Everything Wrong with TF2's Dustbowl

[@dragonfluf]

You forgot the mention the insufficient amount of dust and the complete absence of bowls.

[@LEDs]

Like how Badwater doesn’t have any water

[@YorhaEnthusiast]

So true

[@dankali735]

Maybe the real bowls were the friends me made along the way

[@propangasschnuffle]

@@LEDs it's not called goodwater is it?

[@NTMonsty]

@@LEDs Badwater Basin is based off of and named after the lowest point of Death Valley, so I think it does become filled with water when it rains. I don't think it rains there often, though. And Dustbowl was named after a series of dust storms that occurred during the beginning of the Great Depression, so it could be a location that was affected by those storms.

[@Cob-Kay]

Going the extra mile to show examples on how you could fix each problem is very commendable

[@LEDs]

It's only fair to offer solutions when bringing up a bunch of problems

[@MinosPrimeOfficial]

@@LEDsyou could be the second developer

[@blockwearingman]

@@LEDs🐐

[@cinnamonsplash]

​@@MinosPrimeOfficial They'd let the potted plant take a break.

[@quentonsmith4174]

The stairs in the rock were for the ‘Meet the Heavy’ SFM It helped the Heavy walk up the rock smoothly.

[@darylchua2168]

That's hilarious

[@FivePebbles-e8s]

That’s actually pretty cool

[@d4n737]

Valve problem solving be like "I couldn't fit the new couch through the doorway, so I cut a couch-sized hole so that it fits and then had it fixed when the couch was inside, but due to time constraints I simply filled the hold with plaster and covered it up with wallpaper.... At least the end result is reached!"

[@lootrat4556]

Playing dust bowl with the item servers down actually felt pretty balanced and fun when playing on either side which I found kinda funny

[@starmaker75]

Again dust bowl comes from a era of TF2 where little to no unlocks

[@Vaniity_Velvet]

Hey bud, are the item servers still Down? I've not played TF2 since August of last year, but if the item servers are still down I may give it a shot. I really do want to play stock only. Phlog and Vaccinators killed my patience.

[@flintycave5634]

@@Vaniity_Velvet their back up again i started playing tf2 while the item servers where down, and it felt like a pretty nice introduction to the game

[@Contentdeleted99998]

Dustbowl is from an era where tf2 wasnt a thing, of course it would work better with default loadouts.

[@Vaniity_Velvet]

@@flintycave5634 Fucking hell. If I was Valve I would have left it down for a while and let players know it's on purpose and they will be back up later.

[@Rex-sy8ye]

The grass line is due to UV wrapping and mipmap quality, when a texture lowers mips it usually ends up touching the edges of the texture and then the very top shows the bottom slightly because of interpolation (unsure if TF2 uses bilinear but thats the most common interpolation method I know of which does it) In english; Its tiling the texture when you dont want it to and the quality level bleeds over the edge.

[@GeneraliskYT]

I was about to explain that myself but you beat me to it, thanks!

[@LEDs]

Thank you 🙏

[@Aarmastah]

The issue can be completely resolved by ticking the box "Clamp T" in VTFEdit

[@ThatNerdGuy0]

I was thinking it could be some sort of texture wrapping, but I didn’t think about the mipmaps (I got no clue what those even are)

[@masonbarber871]

​@@ThatNerdGuy0As far as i know, mipmaps in games are prerendered lower resolution versions of textures. This is used so that far away textures look like the average of colors in a part of the texture, instead of highlights/shadows/details aligning with a pixel and making the whole pixel a different color than it shpuld be. They are precalculated with a nice blur/averaging effect that would be too costly to recalculate every frame.

[@stormmalm7049]

you're ruining my immersion pixel by pixel

[@shutp_1675]

This really dusts my bowel

[@Kallichore09]

This really gravels my pit.

[@Freakyknight1]

This really bads my water

[@RandomJD]

Played Dust Bowl for like 10 years. AND NOW! I realized those little things I used to call strange tf2 magic was just the map having issues. MY GOD, thanks for the enlightenment

[@YorhaEnthusiast]

Valve should just hire this guy

[@Nuniixo]

Just to indirectly force him to work on valves newest vr project nobody cares about

[@chxrripop]

tsk tsk tsk

[@biggreen1456]

@@Nuniixothat’s not how Valve works, they let the employees choose what to work on, their problem is everyone they hire want to work on these VR things

[@TwistedFireX]

@@biggreen1456 Not quite

[@StationaryGamingReal]

​@@biggreen1456 You become a social outcast in Valve working on TF2. It's just not cool to do it.

