Introduction
Like a fart in the wind, alpha 3 came and went with naught but a wrinkled nose and a mutter of “smells a little odd in here”. There were 2 playtests for a3, one that I managed to play in, the other one I did not (and it’s sods law that the one I was unable to attend had almost twice the number of players). Alas we strive on! The biggest problem was that I forgot to change the capping times from “dev” to “test”, so teams were capping points in 5 seconds as opposed to desired 15. See, I want to spend as little time as possible testing out things I already know work, so by setting the cap time to something ridiculous like 5 seconds, I can run through the map very quickly making sure everything else works. Simple… I just need to remember to change them back. And the biggest problem with something like this being an issue is that EVERY TESTER FEELS THE NEED TO TELL YOU. It’s not that the feedback isn’t useful, it’s just that you only need one or two people telling you it’s wrong for you to get the idea, and if everyone is telling you the capping time is too low, they aren’t focusing on other more important things like “map is confusing”, “This sightline is busted”, “Spies are terrible here because there’s no great ammo routes” etc – Basically stuff that I hadn’t noticed, that I could iterate on. It’s one of the main reasons you should clip alpha stages of your map. Because if you don’t, players never shut up about it, they get fixated on it and it distracts from your playtest.
Now don’t get me wrong. This isn’t the tester’s fault at all; This rather morbid smelling slip of gas is completely on me, and I know for a fact that if I was playtesting a game or a map and there was a giant Error message on my screen, i’d probably point it out too. But it does sort of soil the whole testing experience.
Alpha 3
That saiddddddd, both play tests offered me great feedback, although I sort of knew going in what one of the MAJOR flaws in Nautilus was; BLU spawn. With the Alpha 3 overhaul I did just enough to make this section playable but knew it wasn’t great, that said the minute I started properly running around it and testing it out, I realised it was worse that I initially anticipated.
- BLU spawn was too close to Point A
It was far too close to the spawn for one thing and the routes were just corridors (there was no meaningful or fun combat zones that the players could actively fight in). Typically there’s an open area when BLU initially run to their death upon the spawn doors opening, followed by some connecting rooms that lead to the first point. This allows RED a chance to hold off BLU and let the time count down before inevitably having to fall back to the point to defend. Nautilus didn’t have that. Instead players could run straight from the spawn, through a few corridors and right onto the point with little to no meaningful resistance. Coupled with the botched cap time and it was safe to say that RED weren’t happy. The first port of call was to open some of the early sections of the map up even further as well as move the point away from the BLU spawn.
- The lower path now lead to nowhere
Another issue which manifested itself from the redesign was that right path lead to a lower level that sort of went nowhere. It originally led to the point but after hacking apart A in alpha 3 the area seemed a little redundant. I had a thought that it would allow demos and soldiers a chance to get some height on the point, but they could do that anyway (and without damage) via the middle route. So the area was just a bit of a waste.
When BLU got to the point problems went from bad to worse for RED as the small area for the teams to fight in meant sentry guns were useless and what small defence RED had could be wiped out reasonably easily. Overall A and BLU spawn held on to too much of the original design and the end result was just a bit of a mess. And the cherry on top of all this trash was the giant sight line from RED forward spawn to the point that I somehow managed to miss. It was clear that I was going to need to strip all this out and start again.
- Navigation was still a mess
Other sections didn’t fare much better; For some reason I removed the stairs out of the far side of B’s pit in alpha 3 and as such falling in there was practically a death sentence as the stairs to the left were the only way out (short of rocket jumping). Thinking back I think it might have been to make space for the huge and out of place ramp down to the lower levels of C… my bad. The main route from the final red spawn to B was also a nightmare for many not really knowing where to go. In fact navigation throughout the whole level was generally a nightmare with players frequently getting lost. This is the problem with working on something so closely for such a long time is that you’ve got the layout memorised, you could fly through it in your sleep! But hand it someone completely new and there’s a good chance that of the 3 direct routes to the point, they’ll take the 4th and end up in the ass end of nowhere. And so once again, I picked up my hammer for we had some building to do.
Alpha 4
- BLU spawnroom update
Ooft another big one, lets get too it! First I completely rebuilt the spawn room. Typically in Team Fortress 2, spawns rooms for the blue team start in a single room and then branch out of the antechamber into a much large room with multiple exists for attack. This is to prevent spawn camping and cramming everyone into a tiny room. The previous spawn room was guilty of this so it had to go. It’s still not perfect in my eyes (would ideally like it even bigger!) but it’s a start.
