Map Face lift: Stage 2

Stage 2's facelift has been completed. The majority of work was spent on the middle area dividing the two main bases and changing the layout the track takes in the actual bases.

Before

After


The middle area is a crucial part of gameplay as it is where the majority of in game combat is to take place. In my redesign I decided to tighten the area up and make it not seem so flat. I also adjusted the length of the first section of the track before the center control point.

Before

After


From the opposite corner you can see how the addition of the building. This building servers multiple purposes. It gives spies and other classes good visual cover from the rest of the area as they try to sneak in from the back door. It also has a dominant physical presence which helps in the appearance of the area being smaller than it actually is.
Before

After


In creating this room I basically knocked out the wall and extended it out to the right of the top screenshot. Also in an effort to make this area major chockpoint I have designated the long ramp as a rollback hill. Meaning that anytime a player stops touching their teams cart while it is on the ramp it will roll back to the bottom. By expanding the room and making it a rollback hill I am hoping this building will play as an effective chockpoint.

Before

After


The biggest problem with the base was how the cart path went directly by the spawn, the path itself was too long, and the defenders had a clear advantage throughout the area. The changes made should fix most of these problems. The track path is now more direct and overall further away from the enemy spawn. I moved the spawn location to the back corner of the space, by doing so players are nearly equidistant from most of the track.

Before

After


Stage 3 is next up for the screenshot updates. Until then, cheers.

Map Face lift: Stage 1

I don't know why but I always like to think of making structural changes to something in 3d as a "face lift" or re constructional surgery. I think it started when I had to remodel a character's face, and I literally cut off the nose, made a new one in its place, and welded the vertices back in. Anyways back on topic. My goal is to release alpha 5 by friday. The first 3 days of the week will be spent rebuilding each stage back to the needed quality for playtesting. With the rest of the time spent checking the map for any glitches, lighting issues, or whatever I can find that isn't major. If all goes to plan I will post a short series of screenshots of what is different or new from the previous version. Today, my focus is on stage 1.

The Problems

Player navigation was confusing and the space between the upper and lower area's didn't flow well from one to the other. Also players we unsure of where their cart was at the start of the round.

Before


After


This image best illustrates the change made. The entire area is now in the open. In the first screenshot the tunnel at the lower left hand part of the screen was the only path (other than via spawn) to get from the bottom to the top. Also players who jumped down from the upper area to the lower area took fall damage upon landing. The middle building breaking up the openness of the area effectively contains an elevator for the cart. This allows me to place track in the lower area, hopefully giving players an extra visual cue that their cart is in that area. An elevator also provides a logical method to get the cart from the lower level to the upper level.

Before


After


The entire geometry of the area is now different. I removed the entire building in the area and replaced it with open space. Needless to say the "skyline" of the area is completely different and new now.

Before


After


From a distance you can see the track for your teams cart and that there is more to that area than the original design.

Before

After


This is in the shared middle area. The old design was more or less a place holder that hid the gate as it opened at the start of the round. The new one is mostly the same size, it now looks a little less awkward.

Thats it for today. Stage 2 progress should be up tomorrow. :D

Oh boy. Here we go.

Last night my level was played on a popular server at peak playing time. Myself and 16 other players had a chance to play the map for the first time. Overall I was fairly happy playing it. The major error that had plagued the last version had been fixed and I got some really good feedback, testing data, and a (mostly) problem free play through. That being said, I realized some of the glaring flaws that existed in the level.

Changes

So here I am, with my original goal of some "minor" tweaks to stage 1 and 2 and the complete addition of stage 3. Something more than minor tweaks was needed for the first two stages. In-fact, what I need to do probably constitutes reconstructive surgery, at least in terms of 3d design. I will get into the specifics of the changes and why I made them in a future post, but for now I will leave you with this.

The problems

Stage 1 actually played really well and was alot of fun. That being said it isn't without flaws. The entire base design was found to be confusing and difficult to navigate. I will need to transform the base area to make alot more sense and to flow the combat a little better.

Stage 2. This was the problem stage. The entire map was way to large. It took way to long to get from your spawn, to the middle of the map, and into the enemy base. The cart path was also considered to be to long. This stage has seen the majority of my time revamping and reconstructing the area. It is my hope that this change will be a step in the right direction, otherwise I might have to come up with an entirely new idea for this stage.

Iteration Alpha 5

Alpha 4 was released and has already seen some playing time in a public server. The server, which just test custom levels, provided a recorded demo file of the game for me to watch and get an idea of how other players play the level. It is a wonderful tool to analyze what exactly is happening with the level.

Playtest Results

Have you ever watched a sporting event and found yourself yelling "WHY!?!?" over some mistake they made? Well I have. First and foremost I noticed that people tend to "follow the leader" and the start of a game round. Of the two paths to take from the spawnroom, literally the entire team chose only one. The Blu team chose correctly and were patiently waiting for the gates to open and the round to start. The red team on the other hand chose incorrectly. Instead they all ran out toward the control point and spent the entire time wondering around like a lost child. Eventually they found it.

The other major problem was the lack of obvious changes made by capturing the middle CP. People just didn't understand what happens when they capture it or when time runs out. I think I'm going to have to add an extra layer of minor tweaks, hopefully to the extent so that it clicks with people. I do have the suspicion that it will likely never click with a player on the first play through. It might take 1 or 2 extra play sessions for players to figure it out.

