Problems, solutions, and much more…

Posted: March 17, 2010

First off, I promised I would post my Novint Falcon review which I wrote it back in January and since then it’s been floating around on TF2Maps who are now offering a 20% discount via a coupon code. But before you whip out your wallets in excitement maybe you should read my review in all it’s glory here!

Moving on to more map related shenanigans, since my last post I’ve worked through 10(!) alphas of CTF Converge and a lot has changed. The capture room have been rehauled to aid sentry removal and to generally make the space more interesting, routes have been fiddled around with to help aid player’s moving in and out of the bases, and I’ve also began to do a wee bit of detailing here and there. It still uses the Invasion game mode which is CTF with a single neutral flag that can only be capture in the enemy’s base.

As is natural with developing a map during these early stages, I’ve experimented with some major layout changes and modifications of the gameplay mechanics. Some worked, some didn’t.

First of all, I tried out Valve’s own version of the Invade game mode where there is one flag that turns neutral upon dropping after x amount of time. But a lot of people (including myself) disliked waiting for the flag to turn neutral as it ruined the flow of the gamemode and removed the back-and-forth nature of the gameplay that people seem to enjoy so much so I stuck with the original setup of a single flag that turns neutral as soon as it’s dropped. It works a treat by creating some pretty tense moments and encouraging players to push out of their base to gain control of the flag.

I’ve also added capture blocking which has features in a lot of CTF A/D maps such as Vector. This was added simply because it was frustrating being unable to prevent players from capturing the flag and it made Scouts pretty overpowered as it was difficult to kill them before they could reach the CP. So now you can either kill the flag carrier and regain control of the flag or run to the capture point forcing them to confront you before they can capture. Yay, tactics!

Another change has been applied to the spawn room which was directly behind the CP making it pretty easy to spawn camp the doors once you had captured the flag. The spawn exit closest to the capture area (bottom-left in the screenshot below) was particularly problematic with spawn camping but also with defending engineers as it was the quickest and surest exit to use for quickly building up sentries.

In light of this, I decided to move the spawn room to the side so that the spawning players could still intercept the flag whilst also forcing enemy players willing to spawn camp to be situated within the middle of the capture room making them vulnerable to close-range attack. But that’s not all.

There’s also a new spawn exit along a one-way path leading out of the base (upper-right of the above screenshot) in absence of the exit next to the capture area being removed. This is so sneaky players can use it to bypass enemies in the capture room to make their way to the middle. From there on they can catch the enemy team off-guard by flanking them or by grabbing the flag from the middle then scoring yummy and delicious brownie points for their team.

(The exit leading to the one-way route has since been moved further along the corridor so it’s impossible to see it from the capture room unlike in the above screenshot)

Some other bits and bobs have changed too. I’ve added visual indicators for the cooldown period and I’ve also added somewhat dynamic respawn timers. This works in such a way that the team who has just lost a capture have a 30 second period in which their respawn timer is cut in half allowing them to push back out of their own base whilst flushing enemies who are hanging around after they’ve captured.

So after that unusually long-post, it’s fair to say I’m quite happy with how the map is shaping up. At this rate I’ll definitely be able to push out a fully complete and fancy-looking beta for the contest deadline.

Speaking of fancy-looking betas…

Catch Up

Posted: November 7, 2009

Over the past month quite a few things have happened. First of all, Nightfall was submitted to the TF2Maps Annual Contest #3 along with everybody else’s entry. Voting begins November 5th so best of luck to everybody that entered – there are some fantastic maps!

Keeping within the same area, Nineaxis has also created a mini-site for the contest which features Nightfall as the banner and a matching in-Hammer screenshot.

In other news, I’ve also begun making a new Stage 3 for the map. This will be my third attempt so it should (in theory) turn out great especially when it no longer revolves around the rollforward mechanic and has been built from the ground up in order to compliment a more standard Payload Race. With any luck, this should be ready for playtesting next week.

I’ve also written a tutorial all about areaportals within Source. Hopefully I’ve cleared up a few things as a lot of the members of TF2Maps don’t seem to understand how they work exactly. You can read that here.

I also got a present…

Thanks Valve!