Let me start off by saying that this map has been quite a journey ( a somewhat masochistic one year journey ). Although it's been a mostly 'in my spare time' thing, it's been occasionally hard to get a lot done on this map. Juggling a full time web development career, several other hobbies and of course the delicious time-void that is videogames, there were often times when I would get an hour, if that, to spare to actually get something done.
Considering how much effort it took to finish this map, it really should never have been finished! Thankfully, due to my sometimes unhealthy determination to finish what I start, it has been.
This is my first map in Source, and my second map ever ( the first was a relatively bad level for the original Unreal Tournament 7 years ago ). I have made quite nearly every noob mistake in the book during the course of building this map. When I started thinking up ideas for it, the last thing on my mind was 'how hard is this to build in Hammer?' or 'will this run smoothly' or 'this idea would take way too effing long'.
Several of these noob mistakes are apparent in the final map, but thankfully it at least runs pretty smoothly (entirely due to a brutal areaportal overhaul toward the end of the mapping process) and, at least to these biased eyes, looks pretty okay in some spots.
This map was more or less, aside from the general major areas within the map, completely improvised from start to finish. I was so eager to start cracking on the map that the entirety of my designs was a very basic layout sketch in Illustrator. As a result, the map, at least to me, feels in places scatterbrained and too eager to use as many different props and textures as possible.
Thankfully I noticed these problems before it was too late and managed to try my best to give some consistency to the visuals.
I learned a lot throughout the process, about using Hammer, understanding mapping on a much deeper level than I had previously, and now that I know about optimization and how utterly critical it can be, I'll never rush blindly into building a map without considering performance again.
Here's a few of the most poignant lessons I learned:
- if you dislike horrible, sloppy drudgery, NEVER make a major building space with many entrypoints a strange shape ( hexagon ) and then ROTATE it so it's completely fudged from the grid, making any and all detail work a soul draining act of punishment
- designing an entire medium to large sized multiplayer map with practically the entire ground as displacements, in addition to several lengthy underground tunnels and caves, is very bad and very time consuming
- designing wide open maps where you can see from one base to the other in a 30 person multiplayer game is a horrible idea
- do not overestimate what size a map should be ( this map was originally meant to be a small-medium map, the final map is very much a medium to large )
- if your internet goes out for almost a month and a half straight (thanks Comcast!), please remember that after 30 days Steam will stop being nice and refuse to log you in in offline mode, thusly locking you out from ( conventional means of accessing ) Hammer or any other Source SDK tools.
- it is a good idea to know during the design phase if it will be a symmetrical map or not. I did not want a perfectly symmetrical map, but I didn't want to risk making a map that was completely unbalanced. My map is odd in that although both sides look entirely different, they both share a similar enough layout structure that I could have just copy pasted and saved myself a tremendous amount of time, building both sides separately is like building two whole maps.
Anyways, enough about the process, about the map itself:
The map is a combination of CTF and CP gametypes. Red and Blu bases each have intel placed on a protected pedestal that can only be exposed when the opposite team captures and holds the CP in the center building. When the intel is finally taken, it must be returned to the center CP to score.
There are no less than 3-4 different ways to enter both team bases and the center building, some of which are dirt tunnels, sewers, vents, caves, etc.
Here's a few screens of the map:
The center capture point.
The middle building that point is in.
Red base.
Area near the red base...
Inside the red base.
Blu base.
Area around the blu base...
Around to the other side.
And finally, the big overview. It'd look nicer if it didn't cut the water out from that height, but it'll do.
Somehow I forgot my blu base indoors shot, that one is forthcoming.
I'll update this soon with a link to the BSP, presently internet troubles have made this somewhat challenging. In the meanwhile, let me know what you guys think.
UPDATE: Here is the map download
Considering how much effort it took to finish this map, it really should never have been finished! Thankfully, due to my sometimes unhealthy determination to finish what I start, it has been.
This is my first map in Source, and my second map ever ( the first was a relatively bad level for the original Unreal Tournament 7 years ago ). I have made quite nearly every noob mistake in the book during the course of building this map. When I started thinking up ideas for it, the last thing on my mind was 'how hard is this to build in Hammer?' or 'will this run smoothly' or 'this idea would take way too effing long'.
Several of these noob mistakes are apparent in the final map, but thankfully it at least runs pretty smoothly (entirely due to a brutal areaportal overhaul toward the end of the mapping process) and, at least to these biased eyes, looks pretty okay in some spots.
This map was more or less, aside from the general major areas within the map, completely improvised from start to finish. I was so eager to start cracking on the map that the entirety of my designs was a very basic layout sketch in Illustrator. As a result, the map, at least to me, feels in places scatterbrained and too eager to use as many different props and textures as possible.
Thankfully I noticed these problems before it was too late and managed to try my best to give some consistency to the visuals.
I learned a lot throughout the process, about using Hammer, understanding mapping on a much deeper level than I had previously, and now that I know about optimization and how utterly critical it can be, I'll never rush blindly into building a map without considering performance again.
Here's a few of the most poignant lessons I learned:
- if you dislike horrible, sloppy drudgery, NEVER make a major building space with many entrypoints a strange shape ( hexagon ) and then ROTATE it so it's completely fudged from the grid, making any and all detail work a soul draining act of punishment
- designing an entire medium to large sized multiplayer map with practically the entire ground as displacements, in addition to several lengthy underground tunnels and caves, is very bad and very time consuming
- designing wide open maps where you can see from one base to the other in a 30 person multiplayer game is a horrible idea
- do not overestimate what size a map should be ( this map was originally meant to be a small-medium map, the final map is very much a medium to large )
- if your internet goes out for almost a month and a half straight (thanks Comcast!), please remember that after 30 days Steam will stop being nice and refuse to log you in in offline mode, thusly locking you out from ( conventional means of accessing ) Hammer or any other Source SDK tools.
- it is a good idea to know during the design phase if it will be a symmetrical map or not. I did not want a perfectly symmetrical map, but I didn't want to risk making a map that was completely unbalanced. My map is odd in that although both sides look entirely different, they both share a similar enough layout structure that I could have just copy pasted and saved myself a tremendous amount of time, building both sides separately is like building two whole maps.
Anyways, enough about the process, about the map itself:
The map is a combination of CTF and CP gametypes. Red and Blu bases each have intel placed on a protected pedestal that can only be exposed when the opposite team captures and holds the CP in the center building. When the intel is finally taken, it must be returned to the center CP to score.
There are no less than 3-4 different ways to enter both team bases and the center building, some of which are dirt tunnels, sewers, vents, caves, etc.
Here's a few screens of the map:
The center capture point.
The middle building that point is in.
Red base.
Area near the red base...
Inside the red base.
Blu base.
Area around the blu base...
Around to the other side.
And finally, the big overview. It'd look nicer if it didn't cut the water out from that height, but it'll do.
Somehow I forgot my blu base indoors shot, that one is forthcoming.
I'll update this soon with a link to the BSP, presently internet troubles have made this somewhat challenging. In the meanwhile, let me know what you guys think.
UPDATE: Here is the map download
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