PL BATT_EngMob (Nippon)

English Mobster

L6: Sharp Member
Jul 10, 2011
355
299
Konnichiwa.
This is my entry into LittleEdge's BATT contest, technically called pl_BATT_EngMob, but I refer to it as Nippon (Pronounced "Ni-p-on"; it's how you say Japan in Japanese). As you may have guessed, it's Japan-themed. I figured it's high time TF2 had a Japanese map, with all the Shogun weapons and whatnot.

Originally, I toyed with the idea of making this a Medieval map, but was disappointed by the lack of good textures and too lazy to make more. At the time, I was also working on a second BATT map, Constellation, but in the end I felt Constellation was too gimmicky and refocused on Nippon.
Once Nippon began taking shape, I decided to remove the Medieval aspect of it and just have it take place around what appears to be a Japanese Temple/Palace, but is actually the launchpad for a RED rocket. The rocket originally came from Constellation (which was to take place in space), and eventually progressed into my failed Assignment Frenzy Arena map, where a rocket takes off to reveal the point.
I modified and re-used the entity setup from my AF map for the final cap of Nippon and themed the final 2 points around that.

The opening is designed to provide for lots of verticality. A good deal of the roof of BLU spawn is accessible by Scout, Demoman, and Soldier, although the lack of ammo and health will eventually force them down.
The next fallback for defense is a shrine just outside the point. This shrine can be flanked easily, but plenty of health and ammo is nearby and Sentries can stop the cart cold unless a clever Spy or Demoman makes use of flanks, making it worth the risk.

The second point is much more simple. Due to the design of the track I was working with, the Attackers are fighting downhill. Since any point at the bottom of this hill would be nearly indefensible anyway (and there needed to be a forward spawn/point at the bottom of the hill to compensate for the HUGE hill following the downhill section), RED can use it to delay BLU while they retreat to the third point. Capturing the second point gives BLU an alternate route to the third point as well as a nifty forward spawn, so RED should do whatever they can to slow or stop that from happening.

A lot of Single-Stage Payload maps have people abandoning the third point. This is especially true of Upward, which LittleEdge's BATT map reminded me a lot of, but can also be seen in maps like Badwater.
I wanted to refocus on defending the third point, which provided for me the most interesting area thematically. There is also what can be considered a second setup time while BLU pushes to point 2 (again, something unavoidable due to the nature of the track while allowing for decent time between caps), and the verticality of the room and many flank routes make for interesting gameplay, a second beginning, as it were.
To accomplish this, time is needed to set up a defense. Once the first CP is taken, RED respawns just outside the third CP and has plenty of time to set up a decent defense.

Once CP 3 is taken, the challenge of making the final point interesting arises. The defenders have a little bit of time to set up a defense as a gate rises to allow the cart through, although admittedly this isn't much (I wish I could use an elevator here, but alas, that would be changing the track).
It's no cakewalk for BLU, not by any means. If RED can halt their push coming off of their capture of CP 3, it can be very hard for BLU to regain momentum, even with all the flanks available to them and the ability to turn the "War Room" of CP 3 into a forward base.

My tests against bots have been fun, but bots aren't at all like humans. I'm also worried about framerate; I've done a lot of optimizing and it runs fine on my computer, but I have a top-of-the-line computer, so I can't really be a good judge of framerates.

Credit:
A Boojum Snark - Every map needs to credit Boojum. In my case, a while back he entered contest number 7, creating an intel room (in the TF2M archives). The VMF was put up for download so people could make prefabs out of it. Bits of my "Spytech" area were taken out of such prefabs, with permission.
Aly - She made a wonderful cherry tree, and then told me it was ugly and gave me a different one.
Earkham - He made some awesome paper lanterns! And awesome privacy screens!
The creators of the TF2M Swamp Pack - Payload explosion, various textures, all-around awesomeness.
The creators of the Community Medieval Update - General Japanese-ish Medieval props.
Seba - War Room Accessories
Void and Rexy - Computer Screen Banks
Rexy - A forklift. Of forkiness.

If I missed you in the credits, please excuse me, for I am a failure. D:
 
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English Mobster

L6: Sharp Member
Jul 10, 2011
355
299
Woo! Update!
Various picture dump:
pl_batt_engmob_a30007.jpg

pl_batt_engmob_a30008.jpg

pl_batt_engmob_a30009.jpg

pl_batt_engmob_a30012.jpg


These areas still need to be spruced up a little (especially the second), but I'll dump 'em anyway:
pl_batt_engmob_a30011.jpg

pl_batt_engmob_a30010.jpg
 

Doctor Paprika

L4: Comfortable Member
Apr 24, 2011
150
53
I have to disagree about the sky. In conjunction with the purple blossoms on the trees and whatever lighting you're using, everything looks like a pinkish shade of violet. It's off-putting to say the least.

