Unreleased Official Maps

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There are several maps being made/have been made by the Dev team but are not released to be played by the public. These maps are not released because they either are simply not ready yet for the public, or the map author stopped working on the map for some reason. Here you'll see a list of maps being mentioned in news posts by the Dev team with screenshots.

Fort

Picture of Fort

Author

Skjalg

Decription

This map has been removed from the game as it had major gameplay flaws concerning trinket wars

The Pirates and Vikings have found themselves in the fort of the Knights team. The holiest of grails was once in the Knight's possession, but is now a trinket sought after by all three. Players must find the grail and hold onto it whilst killing enemies. The first team to kill the designated number of enemies while under the buffs of the grail will achieve true victory!


Snowstuff

This map was made by Jahhur. It actually the released version of Cathedral and Frostbite combined in one map. At first it held the name xlumikamaa, which is finnish for xsnowstuff. Later it got the name Frostbite. The map had the gamemode Holy Grail. But snowstuff turned out to be way too big, and Jahhur split the map in half. Two maps for the price of one!

Newspost

One of the first versions of 'snowstuff'
One of the later versions of 'snowstuff'

Greetings,

There haven't been any frontpage updates nor dev journal entries lately so I decided to write something to show that at least one of us is not playing Left 4 Dead 24/7. I went through my map folder and found some old versions of Frostbite and thought it would be fun to show them to the community (and some new stuff of course).

When I first started making Frostbite I had absolutely no idea what it was going to be like gameplay-wise. The last map I made, Forgotten, had a desert environment so this time I decided to go with the opposite. Now Forgotten should have taught me that planning a map and drawing a layout is always a good idea, but unfortunately I'm an idiot and just started to put stuff together in the editor (just like in Forgotten...) and came up with something like this: (see upperleft screenshot)

The layout of 'snowstuff', which was already called frostbite

Behold the very first version of Frostbite (for you non-finns, the map's name in upper right means "xsnowstuff") The map was supposed to be a lump of snow and ice in middle of an ocean with icebergs in the skybox slowly passing by. Doesn't sound too exciting. I couldn't even decide if it would be territory or booty gamemode. Also having a large open space is not good for performace because everything would be visible no matter where the player is. I realized the map had no future and decided to go with more Forgotten-like environment, except in snow: (see right screenshot)

Took couple building parts from the first version and started to build a castle and a mountain around them. The map was going to be booty mode, this being the path between pirates and knights. Next I started with knight's base. Cathedral was originally a part of Frostbite. Unfortunately at this point I felt that the map was going to be way too much like Forgotten. And if this cathedral was supposed to be knight's base, enemies with chests would have no chance to escape from archers. I wanted to try something new and decided to turn the map to Holy Grail mode. This would give me more freedom because there wouldn't have to be balanced bases and routes for each team. This was the first Holy Grail version of Frostbite. It was big. Way too big to be exact. Being a heavy knight in this version was far from fun. I wanted to fix it without having to redo lots of areas so first I cut out the cathedral and turned it into separate map. Then removed the area on the bottom of the image and replaced it with the broken corridor part from the top.

Pinegrove

A Berserker walks with a chest in Pinegrove
The Windmill

This map is being made by Gaz (& YeeHaa), and will have the Booty gamemode. Pinegrove is a remake of the map in the original mod Pirates, Vikings & Knights I for the Half-Life 1 engine. It is set in a lush forest with a river and some waterfalls which ultimately merge with the sea at the cliffside of the map. And the map has been teased by the team a lot. Several screenshots have been shown and even gameplay footage.

Newspost

Going back to pvk1, the third and final map that I created for the mod, was a level called pvk_pinegrove. Like island, and shores, it was made on a whim, me having fun in hammer (the level editor), and releasing the fruits of my labor to the pvk team. They like it, and release it with the next release. 8 years later, and miraculously, it, like pvk_island turned out to be a number of peoples favorite pvk map. Having remade island, Yeehaa, a fellow pvkii team member, asked if he could make a remake of the level. I agreed, with the only request that he keep the same layout as the original. Yeehaa, then set off, decompiled the old pvk1 map, and traced it in hammer until he had a complete layout replica of the map, and proceeded to start texturing it, as well as set some basic displacement terrain (method used in creating the source engines terrain).

Unfortunately, due to other maps needing changes for PVKII 1.1, Yeehaa lost interest in the map, and so it sat in the development folder of the mod.