Changes made for the Alpha 5 Release

The idea of level design and alpha releases is to improve the gameplay from release to release and to also add basic improvements to the map. Whether it be a whole new stage added in, tweaks of health and ammo locations, added or improved art assets, or redesigning of sections, the changes made from release to release are a crucial part of the design process.

My goal is to at least add the final stage (stage 3) to the A5 release of the map. This stage has honestly been troublesome during the initial design phases. I struggled with its overall design concept. It was a case of wanting to do something different than Valve, but keeping it similar enough that it kept with the 3rd stage design norms of Payload race. Valve's "plr_pipeline" 3rd stage is a very simple and straight forward map. Both carts run along parallel tracks, two massive hills sit between the starting position and the final goal at the very top and far end of the map. The matches go quite quickly and generally the first to make it up the first hill has a massive advantage and usually wins. Possibly the biggest characteristic of the map is that it is wide open and nearly the entire cart path can be seen from the vast majority of locations in the map.

Download Available. and screens

This week saw stage two evolve into a working level. It is amazing how the level comes to life with a little lighting and proper construction.

First off an overhead look at stage two.



The design prinicle of this map was to have a larger common and shared middle area. In contrast the middle of stage 1 is divided into several smaller and distinct areas.



The carts start at the top of the small cliff face along the edges of the walls. They are pushed downhill until they meet in the center. This area needs alot of work. I added the trees in fairly late simply because I needed something in the middle to break up the openness of the space.



Each team base is built as a simple courtyard with accessory buildings lining the area. The buildings on the northern end are built into the rock walls. The extruded part of the building in the center of the screenshot provides for an excellent spot to place a sentry gun to defend the final control point of the stage in the foreground.



The building in the background is one of the major chokepoints that exists in the level.

If you have Team Fortress 2 and would like to play the level. You can get the download link here

Goals

Tonight I completed everything that is required for stage 1 to be fully playable. However I am not publicly releasing it until stage 2 is also playable, which is a pretty straight forward task. All I need to add on stage two are:

-Setup Gates
-Adjust cart paths (so the cart appears to roll along the track)
-Add Ammo and Health
-Add lighting for interiors
-Create team specific spawn doors
-Create "no-build" area to prevent engineers from building in the spawn
-Finish the skybox
-Unique Stage logic

Stage Logic
Like the first stage the 2nd stage is going to give a team a slight advantage over a set time. On the first stage I kept things pretty simple, the only change made is that off the rollback speed of the cart when it is on a rollback hill and isn't being touched by friendly players. On the 2nd stage I could easily apply the same variables to the cart as the first stage, but that wouldn't be any fun now would it? While testing the first stage I discovered that a 15% or 25% speed difference really isn't all that noticeable. At first I made the advantage be a 25% reduced rollback speed. For a team without the advantage their cart would rollback at 100% speed, the team with it, rolled back at 75% max speed.

My current thinking of the stage 2 advantage is to change the cart speed on all surfaces. Overall it will have a 15% speed increase on flat terrain and perhaps utilize the same sort of logic as the previous stage. The latest iteration of stage 2 features 1 large uphill and 3 small ones. I am conflicted on whether I want to allow the this hill to be a rollback or not, or to have the cart roll up it at a slower speed than normal. I cannot ignore the fact that this hill is such a natural chokepoint. It is painfully obvious even before playtesting. It is one of those areas where the first one to the top will likely push on to victory. Perhaps a playtester might have quality input.

End of the week screens

This week saw great strides toward my goal of having a multiplayer capable level. The first stage is 95% ready for multiplayer action while the second stage is probably around 60% there. At the start of the week I was making changes to the second stage, at which point I realized I probably shouldn't be changing it up until I get actual playtest data telling me that I need to change it. Thankfully through saving a new file pretty much every day I can go back and build off those changes made.

Screenshots

This week I revitalized and rethought out the middle section of the first stage. Honestly it was boring, unimaginative, and didn't make much sense.



As you can see the main area here is pretty simple. It literally is a "boxed canyon"



I liked the shaping and the design of the natural ramps that provide a secondary route to the top.



This area was the source of many problems. I just hadn't thought it out much and it is directly part of the middle control point area that I wasn't all that happy with either. In this iteration of the level I wanted it to be a naturally enclosed area (a tunnel), then I changed my mind for it be a open courtyard with both teams buildings and the canyon walls defining the space. Eventually I decided to go back to my original idea, which was to make it an interior. But I decided on making it a neutral building that shares the architecture of neither side.



The new building has a dominating presence about it over the middle section.



Part of the renovation was completely removing the rock wall that divided the area before. Now the building and a fence divides the the two spaces. A added benefit of using a fence is that a portion of the middle area and more importantly the control point is now visible from each teams upper spawn exit. Also the pathway to the top is now man made as the natural walkway no longer looked.... for lack of a better word, natural.



Overall you can see how much this area is now changed. The area in the far right of the screenshot was also enlarged and opened up more due to the size of the building vs the original plan.





The interior of the building with temporary lighting. I wanted the building to feel open and large enough to hold a fight. I added several windows in an attempt to light the building with just the skylight however more interior lights will be needed to properly light the building.

That is the screenshot update for this week. Tune in next week where I might actually show screenshots of the second stage.

The Monday Update: This time on Tuesday.

The goal of this week is to tie up loose ends on the level and to start getting playtests going. It seems much of my time has been spent experimenting with ideas and making changes to the design and layout of the level without any actual playtesting occurring. Hopefully by the end of the week I will have 2 fully functional stages capable of hosting up to 32 players.

I'll be a little more talkative regarding progress in next weeks post.