[CSGO] De_Angels (WiP)

[Jdbener]

My first attempt at finishing a Counter-Strike map. After many abandoned attempts... I present Angels!

Story:
A Venetian-themed hotel on the southern coast of California is being besieged by attacking Terrorist! Obviously, the job was done by racist anarchists... or does this grudge run deeper?

Workshop:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=901966234

Flythrough:
Set to music far too epic for this map...

Screenshots (slightly outdated):

Spoiler

T-Spawn

B-Long

Entrance to B-long

Middle

A-Electric

A-Site

CT-Spawn

B-Sewers

Enterance from B-Sewer to B-site

B-Site

 

1

Thanks in advance for any feedback or words of wisdom you might have

Edited July 3, 2017 by Jdbener

[text_fish]

Hello! Looks like you've made some good progress so far. I can't comment much on game-play, but I have a few thoughts on the aesthetics:

• "Venetian-themed hotel on the southern coast of California" is a bit of a weird theme. I'm sure there are Venetian-themed hotels all over the world, but it's never going to be immediately identifiable for the very reason that it's something pretending to be something it's not -- that's getting way too meta when you factor in that a cs:go version would be something pretending to be something pretending to be something it's not.
   The majority of players aren't going to read the story or map description, so they'll just end up thinking "Hey, this mapper doesn't really know where he wants to set his map". Judging by the video it doesn't look like it would be too difficult to just run with the Venetian theme -- all you'd really need to do is turn the sewer area in to a small canal and change up some of the texturing on a few buildings.
• There are too many doors. Hotels have a lot of doors yes, but hotels are boring, repetitive places and you don't want your map to be boring and repetitive.
• There are too many crates and they were clearly stacked by an insane person who never took any health and safety training. If you're just trying to full up empty space, consider some fenced off garden areas or just extending the surrounding architecture out a bit.
• A lot of it looks quite narrow. This is immediately obvious at the beginning of the video, where the player is bouncing off of the surrounding geometry, but it seems to be a problem throughout. Narrow areas of a map can be useful, but they should be carefully designed in contrast to more open areas, so that players don't feel like they have to bounce off each other and the environment, and also to mix up gameplay styles.

[Jdbener]

I just realized the flags never show up in the video. On both the route to B and the route to A, there are American and Californian flags flying overhead do you think that in any way helps with players understanding that I'm not off my rocker? How many doors do you think should be kept? 75% 50% 25%? I could probably find some creative crate replacements on B. As for expanding the map, early versions were a lot more open than this version, but by popular request many of the areas were compressed down. This is something that I'm going to have to give some thought to... and probably it will require a few playtests to come up with a proper decision. 

Edited July 3, 2017 by Jdbener

[maxlevelboi]

I have not played your level but the lampposts, are they easy to maneuver past during combat?

[text_fish]

I think the flags would probably just confuse people more, personally. If there's a really good reason to set a map in a Venetian themed hotel in California then by all means go for it, but I can't really see why you would choose that over a simple Venetian setting. If you do decide to keep the Cali Hotel thing, I would suggest creating some new assets that look "mock-Venetian", such as cardboard cutouts of Gondoliers or a much more scaled down plasticy looking version of St Mark's Campanile. Valve's Venice assets were designed to look game-real rather than game-fake-real.

[Jdbener]

On 7/4/2017 at 2:08 AM, maxlevelboi said:

I have not played your level but the lampposts, are they easy to maneuver past during combat?

So far there haven't been any problems... However, I have been keeping an eye on them.

I think the flags would probably just confuse people more, personally. If there's a really good reason to set a map in a Venetian themed hotel in California then by all means go for it, but I can't really see why you would choose that over a simple Venetian setting. If you do decide to keep the Cali Hotel thing, I would suggest creating some new assets that look "mock-Venetian", such as cardboard cutouts of Gondoliers or a much more scaled down plasticy looking version of St Mark's Campanile. Valve's Venice assets were designed to look game-real rather than game-fake-real.

3

I plan to make some signs advertising St. Marcs Hotel boasting of an "accurate" recreation of the Campanile di San Marco. 

Edited July 12, 2017 by Jdbener

[Jdbener]

New update

Spoiler

 

 

Edited July 12, 2017 by Jdbener