Recently (last month, in fact) I won the TF2Maps.net Annual Contest #3 which was rather nice because I received a new fangled controller that is the Novint Falcon – essentially a Portal-esque device with 3 motorised arms that can push and pull your hand with alarming amounts of force. Thanks to Valve, it’s fully supported in TF2 so you can feel a Jarate jar leaving your virtual hand, the rumble of a spinning minigun, and the low warm hum of the medigun as it heals patients. It’s quite a visceral experience that makes the whole game feel all new and shiny and I shall definitely write more about it once I’ve become more at comfort with it.

When one contest ends, another was sure to begin but I didn’t think it would be so soon as now there is a new contest at TF2Maps.net – the 4th annual contest in fact – that covers ‘Competitive’ CTF. Initially I wasn’t going to enter (I despise CTF with a passion) but then this happened…

Take the intel from the middle and plant it in the enemies base. No more 2fort shenanigans here. (Hopefully).

Posted in Uncategorized
January 21st 2010

Over the past month quite a few things have happened. First of all, Nightfall was submitted to the TF2Maps Annual Contest #3 along with everybody else’s entry. Voting begins November 5th so best of luck to everybody that entered – there are some fantastic maps!

Keeping within the same area, Nineaxis has also created a mini-site for the contest which features Nightfall as the banner and a matching in-Hammer screenshot. :)

In other news, I’ve also begun making a new Stage 3 for the map. This will be my third attempt so it should (in theory) turn out great especially when it no longer revolves around the rollforward mechanic and has been built from the ground up in order to compliment a more standard Payload Race. With any luck, this should be ready for playtesting next week.

I’ve also written a tutorial all about areaportals within Source. Hopefully I’ve cleared up a few things as a lot of the members of TF2Maps don’t seem to understand how they work exactly. You can read that here.

I also got a present…

present

Thanks Valve!

Posted in TF2, plr_nightfall
November 7th 2009

Nightfall update!
This will greatly benefit from more cliffs in the background but anyway here’s a pic…

…and here’s a short timelapse. Might do some more.

General (Both versions)

Added a new fence along the left-side of the hill to improve flow
Used more conservative values for prop fade distances
Added a whole bunch of occluders to reduce the amount of models rendered from certain points in the map
Added uniquely named rock models so that the gray texture will no longer carry over into [...]

Recently myself and bunch of other TF2 mappers release a pack containing 5 KoTH maps to coincide with last week’s official inclusion of the game mode aptly named ‘The Big King’ which you can find here.
Surprisingly it’s already been referenced on Valve’s official Team Fortress blog which is quite nice of them! (Aside from [...]

Here’s the new Stage 3 for Nightfall!
Grab Alpha 10 here.

I’ve wrote a tutorial for TF2Maps.net that explains how to decompile and recompile models for the Source engine. You can view it here!

The Swamp theme for TF2 has been given a mention by the TF2 team over at Valve. \o/ Here’s the post.