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Old 10-07-2007, 12:24 AM   #1
scaryomg
 
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Small scale CTF map - ff_derive_b2

Updated:
Download Derive beta 2 - Click to see the beta 2 changes and stuff.

This is my first map, and it's a small scale ctf map, roughly 3v3/4v4/5v5. I made it basically as a learning experience more than anything, but hopefully it'll have some worth as a niche map. Also, it has a load of doublejumps that I intended to be useful, since I found the official ff maps to be relatively lacking in opportunities. There's a demo showing off most of them, included.

At this point it just needs people to play it (preferably with proper teams, something I haven't had the chance to try yet.) and give me opinions before I finish it off.


Here's what I stuffed in a readme file:

First of all, this map is small. 4v4 would be an ideal team size
with two offense and two defense on each team. Of course, you can
try more, or fewer - but it was originally designed for 2v2.

Derive is my first ever map. This means it's a little on the basic
side, visually. Due to this, I tried to concentrate on the gameplay
and performance aspects as much as I could.

Doublejumping is something that I've catered for alot in this map -
there are at least 20 (intentional) doublejumps in the map (10 per
base,) and all of them have a use.

Fortress Forever is a very offensively-biased Team Fortress mod -
taking this into account, I made the decision to add some obvious choke
points in the map. There's only one entrance to the flag room, and
it's only wide enough to fit two people through it at once. It's not
too easy to block either though - people are easily conced out of the
way and off the ledge that the doorway sits on.

To reward the offense for passing this chokepoint, I put a window
into the flag room which the flag may be thrown though to the front
door. The window has team specific lasers, so only the defending
team and the flag can pass through. This can be a risky move, though,
since the defending team's respawn is also right outside that window.
It's up to you to decide whether or not the enemy team can hold the
flag there, or whether you'd have better luck running the flag out
yourself.

Defensively, the main point should be the ramp room - this room needs
to be passed through to reach the flag room. It's also a better room to
position a sentry gun than the flag room, because the flag room's window
leaves it very open to attacks from the outside. Feel free to experiment
of course. You can use the window to quickly move between the frontdoor/
respawn area to the flag room or ramp room.

I hope you enjoy the map at least as much as I enjoyed making it, I've
learnt alot about mapping in the past two weeks or so, and after a short
break there may be a full-scale map coming out of me in the future.
With lots more doublejumps. And vertical spaces.


Thanks to:
----------

Nest - for constantly paying an interest and helping me playtest.
Defrag - for answering all my questions.
Fluke - for helping playtest.
Those 5 or so random dudes who showed up while I was initally testing the
map on an open server.
The Fortress Forever Development team for making an awesome (if currently
severely underrated) mod. You made the Source engine feel good. Kudos!


Screenshots:
Outside
Front door / Main ramp
Ramp Room
Flag Room
One-way tunnel from Balcony to Ramp Room
Flag Room from the opposite angle

Last edited by scaryomg; 11-01-2007 at 02:06 PM.
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Old 10-07-2007, 11:09 AM   #2
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Your map is not all that bad. Couple things I would like to address.

Quote:


For some reason the Map Info screen is blurry as all hell for me (I am running everything on Low, 1024 x 768 resolution). I have no problem with viewin' images with FF's stock maps, but ones from community maps look like this. No idea why.
Quote:


Even with your skybox set as low as it is, people can see how the grass just sort of ends out there. Perhaps toss some trees up on top of there?
Picture stuff said, I think the skybox is a bit too low for the map. It really ruins the ability to fly high for me. (My horizontal skills suck, so I often need extra height to clear the distance.) I think you ought to expand the grass up on top of the map some, toss some trees on them, and put a roof on the base. I would love to get some air on this map and see nice detail like that, and since it is small it is not like you are going to hit any resource limits anytime soon.

The fan that brings you in from the upper deck is buggy. Before you actually step in front of the fan (when you are about a meter away around the corner) it sucks you in and then pushes you a dismal two meters. The fan serves as nothing other than a door blocking obstacle (and a lame one at that). If you really insist on leaving it there, at least beef up its push some. If the hall with the fan could be widened to account for bhoppers that would be swell, too.

The lasers in the flag room as a drop down to the front door will just serve as a place to toss the flag out. I really doubt anyone is actually going to run the flag out - ladders make that a pain.

