How many maps can you make per month?

It all depends on how dedicated and frequent your testing group is.

If I did absolutely tried my hardest could probably make:
10 playable Alpha maps.
5 good playable Alpha maps.
1 eh B1 map.

And that's just with my skills, not many people know that Badwater (yes the official Valve map by Dario) took 6 weeks. Yeah, one of the best pl_ map in the game took 6 weeks.

Lain said:

If I did absolutely tried my hardest could probably make:
10 playable Alpha maps.
5 good playable Alpha maps.
1 eh B1 map.

And that's just with my skills, not many people know that Badwater (yes the official Valve map by Dario) took 6 weeks. Yeah, the best pl_ map in the game took 6 weeks.

Click to expand...

I'm sure most people would shoot you dead and say Upward is better.

shadowslasher11 said:

I'm sure most people would shoot you dead and say Upward is better.

Click to expand...

I mistyped that, I personally think Badwater is in the Same area as Goldrush and Hoodoo, extremely chokey and not much area to flank. My favorite pl_ maps are Thundermountain and Upward, they encourage flanking and every class is useful everywhere.

Below 1

Making a good RC takes longer than a month for testing alone

Takes quite a while to take a map from nothing to complete detail. At least 100 hours of work, but the actual time depends on the scope of your project, how it performs during development, and your experience.

For reference, it took me just under a month to reach the fourth beta of Pier. It only got a couple days of alpha testing before detailing.

Installation, for CS:GO, was another map I made in four weeks. Kinda lacking in detail and uses a generic theme. No playtesting because there weren't really any options for that at the time.

Badwater was made in 6 weeks.

If that helps/hurts anyones argument.

Lain said:

And that's just with my skills, not many people know that Badwater (yes the official Valve map by Dario) took 6 weeks. Yeah, one of the best pl_ map in the game took 6 weeks.

Click to expand...

Fr0Z3n said:

Badwater was made in 6 weeks.

Click to expand...

Thanks, Fro.

Tumbolisu said:

Thanks, Fro.

Click to expand...

I can't read.

It would take my computer that long to open up notepad, much less build a map in hammer.

I've actually been timing all my work using an app called Grindstone.

On pl_snowycoast, my hours invested breakdown like so:

Total time to reach Contest Ready (B1): 88.5 hours. - This is the time it took to go from an empty Hammer file to the (buggy & slightly broken) contest version B1.

Total time to iterate B1 -> B2: 4.3 hours. - This was an easy one. It's just the time it took for me to fix the obvious big problems, do a few correction passes, test it, and pack it up.

Total time to iterate B2 -> B3: 66.5 hours - This was quite big due to being when I created the majority of custom props for the map.

Total time to iterate B3 -> B4: 53.1 hours - The big time sinks in this one were the spaceship (14 hours) and the cinematic props (27 hours).

I also include in that the time it takes to make promotional images, build cubemaps, etc. Right up to the point of the bsp being packed up and ready to go. I did not however include time watching demos.

It takes me about an average of 12 hours from blank file to uploaded for my workshop models (weapon or hat). In that time, texturing always takes significantly longer than the modeling itself. So 14 hours is not too far off the curve for the spaceship, and I did spend a lot of time trying out different engine shapes before settling on the current design.

The cinematic timesink was mostly due to experimenting with the best format to export for Valve source. The simulations themselves were very quick (a couple of minutes maybe?). Rigging and hand animating the metal "stress bends" took longer since I couldn't simulate those with good results, but it was much faster and simpler than rigging a character.

Okay, so what's all this nonsense about then?

Well, to make a map like pl_snowycoast, including all the assets and assuming a 40 hour work week, it would take me 5 and a 1/2 weeks to create -- NOT including testing or watching demos.

Sooo... TLDR, I would not even be able to complete a single map in a month's time.

Maybe I could be able to make one map per year, maybe.

On the subject of Badwater taking 6 weeks, it should be considered that Valve is making maps as a full time job, and also that, from what I understand, they have a lot of playtesting available. Working around the schedule of imps, gamedays, etc, it'd probably be much slower.

Maps? Well, I can get an A1 out in about 2 hours, but for good maps.... Uhh....

In terms of getting later versions of maps out, that is all on the testing. I only do testing here currently, so there isn't much I can do about that.

Personally, I'd work on one map but I wouldn't get lazy with certain parts of it (as I've done in most of my maps).
I would leave that part of the map for the time being and work on other stuff, then I would come back to it after 4-5 days and ideas would start coming.

Skullcove from start to rc1 took about 1 year and 3 months. then 2 years to go final (and on the workshop). Intercept already is above 1.5 year of which about 1y was without mapping.