[@zer0her048]

If Valve just had 2 or 3 people like you, TF2 could live forever. The amount of things they neglected in this game is astonishing.

[@fojisan2398]

Like the item server, lol

[@gabbsxoxo]

@@fojisan2398 oof

[@LEDs]

I'm not a great mapper by any means, but I agree that as long as there's somebody who shows passion and dedication, they can help the game out a lot.

[@oblivion_2852]

@LEDs you and Shounic are great for technical tf2 content

[@joe____]

​@@LEDsYou sure fooled me, you seem to know your stuff

[@pablox2143]

Its beggining to look a lot like dustbowl

[@Engimoder]

Sentries everywhere

[@SummerDragoonSaar]

we are trapped inside our spawn

[@yardenar2717]

We have Uber so move *ON*

[@TeamCraftable2004]

Truly a dead workers party classic

[@TeamCraftable2004]

​@@yardenar2717there are lots of snipers so beware

[@latortugacocainomana5533]

The janitor an a guy who tought that this was a fast food job watching how to fix dustbolw:

[@LEDs]

watching this video while eating lunch after mopping the floors

[@klinxium8627]

@@LEDsmopping the keyboards and accidentally typing “update sized update”

[@brokendoop]

I wonder if the Block Bullets brushes at 15:13 were supposed to be used as a staircase to make walking up the rock easier but they used the wrong texture.💀

[@DumbArse]

Oh my god...... This is a map from 2007, how come nobody every bothered to fix these?

[@flytrapYTP]

​@@DumbArsethat's precisely why. It's from 2007.

[@gangswagster]

Isn't this the rock the heavy walks onto in Meet the Heavy? .. yeah

[@DemsW]

That is a really cool video, and I imagine it can be quite fun going problem hunting and finding solutions.

[@LEDs]

Most of these problems were accumulated on a list I made over the course of many months. I saw it the other day and thought, “you know, I think it’s finally time I did something with this.”

[@vintagememelord8168]

This is video is the opposite of the 'Everything great about BadWater' except you tired to improve DustBowl but Casual TF2 didn't talk about how to make the map bad@@LEDs

[@AParticularlyPointySoldier]

Hiding stickies on the dustbowl starting wall is crazy. Never knew.

[@Gahanun]

I think a few of the unlit out of bounds areas are deliberate. They include the lamp for decoration, but they use lighting to guide the player away from there. When you light them up, they seem like a place where you could go to.

[@LEDs]

Then they can be dimly lit. Source doesn't handle dark areas well, so even a tiny amount of light would make it look better without being distracting.

[@Bookslayer10]

The fact that people still care enough about this game and engine to learn all this incredibly niche stuff, and apply it for free, is something really special.

[@leonardo9259]

It means this game has been abandoned for 6 years, stop the cope

[@Bookslayer10]

@leonardo9259 I'm saying the community is really special and dedicated. Valve certainly got something right when they made TF2, but they certainly haven't been as dedicated.

[@HOTD108_]

​@@leonardo9259 It literally gets brand new Halloween and Christmas maps every single year. Not to mention the annual Summer update which still happens. Stop spreading disinformation.

[@unluckyrat3961]

Are you okay honey? You've been quiet. My brain:

[@KPeraOfficial]

when i saw a musical parody about dustbowl, i open tf2 just to play this map and on the second/third round my team built a spawn camp on the blu team. i still love this map

[@djelibaebi]

ive never done map editing work but the tiny fixes you're doing remind me of some of my favourite parts of 3d modelling with all the little problem/puzzle solving

[@rmod8]

6:34 This issue is because textures get truncated, which make them repeat when the polygon used is bigger than the UV cords, and the polygon which represents this decal is a bit too big, so it starts to repeat the bottom section at the top. To fix this, enable the Clamp All flag in the VTF file to make it so the texture never gets truncated, and therefore, extends the last pixels around the edges forever. This could also be used to fix the spawn red icon, and i use in in my minecraft gmod maps for transparent effects like fire.