All in all though not bad for your first map, kudos on poppin' your Hammer cherry. d:
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Old 10-07-2007, 11:53 AM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ihmhi
Your map is not all that bad. Couple things I would like to address.
[blurry loading screen and dodgy outer map displacements]
Yeah, I noticed that too, I also play with very low settings and it appears to be mat_picmip's (texture detail in the options) fault. I don't know what the official maps have done differently. The displacements outside were a last minute thing, certainly will play with them and attempt to make them look a little more natural.

Quote:
Picture stuff said, I think the skybox is a bit too low for the map. It really ruins the ability to fly high for me. (My horizontal skills suck, so I often need extra height to clear the distance.) I think you ought to expand the grass up on top of the map some, toss some trees on them, and put a roof on the base. I would love to get some air on this map and see nice detail like that, and since it is small it is not like you are going to hit any resource limits anytime soon.
No problems with this either, though I don't think I've managed to hit the roof myself with concs. Good suggestions, I'll look into it.

Quote:
The fan that brings you in from the upper deck is buggy. Before you actually step in front of the fan (when you are about a meter away around the corner) it sucks you in and then pushes you a dismal two meters. The fan serves as nothing other than a door blocking obstacle (and a lame one at that). If you really insist on leaving it there, at least beef up its push some. If the hall with the fan could be widened to account for bhoppers that would be swell, too.
Yeah, the deal with the fan was that I wanted it to just be an entrance in order to give defense another chance at the front door if they lose the flag in the flag room (would you believe that I'm an offensive player?) Being designed for a small amount players, the extra exit would be the easier route to take out since there's no quick access to it for defense and it would be a shame to force a defender to sit in there. I also wanted to limit using the force of the push to stop people doublejumping/trimping off the ramp straight ahead of the tunnel and landing in the flag room - that's what happened when I first added it. Basically, making the ramp room that easy to traverse would take away the main defensive position I had planned. What I did next was shorten the range of the trigger_push, but this caused me to be able to conc against it and get out anyway. In the end, I settled for extending the push around the corner and forcing it into the ground at the end (using multiple trigger_pushes,) which brings you to a complete, or near-complete standstill.

It's still possible to get the flag out that route, but it means throwing the flag a few times, which I'm ok with simply because I don't know of any way to stop that. If there's a better way to do a one way entrance, I'll look into that also, though. I'll play with the trigger_push entities some more, either way. Edit: I may end up having the tunnel straight horizontally and then with a vertical drop at the end, just inside the doorway, with the fan blowing downwards to stop people concing/rocketjumping up it.


Quote:
The lasers in the flag room as a drop down to the front door will just serve as a place to toss the flag out. I really doubt anyone is actually going to run the flag out - ladders make that a pain.
Watch the demo I bunged in - "playdemo derivejumps" the ladder is basically there just for people that are unaware of (or aren't used to spotting areas for) doublejumping. It should be both a defensive passage and a flag-chucking window, getting out of the flagroom with the flag on your back should be alot easier than it seems at first (especially if you gained access to the flagroom by killing the ramp room's defenders,) at which point you'd still have to scrape through the front door area anyway. The window will probably get used the most, but there's an option there either way. The most I've seen playing the map properly is a 1v1, so it's hard to say yet whether it's too easy to cap due to the window, or too easy to defend due to the choke points.

I appreciate the feedback, thanks.

Something else I should've added to the first post is that it's not quite as dark as it looks in the screenshots. The front door area is dim in the corners, but the rest of the rooms are progressively brighter untill you end up in the nuclear apocalypse of light that is the flagroom.

Last edited by scaryomg; 10-07-2007 at 12:10 PM.
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Old 10-07-2007, 12:20 PM   #4
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To fix the loading screen, compile the texture with
"nomip" "1"
"nolod" "1"
Orr just use this fixed vtf I made for you

Other points: I think slightly too dark in general. I know it's supposed to be nighttime, but that doesn't mean the insides can't be well lit, and even the outside should be a bit lighter to make it easier to see.

There should be some way for heavier attack classes to get in the upper ledge. Just a ladder at the side would do. Especially useful for spies .

I'd get rid of the front door.
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Old 10-07-2007, 12:24 PM   #5
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I think the dark yard is important since snipers do not have a deck to go on. They need to be able to blend in a little better in the yard.
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Old 10-07-2007, 04:52 PM   #6
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I had a go at this map friday night, although I was pretty tired and my computer barely lets me play ff it seemed like a cool map. What was cool were the double jumps across the maps, hadn't really realised their usefulness. I don't have much experience of 4v4 maps but the layout seemed pretty solid.
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Old 10-07-2007, 10:39 PM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sidd
To fix the loading screen, compile the texture with
"nomip" "1"
"nolod" "1"
Orr just use this fixed vtf I made for you

Other points: I think slightly too dark in general. I know it's supposed to be nighttime, but that doesn't mean the insides can't be well lit, and even the outside should be a bit lighter to make it easier to see.

