[Judge Vote] Icarus' Review Thread

[Icarus]

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Overlook

Category	Score/7
Gameplay	1
Class Involvement	5
Style	6
Optimization	5
Average	4.25

Gameplay:
I really hate how messy the gameplay is in this map. Hyper fast respawn times, cramped, complex out door spaces and cramped, complex corridors really inside really bother me. What gives with the insanely long spawn room? No sense of pacing, bad flow, Overlook always just ends up something resembling a DM grind-fest.



Piling up the intels on your desk might be a cool gimmick, but they don't have collision. Players can hide stickies in there or put sentries on the other side that you can't see but it can still shoot you.

Class:
This map is a playground for soldiers and scouts. Plenty of heights and tight spaces to ambush and spray splash damage all over the place. Demomen can take advantage of the way too many numerous chokepoints.

Playing medic on this map is really annoying! There is no where you can escape to on mid. All the cramped spaces and hiding nooks and crannies on mid make it really easy to get assassinated by scouts. All the access points into the intel room are tight chokepoints, and sentries hiding behind a pile of intels are really bad.

Style:

Overlook's strong point. Your detailing is top-notch. Save for a couple of confusing indoor parts (Vents and spawn), I always know where I am going. I am completely convinced that this is an actual location in TF2. Your facade, has been executed very well, and the goal of each team is clearly laid out for you. I particularly love your indoor spaces.



However, your facade is nameless, and is very much just a generic concrete industrial installation... for some reason build partway into a cliff. (I also don't get why there is an elevated desk in the middle of the room... surrounded by a glass floor)

Optimization:
I get minor but noticeable FPS drops on this map, particularly looking towards one end of mid from the other. My FPS is mostly steady around 60-70, occasionally dropping down to the 40-50 range. Thanks for keeping the filesize small.

Final Thoughts:
While I must commend you on your detailing, I find Overlook to be fine example of what I hate about a lot of custom maps.


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Landfall

Category	Score/7
Gameplay	3
Class Involvement	3
Style	6
Optimization	6
Average	4.50

Gameplay:
Landfall's gameplay was decent, but it's pretty obvious that you don't play/don't care too much for competitive play. Mid is designed in such a way that it's really hard to see anything coming. Enemies from the extreme-height catwalks can literally rain down anyone unfortunate enough to be caught on the ground. Pushing and holding are both annoyingly difficult.



There are just so many surprise flank routes everywhere its impossible to keep track of where everyone is. Having the intel so close to the spawn room (and in full view, too!) was a poor design choice. You're pretty much asking the attacking team to spawn camp them for a while in order to grab the intel.

Do not have your spawn points facing the wall!

Class:
Scouts, demos and soldiers have free feign over the mid. Everyone else, on the other hand, are left out to dry. There are absolutely no escape routes for a threatened medic. Being forced onto the ground floor (which will happen very often) is suicide. Because of how inaccessible and how high the catwalks are, you won't be able to heal your team if they're up on the catwalks. If they come down to help you out they're at a massive height disadvantage.

Really, I think it's the extreme catwalks you have networked across the entire map that ruin it.

Gameplay:
Landfall's detailing is gorgeous. There is nothing I could say that anyone else haven't already. Direction is clear: the subtle differences in colour tones between the two sides make sure I'm never lost. The giant tree in the centre acts as a landmark which acts as a guide.



Your outdoor detailing is awesome, no doubt about it, but your interiors are repetitive and empty. Your spytech areas are rather small, but it's enough to get away with a convincing story. I don't understand why there is an intelligence briefcase right out in the open, in the middle of your cover operation. For a logging/paper company, it's funny that they only have one saw in the entire campus. The rest your rooms look like nothing more than generic storage areas that serve no real purpose.

Optimization:
Your optimization is great, I get a steady 60FPS and I never go below 50fps. The map still draws more than it needs to at mid's sightlines, but that can be easily fixed with a more effectively placed occluder (the one you already have is a good start, but it can be better).

Final Thoughts:
You told me before how much you didn't really care for competitive play. And it shows. I'm sorry


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Mercy

Category	Score/7
Gameplay	3
Class Involvement	5
Style	5
Optimization	7
Average	5.00

Gameplay:
A compact and relatively simple layout gives Mercy a really, really fast pace. I like how there is still room for strategy, but not how layout was done. The intel room feels like a trap because it's just so easy to flank them and hole up in the back rooms. Even then, it's still pretty frustrating to break into the room because of the upwards slope and the proximity to the spawn (which also leads to the occasional spawn camping).

