Town

Night has landed on the streets and merchants come out to sell their apples.

Town is a Last Team Standing map known for its volatile lightning strikes and unusual level design for said game mode. It's also notable for having one of the longest development cycles in PVKII's history.

Stats

• Map file: lts_town
• Mode: Last Team Standing
• Author: Skjalg (original author), Niknak (final release), UberMann (optimization), Colonel Sanders (map overhaul, details and easter eggs)
• Release Date: Beta 2.5 (October 2012)
• Theme: Urban
• Timer:
• Sudden Death Timer:
• Pick-ups: Food (x_) and Armor (x_)
• Stage Hazards: Lightning Strikes (Sudden Death, only)

Overview

Town is unique for having an assymetrical layout, in comparison to the rounded level in Last Team Standing maps like Arena and Cathedral. All teams spawn outdoors and have direct access to the indoor section of the map, the tabern, which can be divided into three rooms: the cloister, the bar and the library/cellar. Players who enter through the cloister have two alternate paths to reach both places; two staicases lead to the library and the cellar while a tight corridor leads to the bar; inside the cellar there's a ladder which leads to the bar as well.

In the outdoors area, the layout doesn't surround the indoor building in it's entirety, since the entrance to the bar is located at a dead end and near the cloister there's a gate which blocks the players' path. The Pirates spawn at a corner near the cloister's entrance, the Vikings spawn at the cellar's entrance and the Knights spawn at the bar's entrance.

The Sudden Death mode triggers deadly lightning strikes which target accuracy is near-perfection; very few players manage to survive Sudden Death outdoors. The lightning strikes won't affect anyone who's indoors, but the claustrophobic corridors compresses the whole level and the rounds end slightly faster.

Presentation

As one of the few urban-themed maps in the mod, Town makes use of its tight corridors for the sake of more emphasis of close-quarter combats, and the night period ramps up the adreinaline even higher. In the moist and cold night, only a group of torches and the moon's reflection illuminate the paths in the streets while inside the warm and cozy tabern light isn't scarse.

History

Development in the map is dated as far back as 2007, when the development team was hard at work in the upcoming Beta 2.0. Orginally planned as a Capture the Flag map, it wasn't ready for it's release in said update due to the Capture the Flag game not being entirely coded and several delays were made. It was later planned to release the map with the Booty game mode in order to finish the map faster.

Years have passed and Skjalg lost interest in working on the map and left the development team. Authorized creator Niknak joined the crew and rebuilt the map for the Last Team Standing game mode while maintaining Skjalg's version's visuals. The map was eventually released in late 2012, after over four years of teasers and anticipation, alongside another highly anticipated map, Tortuga.

In the following updates Town got optimized for the game mode, including new spawn locations for all three teams, a new indoor/outdoor transition, an increased Sudden Death timer and more polish work in existing areas.

Archived Newsposts

The following newsposts were written by Skjalg during the development of Town for a release in the Beta 2.0 update.

A new gamemode = A new map! (09 Aug 2007)

Ever since I made pvk_fort I have been wanting to do a city type map. With the 3 new ranged classes in the game, I figured it was about time I started on it. And I was hoping that windows and balconies would bring triggerhappy people to enjoy my map.

Several key locations in the map have been in my head for several months now, just wanting to get out. And its been wonderful to let it all loose.

This summers vacation I got myself a small job, which I held onto for about 3 weeks. Having a boring job really makes you focus on what you want to do. So on my last week I started to open hammer and work on the ideas I have been thinking on. When I'm eager, I don't do much else. Those of you that are on the new Steam Community could probably look me up there and see how many hours per week I spend in the editor. (ranging between 80 and 100 hours right now). Those numbers will probably drop a little once school starts. But I'm on a good run now.

I decided that booty would be a little boring on my map, so I asked Akz if he couldn't code in the CTF game mode. 3 days later, he had made a small map called 3fort with the game mode in. Brilliant.

No Life and Sleep Deprivation (03 Dec 2007)

The Last couple of weeks have been really hectic. I'm at my final year on my bachelors degree and things are starting to heat up as we are finishing up this semester. Luckily I don't have any exams, instead we've had a bunch of projects and mandatory tests in each of the subjects which will eventually become our grade. The thing is that our teachers are slackers, but they are required by the school to give out exactly the same amount of tests as they set out to do at the beginning of the year. What this means for us, is that we have almost 50% of the tests the last 3 weeks.

And, of course, on top of that PVK2 demands its attention. I've been giving pvk_town a lot of attention lately, while polishing some on pvk_fort from time to time. We had our first big playtest on both of them last night, and I still haven't slept (it was over 12 hours ago we finished the test).

The first few playtests on pvk_town turned out to be pretty boring since it was CTF. Picture booty, only you weren't slowed down by the chests. Yeah, the pirates always won. I turned it into booty, and it seemed to magically turn into a fun map at once. Speaking of turning into a fun map, pvk_fort is now booty tag, which sparked a new life into the old thing.

Thats it for now, I'm going up to the school to ask one of the teachers kindly if I can turn in the next assignment on friday instead of tomorrow (!), since we only had two projects that were due today (!?)! (yea, notice the sarcasm).

Hopefully he'll say yes, then I'm going to celebrate with a cold beer before I go to bed and sleep for 20 hours.

While making the map I was kind of worried it would be too cramped, and I still am worried about that... Here's a Hammer shot of the map so far (for people who can make sense of it)

Trivia

• Town was at some point the map with the heaviest file size, weighting about 56.648 KB or 55,3 MB; the size of the map has to do with several areas having reflected surfaces, caused by cubemap entities which, after Source renders the cubemap build, the map's file size becomes bigger, depending on the number of cubemaps placed in the level. The record is currently hold by Forgotten at 58,3 MB, followed by Townsquare at 55,9 MB and then Town;

• The piano inside the bar can be interacted by players by pressing E in front of it. A rendition of the PVKII theme is played;

• Like in Tortuga, players can hear people talk like in a pub if standing next to some doors available in the map. Some human voices, begging to be saved, can also be heard in the gutter inside the cloister;

Gallery

an early screenshot of Town, showing the Knights' spawn and chest area during the Capture the Flag/Booty version's development (pre-Beta 2.0).

another screenshot from the Capture the Flag/Booty version of Town, showing the map's overall presentation, showing only the buildings.

Official Maps

Booty	Forgotten - Island - Pinegrove - Townsquare
Trinket Wars	Desertruin - Fort - Frostbite - Temple - Tortuga
Last Team Standing	Arena - Cathedral - Gravedanger - Town
Territory	Cara - Sandstorm - Tortuga
Deathmatch	Fort