Airport Hall

An asymmetrical 5-control-point map set in the interior of a large airport hall. Good for small games; lots of fun for large ones. Lots of opportunities for different classes to shine, but also balanced. Replayable.


Comments would be very much appreciated. This map has been around for a little while, but I'm now posting my maps on tf2maps, and I would love to see this one in further circulation, or would at least enjoy a playtest or two.


N.B. This map's art style is intentionally somewhat different from Valve's set of TF2 styles. My later maps conform more closer to the existing TF2 art style, but this one was an experiment. Be gentle with my art skills! -- I'm better at creating good gameplay opportunities than beautiful artwork.


(EDIT: For the record, I believe -- no absolute promises -- that there are actually no Half-Life 2 textures in this map. All the non-TF ones are custom: I got them from a freely available custom Source textures archive. Having said that, I'm trying generally to avoid custom textures in my later maps.)


[Please excuse me if I've made any mistakes in the mechanics of posting a new map. It's my first map thread here.]

Thanks for the kind comments about the bespoke artwork (the logos and signs) and the overall 'epic' look Maybe I will take your suggestion and release those as an archive here.

As for non-standard textures, I've now added this edit to the map release listing, for reference for future comments:

For the record, I believe -- no absolute promises -- that there are actually no Half-Life 2 textures in this map. All the non-TF ones are custom: I got them from a freely available custom Source textures archive. Having said that, I'm trying generally to avoid custom textures in my later maps.

Click to expand...

So, yeah -- I'm more concerned with gameplay improvements at this stage than art direction ones. I may do some more re-texturing if I find particular textures that I'd like to replace various things in the map with, but although I've since learnt to generally avoid non-TF2 textures (if for no other reason than that the community HATES non-TF2 textures!), I'm generally now happy with the look of the map. Please don't flame me too hard for this

Perhaps if the map adhered to an actual airport layout, it would be 6x as epic.

Click to expand...

I know what you mean. If I were to do this map from scratch, one of the things I would probably do is study an airport's layout more carefully and apply some of that to the map. Having said that, airports are huge, and do not necessarily lend themselves to replayable TF2 spaces. So I opted to create a layout that I thought had good gameplay potential, but was a bit less realistic for the setting. There are various airport elements dotted throughout the map to try and make the setting clearer.

Also, think of it as a 'research airport facility', rather than a commercial, consumer airport. This should help you suspend your disbelief

Hopefully this plays as well as it looks like it's going to be work intensive..

Click to expand...

I didn't really understand what this comment meant!


Thanks for all the feedback so far. Is there somewhere on TF2maps I can go to submit this map for possible testing some time?


Mokagogo

Map Testing -- Tonight!

In case anyone is interested, this map will be being tested on the US tf2maps.net testing server later today, at 5.30pm Central Time (6.30pm Eastern; 11.30pm UK time), for 15 minutes. If anyone would like to check out how the map plays, please do come along -- definitely, the more the merrier!

The server is at: 63.210.148.171:27015

If you want to download and install the map in advance, you can do that at the top of this thread.

Cheers,

Mokagogo

First -- many thanks for all the constructive criticism! I really appreciate the time you took to write this.

alecom said:

Right, found it a bit odd that it wasn't symmetrical - I'm not sure to what extent this has an effect on the gameplay, but it doesn't feel right!

Click to expand...

In the testing, the better team won fairly quickly as both Red and Blue. I tried quite carefully to 'balance' the asymmetries against each other when creating the map, so where one side might be argued to have an advantage, their opponents should be advantaged in another way. It would be useful to try and keep a wins/losses record to judge how effective I've been in this experiment... But I will always be keeping my eye on possible adjustments to keep the playing field equal. My later maps are more symmetrical but this was a bit of an experiment.

Symmetry of the central point structure

In the playtest, someone pointed out that the central cap point's building is asymmetrical. That's true, but the asymmetry actually starts on the first floor of the structure that's off the ground. Which means that if the players are running up the structure, both teams actually need to go the same distance in order to get to the asymmetrical part of the structure -- i.e. it affects both teams equally.

The only possible way this might not apply is with rocket-jumping or sticky-jumping. But since you can rocket/sticky-jump all the way to the _top_ of the structure already, this obviates the need for symmetry for those classes lower down.

The textures I don't have any beef, but I think you'll find a majority will, so it depends if that matters to you. Personally I liked the look of some of those textures, and am not a fussy person.

Click to expand...

I've already started changing some of these. None of the custom textures in the map were actually from Half-Life (contrary to what some of the very confident testers were claiming). We'll see what a new lick of paint does to the look of the level.

The middle cap I think a lot of people had difficulty finding - myself included. It's not even in the middle!

Click to expand...

There are arrows pointing at it (and generally throughout the level). Ultimately, like most maps, in your very first minutes of trying out the map you'll spend some time finding your bearings. But once players figure out where it is, this won't be a problem. It's to the side so that there's a view across the map horizontally to create some interesting sniping opportunities.

Having to climb those small ramps to get to the point (which is quite open and in view for snipers) was something I didn't like too much.

Click to expand...

That's good! It's the hardest point to cap and to hold, and it's intentionally exposed. I have limited the exposure somewhat from previous betas, by adding the concrete pillars on the sides of the cap point.

I know that the spawns don't change since the map isn't too big, but do you change spawn times? Something I don't remember, but which would be good to have.

Click to expand...

I don't. I actually have the spawn time set incredibly low (like, 1 or something) -- for two reasons: (i) to make it a fierce battle to cap the final point, which is close to the spawns; (ii) to reduce the need for forward spawns in this map, by having players up and about very quickly after they die. Since it's not a very large map anyway, this means they can get to the other side fairly quickly (moreso with teleports, of course).

The announcer thing was awesome.

Click to expand...

Thanks. And thank you for pointing me earlier today in the direction of logic_timer and logic_case -- my intention is to create some more (funny) announcements using the TF2 voices, and have them play at random in the airport, rather than one set announcement at the start of each round.

Have you tried it with the 2nd caps already taken?

Click to expand...

I originally started with that, but if you start with just the home cap taken, there's a bit more strategy for the teams, since they have to figure out which players should push straight to 3, and which should hold back to cap 2.