Also - and I'm far from the first person to mention this, if you look at the feedback - the floors and ceilings in that one huge room are absolutely horrible. They're reflective to the point of literally being hard to look at.

Your lighting in general is also just very highly contrasted in visually distracting ways, with superhot spots carving blinding triangles down dark walls with almost totally unlit ceilings and mirror-like floors.
 
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tyler

aa
Sep 11, 2013
5,102
4,621
It felt like you didn't build HDR cubemaps or something

Also your final couple spawns for red are terrible
 
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English Mobster

L6: Sharp Member
Jul 10, 2011
355
299
Yeah, again, I'm doing an overhaul of a lot of things with alpha 4 (hopefully). I've gotten a lot more useful feedback from this round of testing than I did from alpha 2, so a lot of the problems shall be addressed.

Preliminary changelog (Hope to have A4 out by October 30th. Only gameplay-effectng changes are noted):
CP 1:
+ Added entire underground complex to give attackers a third route out, closer to the cart. Hopefully this will keep Sentries from pinning everything down right off the bat.
/ Slightly reduced time BLU has to get to CP 1.
General notes: One of my main complaints was that BLU had to travel too far to get to the cart. Independently, I've never liked how effective a Sentry can be in scoring kills on the only 2 exits from spawn, so I added a third that dropped BLU off near the cart. This also doubles as an alternate route under CP 1 and into CP 2, which will hopefully funnel BLU into CP 2, which has gone through a complete design change.

CP 2:
+ CP 2 is completely different. Old bridge structure has been ripped out and replaced with a proper, Badlands-esque bridge.
+ Added 2 alternate routes into the B area for BLU.
+ Added scaffolding-esque bridge thing along the far wall.
+ Added new forward spawn for RED.
/ Redid alternate route into CP 3 to allow all classes to access.
General notes: I basically made CP 2 more fun to fight in. As it stood, BLU just rolled the cart on through while RED set up a defense at CP 3. So much effort would be put into defending CP 3 that CP 4 would go undefended, which skewed BLU's win ratio. To rectify this, I gave RED a spawn near CP 2 to get them to the front lines faster and made the entire area fun. Hopefully.

CP 3:
- Removed gate from top of stairs.
- Removed second gate just before entering the final room.
+ Put point on Thunder Mountain-esque raising platform.
/ Changed RED forward spawn into RED main spawn.
/ Moved RED spawn back to CP 4.
/ Neutered cart speed slightly as it enters CP 3.
General notes: As much as I like this area, it was a little too effective for RED to defend. BLU would have to make a serious push to break through, which was great except for the fact that they would steamroll right to the end. The only real fighting of the map took place in here, and by moving RED spawn back to CP 4, I'm hoping that the defense would be spread more evenly through these 2 areas. I added a raising platform here to force BLU to "Capture" this point as if it were an A/D map (sorta; once they get the cart to the right place, they can leave, but you get the idea). That way, RED can regroup and (hopefully) fighting will still occur on CP 3.

CP 4:
/ Moved spawn back some.
General notes: I'm changing so many variables, I want to test and make sure everything else works out okay before I do the same here. Essentially, the only problem I've found with CP 4 was the location of the spawn made it awkward for RED to defend; RED didn't have any way to flank BLU once they got past the spawn doors, and so CP 4 never got defended. I may make some changes here in A5, but let's see what the overall win percentage is currently before we go changing more things.

General:
/ Defenders no longer spawn at their first forward spawn after setup; I kept it there to get them to the setup gates quickly, but after setup it is completely disabled.
+ Added experimental system for spawntimes: After being frustrated at not spawning quickly enough with seconds left on the clock, I have a system in place that drastically reduces spawn times (for both teams) when there is less than a minute left on the clock.
+ RED gets their spawntimes cut once the cart nears each point for a similar reason.
/ Adjusted cart speed.
General notes: BLU has an insane win rate currently. I've seen RED defend once. I'm also trying to keep the same ratios of win/loss outlined in Mangy's college thesis for Frontier; hopefully this will let RED defend without giving them too many advantages.
 
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