In terms of game design, I'd say the real defining feature of Dark Souls is consequences. When you've plowed through a huge chunk of the game and have a ton of souls, but you're super low on estus and don't know if you're about to fight a boss or not... choosing to go back and level up or try to wing it is super impactful the way few other games are.

PUBG

Listen, I'm allergic to dairy, can I get a pizza without dairy? Also no tomatoes? And gluten free? Basically, just throw all the meat you got into a bowl, and we'll call it good.

Okay, sheeple count: 1

When can I expect some cucks to be dropped? Is this the point where you start heiling Trump?

TECHNO AND SIZZLING YOU NEED TO STOP NOW!!

They were my changes. Seems pretty likely that we will be allowed to make changes in the future.

Awesome, I'll be doing a pass with clipping on the roofs for sure. The window will definitely be blocked off, i've seen that a few times and my later maps the glass windows are always clipped off. The shadow thing is weird, source always has issues with it. I don't know why one side sees through and the other doesn't, but maybe i'm using different kinds of brushes, who knows. I'll probably keep the pipe and not block it off fully, since its such an incredibly unlikely shot that you would need to make for it to matter (additionally, blocking it off would mean that if you fire a rocket that hits below the pipe and it explodes upward, the bullet block would prevent it from doing damage, which would probably piss people off). The boxes can be adjusted to better catch grenades and such.

That's weird, I've never seen that particular spot being an issue. I know that you can have that problem with 45 degree angle brushes allowing players to strafe into them and hang somewhat like that, but thats a game issue that mappers can't resolve, but I've never seen it with what I'm assuming is a straight orthogonal piece of geometry.

Oh wait, never mind. For some reason that brush is isn't a perfect straight line, its at an angle. Must have gotten messed up when I moved some stuff around. Oooppps.

Awesome. Yah the slight func_brush screwing with lighting seems not so good, but consistent displacements seems ideal.

I basically chose not to respond to Benroads because I feel like that is the best way to diffuse these sorts of antagonisms. I'm not interested in allowing someone to be rude to me, and then I do something for them by changing the map. Yes, the things he mentioned are changes that would improve the map, but what does it mean if I implement them? First off, they are incredibly minor changes. 99.99% of players will never notice if a pipe is solid or non solid, they will never notice if a door frame area is slightly unclipped. Thats not to say I shouldn't clip it or turn off collision (clearly its an improvement), but it certainly puts it at at the bottom of my list as far as priorities go when the vast majority of players will never notice.

And on top of that, there is an incentive not to do it. If I do clip those areas, Benroads will use that as an excuse to win an argument later on down the road with another mapper ("CLEARLY I know better than you what to do, I told Scorpio every problem his map had and he HAD to make changes to satisfy me! So you MUST do what I tell you!") It just invites the same sort of bullshit, toxic perspectives that drive mappers nuts. We absolutely want feedback, but we don't want to be treated like shit in order to get it.

He can say that he didn't INTEND to be rude, but very few people do! They are just rude, like a bull in a china shop, completely oblivious to the unpleasantness of their own behavior, smashing someones hard work, never considering the time and energy it took to make the thing they are trashing. He spent a couple of hours gathering screenshots and writing several very small paragraphs?! Holy shit! How much time do you think I end up spending on the maps, building them, playtesting them, watching match footage, replying to feedback like I'm doing right now? THOUSANDS OF HOURS! And he feels entitled to me making some very minor clipping changes and listening to his toxic nonsense? No thanks! I'll suck up a tiny clipping error over complying with toxicity.

Its a product of our time on the internet, and those who have been raised pretty much from birth with it. You assume you can just say whatever you like and its fine, no consequences, it doesn't matter how I speak or what I say. But it totally does matter! And I, for one, will not give in to toxic feedback. If its a major issue, I'll change it, but I'm not going to let someone antagonize me into a minor change just so they can improve their own street cred.

I totally appreciate anyone who wants to provide feedback and who takes the time out to do so, and for the most part the feedback on my maps has been great! Its whats allowed me to get my maps official into TF2. But I'm not going to suffer rudeness if I don't have to.

cp_standin (which is also official)
cp_ashville (lets pretend it never happened)
koth_coalplant (a remake of cp_ashville, back into koth_ashville sort of?)
koth_airfield (played in 4v4)
cp_rooftop (standin style map, still being worked on sometimes)
and a whole bunch of failed projects that sit on my hard drive.