A HK using the chestspecial
Original layout & YeeHaa's re-textured version

Fast forward to before the release of PVKII 2.0, and now I've worked on pvk_island for such a long time, I want to set it all on fire, never to see it again. However, to refrain from such actions, I had a poke about the developer map directory, and fell upon Yeehaa's efforts of pvk_pinegrove. A quick IRC conversation later, and Yeehaa doesn't mind if I take up the helm on my old maps remake. We're in business! Ok, so theres a whole load of waffle, and if you have read all the above, I salute you! Sorry about that, a nice history lesson at least

Now that island only needs tweaks here and there, I took Yeehaa's source map, and removed all of the textures it was using. Good textures, but not ones I personally felt fitted pvkii. Once all the textures (bar a small few) were replaced with Valves Orange and Grey development textures, it was time to work on the layout, and focus on making it look pretty later.

Here is what the original layout looks like, followed by another overview, this time of Yeehaa's re-textured version: (left)

Note: The red lines are to show tunnels as they are very dark. Also note, I have made the center area (the pirate spawn) a cave opposed to the old version, where its open. As well as expanding the top area slightly.


In the original map, pirates spawn in the middle of the map, with Knights and Vikings spawning randomly. I tried re-imagining what the level would look like, and from this making some basic adjustments of the overall terrain (making part a cave for example). I also decided, due to the popularity of booty maps, to make pinegrove, from what was originally a team deathmatch map, into a booty map, with a twist. In previous maps, at least one team have started with chests in their zone, this time, however, I'm trying it whereby there a 4 chests, each in a different location outside zones. They must be scouted, and returned to your teams base.

With this in mind, Knights now spawn on the left side of the map, whilst Vikings spawn on the right side.

File:Pingegrove6.jpg
Gaz's adjustments since YeeHaa worked on it

Having had so many issues with Islands balance, I wanted to make sure that this map was going to be balanced from the get go. So my first port of call, was Grogbots! Currently grogbots are development only, as they are still in the process of being made by Akz. Grogbots are essentially bots for PVKII. I ran about the level so far, laying waypoints for the bots, telling them where they could run, and where chests and ladders were located about the map. Unfortunately, the bots are yet to navigate ladders, and so to counter this, I made some very steep stair cases for a temporary fix.

I added 3 bots to each team, and watched them from spectator view for around 5 games, analyzing their movements, and which team was winning. After that, I took it to 4 and then 5 per team. The results were quite satisfactory, however they was one major flaw. The bots couldn't use ranged weapons! Whatever the class of bot was, they resorted to their basic melee weapons.

Given the bot watching, I made some adjustments to the map. (left)

Note I've now removed the buildings, and added the stair/ladders as well as placed booty capture zones (grey squares). There is also the addition on the tower, bottom left. It is important in level design to teach the player where they are in the map, and the tower serves as a key landmark.

A later-stage layout after Blade gave his first suggestions
Adjusting team routes
The original waterfall...
... and the new waterfall
A pathway in the original...
... and the newer version
A beach in the original version...
... has been replaced by cliffs and a windmill

The next stage was to show it to Blade, our lead tester, having helped me immensely on the refinement and balance on island, I trusted his judgment on this new level. He pointed out a number of flaws in positioning of both spawn areas, and chest zones. Suggesting that I move the spawns a distance away from the chestzones to allow attackers a chance of escaping with a chest.

As with making all changes to level work (mainly displacements (terrain)) its a bit of a pain, but I knew he was right. So with the information he had given me, I moved the location of the chestzone for the pirates, as well as carving out some extra caves for the pirates to spawn in. I also replaced the church building on the left side of the map, and placed knight spawns.

The viking area, the right side of the map was then opened up. There are now cliffs along the bottom of the map down to an ocean, rather than a beach in the previous version. I also opened up the top, and the top left of the map. Allowing for some 3d sky views and more interesting scenery, rather than having the whole level enclosed in cliffs, which is rather boring.

Heres what the level was looking like: (left)

Again, I showed it to Blade, and we had a run about in it. We decided to see what the balance was like layout wise, and timed each other running as the same class, from one chest zone to another. What we found let me make decisions on the layout of the level. Our research told us that Knights could get to the pirates base in 17 seconds going the top route, and 22 seconds going to bottom route. Knowing this showed that the lower route would never get used, as players (and bots) would always take the top route unless getting chests in the lower region. Vikings however, took 20 seconds to reach the pirates, using either the top route, or the bottom. Vikings were balanced, Knights were not. A fix was needed.

