[Release] Blood Veldt Beta

My first map to date is "A medium sized map with a wide dynamic. Rolling hills can yield high speeds, but a careful flag approach must be taken to yield a clean grab. Front->Back grabs are possible, but difficult to pull off a high speeds. The base is set up to make it difficult to rape both the generators and the inventories at the same time, but makes it equally difficult to repair both, requiring foresight on defense", to quote my vengeancemaps.com description. I had hoped to make a map that both played well AND looked good. For a first map, I think it turned out pretty well (the BE base in particular turned out much better than I had first envisioned).

Some screens:
Imperial Base (s95044214.onlinehome.us/maps/Shot00016.jpg)
BE Base (s95044214.onlinehome.us/maps/Shot00017.jpg)
Water Shot (s95044214.onlinehome.us/maps/Shot00018.jpg)
BE Flag Area (s95044214.onlinehome.us/maps/Shot00019.jpg)

Feedback would be greatly appreciated. In particular, I am wondering about:
-Separation of inventories and gens
-Exposure of main base inventories to attack from the outside
-Lack of repair pack at the flag bunker
-Flag stands
-Balance

Download at VengeanceMaps (http://vengeancemaps.com/index.php?display=map_inf o&map_id=131&pictures=)

nice.

Just a game... Only the friends are real.

I like your work so far, but it can use some improvement. Here's some criticism:

The first spawnbases (the small ones) are useless, since all deployables and the inventory station is in the same small space. Two mortar rounds and your entire spawn is gone. That and the lack of an emergency station makes it not very usable. I suggest closing it a bit, maybe add some beams or pillars next to it to make it less easy to spam. And add an emergency station.

I dont think the mortar spam from outside being able to kill your spawn base 2 inventory station is a good idea. its just kind of lame when youre getting a new loadout and a mortar gets lobbed through the window, killing you and two teammates. I suggest closing it, or put some glass or forcefields in there. I thought the rest of the spawn 2 bases layout was nice. I looked really fancy too.

About those flag stands.. well I didnt like them that much. It felt like they were sticked to the mountain, and grabbing the flag from behind or from the front becomes really hard because of that. Maybe a tower for the flag will work better, or put it on some structure in one of the valley parts.

Oh, there were a few bugs aswell. There were some floating rocks and inventory stations/deployables. And the terrain wasnt smoothed everywhere, so there were some nasty bumps while skiing. The terrain itself and texturing was good imo, but you need to scale that dry grass layer down, its way too big now. And maybe you should add some nice wind animation for the decolayer, to make it look less static.

Hope that helped. Keep up the good work :) this map can become really good.

I didn't feel that the flag stand was "too" open last night in the pickup. I'm not sure enclosing the flagstand is a good idea in terms of gameplay. Or at least the beta seems to be very restrictive, maybe a more open concept but not as open as the alpha?

i honestly loved exactly how the alpha you gave us was, with the exception of the repair pack at the smaller bunker, glass over the windows at the main base, and the changes i gave ya on IRC the other night. that deco layer is PERFECT imo... i really like teh feeling of running through knee-high grass. really makes me feel like im fighting in a nice open field. i'll check out this build sometime tonight.

Ahh so you are responsible.. nice work.

I'm with Geiss I love the decolayer and just the look of the map. Haven't played enough with ppl to comment on gameplay. I thought the flag was easy enough to grab.

edit: Just saw the new flag stand. I like it. You can still grab from the sides and top. Its restricted without stopping on the go grabs. We need more flag setups like that.

Just from looking at the screen shots, it looks like there will be potential for a back cap. Which, in my opinion is lame. A big problem with alot of maps today is that there are often excellant back caps, but not good front caps. Front caps make the game interesting because they give people time to chase.

I could be talking out of my ass, as I havn't played T:V in a while. However, this has always been a problem with user created maps in my opinion. Front and Side to Side is good, but back is boring! :) All in all, map looks nice though.
Fling :D

Thanks for the feedback so far. Just to address a few issues:

Re: Bunker
The flag base is supposed to be highly rapable, or else the main base won't see much use. The main reason is for that spawn is positioning, with the remote inv you should be able to have buckler defense set up at the very least. I do suppose an emergency station will help prevent it from being to useless, and I think I will increase health/shielding on those deployables as well. I may also shift some spawn points to the top of the hill if that is preferred.