BLU’s spawn room got a complete makeover
And now it even has an antechamber!
From the screenshots you can also see that the lighting has changed. In an attempt to actually make the name cp_Nautilus make sense, I’ve tried to give it a more aquatic colour scheme. It’s very much in it’s experimental phase right now, but as the next few updates come out, i’m hoping to solidify the lighting and underwater skybox.
- Burn it all down! And by that I mean Point A
I stripped all of the starting area out save for a few elements that I actually quite liked. So let’s start with the giant pointless middle section. It served ZERO purpose in Alpha 3 acting as a little spot for players to run down, look around, shrug and then ultimately get killed by a stray Demoman pill – fun right? I wasn’t 100% what i wanted to do with this area, just that I wanted it to be grand! In Alpha 3 the structure in front of the point felt a little… weird. It didn’t make sense; “why was it there? Why did the architect decide it was needed!? That said, I actually quite liked the structure of it and wanted to try and preserve it in some way.
The main room was completely opened up allowing more room to breath. It’s still not perfect, but it’s a huge step in the right direction
So I kept what i could and started hacking apart the rest. I drastically raised the ceiling and spread out the geometry. The old A had a very claustrophobic feel which many people complained about. These changes were designed to fix that.
I also really liked the idea of flooding the lower level. There’s something about water maps that I really enjoy, and I feel mappers are often hesitant to add large amounts of it to their tf2 maps (let alone incorporate it into their gameplay). Let’s face it, the Water Temple is the second best dungeon in OOT.
At first I was going to have a lower passage almost fully submerge the player underwater leading to a longer and more dangerous route that would appear behind the point allowing for ambushes, but felt that was maybe a bit over the top. So I instead settled for a giant overflowing pool in the main room that’s subsequently flooded the lowest level of the map up to about shin height. I was informed during playtest that if it’s too high it can negatively impact rocket jumping but no one seemed to actually experience this. A lot of people liked the theme though, so it’s definitely something i might push further.
Point A’s “fight” area was made far larger, the top passage allowed for a quick route to the point but is poor in cover so players risk getting picked off by snipers and sentry guns down the corridor. A lower route was added which connected to the main hall. This was the longest of the routes but appeared behind the point offer great ambushing potentials for spies and scouts. After watching a few games and thinking more about this route, i’m not actually the biggest fan of it and instead might have it go under the points instead in Alpha 5. The middle route takes players to the right either behind the waterfall or through the sub room. It’s very similar to alpha 3’s route, but takes a little longer.
Point A was opened up allowing for less CQC
- Rebuilt RED forward spawn
That nasty sight line had to go so i moved the whole spawn room back around the corner and rebuilt it to better suit it’s new position. Someone actually complimented how it looked which was nice since it’s entirely dev brushes. I agree with this individual, it DOES look nice! Too bad it’s getting even more modifications in Alpha 5 – RIP RED forward spawn (a4-a4). Players now had to leave the spawn and follow the arrows around the corner to the point before they could defend it which made for a far more bloody capture of A than in alpha 3 (where they could all stand by the spawn door firing rockets and sniper shots at a completely exposed point).
- Added a BLU forward spawn and re-added ramps at B
People were complaining that they needed to walk a great distance from BLU spawn to C after capping B, and whilst I do sympathise, I just assumed engineers would build teleports… Alas I caved to the pressure and threw one in by B point. While I was there I also made the area a little wider and re-added the ramps.
A forward spawn was added near B for BLU and the ramps made their majestic return
- General fixes
Finally I fixed the capping timers along with a few clipping issues. Moved a bunch of pickups around to compensate for the new geometry changes and replaced a bunch of the crate brushes with actual props as people were complaining the off grid brush was messing with their sticky bombs.
Conclusion
And there is alpha 4! It’s been uploaded now for over a month so I’ve already watched a few playtests of it (was unfortunately down South for Christmas so didn’t get a chance to play in any =[ ). Now that the Christmas holidays are officially over I’m ready to ramp back up to speed and get Alpha 5 on the go! Lots of changes to B coming in the future; it’s holding on to too much of the alpha 2 past and must be stripped away for fresh new and more interesting ideas! Nautilus is moving in the right direction, but there’s still a huge amount of work to do!