Why did you make the intel room a big staircase? It's a sponge for splash damage and makes attacking the intel room more frustrating that it already is. Making the area immediately around the intel nobuild makes no sense either. They're just as annoying (if not more) on the staircase than the cap area.

Class:
It's really cramped, but it's not terrible. Sentries and heavies work a bit too effectively, though. The staircase really eats up splash damage and makes it hard for soldiers and demos to do much.

Style:


Solid detail, but a lot of the style has just been copied from from Double Cross, and lacks a personality of its own. Navigation is messy in the areas behind the bases because of the multiple overreaching flanks and the one-way door. The window opening was also really hard to notice, and it was really hard to tell if anyone was behind it.



Your forest skycards look like they're being used backwards. They're supposed to be used so they look like they're fading away with distance fog. Mercy makes no attempt to explain why the intel would be there, and if anything nefarious was about at all, save for a small, modest detail room. You have a clear transition from cover operation to spytech base... except the base is barely even there. It's odd to see the respawn visualizers set away from the doors like that as you don't expect it.

Optimization:
I get a smooth 80FPS throughout the map. Thank you.

Final Thoughts:
Not a bad map. I can have fun with it sometimes, but other times it just gets too hectic.

[Icarus]

Fusion

Category	Score/7
Gameplay	5
Class Involvement	6
Style	7
Optimization	3
Average	5.25

Gameplay:
Flow is decent and the amount of 6v6 testing you've done clearly shows.



I'm not a fan of Cap-At-Flag. I really dislike the awfully awkward stalemate moments when you have the flag but can't cap. Even worse, you have an intel blocking entity near your spawn. It looks bizarre to begin with, but you can also exploit it! One game, we had a demo or someone move fast enough to get past the barrier, and getting the intel stuck behind it. Everybody was clueless as to what was going on, and we inevitably had to give the intel up :/

Class:
Decent, but mid has quite a few troublesome unavoidable sightlines. Otherwise, it caters well to class dynamics.

Style:
Wonderfully detailed, and I am totally convinced of the foggy winter environment you've used. Direction is decent, but you have several long winding corridors throughout the base. It's not always clear where these passages go. Recently I just found one that I've never noticed before (The one that runs through the middle of the teams' bases into the intel room) because its so tucked away in a cramped area.



The spytech areas are logical, the corporations would just close the shutters and it'd be hidden from sight. The giant machine at spawn looks like a great start of a model, but lacks decent textures. Looks kind of like it's made of plastic now.

Optimization:
I average 55FPS in your base areas, and it consistently dips down to 45 FPS in the middle area. Very poor.

Final Thoughts:
Plays well, except for cap-at-flag. Looks nice, but at the cost of FPS. How bittersweet.


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Bedrock

Category	Score/7
Gameplay	6
Class Involvement	6
Style	2
Optimization	7
Average	5.25

Gameplay:
Really solid gameplay. The intel room can't be camped, and the battles on mid are interesting and flows well. It's kind of like Overlook, but good. You have some odd sightlines here and there, and the bases could be scaled down a tad, but for the most part I had fun.

Class:
Every class can do reasonably well here. All-around solid.

Style:



It shouldn't need to be said that bedrock's style is underdeveloped. At the very least it resembles a TF2 map, with no unusual objects or inappropriate textures. Direction is clear for the most part, the layout is so simple I never get lost.



This sign makes no sense at all. If it's telling you to go right after you go through the doorway, it's wrong, since there are no battlements there. If it's just telling you to go to the small, lone, window the the far corner of the room, that's also weird.

Optimization:
I get average about 90FPS, and never go below 80. No bugs. Perfect score.

Final Thoughts:
It's another map with solid gameplay, but looks terrible. Get good at detailing, then come back and finish the map. It's pretty good.


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Wiretap

Category	Score/7
Gameplay	4
Class Involvement	6
Style	6
Optimization	6
Average	5.50

Gameplay:



Wiretap was clearly designed by pubs, for pubs. Wiretap's mid is too long and narrow. It takes too long to get to one base from the other, but the chokes force a confrontation between the teams. The mid battle is essentially non-existent --most battles take place in the bases. When you have flanks, they're a extreme. There is no uniform way to push in/out, so teams are often separated and scattered about. Wiretap is decent, but the fact you've barely done any real testing, or none at all, really shows.

Class:
You have some nice height advantages that can be fun to jump around on., but the narrow chokes and the long walks make turtling a bit too easy and gives certain classes the short end. Otherwise, not bad.

