Final Map kf-lostboys

[ainast]

YouTube - kf lostboys

Map Name: kf-lostboys
Author: {SDM} Ainast
Played On: taboo.zapto.org
Playable: Yes
Pictures:

Description of map:
This map is a small fortress style *** kicker of a map. There is one main gate that is assumed to be the only place the specimens can break in but little does the player know that there are two destructible walls. One on the side and one in the back. There is also a random specimen spawn inside the base that spawns low levels. Also crawlers randomly jump into the base. There are also randomly placed mines outside of the base. You can walk around outside but do it knowing you risk everything.

This map was designed more with hard/suicidal in mind but can be played at lower levels. This map plays best with more than 2 players.

Map Download/Download Size: http://www.torreznet.com/sdm/kf-maps_backup/kf-lostboys.rom / 4.4MB

 

[Sammers]

Not the usual style of KF map, but I'm trying it because it certainly sounds like it might have potential.

 

[bobthebiker]

sounds like its got potential, and looks like it from the screenshots. I'll give it a go in a bit and get back to you after I've decided how I feel about it.

 

[ainast]

Just remember it plays best on hard/suicidal and needs a couple higher level people to get the intensity right

 

[bobthebiker]

even in solo mode this is actually a fun map. those mines outside the fence are an awesome touch/way to spice up the fight a little.

I say this map is pretty good, and has plenty of potential to be great. well done.

 

[ainast]

Thank you, now try playing it with a team lol. We played it all last night and couldn't beat it once. The patriarch is awesome though as you constantly have to dodge and take cover.

 

[driftwood]

Just solo'd 10 waves on hard, dissappointed I died there coz wanted to see what patty was like on this map. Oh well.

The strategy I used was to build up some gear and end up as demo man. Piping the entrances plus shooting the zeds knocking on the door with grenade launchers meant I only had a small number to deal with when they would finally break through the defenses. This was a lot of fun and there were some great moments of scarkes flying through the air from a pipe bomb, I felt like I saw some flying bodies physics for the first time. The same strategy could be used with more players but I imagine when they break through you would still have a lot of monsters to deal with hand to hand. 6 demo men shooting grenades at doors...could work.

You should have left this in beta for long enough for people to have time to try the map out, as a final release there are lots of bugs still. I think your beta was out for a few days or a week but I assuming testing your map isn't no1 priority for everyone out there, you should give a little longer. Also starting a thread like "help me test my map in the next half hour" doesn't work here because its a small community of people from all over world and your brief testing time slot is unlikely to suit many people.

That said its a great little first map and I do look forward to hearing what you are gonna be up to next.

Pros:
+I love the theme, its a nice change from other fort style maps
+The sky/fog, and general detail with the static meshes is nice
+fun factor

Cons:
-NO MUSIC. There's a very small handful of maps that can get away with having no music because they excel in ambient sounds, but this doesn't even have that. That every 2nd map seems to be released without music is no excuse in my book
-Pathing. is pretty bad. Zeds only arrive at doors in single file most the time, and sometimes get confused. Once inside the fort, they have a lot of trouble navigating the boardwalks. Perhaps this works in your favor to an extent as the map would get insanely difficult once you are fighting on the boardwalks. But bad pathing isn't a good way to achieve balance. For this map it isn't a big deal, the map works as is, but for your next map I suggest learn what the different colours for paths mean (when 'show paths' is on), and basically just use more path nodes and make sure it is really easy for AI to get around corners and complicated terrain/obstacles.
-The low-level zed spawn on the top of the map is a good idea to increase difficulty but for some reason it kept spawning zombies right in front of my face when I was up there. I think its fair to blame the game for this as zombies are meant to follow spawning rules. Still, if you had put something else up there for zombies to come from rather than just popping out of thin air, it would have been a nice touch.
-Trader room has no door, obviously this was deliberate and for this map it works well enough. For your next map definately make sure you got the trader lady and her doors to keep her safe from disgruntled customers who run out of flamethrower ammo half way through a wave.

 

[ainast]

thanks for the input,


as to the music I don't generally like music in the game, I thought about it and guess I should have added a few ambient sounds thought. I will def. add ambient sounds to my next map but prob. won't do music.

