TC Hydro

Sergis

L666: ])oo]v[
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Jul 22, 2009
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Hydro, version ])oo]v[.

Features:
- All the middle rounds have three control points now
- Reworked spawntimes
- Middle round control points are marked A, B, C, D
- TC infowindow has been replaced with Steel style blackboard in spawnrooms
- Pickups now have overlay patches under them
- New paths in all the middle rounds
- Many places made a bit wider
- Tons of tiny tweaks all over the place
 
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Mar 23, 2010
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lol good luck
 
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RaVaGe

aa
Jun 23, 2010
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Put your fucking anti-aliasing on when you take a screenshot with your toaster.
 
T

The Asylum

If you haven't already, pretty please do something about the biiiiiiiig long expanse at the flood zone point when going from floodzone-radar. Sniper heaven
 

Sergis

L666: ])oo]v[
aa
Jul 22, 2009
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test3: doubled the capture times in the middle rounds. should help against early caps because in the four rounds that ended in under a minute, the defenders were getting quite close to the point. we'll see whats the effect on middle and late roundgame.

If you haven't already, pretty please do something about the biiiiiiiig long expanse at the flood zone point when going from floodzone-radar. Sniper heaven

I don't really remember snipers being a big problem at that round, more in the flood - powerplant round. I do have put an extra rock in there somewhere for cover.
 

UKCS-Alias

Mann vs Machine... or... Mapper vs Meta?
aa
Sep 8, 2008
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I see you increased the cap times. but to me that actualy is making it worse. Hydro often already is far too hard to cap.

That you call early caps a problem could be true but that can be fixed in a diffirent way. Just disable all cps for 1 minute. That way the caps have a similar system to koth. With this you can even shorten the cap times if needed.

Hydro fails on pubs because those servers many times dont have respawn times so fixes should mainly focus on diffirent things than respawn times. They are the least of the problems.
 

Sergis

L666: ])oo]v[
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Jul 22, 2009
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In the test I had, first four rounds ended in under 1 minute :p Hydro was too hard to cap as far as I remember, but the difficulty came from getting to the enemy point in the first place. That I have taken care of by opening extra routes in all the middle rounds. In any case, testing will tell if I'm right.

I had thought of disabling caps, but did not want to do it because that would be bringing extra mechanics into an already confusing map. Also there likely would be nothing stopping caps from getting capped ten seconds after the minute is up (though I'm not entirely sure of that).

Koth no-cap time basically gives players a few seconds to establish dominance over the control point. With 2 control points, I feel they are a bit too deep in the enemy territory for that.

Then again, letting players die once before capping begins might let them familiarize themselves with the round some more. Then again, they do it anyway (unless the rounds ends in 30 seconds). Then again...arguing with myself is confusing :D In any case, I need to see if the layout changes work before anything else. They are the main focus of my fixes and they are quite numerous, even if players claim to see none of them.
 
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Sergis

L666: ])oo]v[
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Jul 22, 2009
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Very productive gameday, it showed me that everything I did was basically useless. Spawntimes, extra paths, captimes, none of that matters if I can't get players to comfortably attack. Coming up with a solution feasible both from gameplay and technical perspective will take some time :D
 

UKCS-Alias

Mann vs Machine... or... Mapper vs Meta?
aa
Sep 8, 2008
1,264
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I had thought of disabling caps, but did not want to do it because that would be bringing extra mechanics into an already confusing map. Also there likely would be nothing stopping caps from getting capped ten seconds after the minute is up (though I'm not entirely sure of that).
Hydro is not a confusing map. It only might look like that since its underplayed. Im 100% sure that in the beginning payload race for many also was confusing. Or what about koth with its 2 timers.
Those are just minimal things which players can easily get used to.

The timer itself on a cap isnt confusing aswel, koth already shows that. However, the cp needs a timer for that and i dont know if you are able to do that.
Very productive gameday, it showed me that everything I did was basically useless. Spawntimes, extra paths, captimes, none of that matters if I can't get players to comfortably attack. Coming up with a solution feasible both from gameplay and technical perspective will take some time
No one wants to step into the enemy ground without knowing what to face. On hydro people expect massive sentry nests but they dont exactly know where. People need to know what they can expect to face or they need to be able to guess the defense well.