Style:
Fantastic detailing. Very appealing to the eye. I think you should texture the atrium and the intel room a little more differently, so I can get bearings on which direction would get me outside or further in. A good example is Well: The further in the base you are, the more spytechy it becomes. You bases just look pure spytech, the moment you come into the room. The observation deck could use some more world detailing, because it's just too obvious that it's the 3D geometry. The bland background and the giant film feel kinda ruins it. Direction is OK, but it's not hard to get lost in your corridor bases.



You need to work on your displacements.
What are these signs? Why are they there? What are they trying to tell me? I have no clue!!
What's the purpose of the hazard bar over there? It's normally supposed to mark maximum clearance, and/or warn about overhead obstacles, but it's so high up there it's purpose is defeated.

Optimization:
I average 90 FPS indoors, 60FPS outdoors. Sometimes dips down to 50, especially as I look towards the enemy base from my battlements.

Final Thoughts:
A great pub map, but that's not the focus of this contest. You'll need to do some work to make this fun for all playstyles, expanding your audience.

[Icarus]

Cloudburst

Category	Score/7
Gameplay	6
Class Involvement	7
Style	3
Optimization	7
Average	5.75

Gameplay:
Cloudburst is a pretty solid map game-play wise. It's remarkably well-paced, with long respawns, decent walk times, and a well-constructed intel room. The simple, open layout makes it really easy to understand and is very fluid. I like how you make the caves a holding point to control, but it isn't as overpowered as Turbine's mid. Your intel room is also nicely balanced between too hard to defend and too campable. It's indoors, but it's so small you can't really turtle.

Although rare, Cloudburst suffers the occasional nasty spawn camping problem. This is due to a lot of problems, partially from the height disadvantage, its close proximity and full visibility from the intel room.

Class:
Lots of space for scouts to move around, and a couple of good places where the double-jump is really useful, in particular the balcony to the intel room. Keeping the map mostly outdoors ensures that demos and soldiers can jump at their heart's content. Heck, even your caves have a high ceiling. Several well-placed health packs really help out medics, and there always seems to be an escape route nearby whenever the medic is threatened.

I'm a bit concerned about the full ammo pack near the intel room, though. It's a bit too extreme, and engineers can get their nest up really fast. All the glass-less windows and being able to shoot directly into the intel room might can be problematic with snipers.

Style:
Everything seems to be done just short to make the setting believable, and never goes past that point.



Your displacements need are decent, but need work, especially around your corners and the formation in the centre of the caves. Your building interiors are good, but the exteriors are really lacking. You surround most of your map with cliff walls, which really prevent the map from feeling like it's part of a larger world. You do a little bit for the areas behind the spawn rooms, but some more would make the map feel less compartmentalized.

The caves feel especially plain and blockish. The wooden platforms in the middle look odd without any supports. For some reason you have logs supporting the sides of the caves, but they look like they've just been thrown together. Nothing suggests what might be holding up, nor does it look like it's doing a good job of holding anything up! Your clouds are also moving unnaturally fast.



Cloudburst offers little to nothing to support any kind of story. The only hints is offers is a dead-end train track, and a "Novint Logging" sign. Your buildings have no purpose: nothing suggests why the intel would be where it is, nothing to suggest any kind of secret organization. No facade, no base, no back story, just an intel that for some reason is held within among a bunch of wooden buildings.

It's not all bad, though. The second rainbow (A lot of people actually miss this!) was a really nice touch, as well as the light pouring in from the cave ceiling. Cloudburst has a clear direction integrated in it's detailing. The simple layout and open areas made sure I was never lost. Colouring the buildings that house the intel differently was an excellent touch.


Optimization:
Optimization on this map is great! I get a steady 80-90 most of the time, and the lowest it ever goes is 70! Congratulations, perfect score! Thanks for keeping the filesize low.


Final Thoughts:
I always enjoy playing Cloudburst, and it's a lot of fun. You just need to work on your detailing skills and come back later to finish this map!!


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Wildfire

Category	Score/7
Gameplay	5
Class Involvement	7
Style	5
Optimization	7
Average	6.00

Gameplay:
Definitely solid and clearly designed for competitive play. I'm just not a fan of the flag mechanics you have. I can live with touch return, but I don't enjoy the stalemates that happen when both intels are taken.



Odd geometry and several bizarre clipping issues present all over the map really bug me hinder flow. I get caught in the nook-and-cranny nature of your map, especially the dead ends in each base. I don't know why you decided to stick a rocket + waste elevator prop in the already cramped spawn room. I realize it's not collided, but its not clear and just... bizarre.