[@jordanalmady2145]

I work with 3D models daily so seeing all the fixes u have for this and how many valve missed is very fascinating

[@coffeenair]

You should submit these fixes on the workshop, love your vids dude!

[@LEDs]

Appreciate it!

[@fantastikboom1094]

I love how you fixed the map, hope to see more. 6:48 That happens because textures are blurred to avoid being pixely. But textures also tile. Stack 2 tiles of same texture on each other and blur them to understand it more.

[@SirYodaJedi]

6:16 - You can the Clamp T flag in the VTF to clamp the vertical UV coordinates, avoiding the wrapping. (this should probably be done as a new VTF and VMT to avoid breaking a potential weird existing edge case where it's actually necessary to wrap the texture vertically) 10:52 - Ignoring surface normals when lighting static props results in pretty bad lighting; it's best reserved for stuff like foliage. Really, it wouldn't be too difficult to fix the model itself (although it would certainly take a little longer). 15:09 - VBSP has a CSG process; among other things, it decides which part of any coplanar faces should be kept, as long as it's the same bmodel. Worldspawn will automatically take priority over func_detail in such situations.

[@morphious86.]

i love to see these sort of analysis videos!!! keep it up!

[@LEDs]

🤙

[@singleNim]

@@LEDs How about Borneo next? The gap between the wall and floor next to the third point is utterly egregious, it bothers me every time I play that map. Or Goldrush, so many little spots up on the walls where you can stand and shoot down from.

[@crispx19]

Huh, this video was far better than i thought, going into a map and fixing those issues is like doing a old thing restoration, very satisfying.

[@paulmann8570]

God, this takes me back to when there were six maps. I miss Hydro being popular.

[@bshap495]

15:06 I think what's happening is that when Hammer compiles the geometry, brush faces are chopped if they don't touch visleaves. So maybe when you have two z-fighting surfaces, only one is considered to touching a visleaf, so the other is chopped. In cases where there's still z-fighting, it may be because one brush is a func_detail, and the other is a world brush. Both brushes that are touching need to be the same thing in order for chopping to occur.

[@LEDs]

Thanks for clearing that up

[@pchris]

I’m a amateur game dev and 3D modeler and I know why you get that line on the grass overlay. First, let me explain some basics: The overlay seems to be made of 3D polygons that are just flattened onto the surface. These polygons will have UV coordinates that specify what part of a texture is drawn on them. UV coordinates are stored as two numbers that represent an X and a Y position on its texture. These numbers are values between 0 and 1 with (0, 0) usually representing the top left of the texture and (1, 1) representing the bottom right. These values can be negative or greater than 1 though. When they are the texture typically repeats. So if you have a surface where the top left UVs are set to (0, 0) and the bottom right are set to (2, 2) then the texture will repeat once on each axis with 4 copies of it visible total. Texture filtering is where a low resolution texture is sort of blurred or anti-aliased to make it look less block. Each pixel draws color data from neighboring pixels and creates a smooth transition between them. And now the problem: That overlay could have incorrect UVs but what I think is more likely is that it has texture filtering on and isn’t clamping it to the UV bounds. This means the pixels along the top edge are trying to anti-alias themselves by smoothing out the transition between them and their neighboring pixels including the pixels above them. There are no pixels above them since they’re at the top of the UV map but UVs wrap around so they’re smoothing themselves with the pixels on the bottom of the texture. You can fix this by either moving the texture up one pixel in photoshop, disabling texture wrapping/changing the repeat mode to clamp, or disabling texture filtering. Let me know if I need to explain anything better.

[@LEDs]

Got it, thanks

[@Pragmer]

I love really in depth explanations like this.

[@Xesh]

I love this because it's also a tutorial for how to fix things in other maps! This is awesome dude

[@LEDs]

🙏

[@OrangeHarrisonRB3]

I never knew about the demoman being able to hide invisible stickies behind the Occluder brush on 3-1. I feel like thats something I would have seen everyone doing back in the day, and learned it just by observing, like the asshole sniper spot in koth_sawmill

[@OisinNoel8868]

6:47 This is just UV maps messing with each other, this texture format allows for a good deed when it comes to having a larger texture, such as bigger texture with grass than just duplicating them. The reason why the grass texture is like that is because Valve forgot to aline the texture with its main object properly. Allowing it to extend. Just raise the texture up or just fix its object a small bit and you should be good.