Also on the pathing, for some reason when I added more pathways it never worked. The specimens wouldn't go straight to the gate. I need to find a good tutorial on pathing. The trade off was when this map has more 2 to 3 or more players the pathing doesn't matter because they rush (even if single file) and break the gate down really quickly.

on the zed spawn, I had originally wanted crawlers to spawn on the roof in random waves but they would very rarely spawn so I had to do that. I've never experienced them spawning in front of me though.

I'm actually thinking about remixing this whole map into a much larger idea with multiple traders / areas but since I'm in some pretty tough computer science classes this semester I won't have time to work on it for a while. I've learned a lot that I can do in my next map to make it a lot better (and increase the frame rate significantly.) I am going to sit for a while and come up with a really great map concept and yea the "help me test my map" thread was a little dumb but ended up being unnecessary as people kept joining my server lol. You've got some good points and I'll def. have a much much better map in the works as soon as I can come up with a novel idea for it.

 

[driftwood]

good man. I think this map works well enough as is so just wait till inspired for the next big one.

Lol I assumed your 'help test' thread was a complete failure by the responses I read there, didn't think it would actually work

 

[ainast]

haha thanks, actually I'm already inspired, but my inspiration will have to wait until I learn how to use the terrain tool

 

[grex413]

Great looking map man

 

[ainast]

Could anyone review this map and tell me if it is easily camped? I don't believe it to be so. Thats the reason it didn't make the whitelist this go round.

 

[ainast]

check this movie out, its a small unedited piece of a large youtube video I'm making, this is proof that the birdsnest is not an easy camping spot. SCRAKE!!!! [url]http://www.torreznet.com/sdm/jasonOMG.mp4[/URL] it does contain a bit of cussing, but hey the guy was scared

 

[driftwood]

check this movie out, its a small unedited piece of a large youtube video I'm making, this is proof that the birdsnest is not an easy camping spot. SCRAKE!!!! [url]http://www.torreznet.com/sdm/jasonOMG.mp4[/URL] it does contain a bit of cussing, but hey the guy was scared

Dunno if its just my browser (chrome) or whatever plugin is required to view that video, but I cannot make out what is going on. The frames change once every 10 secs or so. The audio came out fine and sounds like 1 person at least found this map pleasantly challenging

 

[ainast]

Your the second person to tell me that. You have to download it and windows media player can play it. Mpclassic fails for some reason.

That's my friend. We were purposely trying to get video of camping. What should have been a spider turned into avscrake and jumped on the roof and slapped my friend hard. I hope you get the video to work as it's hilarious.

I discovered a new "feature" for some reason the longer one stays in the roof the harder the specimen jump spawn gets

 

[ainast]

This is a video of the gameplay, I think yall will like it.
'
YouTube - kf lostboys

watch in 720p



​

 

[driftwood]

thats a good video for showing the high level of action on the map. It would be nice if they would be more specific about why they didn't white list it first time.

 

[ffjason]

This is a video of the gameplay, I think yall will like it.
'
YouTube - kf lostboys

watch in 720p



​

Absolutely brilliant! Love the video. I'm also disappointed they didn't whitelist this map. I can't wait to get in on rotation on my server.

 

[ainast]

thats a good video for showing the high level of action on the map. It would be nice if they would be more specific about why they didn't white list it first time.

thanks lol, we played 2 matches to get the video, we died on the 3rd or 4th wave of the first and had to restart lol (its in the video) and I just put it together real quick as an example. If I had more time I'd do a better video but we are working with recursion in CS and its a killer lol.

I wish they had been more specific too. Not all maps can fit the same form factor and if they did it would get boring.

 

[ainast]

Absolutely brilliant! Love the video. I'm also disappointed they didn't whitelist this map. I can't wait to get in on rotation on my server.

thanks lol, yea me too, we play it on my server even though its not whitelisted (yet?) and your more than welcome to join in. Server IP is in my sig.

You should see how intense this map gets on hard / long with 6 players. It requires everyone to do their job. You have to divide up your team to take care of the three walls and it fosters communication in the sense that you have to tell your teammates that a wall is down cause they won't know and will get surrounded like the poor chap in my video lol (guess I shoulda told him.)