Re: the main base invs
See, the idea is that the inv should be sustainable if you put the repair station by it. Two mortars isn't going to take that out, and it isn't THAT easy to lob stuff in from any distance. However, I understand that it would be annoying to be mortared while you suit up so I'll consider adding glass. Do you think glassing up the sides would be alright, leaving the "front" window open? It's pretty hard to hit the back of the inventory (where most people will suit up) from the front window, and leaving the front window open gives snipers options.

Re: Flag stands
Being "stickied" to the hill - that's the exact point of this flag setup. Side-side routes will yield the best possible speeds on approach, but front->back caps will be POSSIBLE with skill. Front->back caps are considerably harder now in the beta (compared to alpha), but I am planning on moving the flags outward a little to make it somewhat easier again.

Back caps are a possibility, but not with any sort of speed (especially with the new flag stands). I tried hard to facility front caps while preventing back caps. This was done in two ways: 1) The high slope in front of the flag causes any back cap to be deflected upwards and drained of speed, 2) The terrain is lower behind the flag, making it virtually impossible to gain any sort of speed towards the flag while still retaining the height required to grab it. The new flag stands prevent back caps at an angle from happening.

I do begin to think that the current flag stands make it a bit TOO difficult to grab, but I like their layout - would widening all the approaches by 50% be sufficient?

Re: Terrain not being smoothed everywhere
Frankly, when I first started this map the terrain was too smooth ;) A certain amount of roughness is required if any amount of skill is to be involved in skiing. There are certainly many very smooth areas that can yield very high skiing speeds. However, if there is are areas that make it more difficult for one team or the other, let me know. Screenshots are preferrable so I can find out exactly where the problem lies.

Front caps make the game interesting because they give people time to chase.


i'll agree that chasing is alot of fun, back from my t2 LD days... we dont see too much of that in T:V yet. i've seen some damned good chases on temerity, my map, but thats because its so big and ski friendly i feel. alot of these new, bigger maps are gonna start requiring the return of midfield positions... people that will be able to stop incoming heavies somewhat, but also be able to intercept cappers on their way home. back to fronts make the job a little tougher on defenders, yes, but with the right positioning and mentality (not to mention a possible roster size increase, say 12v12 if we start getting alot of big maps?) cappers should be relatively as easy to stop as they were in t2... just my two cents on what ya said fling.

Yeah, not to mention with the grappler it's not like you have alot of time to chase on side or front grabs anyway :p

if i ever play D on any map, its using disc/chain/nade with shield pack so that i can DJ and ATTEMPT to catch the cappers moving 200+ ... midfield is gonna have to make a comeback i fear.

(...)

Well, imo, either put glass in every window or put glass in none. And my vote is for every window. As for the flag stands: increasing the platform size would be a good idea. And while i see your point regarding back capping and stuff I really think you have to land in a nasty way or slow yourself down using grappler to perform those caps, and thats no good imo. I havent played the map online tho, maybe I'm wrong. About that unsmoothed terrain: It simply looked like you smoothed everything except for some spots, it didnt look like they were meant to be rough. If it IS meant to be rough, then add some new texture to it or something to make it look rough aswell. While skiing i noticed quite a few of these areas, so i'm not going to make screenshots of everything i see. Go play in-game and ski around a bit and keep an eye out for terrain that looks/feels off.

Leave the flag stand as is.. its fantabulous

...I could be talking out of my ass, as I havn't played T:V in a while....
Fling :DBoooo! We need teh Fling in T:V!

Boooo! We need teh Fling in T:V!
:signed:

Main base inventories----
Do something to help from a easy mortar spam to take them out. Force fields, windows, maybe not all of them i dunno, something tho.

The secondary smaller inventories----
I think you should make the walls higher possiable to make less avaliable to mortar spam. Also, the main thing I would like to see fixed is that i forget which side but on one side you can view the flag stand, on the other the flag stand is blocked by terrain, it should be balanced so viewable on both sides.

Other then that, I think it is an amazing map, i love the flag stand

i forget which side it was but i think one of the sides is easier for back capping, klip knows which side

I believe imperial flag was easier to grab on a back cap

Just played the map, and loved it. These are the things I see that need improvement (otherwise fantastic map).

1. Emergency station on small bases. In a match/pub these things will be raped hard. An emergeny station will alleviate this some.
2. Smooth the terrain under the pond. I think the pond should be something you shoot for in a ski route, but the terrain under the water is very bumpy.
3. The terrain outside the oob grid is borked or something, or you can really tell where the terrain starts over.

Other than those small gripes, I really do love this map. It feels like we are playing CTF with jetpacks in Kansas.

It feels like we are playing CTF with jetpacks in Kansas.

Thats exactly what I said when I first played it :D