There should be some way for heavier attack classes to get in the upper ledge. Just a ladder at the side would do. Especially useful for spies .

I'd get rid of the front door.
Excellent, thanks. The brightness will be played with, I didn't have much trouble seeing people, but that doesn't mean it's perfect or anything. I could add a few more spot lights to the outside, along the side walls or something too.

There's a route up onto the balc! The demo should explain it all, any class can make it, I made sure to test that. Spies would have to uncloak to get up, though. The small walled off part with the crates allow you to doublejump up. Jump from the grass to the concrete towards the tall crate, this will allow you to doublejump up onto the tall crate, and once again from the tall crate onto the wall that extends over it a little. Should be able to land from that doublejump, onto the balcony. I didn't anticipate that people wouldn't pick them up instantly - that small mess-around on friday night was the whole reason I put the demo in, but still I imagine most people don't notice it or don't care to watch it.
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Old 10-08-2007, 02:11 AM   #8
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I wish you would just rename it ff_dubbajumpa, what with all the double jumps you have in here mang. d:

Also, if you are worried about file hosting, use http://www.savefile.com to alleviate those worries.
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Old 10-10-2007, 12:37 AM   #9
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Love your map even though I'm not a concer. Now I tested the map at my home
server and didn't get a loading screen. I figured I fucked something up so even if it didn't have a loading screen put it on my clan server anyway. With futher investigation I stumbled upon this.......
You have two vmt files to dl instead of a vmt & vtf so I changed one line to vtf and all is good.


"Resources"
{
"materials/vgui/loadingscreens/ff_derive_b1.vmt" "file"
"materials/vgui/loadingscreens/ff_derive_b1.vmt" "file"
"maps/ff_derive_b1.lua" "file"
"maps/ff_derive_b1.txt" "file"
"maps/ff_derive_b1_readme.txt" "file"
}
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Old 10-10-2007, 12:42 AM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 82694
You have two vmt files to dl instead of a vmt & vtf so I changed one line to vtf and all is good.


"Resources"
{
"materials/vgui/loadingscreens/ff_derive_b1.vmt" "file"
"materials/vgui/loadingscreens/ff_derive_b1.vmt" "file"
"maps/ff_derive_b1.lua" "file"
"maps/ff_derive_b1.txt" "file"
"maps/ff_derive_b1_readme.txt" "file"
}
Good catch, thanks. Updated the one that'll be going into beta2. Lazy copy/pasting.
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Old 10-23-2007, 01:22 AM   #11
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Got an update for us? How close to a final?
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Old 10-23-2007, 02:52 AM   #12
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Still coming - the release of the orange box has slowed my progress (and by 'slowed,' I mean 'completely halted.' ) But I've redone the wind tunnel - it's now a regular corridor with a trap door at the end, no more trigger_push. The rest should be relatively low effort to sort out. The next release will likely be the final version unless something major pops up, hopefully within the week or something.
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Old 10-23-2007, 03:11 AM   #13
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Best thing to do is to release it as _b2. If there are any other problems, it can be fixed and you can release a final. If not, you can just tell people to change the name to ff_derive.
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Old 10-23-2007, 03:26 AM   #14
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Thanks for the update.
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Old 10-23-2007, 05:06 PM   #15
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Seems good, I'll try it out later
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Old 10-23-2007, 06:48 PM   #16
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If you haven't had a chance to run a full on 4v4 (2v2?) or whatever you were looking for above to test it's full potential, I have some pretty decent conc skills and could try to get a couple of friends rounded up and test it out for you...PM and let me know if ya need me to!

BTW looks great!
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Old 10-23-2007, 07:39 PM   #17
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I'd join in on some 4v4 also, I'm awesome with concs
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Old 10-23-2007, 07:53 PM   #18
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Sweet...i say we just set up a time and see what this map really has! I can do it anytime after 5pm MST everyday but Tues and Thurs (all day sat / sun i'm open too!)
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Old 10-24-2007, 04:07 AM   #19
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You guys give me a time and date and I can lock the AE server down or leave open what ever turns your skirt up.

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Old 10-30-2007, 08:24 PM   #20
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Ok so how many people do we have for it atm?
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