I was just wondering what everyone's opinions on this was. If you have two buildings, one meant for blue team, and one meant for red, do you think it's cheesy to select the buildings and everything attached to it and make it that team's particular color (red team's base red, blue team's base blue) in the properties? Is it helpful, or does it take away from the atmosphere of the level? I've been wondering if it just looks better to keep everything at default.
It's only cheesy if you make the whole building color-coded when selecting only small areas will do. Also, use the "Team Color" option. Colors under Team Color will only appear in Team games and not in FFA, unless otherwise stated under the "Object Color" option. Having specific Red and Blue areas in a map during FFA is rather cheezy (to me, at least), especially when using complementary colors is better for overall aesthetic.
Actually, I think it looks stupid when people leave everything neutral. There's no real way to orient the players better than color.
I think color-coding structures is a good idea. Some things, like most building blocks, hardly change at all. Yet others, like struts, look amazing when the colors are changed. When it comes down to it, the aesthetics of the map and post are what make people download your map. So, using colors spices it up.
I personally don't color for teams. Rather, I color to make the area look good, the color of the team is irrelevant for the most part. Like in my current project the center is all orange, but that doesn't mean an orange team spawns there. Mainly its for aesthetics and orientation like silencebroken said.
This, I cannot tell you how many times I've played maps mostly symmetrical that have had no colors on bases and just walls everywhere and got lost and been in fight got spun around then hear FLAG STOLEN! me: WHICH WAY DO I GO D:!
I think color-coding looks fine when done properly, although it's possible to go a little over the top with it. Luckily red and blue are two of the better-looking color choices; some of the others almost never look good (I'm staring in your direction, weird shade of green). But if you don't like colors, be sure to incorporate aesthetic landmarks that players can use to orient themselves. This is hugely important in symmetrical maps, but important really in all maps unless the design is so distinctive that they can't possibly get lost.
Disagree because: Map orientation is important in FFA as well as team games, if anything more important because spawns are likely to be much more all over the place (not as in random, but in terms of lack of side-specific spawning), and (well done) map colours help this massively. A good example of subtle yet functional (and, tbh, aesthetic enhancing if you ask me) use of colours is the recently featured Genome.
I always make the Neutral Structures Purple, Green, or Yellow. Because you can't call out 'he's under the.. white? Neutral bridges! Oh. You're dead.' Has anyone noticed that Team Color's don't show up in non-Team Slayer gametypes or are even the same color as their non-team color counterparts? This annoys me.