Its kinda the same way on dustbowl where they have countered that, it has alot of possible positions for enemy to defend the cp. But you are able to look at that at a safer position (you have a grate which you can look through and you have some higher up ledge only a few can attack through). This allows you to somewhat plan an attack.

The opposite happens on hydro. You already have a weaker attack position, you cant realy see what you face until you are already on the point. If you are 90% sure you arent going to reach it, why run in, die and wait 10 seconds for the respawn timer, need 15 seconds to walk to the front line only to face the same situation? Instead camping for free kills is more fun.

Information is vital, and only when players are actualy able to see or predict what they are going to have to counter then players are willing to.
If people see 90% chance on losing, they arent going to try to win.
If people see a 50% on victory, they will try.
Even if they see a 10% on victory they also will try.

And especialy the first and last on that show the diffirent on dustbowl and hydro. In dustbowl they focus on winning (positive feeling promotes attacks), while in hydro they focus on not losing (negative feelings avoid attacks).

Somehow you need to make the map interesting for people to attack on rather than just making them focus on defending the ideal spot to kill the enemy players.
 

Sergis

L666: ])oo]v[
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Jul 22, 2009
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I tried to add a middle control point that I would teleport around the stages. It'd deal with scout rushes and would make it safer to attack for the team that owns the midpoint. It even worked...apart from the minor detail that the round picking algorithm decided to be rather uncooperative.

tc_hydro_v2_test40000.jpg


I don't really see a way I could get around this. At least, not one that wouldn't require me to build a new and excessively complex logic from scratch.
 
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T

The Asylum

I thought it was totally possible to have multiple stage maps with more than two points with the "Control Points This Round" key.

Where would you even put the mid points anyway?
 

Sergis

L666: ])oo]v[
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Jul 22, 2009
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I thought it was totally possible to have multiple stage maps with more than two points with the "Control Points This Round" key.

Where would you even put the mid points anyway?

It is possible, my problem is that rounds with both endpoints owned by the same team get picked to play instead of only blue - neutral - red (the fact that I have to reset the midpoint to neutral after every round doesn't help too).

I found a place for a middle CP in every round, though some of them might be not quite The Locations For The Important Control Points, more like randomish nooks that could fit a CP.
 

Pocket

Half a Lambert is better than one.
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Nov 14, 2009
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Very productive gameday, it showed me that everything I did was basically useless. Spawntimes, extra paths, captimes, none of that matters if I can't get players to comfortably attack. Coming up with a solution feasible both from gameplay and technical perspective will take some time :D
The problem, I think, is that adding all those extra routes encourages teams to split up, so that when they reach the enemy's side they all sort of trickle in from different angles and get picked off one at a time.

There's also the issue that linking up all of those routes to each other made for a very complicated-looking path. Logically I know I can go into any doorway and come out somewhere in the enemy's zone, but it still feels like a maze.
 

Snack Patrol

L1: Registered
Jul 25, 2012
5
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Hello. I never post here but I just want to say

"Hydro is not a confusing map."

is the falsest statement in the history of mankind. I've been around since Beta and I still kinda don't understand it. The main reason why is: when a team wins a round, there's blocked doors everywhere, I don't know which area I'm going to enter next, what it's going to look like, what pathways this new area is going to block, and which ones are going to be open. I mean obviously it's going to get you generally closer to the last point but the whole middle of the map is very confusing.

Also the fact that there are points of the map (the last points) that can basically only be defended by the losing team. Meaning the losing team can't attack a point as well as defend their last. I don't think that is made clear anywhere. And then it never says anywhere what happens if you lose the last point as the "attacking" team and the round ends.

The fact that I've played it a bunch and still can't remember all it's rules says a lot.

Trust me, do a poll, I guarantee people will agree it's confusing. At least, the most confusing out of all the game modes. I don't remember anyone who was confused by the PLR or koth game modes when they came out btw, I don't think that's a proper comparison.