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Ashwood Asylum: Redux

by Rewire & Motormouth

This is a customized version of the Ashwood Asylum, aimed at fixing a bunch of (blatant) issues with the TWI release version of the map.

I have mixed feelings about this map in it's current release state.
To be more specific, I really dislike the following about the original release:

• Too much spatial clutter (sometimes visual as well)
  
• Inconsistent clipping and collision

A lot of places have way too many things in the way that impede your movement and can cause you to get stuck, and there are lots of places where there are arbitrary invisible walls (or ceilings..) or collisions enabled on static meshes that are not necessary.

After the map being in the game for nearly two months (including the beta period), I get the feeling that Tripwire isn't going to fix the issues, so I've decided to do it myself. The things I mentioned before have been fixed in this version, amongst other things (detailed below).


Here's a list of every single thing I changed:

• Full collision pass: fixed a lot of bad blocking volumes and added new ones to prevent snags
  
• Completely disabled collisions on ALL overhanging vegetation
  
• Reduced visual clutter: either removed (or scaled down) a lot of random shrubs and trees that make it hard to see things
  
• Reduced spatial clutter: removed a lot of objects that created nasty chokepoints or (in most cases) simply moved them closer to the walls and out of the main path
  
• Added additional ammo spawns in some areas
  
• Added a staircase in the back courtyard to get to the second floor of the cafeteria from the outside

Most of these changes are just quality of life changes, but some are also to make the gameplay feel a bit more fluid.
I've found that on a full server, the amount of ammunition that spawns is very lacking, so I've added a few in some areas. The outer staircase in the back courtyard gives you a very nice (and necessary imo) option to get to the second floor of the asylum from that part of the level.


Here are some specific in-game examples of things I fixed:


This (annoying) vine, and ALL other overhanging vegetation have had their collisions deactivated. No more bouncing grenades off of thin air and killing yourself anymore:





Most areas have had their spatial clutter reduced. For example, in these two areas, the lightposts in the middle of the road/area were completely removed or turned into wall lamps:







Removed the floodlight here since it creates a little corner you can get trapped in. Also removed some of the crates near the pillar here to give a bit more room to move around:





Fixed a lot of annoying corners like this:





The 'cage' is well.. not a cage anymore. Honestly this area looks cool but it's way too easy to get trapped here:





Added an additional staircase in the back courtyard leading up to the 2nd floor of the cafeteria:





Anyway I didn't plan on posting this here, but I figured others might like it, so here we are.
Have fun!