VSH Falling Water

[nickybakes]

I made a complete Versus Saxton Hale map inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright's "Falling Water" building design. I visited the home on a guided tour back in early July, and I found that it had very interesting geometry, great for a game level! We were not able to take pictures on the tour, so I did my best to recreate it from memory and by looking at pictures from a book I bought at the gift shop.

The detailing and lighting is left simple to allow for high performance. Some props have bad/weird lighting and I'm too tired to fix it lol so just ignore it thanks :blush:

DOWNLOAD:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2m4u8opwdbl2l8p/vsh_falling_water_b1.bsp?dl=1

 

[Pedro the fabulous]

Considering it's about 8:00 AM where I live and I have absolutely nothing to do, I decided to check the map out and suffice to say I like the look of it. It looks nice, the lightning is abundant but not overly bright and it has enough spots for just about every playstyle/class to have some effect, having a large open area (soldiers,snipers...) as well as closed off areas in the buildings (engineers, heavy+medic...). The main building in the center feels a bit like a labyrinth and sometimes even claustrophobic at first but you get to know it rather quickly although I never get the feel of how so many hallways and rooms can fit in there. There's a decent amount of detail to the map and it's just a great feeling of relief for me when compared to some of the maps that (first-time?) mappers create.
That being said, I think the map has a couple flaws that would affect the gameplay, worth mentioning especially two:

• There's a few big blocks of clip brushes/invisible walls that start from the roof of the center building and go up to the sky as seen in the 4 screenshots below (pink=invisible wall). I can understand if you didn't want anyone going up there, but if I'm a sniper or an engineer I'm going to be sad. If I'm a soldier rocketjumping or hale superjumping, I'm going to be really pissed: Screenshot1 Screenshot1.1 Screenshot2 Screenshot2.1. If you don't want engineers, I'd recommend just func_nobuilding it and removing the clip but you decide.

• There's barely any ammo or health packs. Some of our map are known for having few of these, and others for having a lot of them (I'm looking at you miltiaryarea) but this might be the lowest so far: there's only one small health pack. It makes demoknights and soldiers less prominent which is part of what vsh players just love to play nonstop, but it affects every other class. There's a few ammo packs: Ammo1 Ammo2 Ammo3 Ammo4 Ammo5. Keep in mind all ammo packs are set to small when the VSH plugin loads. Bear with me if I missed any, and because hale's arrival is a bit delayed engineers and medics get a better start, but not by much, changing the playstyle to hoping hale doesn't manage to kill your precious support classes.

• I haven't really got much else to complain about. The waterfall sounds might be a bit too loud, especially at hale's spawn. However, I found this gamebreaking bug when looking around the map. See for yourself: https://streamable.com/e6gvc

 

[Luke]

Feedback - https://imgur.com/a/HpEQzXq

First glace, it looks alright - but the building becomes ugly very quickly.

I think the map is very big, Hale is going to have an extremely hard time dealing with soldiers/demomen.

There's very little ammo for engineers building, especially for a map of this size.

Snipers in VSH can climb, I'm not fully sure if they can climb on player clips - however your boundary clips may be a problem.

I'm also not sure about the usage of glass on some of the windows, it limits sniper positions - however this is a large map.

 

[nickybakes]

Feedback - https://imgur.com/a/HpEQzXq

First glace, it looks alright - but the building becomes ugly very quickly.

I think the map is very big, Hale is going to have an extremely hard time dealing with soldiers/demomen.

There's very little ammo for engineers building, especially for a map of this size.

Snipers in VSH can climb, I'm not fully sure if they can climb on player clips - however your boundary clips may be a problem.

I'm also not sure about the usage of glass on some of the windows, it limits sniper positions - however this is a large map.

Your first feedback on imgur says that the death pit shouldn't teleport people. It only teleports Hale (people on the blue team, which it seems you are on). Red players will die if they fall down there.

For your 2nd image: the water is there because thats how it is in the actual "Falling Water" building. Theres a small fountain there, but I didn't make that fountain part as to not distract players.

Also the statues are nonsolid because it would be annoying getting tripped up by such a small detail.

