I hope this doesn't garner any ire from people like Snipergen (whose views I completely respect).
For me, I am essentially a non-mapper, or was at least until a week ago. I have never made a map before. I have opened Hammer and been intimidated into a little corner, and the closest thing I've ever done to the kind of art you guys create is much less professional maps for Age of Empires and other RTS games. However, when Arena mode was first released, I had an idea and decided to do the work necessary to make it happen.
Arena is essentially a TF2 version of Counterstrike, and while I wasn't a huge CS nut back in the day, I played it enough to remember some good times in one particular map: de_dust. From the moment I began playing Arena, I speculated how cool it would be to play that map in TF2. So I set to work, and little did I realize what I was getting into.
Before it was done, I learned about map structure, 3D skyboxes, brushes, props, textures, clipping, nodraw, leaks, hint boxes, lighting, and tons more. I poured roughly 8-12 hours a day in the final week of my summer vacation into figuring it all out and making it work. The con? I started out with a decompiled version of de_dust from the Counterstrike: Source shared files.
By the end, I had redone nearly everything except the original ground displacements. I decompiled and stripped down the original .bsp file because I wanted to ensure all the angles and dimensions and that it would feel like the original de_dust. I had to account for all the new vertical possibilities TF2 allows for, and how to give it a unique look and feel that fit with the TF2 universe.
My point isn't that stealing is okay, or that what I made was anything other than a TF2 port of the most famous CS map out there. It did, however, push me over the edge and into the world of mapping, and by the end I feel entirely confident I could (and probably will) create an entirely original map after this. I think I would have remained intimidated and never gone far with it, but through that initial decompiling, I had to make sense of everything in front of me, and one step at a time, I got it done.
So before you call me a thief and move on, take a quick look and tell me what you think, the first community evaluation of a map I (more or less) created. Like I said, I don't put the project or especially its layout in anything of the same league as the fine work of real, skilled mappers. But it's my first, and damn it I'm a little proud:
Arena_Dust
For me, I am essentially a non-mapper, or was at least until a week ago. I have never made a map before. I have opened Hammer and been intimidated into a little corner, and the closest thing I've ever done to the kind of art you guys create is much less professional maps for Age of Empires and other RTS games. However, when Arena mode was first released, I had an idea and decided to do the work necessary to make it happen.
Arena is essentially a TF2 version of Counterstrike, and while I wasn't a huge CS nut back in the day, I played it enough to remember some good times in one particular map: de_dust. From the moment I began playing Arena, I speculated how cool it would be to play that map in TF2. So I set to work, and little did I realize what I was getting into.
Before it was done, I learned about map structure, 3D skyboxes, brushes, props, textures, clipping, nodraw, leaks, hint boxes, lighting, and tons more. I poured roughly 8-12 hours a day in the final week of my summer vacation into figuring it all out and making it work. The con? I started out with a decompiled version of de_dust from the Counterstrike: Source shared files.
By the end, I had redone nearly everything except the original ground displacements. I decompiled and stripped down the original .bsp file because I wanted to ensure all the angles and dimensions and that it would feel like the original de_dust. I had to account for all the new vertical possibilities TF2 allows for, and how to give it a unique look and feel that fit with the TF2 universe.
My point isn't that stealing is okay, or that what I made was anything other than a TF2 port of the most famous CS map out there. It did, however, push me over the edge and into the world of mapping, and by the end I feel entirely confident I could (and probably will) create an entirely original map after this. I think I would have remained intimidated and never gone far with it, but through that initial decompiling, I had to make sense of everything in front of me, and one step at a time, I got it done.
So before you call me a thief and move on, take a quick look and tell me what you think, the first community evaluation of a map I (more or less) created. Like I said, I don't put the project or especially its layout in anything of the same league as the fine work of real, skilled mappers. But it's my first, and damn it I'm a little proud:
Arena_Dust
