135
this test is so simple though i'm pretty sure it wouldn't be able to score people with high IQs properly

people don't like it
better answer: the center-of-map hold mechanic works better in koth, the layout breaks ctf's grab/chase dynamics

I'm up for a playtest. I linked your post to a friend of mine who was thinking about playtesting too.

Giving tons of spongy flanks on a forward holdable map like this will only make it annoying to forward hold and boring to push, because there are no options for pushing in choke and you basically make transition plays on the choke route impossible. I mean, it would be reasonable, but the mechanic flanks have is that they punish teams for not defending them. Making them hard to defend just punishes the defending team /for/ forward holding. Yeah, it might work well at low level play, but once you get coordination involved it ruins the KOTH flipflop because of the terrain around your point. It's like you're going for two kinds of a map at the same time. You need to balance it for forward holds or balance it for points holds, one or the other, but your architecture screams "forward hold" while your layout screams "point hold". Or vice versa. I can't even tell at this point, because it seems aimless, but I can tell there's a cognitive dissonance between the way your paths are laid out and the cover/geometry of the map itself.

We alpha 11 now.

EDIT: Don't download this, look at my next update.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1811521/koth_bunkalow_a11.bsp

Changes:
- Softened lighting, rotated map to put it on the opposite warehouse
http://i.imgur.com/p5Dcf.jpg
- Fixed all (?) of the issues with the doors
- No layout/pickup/geometry changes
- Filled a hole in a supposed-to-be-solid piece of cover

I don't have any geometry or layout changes in mind, but if anyone gets an idea that "fixes" a problem with 3v3, please let me know.

surprised there isn't more hate for things that change principles of the game than there is (beggar's bazooka letting soldier airpogo, flying guillotine giving scout free falloff-less packet damage with bleed on top)

mass fraud and corruption?
they get one small, ineffectual case (republican planning to fake 400+ votes) and "assume" it's independent of any larger scheme. give me a break

@ source demo: I'll check it out around noon, I've got to wake up and other "morning" shit right now.

@ scout terrain: I'll see if there's anything that seems queer in terms of cover for scouts and if I can do anything about it. I don't think it's a problem for different classes to have their own dis/ and ad/vantages on a map like this, but if there's anything that can be uncalled for I should check it out (especially since I only intended soldier/med to be relevant before)
Overall it doesn't surprise me that it's hard to kill a scout on an open map, they are the master of choosing engagement after all, and being able to see what's coming after them just makes it easier to escape it, but that doesn't mean there's nothing to balance out there.

@plank: Does splash really noreg on it sometimes? I swore that the blockbullets I put on it would help:

http://i.imgur.com/swAtM.png

It's on that on both of ends of both planks, but the geometry's all a little different. What part of the planks were you having trouble with? I could stretch the rampup on that to improve reg.
People have suggested removing a set of ramps onto the cap before, but I really feel like it limits immediate vertical motion, which is more important on a map with the cap point set up like this than (for example) the area between granary last and 2/4.

Sorry I didn't post alpha 11 yesterday, I decided I wasn't done with the design after you gave your post on 3v3 being great on it.

EDIT: New lighting (the sams as before, but softer). Hope it's chill.
http://i.imgur.com/yfMUc.jpg

did they even make an announcement anywhere? I didn't get an e-mail and I can't find it. I know I got updated on steam though.

Thanks for the feedback, I haven't gotten any tests from many people familiar with ultiduo itself yet so I didn't know how well it really played out. All the tests I played and looked at were pretty low level and with the tests I was in we considered the kiting and point blocking to be pretty fun mechanics.

Was 3v3 really that much better with those mechanics? I didn't consider any other gamemodes, and if it works a lot better for 3v3 with the current layout I'm tempted to work with that instead. I guess encouraging medic parkour and trick rocketjumping is less "ultiduo" and more "silly skillplay", which I appreciate a lot more (being a fan of TFC CTF) than something I'm not even good at (ultiduo).

Though I do appreciate ultiduo too, don't get me wrong.

Do you have a demo you can send?

I'll definitely be making the spawn doors faster, and I'll probably soften the map's lighting a lot, but compared to how it was before I made it so sharp it's a lot more ambient with a low light angle. I'm gonna not post it as beta until I'm sure /most/ of the map works well with the focus of /some/ gamemode, even if it's 3v3.

(ramps and platforms)

Here's my attempt at pathing this out: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1811521/awfe2.jpg
(EDIT: Forgot link)

Red is the chokey main route and green is flanks, purple is connections between them (so is orange) and Blue is apparently supposed to be a choke route but it'll rarely be taken save by out of position players. The flanks are too independent from the main route; on viaduct they meet up at least right before the capture point, but here you have to split up your team into watching like three routes or else you risk getting a scout behind you.

- The flanks sprawl and branch in awkward ways, either being too long for the connection they give on the choke and major zones of interest, or being too short and having long connectors off them onto the choke. This has a massive negative impact on push/hold mechanics at low playercounts.

- I know that the cap of the structure is supposed to be of the most interest, but right now the area around it is way more likely to get fought on because of how the map is laid out. It takes too long to get to the point for how diverse the paths around it are, making holding it forward as if it's mid on a 5CP map better than holding behind or even on it.

- With the previous point, the cover and other tactical advantages (eg highground, enclosed area) are all in "boring" areas and ON the capture point. This would be great, but there are no good places (for example) for a demoman to hold and spam onto the point, which are also OFF of the point - The places that seem good for it, are very hard to retreat from without getting easily caught-up-to or pincered; The best holding spot is On Top of the cap point because of a total lack of cover anywhere else. I don't know if this is somehow to try to bandage the problem where.

I see a bunch of potential problems that kind of counteract eachother but from what I know about maps in games with spatial control I don't like the layout of this map one bit. I know that I'm theorycrafting a lot and I'm being more precise than I have any right to be here but I really really really feel like you should scrap some of your flanks and try to shrink or chokepoint most of your larger and more open paths, because you DO have a bunch of nice ideas (and art) here, but that they'll likely be ruined by layout issues.

I'm going to post alpha 11 later today. If I decide to start making the 3d skybox I'll call it beta 1 instead. If I don't, there won't be an alpha 12, that one will the the beta 1.

I fixed the "you can see the team blocker through the door" issue, as well as the "you can hold the spawn door open" issue that I originally did a tradeoff with the team blocker being visible. Basically, the team blocker had to be behind the door to not see it, but if it were behind the door then you could stall it open by standing under the very edge of the door. The solution was to put the blocker behind the door like before, make the doors the opaque version (the one with windows had visibility glitches), and put an invisible blocker in front of the doors.

Also, I rotated the map 180 degrees (casts the sun on the blue team's storage/shipping building) and optimized some brushes.

The biggest thing I fixed is probably the spawn door, anyway. I still need to make it so that you can enter the spawn rooms during humiliation.

i like these a lot
anything to get more DM-friendly arenas than the existing chokey and hidey-holey ones would be awesome

am i the only one that likes waste?
;_;

EDIT: I also really want an ammomode_(MGE)-like arena with realistic terrain but no edgable cover, think if you had viaduct without the weird cubbies or signs or shacks

sorry for the off-topic spew but it's something I've been thinking about for a while

I'm not the greatest at mapping (the only complete map I've made was bunkalow) but I'd be willing to help out with stuff like that

my radeon HD 5770 does tf2 pretty damn well considering it's a mediocre card by non-gamer standards

pulling 500FPS in TF2 says a lot about your CPU's performance on a single thread, not your video card. if you want more FPS in games that are GPU intensive, get a better card. Simple enough?