koth_airfield

koth_airfield was created after Valve purchased standin and process. With both of those maps now out of my hands, I had spare time and no other map projects that needed immediate attention, so I set out to make a koth map. As I'd never made a desert themed map before, I decided to emulate some of the rocky hills and concrete structures from pl_badwater, while adding some 45 degree angles to create interesting sightlines. It was mostly conceived as a distraction so I could try out a new visual environment, but the end results turned out much better than I expected.

The original design of the map was much more concrete and ramps, but very quickly I realized it would result in quite a few deadzones that players could fall into and get destroyed. It also had quite a few flank options underneath, but very few direct ways to get immediately back onto the point. Looking to pl_badwater, I decided to push some displacements quite a bit further, creating very natural surfaces that quite easily transition from lower to higher ground, while also using badwater mesh boulders to block sightlines and offer scouts and soldiers interesting perches to get around the map.

The inclusion of the airfield was mostly down to some feedback from Valve mappers. They felt that a weakness of my design was that my levels were a bit too abstract, with very few visual indicators to explain what the locations were supposed to be. The area behind the spawn in airfield was large and open, offering me a perfect opportunity to create a fairly sprawling airport. The only issue was actually finding the right art assets to sell it.

A friend on Steam, Ruskeydoo (http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197993590139/), had expressed interest in working on some 3d models for some maps of mine. Our scheduling didn't quite work out at the time, but when I started fully detailing airfield, I contacted him again, and he got to work. The two airplane models were created by him, with some reference images I found to give him a direction, attempting to maintain the realism of the TF2 60's, compared to other more extreme airplane models that I had seen. I had to make some adjustments to the size of the airport to accommodate the cargo plane, and Ruskey had to adjust the size of the wings to fit in the given area.

Though koth_airfield wasn't really designed with competitive play at the forefront of my mind (it was mostly playtested on public servers), it has been played in the inaugural season of UGC's 4v4 league, and was included in the preseason of CEVO's 6v6 league.