Class:
The touch return mechanics very heavily depend on good scouts to intercept and capture the intelligence, but class balance otherwise is pretty good.

Style:
Great detail work from an experienced mapper. I loved the whole atmosphere of the map, especially when you're entering the enemy base via the road, and there are all these signs warning us to KEEP OUT. I especially like how you explained why the intel would spawn outside of the base.



Direction is poor. It's not as clear as it could be at times, and I end up on the wrong base. Sometimes I feel like a rat trapped in a maze. The subtle changes in colour tones isn't going to be enough, you need something more. The odd map geometry doesn't help, since doorways and paths all intertwine with each other. Some of your props also just "pop" in and out, rather than fading. e.g. the roof vents.

You have a random girder sticking out one side of your buildings.

Optimization:
66MB is really pushing it, considering how small Wildfire is. Your really need to get on lightmap optimization.

I get a steady 80FPS throughout the map.

Final Thoughts:
Wildfire is decent, but I never really have any fun. Your geometry is just bizarre.


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Deliverance

Category	Score/7
Gameplay	6
Class Involvement	7
Style	4
Optimization	7
Average	6.00

Gameplay:
Deliverance is pretty fun! I've really fallen in love with the invade game mode. It's fast paced, good flow, interesting hold/push dynamic. You had it spot-on with your design of the cap point. By making it a small closet-sized room, teams can still block captures without Converge's blocking mechanic and the exploits it brings with it.

Deliverance makes it really hard to keep your team together and organized, as the map is wide with many routes, and the lack of a cooldown time in between captures demands that teams leave a mate behind to guard the intel spawn, or risk losing to a speedy scout cap.

Class:
All classes can work their magic on this map, even the utilities, given the great way you've structured the cap zone.

Style:


You have some very interesting ideas here. I love your capture area, and your out-of-bounds areas really makes the world feel a lot bigger than it really is. Direction is sort of there and the back story of your map is clear. I'm not a fan of the setting, however, and deliverance doesn't change my mind one bit.



I was disappointed in the lack of detail of this map. The spawn buildings look more like they were made out of blocks than an actual building. The concrete interiors are plain and uninspiring. It's still really hard to notice the back way into the cap zone, because the rocks separating you and the route blend in perfectly with the cliff behind it. I don't quite understand your cramped network of hallways that connect your buildings together. Sometimes I just run through it all and hope for the best I'll end up somewhere I'd want to be. It doesn't make sense for the intel spawn to change color.

Like Converge, deliverance makes little attempt in explaining the neutral intel spawn point on a fictional standpoint.

Optimization:
I get a steady 90FPS throughout the map. Congratulations on your perfect score.

Final Thoughts:
If Deliverance's style was as ambitious as Meridian, you'd be on top of my charts.

[Icarus]

Stockpile

Category	Score/7
Gameplay	6
Class Involvement	7
Style	4
Optimization	7
Average	6.00

Gameplay:
I have fun every time I play stockpile. Fast gameplay with healthy chokes and flanks, good pacing and flow. I just don't like how you have the double-well 'airlock' to your intel room. It gets in the way and ends up being a deathtrap if you're caught in between. The giant pipe prop doesn't fit in either, you need to make your own ramp/platform instead of trying to fit the map into the prop.

Class:
Medics have lots of nice escape routes, and I like the mechanics around the medpack at mid. Soldiers and demos have a roomy roof to play on, and scouts can utilize the many flanks you have. I've seen decent heavy and sentry defenses from the decent number of hiding places. Nothing really sticks out to me as bad

Style:


Your detailing is solid. It totally feels like I'm in some kind of rural complex. I appreciate how you dared to detail each side differently, and they most definitely retain their personalities from maps like 2fort and granary.



It can feel somewhat empty at times, however, your bases look massive from the outside, and there are plenty of windows to suggest a larger world, but how does anyone get to those other places? You have no doors or anything! The intel sits on a cart outside a very large window that looks right into a generic spytech room, with no way nearby in or out of the room, or any reason why the intel would be there. Your indoor hallways all look the same, sometimes I get lost. Stockpile is, however, a very good sign of your developing detailing skills.

Optimization:
Congratulations! You've met my requirement for a perfect score! FPS usually hangs around the 100s range, and the lowest I ever get is 70FPS.

