This is a new competitive map I built called Boiling Point. In some respects it's a re-imagination of Chill Out and Cold Storage - it doesn't directly resemble these maps except in a few particular elements, but it will hopefully feel kind of like they feel. It also has a couple of features I hope are eye-catching and unique. I'll be playtesting it tomorrow night - if interested, check the customs lobby, the Tuesday June 14th thread by GrenadeGorilla.
You may get your wish - this build just about drove me insane. The next thing I build may involve just plopping some pieces down in the coliseum and calling it a day. By the way, one thing that inspired this map was the heavy use of jumping in Chill Out and Damnation (two of my favorites from CE). So true to its influences, this map has plenty of places where jumping is a useful skill. You can also just fly around with your precious jet pack, if you prefer, but I like it old school.
While I don't have a complete feel for the layout from the pictures, I am certainly intrigued by the design that you have going here. It looks like you have unique areas that should make navigation quiet easy. I look forward to getting to test this tomorrow night, and seeing how the map flows. I don't know how much you want to give away before hand, but besides the rockets, and a shotgun is there any power weapons on the map?
Thanks man. That was really the #1 idea behind the map design - that every room and corridor would have a distinct feel and look so that no matter where you are, you should have a clear idea of it right away. Oh I don't mind at all. There's a rocket launcher, shotgun, sniper and sword. The rockets and sniper are neutral, the sword and shotgun are close enough to the initial spawns to be basically team-owned. The rockets are part of the Chill Out design - obviously the rockets were the primary important piece of hardware on that map - but since I felt their spawn location gave one team an unfair leg up, they are in a true neutral position here. The neutral sniper is a quirky thing that can be annoying on some maps, but with this being more segmented and having a couple of teleporters on it for fast transport, I'm hoping it won't be a problem here. (The sniper on Chill Out was also neutral and never really gave too much of an advantage, I don't think.)
I just realized the name "Boiling Point" is the pretty much the opposite of Chill out/cold storage hahaha Good thinking! haha
Yeah, hopefully that name is just subtle enough..! I'm certainly not hiding the influence anyway. If nothing else there's one room (seen in the first and third screenshots above) that makes it fairly obvious - it's like the rocket room from Chill Out but with all the pieces rearranged. I think this map has a relationship to Chill Out like Guardian did to Lockout, except maybe in this case the resemblance is even a bit more distant.
Another thing I really like that also sets it apart from it's influences is that it's an open area rather than being closed in
I really enjoyed this map last night. The layout is unique and diverse but nevertheless it took me a little while to learn it since every area is so different. It had good lines of sight and height variation but there were a few places where I had wished there were more ramps or grav lifts (such as that place where the ball carrier was trapped in for a long time on oddball). Not that framerate was much of a problem but I would advise you get rid of the kill balls just to make it even better. I know the kill balls go with the boiling theme but they looked kind of out of place to me. I still don't see much resemblance to cold storage but this was a very well made and thought out map.
Thanks man - I'm thinking of ditching the kill balls because the only place on the map that gets at all framerate-y that I have noticed is standing in those two towers. This is still a work in progress, hopefully I'll be testing it again in a week or two with some fairly extensive updates.
I like the way they look in this context (I usually don't like them on most maps) - but if it's between aesthetics and framerate, I'll lose the aesthetics and take a huge runny crap in the middle of my own map every single time. Well maybe not that, but you know what I mean. If it plays great I can live with a slightly less than inspired look. My last few maps have all been well under budget for that exact reason.