[@000marioshi000]

Imagine your game being around so long that one of the small overlooked issues from back then can now be fixed with _AI_ Amazing vid, very interesting! I really wonder if, should the map be "fully" fixed, players would complain about the removal of clip brush gaps allowing them to stand in funny spots...

[@LEDs]

That's a good observation. "Fixing" the map would require some parts to be significantly altered, which could be perceived negatively. At the same time, though, some of the problems exist because of how the map was constructed, and cannot be fixed without changing the way it looks.

[@Stefano--]

Wow, this makes me appreciate the source engine more. I always thought those were just engine bugs, but actually you can fix most of them if you take an extra care. Thank you, great work.

[@LerilayRelyable]

Guys, am I seeing things? In the middle of the video the map he's talking about began to look a lot like dustbowl. Sentries everywhere

[@LEDs]

you should get help, I recommend drinking the water on 2fort, that should fix you up 👍

[@Wadethewallaby2001]

8:18 the reason why they’re different is because different textures are on different games.

[@toastietart]

i love how he points out some of the things that youd never find, even after years of playing keep up the good work!

[@LEDs]

❤️

[@penguinimptheinsane774]

I would gladly be bored by anything extra you'd have to talk about, this video was so fascinating and I loved learning about the little intricacies you've found. Any chance you'd consider breaking down more maps like this?

[@LEDs]

I'm happy you found this video interesting! I made it after building up a list of a bunch of problems I found over the last couple of years when working on stuff in the map. Unfortunately, there probably won't be a sequel featuring other maps, at least not anywhere near the extent as in this video

[@EpicParsnips]

We need this man working for Valve

[@TheShadyShepardShow]

Itd be cool if you put this on the workshop so people could run community servers with the new and improved dustbowl

[@OffTheRailsUK]

"Cracks in the walls" Oh dear, it's Doctor Who series 5 all over again

[@UndeadAlex]

8:23 using the map leak, the model for the lower and upper door are 002 but in the model viewer you look at 001. for me 002 is still distorted in the model viewer, ingame and when ripped. but 001 and 003 are both fine, the reason why they dont use 001 is because its bigger incase anyone was wondering, Edit: the issue with the door_grate002_bottom model, is a uv issue where the UV's coords for the corner isnt stretched out as far so it causes that strange distortion

[@vencislavnikolovski9053]

keep it up dude! As a new TF2 mapper all this explanations are much needed! Subscribed

[@LEDs]

Thank you!!!

[@DrPeeper]

The problem with the grass overlay is that it's a combination of textures looping around edges and textures filtering. The game thinks that the bottom of the texture is adjacent to the upper part and filters the bottom to here, it's solved when you move it up because the game doesn't think that the upper pixels are adjacent to the bottom colored pixels and doesn't filter them as such Edit: to fix this issue press one of the "Clamp" checks in the vtf parameters(i forgot which one)

[@gonzalolog]

6:44 you have to use in your texture flags clamp v in order for it to not repeat vertically, it's one of those 3d engine shenanigans

[@Redbr34]

6:17 you can just disable the texture lock, and scale the overlay down so it hides the line without actually stretching the texture

[@LEDs]

I tried, it didn't work

[@creeperwolffe3898]

this is very useful for a new mapper trying to wrap their head around textures and displacements!! thank you very much for making this :D

[@thelemonsheep7257]

Why is the video only 17 minutes long

[@KritzKookiesTF2]

the AI removing the issue on the texture made it look more noticeable ngl,

[@untodesu]

11:37 the sun is leaking

[@Jerwas170]

You beat me to it

[@gameworkerty]

the line along the grass texture thing is just because of how UVs are calculated, when things are close together on a UV map or loop like that then a floating point error or rounding error can shift them slightly and create artifacts like that.

[@Krzaczor34]

how are you not a valve map designer

[@PomsonGamingII]

doubt they need much soul for deadlock

[@stealthiestboy]

This is the kind of content we need more of. Subscribed.

[@LEDs]

❤️

[@Vaniity_Velvet]

You know, I wonder... What if the minecarts moved? Like, one of Dustbowls biggest problems is it's a giant sightline with little cover. What if Blue (Or Red, I suppose. But, there aint much of a point behind it) could push the minecarts towards the points with the carts acting as mobile cover for them? Similar to how players sometimes treat the payload carts.