Final Thoughts:
I can definitely see your skills improving. Keep it up, you have something good going


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Converge

Category	Score/7
Gameplay	6
Class Involvement	7
Style	6
Optimization	6
Average	6.25

Gameplay:
I must admit I didn't like this map during development, but now I can't get enough of it! It's this map that made me learn and realize how interesting the dynamics of the invade game mode was. I really liked how easy it was to make organized strategies, and I loved the dynamics of push/hold states. Your blocking mechanic was really shows the limits of it's usefulness when someone decides to go sandvich heavy or cloak and dagger spy. I think deliverance did it best by having a really small closet-sized room as the cap zone. You could then still block it with an uber or something, but it wouldn't be as exploitative as a blocking function.

Class:
Lots of opportunity for any class to do great here. Mid is really fun for soldiers, and the bases offer a nice array of height advantages to exploit. Scouts have a lot of room to run around with plenty of flanking options. Lots of cover/escape routes for medic, and a decent healthpack is never too far away. Aside from the problems generated by the blocking mechanic and heavies/spies, class balance looks tight.

Style:


Your detailing is fantastic. The progression from Outdoors -> Indoors -> Spytech ensures I'm never lost and I always have my bearings. Your manne-frame makes me jealous next to my HAL-machine in Vector



Your map really pulls off a believable alpine-industrial setting seen in gorge. So well, however, that it almost seems to mimic it. Converge doesn't seem to bring anything new to TF2 stylistically. All your industrial hallways look the same as the next. It all feels like I've seen it all before, missing a distinct personality needed to set it apart from other maps, and leaving you just short of a perfect score.

Like Deliverance, Converge makes little attempt in explaining the neutral intel spawn point on a fictional standpoint.

Optimization:
I was floored at how well this map ran for me. My requirement for a perfect score is that my FPS never goes below 60. In converge, I rarely ever go below 100! That is ridiculous for a map with such excellent detailing! My average FPS indoors is 150, and 100 outdoors.

Unfortunately, however, I'm going to have to deduct 1 point for the really annoying ambient sound bug you have. Please, use a custom soundscape instead of an ambient_generic. It's really, really annoying.

Final Thoughts:
One of my favourites with the potential to win you a second falcon


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CompCTF Contest
How does you map compare?

Category	Average/7
Gameplay	4.64
Class Involvement	6.00
Style	4.91
Optimization	6.18
Contest Average	5.43

Final Thoughts:
Running a contest for the worst possible environment was a really poor idea. We're mostly pubbers, mapping for the competitive players with a game mode nobody likes to play. Nobody cares. Even the 72 hour contest gets more attention.

What I find really disgraceful was the number of entrants that didn't vote. What's up with that? Did you just stop caring about the contest now that you've lost the prelims? And you still expect judge reviews? :/

PS: The 7-point scale was such a silly idea.

[MangyCarface]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Icarus

Final Thoughts:
Running a contest for the worst possible environment was a really poor idea. We're mostly pubbers, mapping for the competitive players with a game mode nobody likes to play. Nobody cares. Even the 72 hour contest gets more attention.

What I find really disgraceful was the number of entrants that didn't vote. What's up with that? Did you just stop caring about the contest now that you've lost the prelims? And you still expect judge reviews? :/

PS: The 7-point scale was such a silly idea.

Just as a heads up I didn't vote because I couldn't play any of the finished maps :<

[Icarus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MangyCarface

Just as a heads up I didn't vote because I couldn't play any of the finished maps :<

Of course, I wasn't talking about you

[Waif]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MangyCarface

Just as a heads up I didn't vote because I couldn't play any of the finished maps :<

Same. Plus Im shit at 6v6 so like many people I would feel my vote is not relevent.

[grazr]

Nice, i agree 100% with all of these reviews. Although, your style marks are all quite low. Were you reviewing gameplay style or aesthetic styles? Or were you just not that impressed by the visual executions?

edit: Wait, you were scoring out of 7?

[Boylee]

Dude, I would pay you to write little mini-reviews like this for my WiP maps.
/offtopic

[Jack Riguel]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Icarus

Running a contest for the worst possible environment was a really poor idea. We're mostly pubbers, mapping for the competitive players with a game mode nobody likes to play. Nobody cares. Even the 72 hour contest gets more attention.

What I find really disgraceful was the number of entrants that didn't vote. What's up with that? Did you just stop caring about the contest now that you've lost the prelims? And you still expect judge reviews? :/

PS: The 7-point scale was such a silly idea.

/end_contest

You know things aren't going well when even the judges are admitting to this. On the plus side, the community can learn from it's mistakes.