Haha...You're still here?

Well I had finished Alpha 3 before the weekend, but unfortunately I wasn't available for the test that was carried out on Saturday. Huge thank you to SI and Wolf for pushing ahead with that. here is what SI sent me in an email with the collective thoughts on that session:

k bub... we did a playtest tonight

so everyone was REAL impressed with the progress. No real complaints man. I think you've got a near final product for texturing.

So heres a list of things we came up with for you to consider from random people:

-The guys loved the glass tubes, though they were hoping for them to be a little clearer so you can see into them better.
-Wolf and I thought maybe making the outside tube to the middle building glass as well?

-Everyones still complaining about the sewer tubes. All the other tubes everyone is very happy with. We're still suggesting putting the angles in the sewers to force the player through.

-Some people wanted the guard shack to have slightly larger windows so you can jump/crouch into them.

-The spiral staircase up to intel should have handrails so that people cant drop down them super fast with intel.

-We were thinking some outdoor lighting would be very moody for the map... so we were thinking instead of a sun high in the sky, having it a sunset on one side of the map and have some consturction flood lights around the mine entrance and the center of the building... the big open area by the front stairs and capture point. I know the sun hits the moon too, but the thought of sunlight being so bright and cheery on the moon just doesnt feel so spacey to some of us. And the big construction floods would feel really military.

-Possibly throwing some green ground down by the water landings... running with the terraforming idea.

-Gonna need some invisible walls above the buildings and the outer walls of the map... easy for a demoman to exploit the high ground up there.

-Use some emergency lights like in normal building staircases for the spiral staircase to intel - the two lights from the one fixture.

-Some sort of flood lights in the intel room to set a glow out the windows.

-A healthpack/ammo set on the top of spiral staircase on the landing.

-Some more health/ammo strewn about the outside of the base.

-The large circle sniper deck room is very big and empty... something to kill a lot of the dead space to create sentry positions and spy hiding. Making it a lab or a greenhouse was tossed around.

-That second floor door to escape from intel is definately too easy to get out through. We agreed it should probably be walled off but leave the balcony there for sentry options.

-And the possibility of flooping the intel room as I stated before. a few extra steps for offense to run to get to it and creating more defensive options.


So thats that dude. We had to struggle to come up with that much shit, and for the most part its tiny things. Overall, everyone was super stoked on this thing! Too bad you werent on =/ alright dude, take it easy... ttyl

With this small amount minor changes to the layout, it appears that I can move onto finalizing the brush work, adding in the terrain, and texturing the map.

and thanks to everyone that helped test the map!!!

PS I goint to post a series of pics that show the progression of the map throughout this process I think I'm on iteration 65 of the map so it should be interesting to see the how the map has changed.

Sickness N' Stuff

Sorry guys. After my trip, I ended up catching a cold and was pretty spent after work because we started a new project. Work will continue starting today. and we should have a new version to test soon.

Still here just been updating the steam community page more

here are the updates from the the Steam Community Page

September 12, 2008

Hey people, Moonbase_Alpha_1.1 (this was changes to Alpha 2 because of the amount of changes) should be ready to go Saturday with MAJOR changes to the map. a list of whats been completed so far:

*Map shorted by about 2048 units (should make it easier for those heavys to get back and forth)
*The Left Hallway from the lower spawn has been moved to gain quicker access to the Snipers nest, and the stairs in the snipers nest have been flipped so they face the door
* Sewer area being totally redone
* Airtube access to roof of middle building added to ground floor near Bridge
*"The Pit" will now be toxic water that does damage but with a chance of recovering the intell should it fall into the water

those are all the ones i can think of off the top of my head. stay tuned.
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September 13, 2008

Just wanted to let everone know that all the major changes to the map have been completed. There is still some work to be done but harder parts have been completed. Stuff that still nees to be done:

*Add Cover from Snipers
*Add Health and Ammo Packs
*Filp eveything and create Blue Side

right now I need a break but it should be done for a test tonight if everyone is up for it.
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September 15, 2008

Wanted to let everyone know that there will be no update this week because I will be traveling at the end of the week. So I need to get stuff ready for the trip. Next week there should be an Update where I'll start to test textures (as long as the major map changes are done).

I know for the next test I need to do the following:

*Add cover for protection from Snipers
*Remove Down Tube from sewer area
*Test ways to make moving through Air Tubes less buggy
*Add wall to Upper Spawn to prevent snipers from being able to hit people inside the spawn when door opens and to prevent them from hiding in spawn and sniping people when door opens
*Add cover to the top of Middle Building because is too open allowing snipers to see more than they should
*Lowering windows on Snipers nest in Middle Building allowing snipers to see down
*Adding Wall to front of lower spawn to prevent snipers from firing into spawn

I think thats it
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So those where all the important posts from the Page.