[@c0nk2879]

That could actually be a really fun gameplay dynamic, though I feel like the only way we'd get something that new is either with new maps or with Team Fortress 3 - Source 2: Electric Boogaloo

[@aur.31]

​@@c0nk2879 True, I'd love to see it

[@aur.31]

@@c0nk2879 True, I'd love to see it

[@TeenWithACarrotIDK]

It would be nice to get a map design video on this map. Not a video about fun or gimmicks of the map, just pure map design investigating.

[@XradicalD]

I just love seeing map videos for TF2, it's always good to re-check the basics.

[@benedwards5317]

I think I speak for most when I say these issues make dustbowl completely unplayable.

[@MrGermandeutsch]

I'm almost jealous I haven't made such a video myself. I'm genuinely impressed, well done and very informative!

[@LEDs]

Thanks!

[@CamC159]

The issue with the line texture is the wrap mode. I don't know how you would change the source engine equivalent of it. But in my experience with unity, you would usually set it to clamp since by default its set to repeat

[@foxtrotknowsbest1804]

The lighting changes make such a huge difference, it’s crazy how just a tiny change like that makes it so much more immersive

[@LEDs]

Lighting is huge!

[@chips_lol9537]

Honestly you should do this with more maps, like wutville

[@Oscar97o]

5:10 I haven't done much 3D modeling but that topology is horrifying.

[@LEDs]

The problem with these displacements is that their sizes don't match, so the "vertices" don't align with the neighboring ones from the other displacements. It's generally a better idea to make the displacements at the very beginning, or the very end, that way you can make sure everything lines up to accommodate whatever you build on top of them.

[@uksz1]

Valve should offer you a job

[@Juke-Fox]

TF2 map hobbyist here, major kudos for the surprise crash-course on cleaning up map jank -w-; I'll definitely be more careful with my displacements and player_clips

[@SlavaArduino123]

Dude needs to be hired by Valve

[@SrKrt]

Valve won’t fix the stairs because doing the stairs like that on each map that is added is treadmill work

[@GTB_PR00]

the grass texture is most likely a "texture wrapping" issue. kinda like how if you expand a texture with repeat texture enabled... either the mesh/texture_box is off set, or the image was offset during the render

[@commanderboom2626]

1:00 ah the lawful evil style of stair clipping

[@philhiggins-ty5vg]

Dustbowl is literally perfect. What do you mean?

[@LEDs]

sorry I was having a rough patch

[@demogaming8895]

I didn't even notice any of these, but now I definitely will. Dustbowl ruined...

[@NinjaKatzKool]

Hey, how's soldier?

[@nike5772]

This video is only 17:15 long?

[@OsholitloTF2]

Valve, hire this man.

[@Fatsaver]

Now make your 78 hour long video stating everything RIGHT about Dustbowl! 👌👌👌

[@digitaltoaster4956]

New Team Fortress 2 Update: Summer Tidying. -Fixed a bunch of small errors in maps.

[@KM316-m1b]

Valve gets told what to do exactly to improve the quality of life in the game and still refuses to do shit about TF2.

[@the_crum]

the problem with dustbowl is that there’s a giant fucking demoman with a magnifying glass above the map like wtf was valve thinking

[@ImTorryTF2]

You should apply for a job at value and fix tf2

[@euckb]

imagine how tf2 could be if valve just started hiring these youtubers.

[@gabetechinc]

This is a good example of an appropriate instance of AI art

[@Universalgreenie]

What do you mean?????

[@dgkway]

I know this isn't exactly relevant, but id really like to appreciate how nice having the walls of tf2 clipbrushed to eliminate a lot of the sharp edges and round them out, it really makes it so you dont really loose a lot of momemntum if you bump into things, which may seem like a no brainer, but it really isn't appreciated until you play a game that does a poor job at this, ie destiny 2 or COD. The amount of times you can get stuck on geometry in those games unintentionally and killed is insane compared to tf2, and I realised is what makes the movement feel so free to me, and not frustrating to traverse like the latter.

