skull island beta 2 wip

Hey guys,

So I'm working on fixing / improving my map for a b2 release and had a couple questions.

First, technical stuff:

As you can kind of tell from this pic: http://xombie.redjustice.com/images/pictures/skull_island.jpg

The HUD for the cp's is screwed up for the first round. I have no idea why, and the other rounds all work fine. My understanding is that I'm using the team_control_point_master's "Cap Layout" field to do this, which currently reads: 1,2 3,4 5,6

Further, in the same pic, on the far right you'll notice some of the grass appears red. This occurs throughout the map. Any suggestions?


Finally, I've moved some spawns around to reduce the walking time. I'm still working on the Blue Spawn for round 3. Currently when blue exits spawn, they go down 3 flights of stairs and into a little hall where the setup-time gates are. I think gameplay would work best if I moved the Blue spawn right outside that waiting-hall and just bypassed the stairs, or maybe even a little closer.

However, I've already moved the Round 1 Red Spawn to where the current Round 2/3 Blue Spawn is (again, to cut out the stairs). So if I move the Round 3 Blue Spawn that will mean the mid-section of the stairs is never used. I'm kind of... emotionally attached to the stairs, because I think they help convey the feel of this being one large map instead of 3 totally separate rounds. Any thoughts on how I can move the spawns closer to the action without sacrificing the "togetherness" of the 3 rounds?

Hah, hope someone can follow all that... anyway, thanks in advance!

Not only do you need to set the CP layout in the Cap Layout field, but each CP needs to have an index number which is the same number found in the CP Layout.

Commas are line breaks.  So if I have this setup: 1 2, 3 4, 5 6....

In game it would look like:

1      2
3      4
5      6

If each of those numbers is a CP icon in the HUD.

Yeah, each of the CP's are properly indexed. I think it must be something... odd? I mean, it's not like there's a command that says "overlap the HUD".

I've tried it with just 1 2 3 4 5 6 (which, to my understanding should just put all of them in a straight horizontal line, but since it's only showing 2 per round that should be what i want) but round 1 is still screwy.

Also, I've discovered the red grass has something to do with VIS or RAD, cause it's perfectly green when I just run a BSP.

If you have followed step by step guides for a CP map (like this) and are still getting this HUD issue try the tf2maps.net chat room. because it's hard to diagnose tricky issues over a message board.

The TF2maps.net Chatroom has helped me remarkably when I have unanswerable problems!

Termaximus: Ooh! I double checked everything in the step by step guide and got it to work! I had been using the indexes 1-6 for my CP's instead of 0-5. Thanks!

Also, since the map has a severe vertical component I can't really post a meaningful top-down view. But, if you want to run around you can grab the current version here: http://xombie.redjustice.com/cp_skull_island_b1.bsp

Again, I worry about moving the 3rd Blue spawn as I feel running down that flight of stairs really gives you the feeling that you're going underground, that may not be conveyed if you just spawn there. I worry about losing the continuity. So yeah, any layout suggestions you have would be great!

And, I'll see if I can't get into the TF2maps.net Chatroom sometime to figure out why my grass is red thanks for the link.

If you want an "underground" feel, have one of the walls be bedrock and have steel supports on either side of the rock wall holding up the ceiling.  You could also maybe have a teeny tiny bit of foliage coming from the seam created by the rock wall and the ceiling.

Glad I could help. I am very time limited and I can't play TF2 at work (yet!) so I probably won't get a chance to run through map any time soon.  Can you take some FRAPS video and put up on YouTube. I could watch that at work and give some suggestions.

Hey,

Yeah, will definitely get a video of a run through eventually.

For now though, I went ahead and moved the final spawn. Figure better gameplay is more important than my emotional connection to the old layout.

I now have the travel time for all rounds equal or less than that of their equivalent Dustbowl rounds!

My next question is: it was mentioned I should make the cones "passable", so that players don't collide with them. How do I do this?

Can't think of it specifically, but there is either a flag or entity option to make non-solid.