This is a place to be!
Here's some tips for adjusting into the community:
- Be nice and stuff
- Respect our overlords
- Don't deface the old gods
- Crash is the entity lord, but A Boojum Snark is the entity god, ruler of all that is holy and unholy.
- I am the best
- The Steam Group chat is usually active, a good place to get help
- Posting screenshots in the WIP thread is a good idea to generate hype
- Don't forget to look at the maps showcase to demotivate yourself
- Pray to Crash, but leave a sacrifice for Boojum
- Make maps
- Make more maps
- If you stop making maps Frozen and YM will beat you up, while Crash makes some logic for a TF2 gamemode about beating you up
- Listen to feedback, it'll only help you. Attempting to fight legitimate criticisms will only make you look like a fool, and eventually fighting the flood will tear you apart.
- KOTH is a good gamemode for a first map, but it's structure has a low ceiling for skilled mappers to take advantage of, and about 90% of maps in the mode follow a boring formula.
- TC, MVM, and Payload maps are best put on the back burner until you have the grips of Hammer.
- Crash has good tutorials, but don't rely on frequent uploads, and since his series is relatively new, it doesn't have a lot of episodes that dive into advanced topics. Still worth watching if you're just getting started, and his latest chapter could possibly save you 100s of hours of mapping by teaching you the formulas instantly.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2KT0JL74Qff_c1WbqNi4K5yAmpWAUQlq
- 3kliksphillips has fantastic tutorials, which are straight to the point and edited to be short. Though his are based on CSS, most can be applied to TF2.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfwtcDG7LpxF7-uH_P9La76dgCMC_lfk3
- Tophattwaffle doesn't edit his tutorials, but has made so many you could learn just about anything from them. He also does CSS mainly, so don't expect TF2 from him.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-454Fe3dQH1L38FnKkz_O1CqYx6sKaXk (New series)
- Eat no meals a day, that's valuable time you're wasting that could be used for mapping.
- Drop out of school or quit your job to map more
- Find a good playlist of music, you won't be able to map nearly as long if you don't have some good tunes to listen to
- If you only map to get in the game, you're making the community more toxic. It's why CSGO's mapping community sucks so much. Don't bring that into TF2
- I'm still the best
- If you have a problem in your map, copy the compile log and post it into this beautiful piece of work
http://www.interlopers.net/errors/index.php
- Find reference images for detailing help
- You can poop in a sock to avert going to the restroom, therefor saving valuable minutes of mapping time.
- Once you get good at mapping, join the major contest. Not only are they fun, but you could very well end up with a fantastic map that takes the gold.
- Read the first letter of all the tips above.
- Drink coffee, you can sleep when you're dead.
Alright, there are some tips. Sorry fro the big post, just needed to help you get in the swing of things. Have fun on the site!
