invalid solid trying to be made valid. The clip tool and any translation tool (resize, rotate, skew) will never create invalid solids and can be used to make some weird shit if you play around with them.  However, the second you start using the vertex edit tool, you have to be extremely careful as to not accidentally create any concave surfaces as it makes Hammer go nutso. 

 

I also noticed you have pretty decent understanding of how brush triangulation works. (your ceiling dome and a few other things) This same concept could easily be applied to making your opera floors, here take a look at this: 

 

Your floor being a model, while good in terms of optimization, is not good in terms of lighting (especially since its indoor and csm cant touch it) or collisions. So, make it out of brushwork!

 

1. Count the number of sides each arch has that you want to connect

2. If each number is different (you want to connect a 14 sided arch to a 16 sided arch) use the endpieces as outlier control to "absorb" the left over sides. This makes it so that you can neatly triangulate simple rectangles to keep it as simple as possible

3. Clip the outlier brush using ONLY the clip tool as to avoid invalid brushes here (because it will probably have more than 4 sides therefore making it extremely difficult/impossible to triangulate)

4. Perfectly align the tops of your brushwork to that of the surrounding areas using alt+right click in the texture tool

5. Triangulate the brushwork

6. Select the top row of vertices that you want to drag down to meet the lower arch (this part is important) and drag them down to the area you want to connect. Make sure you drag and not push, as pushing vertices in hammer results in valid solids becoming invalid. Your brushwork should have been made so that the bottom of your connecting arch is the top of the walkable space below so that when you move all the vertices down, you weld the vertices into triangles.

7. Bam! done:

 

 

I tell you to align your textures before you vertex edit because if your original brushwork shape and texture align to a nice grid, then the following vertex edited brushwork will also do the same even though the new resulting surface is slightly larger than the previous one. (Hammer will ever so slightly stretch the textures for you perfectly and without actually "scaling" the texture - meaning if you click on it, it will still say "0.25" as opposed to a slightly larger number even though it still fits perfectly)

 

If you did it right everything should stay on grid even after re-opening it ANd your textures will remain perfectly fit and workable:

 

http://i.imgur.com/PIQjFCG.png

http://i.imgur.com/gxNC1FP.png

 

I attached a vmf with that brushwork in it if you want to look at it in hammer. (copy it from my vmf and "paste special" with the "center of original" option checked and it will place it exactly in the map where it needs to be)

 

EDIT: Also thanks for the bms compliments

opera_floor.zip

Edited November 24, 2013 by JeanPaul

[Puddy]

The map was quite fun and it certainly has a unique setting. I'd make some of the alternate routes slightly less "twisty and turny" to aid players in finding their way and I'd look closer at the T-sidedness.

[leplubodeslapin]

Thanks for this answer JeanPaul.

Actually i don't have any problem with the vertex tool, the issue i'm talking about comes with the clipping tool. I don't think it's due to invalid solids, i'm really careful about that.

I totally agree with the fact that it would be better that my floor is in brush (mainly because of the lighting as you said), and it was in brush before, the same way that you generously have done :

 

(it's the lower floor)

 

But i had the problem that i said to you, and i'm sorry but i have the same issue with your vmf, take a closer look :

 

 

 

 

Maybe i just have this issue on my PC, i don't know (those screenshots were taken in a grid scale of 1 and the biggest zoom possible), could you try to check yourself ?

So, this is the reason why i made it a model, because vertexes can't move once the model is compiled and the lighting isn't that bad with -staticproppolys and the other compile commands (i don't remember). And it seems that it doesn't bother the bots.

 

Still, thank you very much for this explanation, i didn't know about the texture thing.

 

 

Thanks puddy for coming yesterday, i'm not sure i will be able to make the paths less "twisty and turny" but i'll try and yes, i also think there is a balance problem, especialy in the main entrance. I'll try to do something helpful for the CT. Thank you

[Rick_D]

why don't you just fix it? :S