Seige map: Warkworth Castle

[Peasant_Woman]

This is my latest siege map, based on and named after Warkworth castle in northumbria, England. I made an effort to use lessons learned when making my previous maps such as taking care to not make it too big or too complicated and to be honest i'm fairly proud of it.  I also managed to get spawns working properly as far as I can tell, probably due to attackers coming from a single direction. This image is what inspired the gatehouse area;

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Plan_of_Warkworth_Castle%27s_keep,_1909.jpg

http://www.mbrepository.com/file.php?id=2749

Previous changelogs;

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v1.1 changelog

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Moved the attacker spawns closer to the wall
Moved the siege tower closer to the wall and attacker spawns
Added a way to jump down to street level midway along the wall on both sides
Added a walkway along the houses on the right side
Added random junk littering some of the streets
Removed the spikes facing the sally doors on either side of the castle
Fixed a hole in barriers along the back of the castle
General polishing
Minor terrain adjustments

v1.2 changelog

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Fixed all broken/unraisable ladders
Changed the starting position for one of the ladders so that it doesn't get in the way as much
Fixed a terrain bug in the hidden tunnel
Changed training dummies to indestructible ones to avoid chat spam

v1.3 changelog

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Added stairs leading to the outer wall near the tunnel entrance on the right side of the castle.
Moved the raisable ladder near the right side tunnel to the bottom of the newly added stairs.
Moved one of the right side raisable ladders a little closer to the gatehouse.
Moved defender spawns around so that defenders cover more of the walls.
Fixed the defender spawns so that players will not spawn in the immediate area around the flag.
Moved attacker spawns closer to the outer wall.
Moved the raisable ladder near the left side sally doors to be raisable from both the outer wall and from the walkway leading to the flag area.
Moved the siege tower further along the wall from the gatehouse but closer to the raisable ladder leading to the flag area.
Moved the Jump-to-street-level section on the left side outer wall towards the flag.
Moved the destroyed wall section towards the siege tower.
Moved the attacker siege defences nearer to the outer wall.
Changed the wooden palisades into castle walls connected to the flag area and central tower stairs.
Changed the walls immediately around the flag into castle battlements
Removed two raisable ladders from the left side castles outer wall.
Removed a few objects all over the map to help lower end machines.
Fixed some of the ground textures inside the inner wall.
Removed a fair amount of ground textures around the areas players never go.
Added water to the horse troughs near the right side inner wall.

v1.4 changelog

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Moved the gatehouse closer to the flag
Moved the siege tower to the right side of the castle
Moved broken wall section to the right side of the castle
Moved attacker spawns closer again
Moved defender spawns away from the flag and more onto walls/streets
Moved inside right raisable ladder so it can be raised from both the outer and inner walls
Moved light sources around so that the castle looks better at night
Made the gatehouse shorter
Changed secret tunnel gates into a single sally door
Changed left side house behind gate into the same as the right
Changed the layout of the attackers siege camp to look better
Added stairs to the left side of the castle
Added another raisable ladder on the left side of the castle
Removed many plant/tree props to help lower end machines
Removed several smoke effects to help lower end machines
Removed ground textures in places players never go to help lower end machines
Removed most of the rocks in the riverbed to help lower end machines
Removed the spikes along the inner wall to help lower end machines and prevent players getting stuck
Fixed a hole in the barriers
Cleaned up the wall inside the castle, hiding overlapping textures etc from players

Screenshots (updated v1.3);

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Overview

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As always constructive criticism and feedback is welcome!

[bosco]

That looks both visually appealing and realistic!

[Wallace]

Yeah this looks nicely polished good work man

[Lansamur]

Looks great, but again attackers have to walk a bloody marathon before even reaching the walls. Time will be an issue there, me thinks.

[Baron_Settmour]

Move attacker spawn up and I'd like to see this on the NA rotation to give it a try.

[Peasant_Woman]

Updated. Attacker spawns are now much closer to the walls, full changelog is in the op. 

[Leiknir]

Added it to the eu servers

[Jacko]

Played it today. Attackers spawn to far away, you have time for 2-3 attacks on the flag and then the time is up. Never saw attackers win.

[Cohen]

Played it today. Attackers spawn to far away, you have time for 2-3 attacks on the flag and then the time is up. Never saw attackers win.

yeah that's more than true. you should at least halven the way to the townwalls, if not even shorter. and maybe divide the spawns into a left and right half, so that there are more attacks on both sides of the gatetower. atm attackers mostly take the left side, cause after that long walk to the walls u don't want to walk even further to the other side of the gatetower.

the map itsself lookes quite nice, with the cornfields and all the other details. only the strange wooden bars used as walls near the maparea look somewhat strange. a simple stonewall could be nicer, but that's just my taste and not important, for the game itself.
all in all i think it could be a funny map if it was somewhat faster. after the attackers finally get inside, there are usually some good fights.

[Peasant_Woman]

Updated to version 1.3! Full changelog in the op again.

Played it today. Attackers spawn to far away, you have time for 2-3 attacks on the flag and then the time is up. Never saw attackers win.

yeah that's more than true. you should at least halven the way to the townwalls, if not even shorter. and maybe divide the spawns into a left and right half, so that there are more attacks on both sides of the gatetower. atm attackers mostly take the left side, cause after that long walk to the walls u don't want to walk even further to the other side of the gatetower.

the map itsself lookes quite nice, with the cornfields and all the other details. only the strange wooden bars used as walls near the maparea look somewhat strange. a simple stonewall could be nicer, but that's just my taste and not important, for the game itself.
all in all i think it could be a funny map if it was somewhat faster. after the attackers finally get inside, there are usually some good fights.

Thanks for the feedback, I shortened the run to the walls for attackers again. Theres also an even spread of attacker spawns to the left and right and in front of the gatehouse, it'll be interesting to see which side of the castle sees the most action now that the siege tower is slightly further away from the spawn but nearer the walls. Also I wasn't really happy with the wooden flag area either so I took your suggestion of a stone wall. I listened to complaints in game about how once through the hidden tunnel your only option is to go and beat on the main doors with the gatehouse crew and so added stairs at the back with another way to the flag and the same on the left side but with no stairs, i'll want to see how this affects attackers chances before adding another set of stairs to the left side as my biggest fear is defenders could have thier castle ninja'd too easilly by these routes.

[zagibu]

No idea if this has already been mentioned or fixed even, but make sure no spawnpoints are too close to the edge of the walls. I spawned in midair today, on the right one of the tri-towers of the inner castle (right seen from flag).

[Peasant_Woman]

I completely redid the spawns for version 1.3 and now theres only one defender entry point on the middle tower of the trio of towers, hopefully this will fix the case where some players were spawning in midair.