Firsthand Experiences From Mapping?

[Viemärirotta]

What's your firsthand experience with making levels on Hammer? What game/gamemode was your first level for? What have you learned since then and how have you improved?


My first mapping experience starts off with a pretty bad 5cp map, definitely not perfect, thus riddled with issues. Since then I've slowly improved over the months with a few here and there projects. I've learnt a lot simply by watching/reading tutorials once or a few times and most importantly from past mistakes.

Here's some pictures of my very first map project from February 2016 (a4):

Spoiler: Screenshots

And here's what I've improved since then on my current project (a3):

Spoiler: Screenshots

 

[squ1rrel]

Mine was a koth with a city theme. It didn't look that much like a city or look that nice.
From what I've learnt, I really should play test maps and create them through dev textures first instead of art passing is all first.

 

[MegapiemanPHD]

The first map I made was for a game called Dino D-Day. It was a simple map called Garage that was a box with a few buildings in the middle.
It wasn't that great and broke when I made a prop_static of a truck a detail entity. Don't do that.