How to design a jail:

Jails are all important parts of any jb map, for obvious reasons. They're the focus point of every level, and pretty much everyone is guaranteed to go in it at some stage, so design is key. Thus...

When you first design a jail, stop and think. What will it's escapes be? How will the release work, how will the execution work?

The execution is usually the most important thing to consider: if it's something flashy like, say, a headcrab cannister barrage or a helicopter, it will need an open roof. If the floor opens up on a fire pit, it'll need a flat, wide open space.

From there, you can come up with escapes. Take, for example, this execution:
Death by being sucked into a core (those shimmery tube-things that dissolve stuff in the citadel level of HL2).
Obviously, the core is going to be the focus point of this jail (which would probably be the jail the rebels get chucked into, for obvious reasons).
Now, in the citadel levels, there were often a lot of platforms suspended over massive drops, so why not keep that design for the jail? A big glass platform that if you fall off, will kill you with a big wobbly core thing in the middle.
Now for the escape: you already have a danger (falling off) whilst in the jail, so why not expand upon it for the escape? In the citadel, there were frequently walkways and bits of machinery jutting out all over the place, so why not make escapes have to jump down onto these like stepping stones until they reach the bottom safely (which would be part of the main level or something)? If they miss, they go splat...
For the release, some sort of lift would work, or a teleport, given that the jail would need to be very high up for the escape to work.

Thus, when thinking of your jails, it helps to think it through this way:
1) Execution
2) Escape
3) Release
Obviously you should bear in mind your map's theme with the jail, and trying to make it genuinely look like one also helps (ie graffiti, beds, some dropped soap...). I will cheerfully admit that I messed up with imprisoned: I put no thought into the execution at all, and am currently stuck with trying to come up with something that A) looks cool and B) will still work despite the jails' complicated geometries.

I hope this helps people
-GMN

nice man. this helps!

Heh This is helpful even for me! Good to have a reference point to come back to like this when trying to think up new concepts.

I love the idea of having long bottomless pits to navigate around, kinda like Bespin Cloud City etc.

Good stuff GMN!

*hint hint* maybe sticky it *hint hint*

nice writing GMN

I was already working with a bottemless pit idea lol ^^
and yea this helps, this is the first thing I do when making up a map,
after that... I get stuck and leave the project ^^

(More words of praise and agreement)

This is a really good way to think about it!