So Wareya jokingly jabbed at me, "How's the tenth different mid for logjam going?" So I went on a nostalgia trip...
Here's the full convo...http://pastebin.com/imTmiff2
And a tl;dr:
Logjam had 9 different mids in alpha. 3 of them were introduced under the name cp_uintah, and 1 of them was introduced under the name cp_stagg.
Logjam had 10 different mids in beta. (sonuvabitch his joke was right.)
Some highlights:
-b2 had the "Viaduct Mid"
-b6 had the bigass rock arch over the point... sometimes I wonder if I sniff glue then map
-b8 modified the ramps a bunch, and was the beginning of WARHURYEAH telling me mid sucks balls:
"Mid is really in dire need of something changing, it's so open and wide that all you get is 30 seconds of people just eyeing each other, there are very few ways for a roamer to jump without being clearly seen. Most other maps have blind spots/cover to jump from behind, creating a good amount of space for the team as they can jump in without being immediately called. This mid offers none of that." -WAR
"Make a new mid or it's going to be difficult for people to play it this season. If you don't it might lose a lot of popularity and may not be considered in future seasons. The ETF2L map pool is pretty shitty and unstable."
-WAR
Talk about forshadowing... #riplogjam
-b10 introduced THE BRIDGE MID, aka OBSCURE MID... I'd never seen obscure until I recently looked it up. Can't say that it looks like my mid too much, but I can see where people are coming from.
-b11 introduces the side corridors on mid where cave comes out...
-I laugh my ass off at my optimism: "Detailing progress so far, b12 (maybe RC1?!?!?!?) should be out by January.
-b18 introduces the humped bridge and the ramps up the rocks that got played in ETF2L S20.
-b20pre1 introduces the rock bridge mid, RIP houses
-b20pre3 introduces a better exit from logroom, and modifies the bridge pretty decently
So, that's 10 mids during beta. 5 of which came out after WAR told me mid was a pile of balls.
Logjam's first beta mid was the same as the last alpha mid- so the total number of mids is one less than the sum of alpha and beta mids.
18 different mids. That's just mid. Last has stayed pretty much the same through the whole thing. 2nd had about a billion different alpha versions, and the transitions have always been an issue.
So... next time you say "I'm interested in making a TF2 map for competitive" I'm going to recommend drinking heavily instead. Hah. It's been a fun ride having this map in ETF2L. By no means am I going to stop working on the map, but I'm pretty sure it's getting replaced in ETF2L.
What's my honest opinion on that? Well, I'd say that they're taking it out and I'm going to lose testing and it's going to be hard to get good feedback. That being said, that's none of their fault. Who wants to play on a shitty map that's constantly changing? Probably not many. I think Logjam got hyped a bit too hard and I got too excited when the chance of getting it in season happened originally, and it got thrown into rotation very prematurely. Which is certainly largely my fault for even letting it happen. I did make a shit ton of progress on the map between when the Logjam Cup was held and now. Hopefully the map will be good someday. Thanks for letting me run it for two glorious (lol) seasons, ETF2L.