[CS:GO] de_investment (WORKSHOP, Update 7 Sept)

[MaK]

Looking great as usual, love the architecture and thought put into the layout. We need to playtest this soon!

[Sathor]

I have finished my university essay and have worked on my map again. I reckon I will have a playtest version in a few days. Remember, a lot of the brushwork in the screenshots is just showing what I want it to look like later, with models and so on.
This is the middle hall of the map:

[Hollow]

Starting to look really great. I'm excited to playtest

[MayheM]

The architectural looks great. Can't wait to see more...

[Generalvivi]

I loved that room from Mirrors edge!

[Captain Terror]

This looks amazing sir!

[Sathor]

Public playtest!

The time has come to do a first public playtest of de_investment.
You can download the necessary files here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/66424987/playte ... stment.rar

It includes a BSP and a NAV (put them to cstrike/maps folder!) and a materials and a models folder, which you can just copy into your cstrike folder.

The playtest is due to begin at 00:01 am CET (saturday).

London: 23:01 pm (friday)
Los Angeles: 03:01 pm (friday)
New York: 06:01 pm (friday)

The server address will be published here half an hour before the playtest. Be sure to have all the files installed before the playtest begins.

Everyone is invited - the server is in Europe, but I hope some people from other parts of the world will join us, too!

[MaK]

I'll see you at the playtest! This shall be fun.

[Sathor]

Check first post - playtest begins

[Ark11]

Structure wise, its great. But I felt that those little rooms with the desks and cubicle dividers was pointless. Maybe that was just because i'm not familiar with the layout of the map.

I know its in the dev blocked out phase but it was a really quiet map. I think it needs more atmospheric noise and since its an office needs some music like this playing in the reception areas:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rrvyIwmSnY&t=6m12s

[Sathor]

Thank you everyone!

The playtest was a bit short. I got rcon banned from the server. Somehow the password didn't work

Anyway, common opinion is: too big.

I will see how I can make the map more compact.

For anyone who feels like it, post here what you thought etc. I am providing those overview screens so you can comment in pictures:






The screens are of a bit older version of the map, but should be sufficient!

As for anything concerning lightning, ambient sound, textures, models ... whatever - this is not the right time. This is purely about gameplay. I want to make it as gameplay ready as possible before adding REAL detail. Everything you see is still just sketches.

[mookie]

[Major Banter]

To sum it up; it's a bit of a mess. There are a few too many routes - not necessarily a bad thing, but it's hard to keep track of them all. The map needs flow; I didn't know if I was going to get up at the large central room quite often, when I'd rather have avoided it.

I've made a critical drawing for you Sathor, but look at the images above - the Ts have huuuuuge walks to get into combat and there's a lot of combat points, sometimes in weird locations. I love the stairwell contact area on the right hand side, but it's a strange place to have a fight. I think just making the T runs shorter will benefit a lot, along with slimming areas down. You can keep large portions of the map - just make it more basic.

Anyway, here you go. Start from the bottom!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4384889/sathor1.jpg

[nub]

Thanks for that overview picture, mookie:



I've highlighted (in blue) areas that I believe should be totally redesigned in order to make the map less confusing to navigate. As it stands, the lower-middle portion of the map consists of a number of corridors which all sort of intertwine. This ends up being a tad bit confusing. You tend to wind up somewhere completely random.

In my opinion, you should replace the vague corridors with rooms, or completely remove them altogether while rearranging the layout of the rest of the map so the major areas can be connected more simply. Doing the latter would definitely help you compact the overall size of the map pretty well.

When/if you decide to rearrange your map, try and keep the atrium as the focal point of the map. I'd suggest trying to make the atrium much taller, then build an exterior version of it that can be seen from most areas of the map so it can act as a visual guide. I think skylights would be a fantastic way of allowing players to see it from enclosed rooms and whatnot. This would also allow you to let environment light in to more areas of the map.

[mookie]

T spawn can be basically eliminated as a playable area. Moving the spawns to the south end of the room will help here, and running a usable hallway behind the reception desk would probably help to clear up congestion here.

I think most of the hallways/hallway facsimiles on the map need to be shortened.

1. Too long (distance from stair room doorway to orange floor room doorway).

2. Too long. Anything you can do to shorten the distance the Ts have to run from their entry to this room at the north-northwest to the hallway leading to the center room, and then from the hallway to the center room to the double-doors into the stairwell at the south end would be good. Overall, this route would be roughly the right length if the T spawn was at the reception desk, and bombsite A was very close to the top of the stairwell.

3. Too long. This is just dead space making it take longer to get from the big east room to the center room.

4. The distance between these doorways is probably twice as long as necessary. Some combination of shrinking the center room and making this second office the middle of three would probably be good here.

5. Too long and bare as a straight hallway leading out into the center room. Maybe this path should be turned into a room that takes you out to the right a bit before opening on the center room.

6. Too long, dead space.

7. Too long together. Maybe kill one of these two rooms.

8, 9, 10. Each too long individually, combining for too long.

CT spawn is a reasonable size, but way too far away from everything (due to the length of the hallways between it and the bombsites). This catwalk on the left is a problem because it forces the players to run back a bit before leaving spawn by the upper route. The lower exit from spawn needs to lead towards B almost as quickly as the upper exit, if not a little quicker. Currently, it only leads to A. Combining how far you have to run to get from the lower CT spawn exit to the upper with the fact that the lower exit is not that useful means that CT spawn is basically useless. The whole area between the south edge of A, and the stairwell leading down to the south side of the center room, and CT spawn needs to be reworked to be much quicker.

11. Too long.

12. Too long.

13. When I back up the stairs out of B, I want to immediately push forward through the wall to the right of the stairs to start approaching the site from the side. Instead, you have to back out through three doorways to get back here.

14. Too long.

Bombsite B seems about right in terms of size, but is lacking the ability to really use the lower level. A hallway connecting two doorways on this level would make a huge difference, especially if it connected to the CT hallways somewhere (maybe the stairwell at the south side of the center room, or leading quickly back to CT spawn). Two ingresses for the Ts here is fine, but only one for the CTs seems like not enough.

Bombsite A seems like a bit of a mess because it's very open and has all these raised platforms with railings that are an impediment to movement. It's difficult to know how this will play since it's unusual and the size of the map didn't put much action here that I noticed in the playtest.

The levels vertically seem a little too far apart. In most places where you'd want to jump down to move from one place to another, you take fall damage. It looks like the floor-to-floor distance is 256 in most places, cutting this down towards 192 would make jumping down more viable and allow the stairways to be shortened a bit. Tightening up the gaps between some stairwells that are a U shape might make it easier to get down quickly as well.

The middle room is very tough for the CTs. Their ingress on the lower level is not very good because to get anywhere they have to jump around one of the two corners to either side. Running down into the depressed area in the middle looks very bad because the railings are so high that you can't jump out.