Sat, May 27, 2017 by doppel

In honor of this week's map, Koth_Bagel, we took some time to ask Yrrzy a few questions (Thanks Yrrzy!):

The shape of the capzone (originally) it was donut-shaped but "donut" was taken. Later though I made it more square in response to feedback, although I left bevelled edges on two corners so you could cross mid without capping if you wanted to be sneaky or something.

The capzone around a central column; another map I'd scrapped had a column in the centre of the capzone, and I liked the idea of having a point like that in a koth map. The original versions of the map had the column extend up to a bridge, but it was kind of awkward so I capped it off like Gullywash and Baloo, it wasn't actually inspired by either of those maps though.

Too many, it's been in development for around 8 months and I spent a lot of full days working on it.

Initially, as with any map, the hardest part was getting people to playtest it, but later in development the issue was getting people to stop thinking about it as a Viaduct variant and expecting Viaduct strats to transfer. It's hard to figure out which complaints people have are actual problems and which just come down to "It's different from Viaduct".

Besides the artpass, everything different between the current version and the first competitive release of the map has been in response to either feedback or observations of people playing. I got all my ideas out there at the start and spent the rest of the time making changes as they seemed necessary. A lot of seemingly minor changes had a big impact on the gameplay of the areas surrounding them.

I think if nothing else comes up, the current version may be final. (But I thought that 2 or 3 versions ago, so you never know)

Not currently, but I have some ideas floating around. Making competitive maps is a huge time commitment so I'm still not sure if I'll ever make another one.