rip WRT54G

Is the rock spawn that awkward? I can move it if so, I just see a lot of soldiers actually standing on that one for both defense and offense, and figured that one was safe. Same with the shack.

pushed cp_steel, cp_granary_pro_b4, pl_borneo_rc4, cp_glassworks_rc4a, and koth_sandstone_pro_rc1. If there are any others you want done please let me know. I want to make sure every league map this season has support.

edit: accepted, update your soap

I didn't do Logjam, that would be LaMqTa.

Does Croissant really need Soap support? It's a cool map, but does anyone actually play it competitively?

describes what he thought about his childhood

I don't barely have any HL experience. I've only been rostered for two seasons but that's because I haven't had time to devote to a regular team. I also casted quite a bit, including far more Steel than I'd care to have casted.

The biggest issue with Steel over other maps is that if you get caught off guard, you're literally fucked. If, for instance, your Engie sets up on A but offense does an E push, there's nothing you can do to pull back - you'll have to ditch all of your buildings and try to set up on E or B. Higher level teams will often just forfeit A and have their Engie set up on B, but even then, Blu can still push through the A-E connector and then most of Red will have to pull back.

One of the strengths of HL is that the Engie determines how strong you can hold something, but when the Engie can be made null (unless he sets up on E in which case E is incredibly tough to push without taking D) by simply rotating, it leads to cheesy strategies. It's one of the reasons why Viaduct's mid fence was shortened to deal with snipers - being able to slightly tweak where you are in order to force the enemy to entirely rotate is just bad map design.

There's some kind of invisible ledge on the left side of the sewer dropdown

These hanging pots shouldn't clip with players or projectiles

Because every single ammo pack surrounding second is small, and there isn't one on the field itself, I feel like there should either be another small ammo pack here, or the one under the point should be upgraded to a medium pack. Not as big of a deal in HL when there are dispensers, but in 6s, having to fall back to lobby or mid just to pick up a small ammo pack from there, and then having to fall back further for more ammo is a big deal. Would also help pushing out of second if you can't take lobby.

Perhaps also a small ammo pack here for spamming into lobby, in case they're doing a defensive lobby hold

What is this thing? It isn't mirrored, and it looks like a malformed chunk of Australium with a missing texture

Garage should also use RED's theme on their side, instead it's mirrored across both sides except it uses red signs on RED's side

Other than that, love the map, would love to see it get played more. ESEA or UGC needs to pick it up.

glassworks done, making the sfm is a bitch so I won't bother

Do you guys think if it's okay that RED spawns on the BLU side on top of their own? Right now I've got it set so that BLU only spawns on the BLU side, and RED on the equivalent RED side spot, but other maps like Process have them all share.

I think the A/D format in HL is definitely interesting, but Steel is prone to ridiculously stupid strategies. Teams are often left guessing what the other team is going to do, and they're forced to play off of that.

thoughts on borneo spawns?

http://youtu.be/c21ewGCmMH4

apologies for shit quality, bloom, and motion blur - i placed a bunch of resist shield props on top of the spawn locations in SFM and then recorded the video with SFM's built-in TF2 instance, which is from 2008 and has forced bloom and motion blur

glassworks is up next

Thanks for bringing to light the kind of work we do, tsc! Fantastic writeup.

Pretty much. Steel is the worst map in HL and I don't hate HL but I still like to poke fun now and then.

Logjam hasn't been supported for very long. Once the support is added to SoapDM, it's up to the server owners to update their installations of Soap and to add those maps to the rotation. That can't be enforced.