Also yeah the vent exit on Hale spawn was literally put there at the last minute because people didn't like the idea of a door that opened with a slight delay. Since you think the big size of the would make it hard for Hale to fight soldiers/demomen, do you think just letting Hale exit immediatley would be a better option?

 

[Luke]

Your first feedback on imgur says that the death pit shouldn't teleport people. It only teleports Hale (people on the blue team, which it seems you are on). Red players will die if they fall down there.

For your 2nd image: the water is there because thats how it is in the actual "Falling Water" building. Theres a small fountain there, but I didn't make that fountain part as to not distract players.

Also the statues are nonsolid because it would be annoying getting tripped up by such a small detail.

Also yeah the vent exit on Hale spawn was literally put there at the last minute because people didn't like the idea of a door that opened with a slight delay. Since you think the big size of the would make it hard for Hale to fight soldiers/demomen, do you think just letting Hale exit immediatley would be a better option?

Ah - I was viewing it the other way around, thought that the teams were reversed.

If that's the case then yeah - ignore the teleport, that was a dumb oversight by me.

Allowing Hale to exit immediately wouldn't be bad given the size of the map.

Personally I'd rather be stopped by the statue, just feels better that way.

 

[Cream Tea]

One of the most annoying things on vsh maps is not enough health kits. Either place more or make the existing ones full health kits. (lack of ammo can also be frustrating for soldiers)

Apart from that I like the look of the map.

 

[nickybakes]

Beta 2 Update:

• Fixed a visible nodraw texture
• Removed clipping from the top of the main building
• Added some more floor textures in the main building to help differentiate the diffent rooms
• Added another way to get up to land from the water
• Made the waterfall sounds near Hale spawn a little quiter
• Added some clipping to the rocks behind Hale spawn to prevent hiding
• Added 3 small health kits and 2 medium health kits
• Added 5 small ammo packs
  • I tried to spread the packs evenly around the map to help everyone and to encourage players to go towards focus points
  • Total: 10 ammo packs, 4 small health kits, and 2 medium health kits
• Adjusted some lighting and positioning of props
• Make the statues solid
• Made it a lot easier to get into the vents in Hale spawn
• Adjusted the textures on some walls of the main building to be more consistent

DOWNLOAD:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/gbiifvwfn6clmgp/vsh_falling_water_b2.bsp?dl=1

 

[Pedro the fabulous]

There's not as many ammo/health packs as I would have preferred for my own playstyle, but it's actually usable now. If there's more support, I think the map should have a chance on our servers (as long as bottiger agrees)
+1

 

[nickybakes]

There's not as many ammo/health packs as I would have preferred for my own playstyle, but it's actually usable now. If there's more support, I think the map should have a chance on our servers (as long as bottiger agrees)
+1

If it gets played on the server and people want more health and ammo, I'd be more than happy to oblige! :smile: Same goes with other feedback and changes.

 

[nickybakes]

Beta 3 Update:

• Moved Hale's spawn closer to the main building
• Moved RED's spawn a little closer to the main building
• Removed the lake/pool of water that Hale originally spawned in, and moved the cliff closer to the main building
• Added 14 ammo packs and 12 health packs (total of 24 ammo packs and 18 health packs now)
• Added some wooden structures in the grass area near the secondary building (wooden building) in the back of the map
• Made the wooden ramp used to get out of the water wider
• Small adjustments to details and sounds

Overall, the map is now smaller and more of the fighting should focus on the 2 buildings and the area in between (rather than Hale getting stuck in the water as previously done). With more health and ammo packs and the smaller map size, action should happen a lot faster and it should be a lot easier to play on RED team.

DOWNLOAD:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UUkJTRF0bTZWB5eZVs9dfYpawL5rMsDp/view?usp=sharing

 

[sehcturc]

+1

 

[nickybakes]

Beta 4 Update:

• Fixed an exploit where players could clip through the large waterfall and escape the map.

DOWNLOAD:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11kOpby8pr2KlYq5qm8dVle_ywzVWnAju/view?usp=sharing