Contest Entry #2

With little to no fanfare at all, my entry is complete for the TF2Maps.net Intel Room Contest. I put the finishing touches on it late last night. A lot more work was put into the project than I thought would be. While at the same time, not putting in nearly as much as I ended up wanting. I'm pleased with the overall product though, and the project served it's purpose well: to reconnect me to mapping for Team Fortress 2. I'm not expecting to win, but I feel like I should be in the thick of things. Win or lose, I had a blast doing it and am looking forward to mapping on a larger scale. This effort suitably blows away my first contest entry. Here are some screenshots and a download link:

With the focus last week on this project, the design process on our CTF map has obviously slowed. I was able to find the time to contrive a layout for our central area and alternate flag route. With this final piece of the design puzzle being finalized in the next day or so we'll be ready to put the level together and really tweak the flow before diving into actually building the map in Hammer. I'm aiming to start construction this time next week.

With the contest entry behind me I understand what game developers say when a game is never really finished. There are so many more ideas and little touches I would have liked to have implemented. With the deadline today I simply didn't have the time to do anything more. I'm used to having my back against the wall when it comes to time limits. It usually comes from getting a late start or just tardiness in general on my part. I've spent a week on this project so I'm not exactly late to the party. Being up against a deadline because I've done my appointed task and now just want to do more...is a whole new pair of pants for me. They fit well enough so far, but I've got some room to grow into them. One of the major lessons I took from this contest project was the importance of proper design before building in 3D. You read that right. I took everything I learned from our CTF project about proper design theory and threw it out the damn window. In my youthful ignorance I thought proper level design was the province of larger projects. I was completely wrong. A proper design would have lessened the time spent bumbling about in the level editor and allowed more time to add the things I wanted, but couldn't.

To speak on actually playing games now. I have a confession to make: I killed a Big Daddy (translation: mini-boss) this week...and I felt terrible about it after. I came across a new plasmid (translation: magic) to trick BD's into thinking they should protect me as if I were a Little Sister (translation: walking treasure chest). A BD named Rosie was used to literally clear out an entire level for me. Foe after foe fell to her grenade launcher. She would take out the enemies, and I would reap the rewards in dropped items. As we progressed, an unexpected bond began to develop though. As Rosie defended my life with every fiber of her being, I could not help but think of her as the Chewbacca to my Han Solo. Soon, I wasn't letting her take the brunt of the damage while I mopped up the rest. Instead, we charged into danger together. We had each other's backs and it was glorious. Then the moment came: I was running low on EVE (translation: mana) and enemies that needed killing. It wasn't even sporting. A few proximity mines placed in her path and Rosie was gone. When it was over I realized the Little Sister I would have harvested for more Adam (translation: buy more magic) was long gone. No reward for me. No reward except the empty hole in my heart.