- Jul 10, 2011
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Use basic lighting options. Your goal as a mapmaker is something called "rapid iteration," meaning that you're putting out version after version after version all with slight tweaks, and you're testing for "fun." Fancy advanced options can slow this process down and really don't add to your "fun" goal, so you don't have to worry about them.
For your first map, feel free to submit a map with developer textures and basic lighting (you don't even really need any props to represent the light source -- just the light itself). This is called "blocking out" your map, because you don't have anything fancy yet, just the barebones stuff that can be easily changed. You can have a few props that give the players direction or impact gameplay in some way (like doors, signs, respawn cabinets, payload railroad tracks, or anything that can be used as cover and impact gameplay). One thing, though: make sure you include a lightpass, please. From what I recall, if a map doesn't have a lightpass it will actually screw up all the maps after yours in the rotation. So include a lightpass and some lights, even if things are very basic.
Just test something you've made really quickly in an impromptu or gameday, listen to people's feedback, and incorporate it into the next iteration of your map. You don't have to accept every suggestion -- there were some suggestions in my maps that I ignored because I thought they would negatively impact gameplay, which is my liberty as a designer. But if you keep getting a particular piece of feedback over and over and over again, you should be a lot more hesitant about ignoring it -- there's probably something to it.
At a certain point, you'll find that you won't need to make many more changes to gameplay. This means that you can enter the "beta" stage, and now you can do an "artpass" -- when you start replacing developer textures with regular textures and start making things look pretty. Your goal is to get things to a state where your map looks like your dream map. During early betas, I would skip advanced lighting options, but in later betas you can start adding it in. Remember to keep iterating and testing throughout the beta process -- even small props can wind up impacting gameplay, and the use of color, light, and shadow throughout your map may add hiding places that weren't there before. Your map will also be less "blocky" as you add details and displacement maps, which can subtly alter the way it plays -- you have to decide whether those changes are good or bad. Players will also catch stuff that you missed and tell you about it so you can fix it.
Once that's done, you should start adding in advanced lighting and pulling out all the stops. You've now entered the "release candidate" stage -- barring any major problems, it should be exactly what your map looks like. This is when you always run advanced lighting and have largely stopped rapid iterations -- the map is pretty much done.
I haven't actually done anything in TF2 for a very long time -- I don't even think I have the Source SDK installed anymore. Instead, I've been making games for the Unity and Unreal Engines. However, this same exact process applies to making a "real" game: block out, artpass, release (with 20 gazillion tests inbetween). Things are a little more complicated in games you make yourself because you're also coding and adding in mechanics (as a TF2 mapmaker, you don't have to code in how to shoot a gun, take damage, heal, or use ammo, for example). What we call a "mapmaker" here is known in the gaming industry as a "level designer" -- you design levels. This is different from a "game designer," which designs mechanics for the games and influences how it plays on a grand scale.
I've digressed from the point a bit, but what I'm trying to say is that you should always follow those same sorts of practices even if you start doing things in other games/engines. Remember that testing is key, and that you should always be showing your work to others and getting their honest input in order to improve your work.
