CP Pool_Club - One of those useless Maps.

Well it is a map. The line of tables full of health and ammo seem kind of silly to have. I guess if anyone would need a dueling ground that looked like a swimming pool, this would be the map to go to.

If you need help putting together things like objectives and spawn rooms, try checking YouTube for tutorials for technical things like that.

I found Phate's guides to be quite helpful when I first started out. http://www.youtube.com/user/mattdawg420

Also when you're just playing, I try to pay as much attention as I can to the map details (prop placement, textures used, ect) as I can. Especially so on new maps I've never played before.

Hammer also comes with a few vanilla TF2 maps that you can look at to see how Valve put together their maps.

I wish you luck in your future prospects.

"cp_devbridge?" Please tell me that's not another orange map

Please for the love of Tezcatlipoca, please tell me it's not an orange map.

You can put the download link in the top rather than in the message.

From the screenshot you posted it looks like you created your skybox by placing your map in a hollow box with the texture. This is bad for computers, because you're rendering more than you need too. I would construct the skybox brushes so that they enclose your map like walls normally would. Or, you did this, and you wanted your players to be able to get on the roof or something. I can't really tell.

I feel like your logo for red team is off. Your map is almost entirely comprised of rectangles, so having a circle as an aesthetic kind of throws off the overall theme.

I'm going to be real with you--when you describe your first efforts as "a useless map" right in the title, it doesn't really set a good tone for it, you know? You're already coloring our opinions of what you made negatively. It's okay to post something rough, especially for your first efforts!

The thing is though, this isn't really...anything, you know? It could be a cute little detail thing in the background of a map (Thunder Mountain has a pool room!), but it's just not got much to it. And that means there's not much WE can say, you know?

What I recommend is poking around in other maps. Look at the official maps that come with Hammer--2fort, Badwater, Lumberyard, the works, and you can pull all of them back as much as you want. Disable the visgroups for hints, area portals, player clips etc. so you can see just the map architecture and what goes into them. Don't just look at official maps either, check out the TF2maps abandoned maps repository so you can see what maps made by people like you look like in various stages of development (because looking at official Valve stuff is intimidating as fuck for a new mapper).

I hope that doesn't just sound stupid. Mapping is kinda terrifying but it can be very rewarding once you get your feet wet! Keep dippin' those toes in the pool!!

EDIT: Wow I said "you know" a lot

I like your download image, tho