I've been working on a KOTH map for a few days to get the feel of hammer down. It's probably not very good gameplay wise, considering all I got was bots to test it so far.
I should add that I'm totally new to this and am unfamiliar with proper naming (it's just "koth_atlantic" instead of "koth_atlantic_letter#"), but please criticize it as hard as possible, since I'm not going to get anything out of it if you go soft. Since this is my first map, I kind of know it's probably terrible and won't be afraid to scrap it if I have to, but I'd love to continue working on it.
Main Level Design Concept
koth_atlantic is an oil-rig themed stage. When designing it, I wanted players to feel as if they confined to a construct in the middle of the ocean. I made the stage a bit vertical oriented, since that would make the players try to think about up/down more than west/south/noth/east, which helps the theme of the stage. I also did it because most of the stage is metal and concrete, and there is little reason for displacement or interesting floors on a stage like this, except on the ocean bottom.
The map looks good so far, it just needs a lot of refinement. Which is fine considering its probably pretty early into development. Also next time you post screenshots, jack up your settings so it looks nicer.
EDIT: Your environment lighting is also pretty bland and all your scenes need more contrast in the lighting. Thats all I can really comment on considering I havent played it yet.
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Here's how the naming scheme works: a1, a2, etc and then b1, b2, etc, and then sometimes rc1, rc2, etc. The breakdown is a = alpha, meaning basic layout stage, maybe some detailing but nothing major; b = beta, which should probably be fully or 90% detailed, be mostly done, and play how you like; rc = release candidate, meaning you think it's now so good that you would release it as a final build to Valve, would they buy it. What you have here is an a1 probably. You should have more alphas than betas and more betas than rcs.
As for your map, I'd recommend using a more coherent set of textures--pick a few and stick with them. It will make your map look better. The metal truss texture either needs $nocull in the VMT or you should double it up... it looks weird having a completely flat support that close to the player. For now you could probably just use metal ibeam textures.
Oil rig maps have been attempted a few times. The actual layout of a real life oil rig is probably not conducive to great TF2 gameplay, so don't feel like you can't fudge it a little bit to make things work. I think this idea could work and has been close to working in the past. You might want to search out the older oil rig maps and see if you can identify any issues with them. I think two were named "Oilrig" and one was... derrick, or something like that. Best to avoid past mistakes if you can.
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The breakdown is a = alpha, meaning basic layout stage, maybe some detailing but nothing major; b = beta, which should probably be fully or 90% detailed, be mostly done, and play how you like; rc = release candidate, meaning you think it's now so good that you would release it as a final build to Valve, would they buy it.
Atlantic
