tbd_siege

[Mythcaptor]

Im new to the Altitude community, and I love photoshop and graphic design and the like so I decided to make a map. Please give constructive criticism.

V2 is out, shown below. Thanks for all your help. V1 can be viewed here.

download v2

[Ribilla]

Great to have another map maker. I am not very good at seeing gameplay issues, but just from the off, it looks like it might be far to easy to defend. All the routes into the base are too long, that there is no way you can easily switch between them as a runner to confuse the enemy, so it would only take 1 or 2 defenders to be alive to cover the route they know you are approaching from. If you made a small hole where the big turret just above the base is, it might help.

[Demuyt]

Graphics are looking good, but the low routes are too open, thus too easy to defend; try placing some more obstacles in there or drag the walls down a little to make it tighter.

[Demuyt]

I uploaded it to the test server.

[mled]

Keep turret size standard if you want the map to go far. also the middle low portion shouldn't be so cramped.

[Karl]

Theme of this map if freaking awesome. Graphics are great. However, we're not all Luke Skywalker and navigating tiny tunnels in real games is too hard. You should study tbd_middleground, tbd_mayhem2, and tbd_planepark for maps with similar layout styles that are really fun to play. Note, I'm not saying copy those maps, just study them as they are great examples of maps that work really well.

I'm thinking the bottom tunnel should be a lot larger like middleground. Maybe it should be the dungeon of the castles.

[Mythcaptor]

Thanks for all your criticism and complements! Thanks Demuyt especially for uploading it. Ill have a v2 coming sometime soon with the following improvement based on your comments.

•Routes to bases blocked by large turrets cleared up to make base harder to defend. and to get rid of oversized turrets
•Tunnels expanded
•Armour racks in centre replaced by stone blocks to make it easier to navigate (I dont really like them anyways)
•A few new routes through walls
•Misc gfx fixes

[Mythcaptor]

Version 2 is out.

•3 new routes into base
•Removed oversized turrets
•Bridge added in top left and right to make tunnel a more viable route to base
•All tunnels expanded
•Rearranged some catapult stones and moved one catapult
•Rearranged power up spawners

[innerlyte]

Looks great! Reminds me of an old map call tbd_almoural, which also had a castle theme. I only had the chance to play it offline, but I came up with a few suggestions that will hopefully help you further develop the map.

In general, the map is kind of cramped. Passageways are still a bit narrow as well as openings between adjoining regions. In the picture below, I've circled in yellow the biggest problem areas. As a rule of thumb, you want players to be able to maneuver around your map at medium to fast speeds without having to slow too much for collision objects. That's not to say you can't have some tight choke points, but at the moment, this map plays more like a co-op or objective map, because you have to carefully plot your moves.



Here are a few specific observations I made when testing the map:

• Open up passageways and openings, especially circled areas. The passageway marked as "B" in the picture is a good width. You can make some places smaller/larger, but make sure you keep corners broad or a bit wider.
• Pull up the wall marked as "A" in the picture. Otherwise it's difficult to fly in and out of the bomb spawn area. You may also want to consider moving or removing that "cannonball" (I know it's not a cannonball, but that's what I'll call it!).
• Remove the wall behind the base.
• Generally, you don't want long, straight and narrow tunnels in your map. They are biased toward explodets and leave players vulnerable with nowhere to escape or take cover. If you open up the bottom tunnel, maybe you can include a few objects protruding from the top and bottom walls.
• Consider possibly opening up the floor to the tunnel in section "C." That whole center area is a bit cramped. Maps with a lot of vertical walls are harder to maneuver in than others, so you want to keep vertical walls to a minimum. You may even want to remove that block (circled in yellow) right above C. If you enlarge the entrance enough there, you probably won't have to though.
• There are too many turrets. Most maps will have 4 or 5 per side. I would probably remove at least one of the turrets in front of the base and 2 or 3 at the top of the map.
• There are too many power-ups. Three or four is standard. Having team-based power-ups is not common either in tbd.
• There are too many "cannonballs." You only really need to remove a few though. Try moving some to the center too.
• Pull back spawn points. You want to give players a little more time to react after spawning. Change the angle back to completely horizontal. For one reason or another ball maps are the only type to use angled spawns.
• Crashing into the ceiling of the map insta-kills you. In order to fix this, you have to place an invisible, 1-pixel geom with a 0 damage modifier there.

Wow, that was long lol. Anyway, I hope it helps some. In my experience, finding a good layout is much harder than developing the graphical side of a map. Maps that are official now are time tested, so using them as very general reference will help.

[Mythcaptor]

wow, thanks a lot innerlyte, It looks like you put a lot of effort into this, and indeed, it really will help me with the development of v3. I will probably make v3 sometime late this week/early next week.

[Hartz]

Hey!

Tried it today...

4 MB for the file size? That's a bit too much for a relatively small map like this, don't you think? Try to compress those textures a bit more etc.

Did you try to play this map with whale (explodet) while you were testing? Many of these passages and holes are the same size (or smaller) as that plane, which makes it almost impossible to fly through with high speeds. Try to think of every plane type when creating maps

And because of the narrow tunnels, the lower part of the map would probably be pretty inactive - that one power-up is not worth the trouble and i doubt people would choose to run nukes through there as well.

The gfx look nice. There are few things to change and improve (imo), but let's get the game-play part fixed first

Will be waiting for the 3rd version!

Hartz.

[Mandrad]

Nice 1
Graphics are cool but i hate the tunnels. tunnels and planes dont go well along. Imo they kinda wreck ur overall design.
Also think it would be better to have 2 castles - separated. The towers have material enough to create a good gameplay layout.
You had some very good tips, follow them and you just gave us a very nice map.
Congrats and TY

PS - I dont think 4Mb is an issue, we only download it once, or twice according to updates.

*PS2 - I asked this before but noone knew... Who made Almourol map? Im curious because its a portuguese castle map made when no portuguese players played Alti.

[Mythcaptor]

Im aware of the tunnel issue, along with the multitude of other issues with this map. Its obvious that while I have experience with graphics, I have less so with map making, so thats a skill I will try to improve. V3 will feature a full rework with a new size, because Im not happy with the smallish height to the map. I also plan to add three additional entrances to the bottom tunnel, fixing the tunnel issue.

[Duck Duck Pwn]

Originally Posted by Mandrad

*PS2 - I asked this before but noone knew... Who made Almourol map? Im curious because its a portuguese castle map made when no portuguese players played Alti.

It apparently was made by someone named 7Vo73igE, according to my saved maps folder.

I won't judge this map since i haven't played it but I wanted to answer that question

[Demuyt]

I've brought V1 down from the test server. Hope the devs can soon figure out a solution for Steam users

[blocknight]

• Cannonballs are unnaturally symmetrical. You should delete them, perhaps leaving a few.
• Underground is too straight. Mix it up a bit, probably still keeping the symmetry.
• ???

Aaaand that's it. This is such a good-looking map, I can't find many problems from pictures alone.

[ex~]

Looks promising, excited to see v3