Off I went again, and made some changes given our findings. (right)

Here is the result. The major changes were to the bottom left of the map, I have radically shrunk the amount of cliffs and changed the direction of the tunnel out to the tower. The Knights chest zone is now lower down nearer the church, and the other building in the knights area, is now higher up. This offers attacking teams to climb up on the roof and fire down at the knights, or ambush them and run off with a chest.

To counter this for Vikings, the addition of a treehouse was built. Offering opposing teams an alternate route to attack from. The pathway up to the treehouse has since moved closer to the top of that area, so that its harder to chase an enemy going up.

The Pirate spawns have been shifted slightly, with the upper cave now sporting an upper deck to prevent campers dropping kegs into their chestzone, without the enemy reaching them.

Lastly the green path has now been changed, allowing a more interesting route, as well as better optimization map wise.


I hope thats been a somewhat interesting read, sorry if it was a bit long, but I wanted to share it all with you Please let me know if you enjoyed this dev journal and what you thought of it.

Thats the layout covered. Next time, I'll try and show you the progression of the map visually. But for all those of you picture hungry, here are some very WIP (Work in progress (not finished!)) screen shots of the level, old version followed by new version.

Zeppelin

This map is being made by Crazytalk and will be in the Territory gamemode. It will bear a moving territory in a zeppelin moving around the map. The whole map is based on cliffs where you can jump on the zeppelin to take control.

Newspost

The Pirate Spawn

New Map for 2.2? By: Crazytalk

Hey, thought I'd get some journal action going by posting about my new project I'll be working on which I hope to have completed for 2.2. The map's name is pvk_zeppelin and it will be territory.


The screenshot is a quick glance at the Pirate spawn. Right now most of the layout of the map is done, but it's all blocky and in dev_ textures so I'll be holding off on that until I get some detail in. The main objective of the map is a moving Zeppelin. Those of you familiar with the grogboat maps in PVK will know what I'm going for. The territory the players are fighting over will be the Zeppelin which moves around the map. The action will be concentrated on the ship itself, but many one on one duels will be had as players run into each other throughout the map heading for the ship. What makes this unique from other moving territory maps of the past is the lack of water to swim around and with the territory. If you fall off the Zeppelin, you fall to your doom, which makes shield charging and lunging a bit dangerous! Altogether it's shaping up to be a rather fun map, but still has a long way to go and I'll be posting updates as I find time to get work done on it.

Town

Town was originally designed for Capture the Flag by the mapper Skjalg. But due to gameplay issues the gamemode was transfered to Booty. Town is set in an evening/night city scenario. The map was set to be released with the beta 2.0 release of the mod, but didn't.

Newspost

A new gamemode = A new map! By: Skjalg On: 09 Aug 2007

Knight flag spawn

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 By: Skjalg On: 03 Dec 2007

Showing a street in Town

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)

3fort

This map is being mentioned in the newspost about Town. It is a map designed to test a version of CTF. The map was probable made by Akz.

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. - Skjalg

Crossroads

If you look at this remaining of the old version of the website of PVKII: http://www.pvkii.com/gamemediamaps.php You can see that there is a mention of pvk_crossroads. It is unknown who is working/has worked on it or what gamemode it will be. On the site you can see that there were 4 pictures of the map, but got apparently deleted on the image hosting site. If you have seen pvk_piratehaven on the web page, and thought there has been an unfinished map left out unmentioned on this wikipage, then you would be wrong. piratehaven is the previous name of Tortuga.

Tortuga

A seagull flying through the port of Tortuga
A building being shown

Tortuga was a map made by Evil_Taxi. It is unclear what gamemode it had, as it wasn't really mentioned in newsposts. The map was set to be released with the beta 2.0 release of the mod, but didn't because the author has left the team. Tortuga can be seen in a couple of screenshots. The map is set in a beautiful sun set.

"What you've seen of Tortuga is basically the most complete area. The rest of the map is fairly unfinished and needs a substantial amount of work.I'm concentrating on helping out 2.1 bugs, and then working on pvk_pinegrove. Perhaps after that I can start fixing up Tortuga, now that EvilTaxi has gone." -Gaz

"The guy making the map had to leave the team due to some commitments in real life, we don't have a source for the map so we can not finish it." -Crazytalk

The future of Tortuga remains unclear.

Forum

Mysterious map is mysterious

Stranded

Stranded is a map made by YeeHaa with Objective Push as the chosen Gamemode. The map was set to be released with the beta 2.0 release of the mod, but didn't.

Newspost

Showing a wall
Stranded seen from Hammer

Map Progress By: YeeHaa On: 01 Aug 2007

Dev journals, A great idea really. With that said, I'm going to show the public some progress on my map, which has no name yet.

