Avoiding brainless endeavor

Creating iPhone apps is apparently all the rage now with budding game developers. It's super cheap to develop for and the mechanism to deliver your app to the marketplace is already in place. Apple pockets 30% of every sale, but the rest goes straight to the dev's pockets. When you consider that most iPhone apps can be created by a team of 1 or 2 devs, the possibilities of making money start to dazzle the eyes. Having said that, what am I doing making multiplayer FPS maps that pay a big goose egg for my efforts? Good question. Good question indeed.

Despite pouring 17 hours of my last 7 days into Left 4 Dead, I managed to get a good bit of work done on our TF2 mapping project. I'm about halfway through the main base, just blocking it in. Nothing fancy. No details. Concentrating solely on gameplay. I'm hoping for rain/snow/sleet/take-your-pick later this week so I can just spend all of my Friday finishing up this stage of construction.

In a rare move on my part, I set the mouse and keyboard aside Sunday and cracked open my copy of God of War for the PS2. It felt odd at first to clutch a gamepad, but much like riding a bike it is a skill not readily forgotten. I played off an on most of the day Sunday. By no means a classic, the game is still a very enjoyable button masher. It makes up for this by throwing in a massive variety of maneuvers to perform. And by variety, I mean ripping a medusa's fucking head off. It's oddly cathartic. This and clever puzzles keep the whole affair from descending into brainless endeavor.

Van out.

In loving memory

I'm not ashamed to say that Left 4 Dead has consumed 90% of my free time this week. Bioshock, has become neglected, still setting on the ivory pedestal I placed it upon this time last week. Shenmue, Command & Conquer 3, and Age of Empires 3 are simply cadavers heaped in a pile. Waiting to be burned. Casualties of the zombie apocalypse. Our Hunter's Lounge server activity reads like a regular heartbeat on an EKG monitor.

Amazing that a game with only two maps can become such a powerful force of attraction. Yes, I know campaign mode has 4 maps. Can I play as infected in these maps? No? Then they dont exist.

I believe multiplayer FPS gamers tend to gravitate towards certain maps at the exclusion of others. For my clan, it was de_dust2 and cs_office in Counter Strike: Source. Much of our time in Team Fortress 2 was spent in cp_dustbowl or pl_goldrush. L4D has only 2 maps, these 2 maps just happen to be on par with a dust2 or a goldrush. Valve can take all the time they want in making those other campaigns playable in versus mode. I'm in no hurry.

Oh yeah, work progresses on our TF2 mapping project. It's not dead.

It's not living either.

Dun Dun DUNNNNNNNN.

Milestones are fun

We hit upon our first milestone in our TF2 mapping project. The layout and design phase is completed and construction has begun in earnest. I spent a goodly amount of time on Sunday getting things blocked in for our intel room, trying to work on the scale. It's amazing how quickly the building process goes with a layout and design document to reference. Turns out the intel room is the first part I designed. It is neat to see how I progressed in my design process from this room to my final design which was the middle ground between bases (pictured above). At this rate, we should be in an early alpha testing phase soon. The building phase should go much faster than the previous one. For those keeping track, we took a month to complete our design portion of the map. Truth be told, it probably could have been finished in about a week by a dedicated mapper. Fortunately, we are not dedicated. This is a side hobby, second to our main hobby: killing zombies in Left 4 Dead. I'm happy with our pace so far and to be fair, this is the most progress I've made on any project. There is no danger of the burnout point being hit as has been the case with all my previous mappign endeavors.

Valve finally announced a release date for the new content for L4D: April 21st. Though not mentioned with this press release, they promised long ago that the L4D SDK update would come along with the new content. I'm really looking forward to brainstorming and designing our L4D campaign.

While on the subject of Valve's updates. I've had a chance to digest the changes recently made in Valve's last update. Specifically, the addition of a fatigue meter to survivor's melee attacks. I've long been a proponent of anything that promotes more tactical gameplay. Reducing the number of flailing elbows goes a long way towards achieving that end.

Speaking on milestones, our L4D teams have come together and made the decision to be more competitive. Up to this point we have been very inconsistent with our play and execution. If we suit action to our words, I'm excited to see what sort of impact we can make on the competitive scene.

V out.