Machina

My ctf contest entry. Edit: Durp... See bellow.

Backstory:
Red and Blu battle it out for each other's secrets inside TF industry's mega complex, Machina: a factory-like complex the size of a small city.

Functional information:
The map was built with 2 main objectives in mind: avoiding stalemates and keeping the fight interesting wherever it may happen, particularly in the neutral area.

I tried to cover the first point by making defending the flag harder (and consequently capturing it easier). There are 3 ways into the enemy base, and 3 ways into the flag room specifically. There are 2 ways out of both. It's impossible for one person/sentry to cover all entry points or either of the exit points by itself, and the flag room is small enough that a single uber should clear out all sentries inside it.

The intent is to make it more important to shift the focus of the game from the usual "camp our flag, and then make a run for theirs when the heat dies", to "get theirs before they get ours".

For the second point I decided to pick my current favorite ctf "neutral ground", turbine, but add to it. The problem with Turbine's neutral ground to me was the lack of more vertical combat, and a bit more space (not open space specifically, just neutral space in general) I tried to have a lot of possibilities for vertical fighting in most cases for Soldiers, Demos and Scouts, while providing enough cover and choke points for Heavies, Pyros and Spies, and enough sightlines/open ground for Snipers and Scouts with a tad of "good but not invulnerable sentry spots" for Engineers.

The vertical combat, specially for scouts, comes at a risk though: The higher you go, the less cover you have. It's a trade off.

At the end of the day I tried to make a map that is hard to camp, particularly the neutral ground and the intel rooms, and rewards aggressive strategies while keeping the fight interesting. As testing goes on, I'll see if it worked and try to fix whatever might need fixing.

Cheers.

30/07/10 - Edit: After a heart crushing HDD problem which had seemingly sunk my entire mapping work into oblivion, I stopped mapping entirely. I didn't mean to stop forever, it was just devastating having my entire work (on both this and my cp map) completely lost. As such, I was, obviously, incapacitated to meet the ctf contest's deadline (which was over several months ago).

That said, couple days ago I received the kind of information that left me absolutely ecstatic: my brother managed to recover my HDD, and with it my entire mapping "career".

I know the contest is long gone, but I'll see this map through nonetheless. I was very proud of it when I said my goodbyes, and time has only reinforced my resolve. I'm not competing for any prizes, except for the biggest one of them all: see my map finally finished and out there.

Hey ladies... I'm baaaaaaaaaack.

[The Political Gamer]

The mid looks very turbineish. Also what is with people, this contest, and water?

[Caliostro]

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Political Gamer

The mid looks very turbineish. Also what is with people, this contest, and water?

That would be because it was inspired by turbine, as I mentioned in the op

... Because water fucking rocks... Water "mirrors" look fucking awesome x2, and I needed something to make sure people who felt like jumping down the horizontal pass wouldn't take fall damage.


...Also when I was building the map, and didn't have a ceiling yet, was just test-compiling with cordon and some insane height, I made a game of "shoot the demoman", where I'd just propel a demo from one corner of the map to the other and tried to land in the water just to admire bizarro physics at work.

Apparently in the TF2 universe something like 20 inches of water perfectly break a 3 mile vertical fall...


...It was funny...


...Water's awesome...

[absurdistof]

What's the glass in screenshot 2? Also, I like the levels of cargo boxes, but you might want to expand on the map a little bit if it's your main fighting space.

[Snacks]

Spawn room doors are filtered, but don't have func_respawnvisualizer.

[Caliostro]

Quote:

Originally Posted by absurdistof

What's the glass in screenshot 2? Also, I like the levels of cargo boxes, but you might want to expand on the map a little bit if it's your main fighting space.

"fishtank". I dunno, random glass, it'll probably be changed in the next alpha since the blue tint is... meh.

On the middle, I reckon I might have to work on it, but I wanna see how it plays out right now before adding anything else.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snacks

Spawn room doors are filtered, but don't have func_respawnvisualizer.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-... Knew I forgot something.


Hotfix commin' right up.

Cheers

[Colt Seavers]

Downloading now - will stick on the map lab 8)

[VelvetFistIronGlove]

Moving through the middle of this area felt really awkward: at ground level there are lots of obstacles, and you can't see much. On the other hand, the raised platforms around the edge felt disconnected: if someone takes the upper route through the middle when returning with the intel, you can't really intercept them if you're in the lower area.

I think you need to make the upper and lower levels more integrated.

[The Political Gamer]

[VelvetFistIronGlove]

I'll just follow up my comments with a picture showing one possible way of integrating the levels in the centre of the map, so that the upper level is still useful for controlling the map, but much more approachable (click through to get full size):