PL Vesper

[Vilepickle]

Description:
An alpine themed Payload map with rollforward, rollback, and dynamic gate elements. BLU must assault RED's base to uncover their hidden explosive stockpile and disable it.

CP 1 and 2 both have gates that BLU must destroy when they cap the point in order to...

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[Vilepickle]

After a bit of playtesting I'm planning on tightening up the wider side route that red takes to the CP1 area. That area in general is quite spacious and I'm not a big fan.

I have some more plans in my TODO, but I'm not sure they'll make it for the submission. I do want to do a beta 3 this weekend though, time willing.

[Francis]

This map is pretty great. Add me on steam if you need to test out b3 or w/e with some people on our server. We usually have ~20 people in evening time (PST.)

B2 is uploaded right now and I'll run it once a day when people are playing.

[Vilepickle]

Old:


New:


I think that should make the entrance and exit flow better than in b2.

[Vilepickle]

B3 out, post updated/screenshots updated.

B3 CHANGES/FIXES:
FIXED
-Made it easier for BLU to attack the right route into the CP2 area from near CP1 with a new route up in addition to the longer house path
-Added full health and ammo close to CP1, mostly for offense after capping
-Removed the full health from the upper catwalk of CP1 (it's now down near the CP)
-Removed medium health from the defense side of CP1 wall
-Tweaked up the health of the dynamic element gates by a few hundred
-The far side route from CP1 to CP2 has been streamlined to be less wide open and large
-Replaced the window on the CP2-3 catwalk for RED with a small balcony in order to improve flow in this hallway
-Moved the exit of the CP2-3 catwalk over to prevent a nasty sightline

[Vilepickle]

Beta 4 out based on gameday feedback. Quite a few positive changes.

B4 CHANGES/FIXES:
FIXED
-Blocked sightline to BLU's far spawn door
-Clipped the "great wall" so it cannot be gotten over
-Reworked dynamic element to no longer require players to break the gate. The cart will proceed to break the wall on its own, but before it does the path is blocked
-Added a medium ammo pack for engineers behind the last CP
-Further optimized FPS at CP1 area

[Tarry H Sruman]

The whole first area, prior to the "great wall", could definitely be broken up more. Also, your dynamic element doesn't really contribute anything to the gameplay. The doors break so quickly and easily that they might as well not be there.

[Vilepickle]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tarry H Sruman

The whole first area, prior to the "great wall", could definitely be broken up more. Also, your dynamic element doesn't really contribute anything to the gameplay. The doors break so quickly and easily that they might as well not be there.

Indeed, changes in beta 4 are focused on these two things in particular. The screens have been updated so you can see the separation added to the area outside of BLU's spawn in order to close some sightlines that were proving troublesome.

Also, my dynamic element has changed in b4. It's more subtle in that it's not a "here, break this wall, waste some ammo, it's not really adding anything" element. The main reason I wanted gating in the first place was to have routes open up near the cart itself, which this change promotes while dumping the cruft. The cart proceeds and breaks the gate itself rather than having players do it. Simpler, more effective, and makes more sense.

[stevethepocket]

One thing that really stood out when I played this is that almost all of the lightmaps have been turned up to a higher level of detail than the default. I would recommend avoiding this, since like I said it really stands out when players are used to maps with mostly 16-scale lightmaps, and also because it tends to lead to overly large and unwieldy filesizes. Fortunately that second part doesn't seem to be an issue yet, with the map taking up only 55 MB compared to, for example, Croissant and Shenmue which are over 100 MB apiece.

Also, the first gate still seems to be designed to be broken by the player, so if you meant to change that, it didn't take.

[Vilepickle]

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevethepocket

One thing that really stood out when I played this is that almost all of the lightmaps have been turned up to a higher level of detail than the default. I would recommend avoiding this, since like I said it really stands out when players are used to maps with mostly 16-scale lightmaps, and also because it tends to lead to overly large and unwieldy filesizes. Fortunately that second part doesn't seem to be an issue yet, with the map taking up only 55 MB compared to, for example, Croissant and Shenmue which are over 100 MB apiece.

Also, the first gate still seems to be designed to be broken by the player, so if you meant to change that, it didn't take.

I selectively changed some of the lightmaps to enhance the shadows. I prefer the sharper shadows most of the time myself. I'll see about tweaking it down on some surfaces where it's a bit too obvious.

With the gate, do you mean something is broken about it, or just the overall design of the gate?

[stevethepocket]

I mean it still has the thing where you have to hit it so many times to make it break apart and let you through.