The map itself is a castle settled on an insland in the middle of the ocean. The castle isn't pure realism (Windows in walls and so on) but I went for eye-candy mostly.

I've got the basic layout done right now, all that's left for me is texturing/lighting/placing props and optimizing.. and of course the long awaited compile (which will probably take some time).

In the map the 2 teams (P and V) need to attack the castle, destroy the 3 gates (The main one, the one into the second wall, and the one into the objective room). When they have destroyed all 3, they need to blow up a powderkeg in the storage room, and the team that succeeds first in this, wins. This game-mode is something new , so I hope it'll turn out ok.

Clouds

The 'floating' castle
Huscarl falling to his death in the clouds

The map was set to be released with the beta 2.0 release of the mod, but didn't. The map's development was put on hold just before the initial release of Beta 2.0. The development of the map is to be resumed someday. The map's gamemode is unclear. Clouds has been spotted on the screenshot on the right, and in the PVKII Teaser Trailer. The map is being mentioned by Crazytalk on the forums is this 'interview'. Clouds is a castle set so high it is above the clouds, it almost seems like the castle floats. Be careful where you set your foot, otherwise you'll plummet down.

Catacombs

"Catacombs was the first pvkii map ever, made shortly after hl2 came out. The mapper died or something. It needed a lot of work anyways, so it was dropped." -Jrocket

Sail Away

Glacier

This map is part of the PVKII Layout competition held in 2007. The runner-up won a beta tester spot, and the winner will also become beta tester and on top of that his designed map will be made by The Team. Glacier was the winning map, designed by 'Parrot of War'. It has the Booty gamemode, and was being made by MrAgent and Smilie. There is no information about it's further development or release.

History

Showing the layout of the map, made by 'Parrot of War'

The pirates and knights encountered eachother on the seas in their ships. Being natural enemies they immediately battled, and the battle lasted hours. After the pirates fled they came back in larger numbers and the knights fled, then coming back in even larger numbers. They did this for days, and faught until they found themselves in a bery unfamiliar (and cold) part of the seas. The pirates showed were proving themselves winners because of their seaworthiness with a combination of bad weather. After losing many men and ships, the knights retreated with just one badly damaged ship. The pirates celebrated that night by drinking and partying. Unfortunately or them, the worst of the storm was yet to come. Soon the strong winds and rain came, tossing the pirates ships' like bath toys. The pirates were soon washed up on a small beach set between to cliffs. Only one ship made it there, the others sunk from the storm or hit the cliff walls and sunk.

The knights had actually retreated to that same location when the storm first started. Their ship was completely washed away leaving no evidence they were there, except a couple lifeboats at the bottom of the cliffs. After sticking a knights flag in the ground to mark their territory, they discovered a beautiful cavern. They would have normally took shelter there, if they hadn't realized the sign that they weren't alone: freshly lit torches set up all around the cave. They snuck around the cave listening very closely for any sign of enemy activity going on. They soon heard voices and quickly unsheathed their weapons. They came upon a group of vikings gathered around a campfire in a chamber in the cave. The knights ambushed them, resulting in them fleeing out of the cave. Half of the knights followed the fleeing vikings and the otehr half climbed a ladder leading to the surface to investigate. They found themselves in the middle of a viking camp, where vikings were completely unaware of the knights' presence. The knights sent a scout to investigate, who soon came back with important imformation. The scout said he saw a section of the camp with many treasure chests. He said he counted six, and that they all looked like they belonged to knights at one point. The knights were infuriated and, without thinking, they rushed into the camp. The vikings very soon after faught off all the knights. The knights regrouped where their flag was set up and attacked the vikings' camp from many directions.

The vikings had lived on this land for years, and they felt they deserved the treasure since it was on their territory. When the knights came to attack their base, the vikings were ready and faught back. The pirates eventually stumbled upon the battle between the knights and vikings, and in typical pirate fashion, they tried to smuggle some treasure while they were distracted. They were quickly spotted and were forced to joined in with the fighting. After a while they all retreated back to their bases and regrouped. What happens next is up to you.

Newspost

pvk_glacier By: MrAgent On: 26 Feb 2008

I began working on pvk_glaicer last week with smilie. We have some progress done on the map, but nothing significant yet. For those that dont know, pvk_glacier is the map that won the mapping contest last year. I decided to pick up the map, and start making it. Along with help from smilie, it should turn out to be a great map.

I dont have a compileable version yet, so I cant really take any screen shots. When I have a compileable version ready for testing, then I will get some screen shots available.