Welcome to Dust2, Episode 2, and what I consider to be the proper start for this project.
You see, I wasn’t too happy with the changes I made in Episode 1.
I did them with good intentions and with a specific goal in mind, but failed to foresee
the unintended consequences of the changes, typically what they’d do to change the behaviour
of the other team.
That blue crate on long A, for example: some people said it made it very T sided.
Actually, from my testing it felt CT-sided.
The point is it wasn’t fun!
So I moved it back to where it was originally and instead tried a very different kind of
change.
A few of you suggested other paths and windows at long A for players to peek out of but this
seemed like too much effort so I added back a door- and a wooden one at that- along with
a barrel.
With 2 people, as T’s it’s possible to boost and to peek over the top of the door
for a limited but very important view into long.
I also closed up the ramp at Long A a bit to improve visibility should there be any
camping CTs down there.
Definitely makes it feel a lot sunnier as well which is always a bonus!
The biggest change perhaps is to middle, where I put a corridor through leading to the scaffolding
between T spawn and B tunnels.
NOW HEAR ME THROUGH HERE!
I thought long and hard about what such a change would do.
It doesn’t affect CT’s much at all, unless they successfully push well beyond where they
should.
But for T’s it provides them with a faster rotate from mid to B and vice versa without
having to run all the way around through T spawn again.
Let’s face it, it takes too much time for both teams when this happens.
See how this change pans out.
I also had another stab here, where the monstrosity used to be.
To obstruct view from T snipers, I instead replaced it with a more permanent-looking
extended wall, leading straight from CT spawn.
One of the unintended consequences of the monstrosity I added last time was that it
was used by CTs to hide behind, making it even harder for T’s rushing through mid
to B. And I guess this solution doesn’t exactly fix that.
At first I wanted to cut off the bottom of the monstrosity, revealing feet of those people
behind.
But I can’t exactly do that with a stone wall.
Let’s see how this new setup plays.
Oh and perhaps another biggest change is to the window at B, which I moved over a bit
to reduce the number of spots that attacking players have to clear.
Remember what I said earlier about unintended consequences of the changes?
I can picture this change being a great advantage to people defending the site, as from here
they can peer right down mid.
So I made it a drop down to stop this kind of peeking mentality.
There are still ways back through it from the site but it’s not going to be something
you can do safely and on the whim.
I also replaced the doors with wooden ones again, just for old times sake.
Maybe by doing this we’ll find a good reason for why they were changed to metal in the
first place?
People were saying how they miss the car.
You strange people.
Firstly it was argued that it helps boost onto the crates here- so I’ve added a more
elegant barrel for this instead now.
Even though you can still manage the boost without any of this at all just from running
and jumping from the front.
Oh, and you also said how you missed calling this bit of the map ‘car’.
So I gave in and finally added the car back in again.
Here.
I was given several suggestions to the A site that wanted something done with this area
HERE.
I’m a little bit scared of changing such an iconic bombsite in such a major way, especially
with what it would do to the short A timings.
But still, I added a barrel to the corner so that people who really want to can get
to the site in this way.
Because why not.
We’re testing changes.
And in a similar vein I removed a few of these baskets in the corner here to experiment with
some bangable cover instead.
I also removed the scaffolding at T-spawn, added a crate to suicide because it was easy
to do and didn’t conflict with any of the other suggestions, and I had a go at adding
clipping to the stairs in tunnels.
BUT HERES THE THING.
The way in which these stairs are made cause problems with this, as they’re so narrow
on the inner side that the clip brushes are at more than a diagonal angle so you’ll
slip over them from above and get jolted to a stop from underneath.
I messed around with the clipping a bit.
It’s not perfect and there might be a few bugs left, but it should feel somewhat smoother.
I’m happy to remove it again in the next update if it proves to be a huge problem.
Thanks also to Quoting, who suggested making these trims non-solid so they don’t bump
your view as you run over them.
I also removed one-way flashes and moved the post at the top of mid, as well as other small
tweaks and bug fixes that he suggested.
There were a few popular suggestions I didn’t do.
One said to close up the tunnels again because the smokes you can do from there are too overpowered…
ngh, sorry, it seems like too much work to close the tunnels up again for such a vague
reason.
It works in reverse too, remember.
People suggested resizing the door models in mid to fix the ‘peeking’ problem.
Well, now that I’ve added another solution I’d rather try that, plus there’s the
small problem that you can’t resize models in Source!
And a door from CT spawn to short was also suggested and upvoted but I’m not sure what
it’s the solution to, and can’t even begin to work out the implications of such a change
right now.
Not that these changes shouldn’t be tried, but those are my reasons for not trying them
in this project.
Thank you to Pulse Servers for continuing to provide lovely wonderful servers for us
to play on, and to the staff behind the scenes who are quick to fix problems and to kick
HACKERS.
And to David Randall for this song that you can check out in the cards of this video.
But sadly not the annotations any more.
Because Youtube removed them.
Stupid.
And thanks also to everybody who has contributed to this project so far.
Check out the description for a link to the reddit topic for suggestions on this new version
of the map.
I’m sure that, with help from this new episodic format that we’ll see episode 3 very soon.