What got you into mapping?

[SC PL]

My brother's friend, TheMasterBlack (I forget his actual username) has shown me a map cp_town, that he made by himself and that inspired me to make a map. He told me some basics, how to make a maps. First map, it made was Come_.vmf which had only few brushes and it couldn't even work. Later I made map GrayWhite which has been failed due maybe player was spawning, but map was waaaaay to big, like in my later map called 5cp. After a loooooot of tries and tests in January 2015 I made my first playable map called koth_ . I played on this map with my brother and his friend. He said that I make good work. Later I started make better maps like cp_cpkotharenactf, koth_flood and 4f_port. When I heard about TF2maps I decided to join it and I participated in 2015 72hr Summer Contest. I screwed up with a koth_waterock_72. But 6 months later I published koth_coalhill which was a way better. Now I obtained everything about hammer and I could do a very good maps, but I'm not so much motivated like a year ago.

TL;DR: My brother's friend has shown me hammer and that motivated me to do maps

 

[seth]

(Another aside: I also made a map for Narbacular Drop, although I doubt I ever published it. I remember using magenta/black lambdas as nodraw, which makes me think this was my one and only stint with Worldcraft.)

That's the trigger texture in Goldsrc isn't it?

 

[Idolon]

That's the trigger texture in Goldsrc isn't it?

I remember fairly distinctly that it was used like nodraw, though I could be wrong. It's also possible that Narbacular Drop runs on a different engine entirely and just used Worldcraft as the editor. If they didn't have any sort of face-culling compile process, they probably just ignored all faces of a certain texture.

 

[seth]

I remember fairly distinctly that it was used like nodraw, though I could be wrong. It's also possible that Narbacular Drop runs on a different engine entirely and just used Worldcraft as the editor. If they didn't have any sort of face-culling compile process, they probably just ignored all faces of a certain texture.

I think nodraw was actually a third-party texture that was included with Zoner's HL tools in the Goldsrc days. It was called "null" at the time and was black with a blue N. But yeah, maybe Narbacular Drop was different.

 

[Startacker!]

Watching UEAK Crashes' videos

 

[Jukebox]

I wanted to make weapons for tf2 but at the time I couldn't figure out how to transfer my model from Maya to source. So I eventually stumbled into the mapping scene and loved it. It's because I like the feeling of other people playing something I put effort into and potentially enjoying it to the point where they look forward to updates.

PM me if you ever wanna get back into it. I'll help you out.

Same for anyone else.

 

[norfolk]

I'll tell you as a hundredth post special.

I got bored one day and thought mapping would be neat to try. It was pretty neat. My maps, however, were the opposite.

 

[Trotim]

Time for another Idolon Long Post™

I've always been drawn to editors of any variety. Some of my first favorite games were Roller Coaster Tycoon and The Incredible Machine, which both provided a lot of avenues for building my own things. I have a few distinct memories of designing my own Sonic the Hedgehog levels with pencil and paper - I blame this on the fact that my 5-years-superior brother indoctrinated me into the Church of Sega.

The same brother introduced me into a neat tool called GameMaker, which as the name suggests, let me make games. This lead me into discovering indie games. I gravitated towards games with communities based around their level editors, including (but not limited to) Jumper Two (where I actually ended up meeting @Trotim), Knytt Stories, ChallengeYou (where, to my knowledge, I did not meet @Captain Clam), and Escape.

Your early story is very similar to mine, heh. My "Trotim" name is just the abbreviation for "The Return of The Incredible Machine". I was an original little kid!

I don't actually remember much of the Jumper Two days for private reasons. Still really enjoy exploration platformers like Knytt Stories or An Untitled Story though.

My editor career looked like: Sonic the Hedgehog debug mode, Warcraft 2, Age of Empires, Incredible Machine, Heroes III, Duke Nukem 3D, Jumper which lead to a couple years of Gamemaker... lots of Warcraft 3... eventually Portal and TF2 which are the first proper 3d tools I used.

Now I want to get back into Gamemaker: Studio. Export games to Android and HTML5. Cute little solo projects give me a lot more satisfaction than the team projects I dabbled in. Less stressful to work on, too.

I feel like going back to all these older editors some day however. There are still nagging ideas in my head for Warcraft 3 maps or HL2 levels that I don't think will leave until I've sat down and created them

 

[Empyre]

In the 80s, I discovered that Lode Runner on my Commodore had a built-in level editor, so I gave it a try, making well over 100 levels, some of which were not too bad, and they all fit on a single floppy.

Years later, I found out that I could make my own levels (now called maps) for Doom on my 486. I made 7 not-completely-awful Doom 2 maps in the 90s.

Later, I made a couple not-bad-for-a-beginner maps for TFC. I remember ABS from those days. His maps were much better than mine, and he already used that cookie as his avatar back then. I am also still using the same avatar.

Then I want back to Doom, but instead of making new maps, I made lots and lots of improvements to my existing maps.

Then I tried mapping for TF2, but it wasn't a good fit for me, but I had gotten into the community, so here I still am.

Now, I have returned to Doom mapping again, and I have gotten much better, adding 5 more maps with "modern" features like slopes, 3D floors, and swimmable water, and still improving the old maps.

 

[Davekillerish]

Drug Money.

Spoiler

Gotta get those ducks

 

[Gabe Noodle from Volvo]

All mappers do it for the money, no exceptions.

 

[CriminalBunny]

All mappers do it for the money, no exceptions.

*youtubers

 

[Asd417]

I like making any maps instead of playing it or finishing it
I 'tried to' make starcraft map, minecraft map, portal 2 map (I actually finished quite alot)
So I moved on to tf2 and started making a map