[@vaughnrudy8084]

why do you know this

[@professionalclown7166]

Because he's big brained and very smart

[@remilia20xx78]

Fun video going into detail about the jank of one of the first maps I've ever played. Regarding those no-build sections at the end, I feel like they may have been onto something because there's a section in the last round of pl_goldrush where an engi can build a sentry in a window (or there was, I don't know if it was fixed) between the first and second points of that round. It's very hard to destroy from there too, so overkill is needed for these no-builds it seems.

[@memesmemes3143]

DUSTBOWL IS THE BEST MAP 🙏

[@LEDs]

DUSTBOWL NATION

[@K14204]

No way did he just ask vale to fix a minor glitch for an update No way vale would do that bro.

[@BenisMannn]

Ew "ai"

[@yellowice0]

Displacement meshes are extremely finicky, they often break when sewn together causing tears, but it doesn't cause any functionality problems unless gaps eat projectiles (like rockets for splash radius, or unless they're so big that you fit through them, other than them being visually unappealing) I find the worst problem with it is when using the ground as a reference point for spawning objects, with GMOD in dark-rp and other similar gamemodes, objects frequently clip past displacement meshes and stay at the bottom of the map, and since those objects are classified as "world" objects, they stay there till server restart, or an admin flies around with noclip and clears the items.

[@scarletcafe]

The problem at 6:37 may be due to texture filtering and/or mipmaps. When you're far away from a texture, in order to prevent moire and other nasty graphical artifacts, the GPU will sample pixels in an area of the texture to decide what is shown for a given pixel on the screen. In texture filtering modes such as bilinear/trilinear/anisotropic, this can cause the sampling area to go beyond the boundaries of the texture, and because textures tile infinitely by default in most graphics APIs, this means the top of the texture can end up having a "texture bleed" wrapped around from the bottom of the texture. The same thing also happens with the right and left boundaries. I don't know exactly how the Source engine produces mipmaps, but depending on how it's done, the bleed could either be happening at runtime (when the game is rendering) or it might happen at build-time. If it's at runtime, then changing texture filtering settings, mipmap bias, disabling mipmaps entirely, and so on may affect how severe the bleed appears. As far as it goes from an authoring perspective, just moving the texture away from the boundary as you did works, but Source might have a way to set the texture wrapping mode also. OpenGL has GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE and DirectX 9 has D3DTADDRESS_CLAMP, so it just depends on whether it's exposed to the material system or not.

[@TinyDeskEngineer]

The grass overlay's texture probably doesn't have vertical clamping enabled.

[@ilhatropical1]

Valve really be sitting doing nothing while the playerbase can even fix the maps THEY made however many years ago, amazing video.

[@hapytreefriends78]

6:50, the issue you are experience has more to do with UV maps, if geometyr's UVs go beyond the initial border, and you have a texture with transparency, like here, then it will loop, and since your texture has transparency, then it loops into the beginning of the texture, which is opaque. It's usually fixed by moving the uvs of mesh by Y axis upwards until it no longer clips through the UV box.

[@Eeevonn]

6:16 the UV map for the grass texture has the grass going past the defined mapping of the UV which causes it to loop to the top.

[@axmoylotl]

13:05, I don't think there SHOULD be light here, I imagine it's darker so it doesn't mess with player visibility, and also to make it clear it's just part of the background, not a real room. I think that it should be left dark, and just remove the light fixture and maybe windows

[@bukachell]

I believe the overlay error is caused by texture filtering. I've had this issue personally in 3D modelling, and if part of the UVs are too close to the edges of the texture, the texture filtering causes the bottom of the image to bleed into the top a little, creating those thin lines on the opposite side of the object, and the only fix is to keep around 2-4px at the edges of a texture clear for a decal

[@JoeDejacque]

Great video! Would love to see this on the other classic maps like 2fort, Well and Gravel Pit

[@vo3243]

If only someone could make a 12 hour video talking about badwater

[@HaxxorElite]

Dustbowl is a map with zero flaws

[@christopherlibby5438]

Everything wrong with dustbowl: Everything. Dustbowl is what is wrong with dustbowl

[@artyom2801]

I love these kind of videos ever since Connor Sheri Shaw's Payday videos regarding old Payday maps issues.

[@steves5476]

6:50 you have to set the sampling mode of the texture to clamp (at least along vertical). I'm not sure how this is done in Hammer, though, but it is a feature in most 3D engines.

[@toadboydude5015]

LED just dropped the hardest Dustbowl edit and thought we wouldn't notice