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Casbah... oh dear (Jan 11, 2006)

So, this is the mess we ended with last time.

...which is precisely the last thing I delivered to Valve. Rather wisely, the talented souls at Valve realised I was perhaps heading for disaster and kindly took the map and salvaged all they could to produce what became 'Casbah'.

My saviours!

That's the story over. The interesting stuff here is what went wrong and how it was corrected...

Gameplay change

Casbah was originally a bit like Canalzone - several flags that both teams try to capture. However, Canalzone works because it is very open. Casbah was very tight and maze-like. The two don't mix, so it was changed for traditional CTF instead.

Simplification

The main, big, glaring problem with my Casbah was it's complexity. As you can see above, it was a spiderweb of connecting routes and little niggly details. 80% of them serve no gameplay purpose or share a particular role with another route. That is, several routes are doing the job of one. That's bad for flow and for players. It's confusing.

Look at Valve's Casbah and that's been fixed. The only minor routes are ones that actually serve a purpose - for example to sneak through the central alleyway area or to find a secondary route to a well-defended flag area. Every single route serves some purpose and has obvious advantages in particular situations.

One Major Route

My Casbah featured a number of ways to get from the blue team capture point to the red team capture point, which again is confusing. Look at the Valve version, and all the complexity has been removed with one major route between the two sides. That's all a CTF map really needs, and also explains why Casbah can lead to some very hectic, exciting games - everyone is focused onto one main path.

Height Changes

My Casbah was very Dust-like in it's height variation (i.e. pretty much all on the same level), but TFC is a very different game to Counter-Strike. TFC needs height variation for some classes to even be worth playing. These were added in as platforms overlooking flag areas.

Prettiness!

Finally (as you can see from the overviews), it was given a nice, healthy, golden glow and bathed in glorious sunshine. Now all my gameplay demons had been expelled from the map, it was playable and fun!

Summary

So, main points. Things I did wrong: bad/no planning, lack of direction, over complication, too much complexity. Things Valve did to fix: reduced to one major path, added sensible variation (not too much), and notably removed the bad bits. Those were the same lessons I took home: simplicity is king and often, deleting bits is much than piling more on.

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user comments

Atrocity at 22:45 on Jan 12, 2006

Now that was an awesome series! You love your sunlight :) I'm working for Black Mesa Source now and I have been taking things you have been saying and reviewing my work carefully :) I'm currently finishing up crossfire, and hopefully you can write something about a media picture when it comes out.

reaper47 at 15:43 on Jan 13, 2006

Damn, I'm glad I found this link to your blog. This is some interesting stuff.

From what I see here the overly long paths from the starting point were Valve's idea. Also among the changes I see some background buildings that were added at the left spawn area. They are so typically Valve. They're great at adding these little background details that become so important for the atmosphere. Always reminded me of the rocks in HL1 when you leave the door to the dam area.

Dave at 18:41 on Jan 13, 2006

reaper47: I don't think the long path was intentional, but really making the best of the situation.

As for the buildings, they were in my original (you can still see them there if you look closer), and it's only common sense to leave them there past the map border to help give the map some depth. It's something I learnt when making Tire and then Dust (like the buildings at the spawn which go right past the perimeter wall, I was well pleased with my 'discovery' back then!)

reaper47 at 18:56 on Jan 13, 2006

Oh, now I see them! I really like this way of thinking. If I had to abandon a path like this in my map I'd probably nuked those buildings although I missed them. This way is much more sophisticated.

I always liked casbah's architecture. When TFC 1.5 was released I just went around the maps and looked at the buildings for hours. Also I liked the dustbowl rocks and avanti texturing.

Tristian at 01:56 on Jan 19, 2006

I think every mapper has their own 'Casbah' story.

For me it was my second map, LabTech. My first map was a good size, good design, and well received. I decided my next map needed to be bigger and better. Well it was certainly bigger. It was also a twisty mess of corridors and smallish rooms.