Results from Last Nights Test

HUGE thank you to Got Wolf for letting me Hi-jack the Beer and Crits Server last night! Overall huge success! I know what needs to be done to improve the map so that the slower classes have a chance to to get through the map. here are my notes from from last night:

• Fix 2nd floor blue spawn door to blue players can go through it.
• Push bottom spawn forward 512 units
• Push buildings forward 256 units
• Push entire Base forward 256 units
• Total Base movement is 1024 units (this should put it closer to 2forts length)
• Add outside stairs to middle building to roof
• Add Health and Ammo to Middle Building
  
• Add cover to Middle Buildings exits to prevent snipers owning the front of the base
• Shorten or Remove left Hallway from bottom Spawn
• Move Capture Zone to be facing outward instead of inset near spawn
• Possibly remove Air Tubes from map, unless I find proper solution to push players horizontally
• Shorten Sewer area and have exit run behind bottom Spawn

Should have most of these changes done by the Weekend.

Sorry to be keeping you in the dark

I got lost working on the map in hammer and have forgot all about you guys. :'( My bad. SI has been a huge help in finding areas of my map that needed reworking and right now I am compiling an alpha version of the map for testing this weekend and Boba (thanks btw, Boba! you rock!) is letting us borrow his server before the weekend in case I need to make any tweaks before the major test. I haven't posted many images since my test map and ther reason for that is that all of the textures on the map are either orange or grey.... and flat so it is VERY difficult to pick out features of the map when taking screen shots. This Alpha test will have lighting so its will be easier to pick out features of the map, and so I will make sure to take plenty of screenshots (the lighting for the map is not final so its going to be pretty ugly).

Anyway i hope you are all caught up and please don't be mad at my horrible blogging skills :D

Screwing around in Hammer

Here are some shots of a (really) rough brush build of the base. I was just kind of messing around seeing what I could do:

Base Layout

I decided that going to look at the building was a stupid idea. I shouldn't force myself to conform to the layout of the building. It's good to take inspiration from Sheats Apartments, but not to emulate it directly. So here are the changes:

• The building is only 2 floors but on multiple levels
• the intelligence room is buried in the in the back of the base to the other team has to work for it!
• some other layout changes to make the map more fun to play. (hopefully)

Neutral Areas

Quick Update

I was really hoping to burn through the layout for the base today and while the basement is pretty much squared away (at least on paper, we'll have to see how it works out in game). since it is close to the weekend I think a field trip to Sheats apartments is in order. I know it may seem a little obsessive, but I feel that having seen how the building is put together will really help with trying to correct the building to be more playable.

Anyway here is the Basement Layout:

Flow Chart

Flow Chart version of map, note some of the changes:



The major changes being that the low path was extended to the other side of the middle building, this is to discourage intelligence carriers from using this path because of the length and relative danger of getting trapped (much like the sewer in ctf_2fort).

the other change is an addition of an air shaft that branches off of the low path. Once on the Air Shaft path the player has to commit to going to the base. This path would be great for spies wanting to infiltrate the base with out the worries of burning their cloak time going through the open area of the crater. I think that is all for now.

Layout Image

Here is the image of the layout:

Where the Idea came from

Moon_Base came about after reading a post on the team fortress 2 blog about their environments. And i think it was on Kotaku and someone make a comment about "HEAVYSSS IN SPACEEEEEE!!" and that comment just stuck in my brain. I started getting ideas of having like 50's - 60's retro future base set on the moon. and everything went from there.

My first goal was to find a building that had the look I was going for. I was imagining a good amount of curved surfaces and glass, and Jackie Treehorn's house (from The Big Lebowski) seemed like a pretty close fit. I tracked down the Architects name (John Lautner) and started to research his other buildings and came across Sheats Apartments:

There are more detailed images here (but I think you need a gmail account). Anyway the base is going to be inspired by this building but a few things will definitely change to make it more game friendly.

I had originally wanted to do different buildings (Like Sheats APTs vs Wrights Fallingwater) and I have asked a few people what they thought and they all said that a different layout would give one team advantages over the other. (thanks SI) So to switch is up I made it more of a boomerang shape to break it up from being a straight line.

My main goal with this map is to create as little custom models/textures as possible. I get hung up on the details sometimes and I think only pulling from what is available to me from TF2's extensive stock will help me concentrate on just the level design and trying to make it more balanced for all classes.

Image of layout to follow.