1) I got into mapping because the TF2 blog posted a link to the Source Wiki and I was like "okay lets make some maps". I was playing on a pub server at the time, and the server admin was keen on hosting community maps, even really terrible ones (terrible map tuesdays never 4 get). I basically trawled the TF2maps.net forum and tried to learn as much as I could from the resources there, as well as opening up decompiled versions of valve maps and seeing how they did things. From there, it was just something I never put down, and I got better and better every time I made a map, and now three of them are in TF2 and I'm steadily working towards my goal of full time level/game design.

2) I haven't thought about it in a while, but I still think I have a real soft spot for Metalworks. It was my first map that really took off, the layout is pretty much my own design (not really incredibly influenced by existing maps), and it also taught me the value of starting over if something isn't working (the original map was cp_resonance, but I did a complete reboot, and even reworked the basic shape of the map from a U to an S). Obviously, cp_process is probably the most popular of my maps, and it clearly had a pretty profound effect on what constitutes a 5cp map, so thats cool, but yah Metalworks probably.

3) Oh man, I could ramble for days. First thing to keep in mind: your first map will be bad. This isn't something that you've done wrong, it isn't the result of a mistake or a failing on your part. Its all just part and parcel to the learning process that is level design. The first thing you make is bad, both because you're just learning how to use the tools, but also because you're learning how to make GOOD levels. Its one thing to figure out how a brush/displacment/hint and so forth works, its another thing entirely to understand what good gameplay is, what a good combat space is like and so on. So take your first map as a learning process; make a messy, stapled together, poorly optimized trash heap and then move on. The next map will still be bad, but you'll have learned from making the first. And then the third will be better, but still not amazing. AND THEN... and then and then you just keep going and eventually you'll start making GOOD maps.

A level designer from Valve that I follow on twitter, he made a comment on his maps that basically is like "I'm constantly making better maps than I've ever made before", because every year he is getting better at making them. So don't get discouraged! If you stick with mapping, you'll look back at your first maps and recognize the necessity of your failings as a stepping stone to where you are today.

Second, there is a fine line between observing other maps and learning from their success, and trying to re-implement their success exactly. A good example of this is sunshine. Clearly, its a map very much informed by the success of process, but its definitely not (strictly speaking) a clone of process either. Its got its own last, its own take on middle and how it handles flank routes, its own visual design. Being able to tell when you are just retreading the same exact footsteps of another map, versus when you are taking the formula of that and spinning it off into your own thing is really important. For a new mapper, learn the distinction between copying a map exactly versus evolving the concepts the map deals with and you'll go far.

Finally, acknowledge the necessity of feedback to grow and change the map you're working on, but never forget: Its your map! You know its ins and outs. You know what you intend to do with it, and how long a change will take to make. If someone tells you to change something, don't just blindly follow their input, but consider the implications and ask yourself "does this make sense?". Design by committee is never a formula for interesting game design, and allowing yourself time to think and consider is huge for improving a map.

Yah, this seems close to what I'll probably end up doing.

Its totally on topic. Funny enough, the very first version of metalworks (called cp_resonance) had a door into last with a glass window to see into the combat space.

There are two reasons not to go that route. First, that door has an area_portal inside it, which turns off when the door is closed and turns on when the door opens. Area portals block visibility, which doors don't do on their own, and ensures that things on the other side of the door don't render when you can't actually see them. If I put a window in the door, the area portal has to be always on or it glitches out the window (you won't be able to see anything on the other side), which means you have to render more areas of the map from last than you normally would, which can affect frame rates for people with worse computers.

Second, from a game design perspective, there is a lot to be said for not giving players complete information about a space they are going to be pushing into. In general, TF2 is a game which relies on players communicating the state of the game to one another (how much uber they have, how much health, what classes the enemy team has, where the sentry is, etc). We don't have a CS style top down map to show whats up, we have to talk to one another to figure out what we are pushing into. If you put glass in the door, I feel like you end up knowing a great deal about the nature of the space you are pushing into, without having to commit yourself, which I don't think is as exciting. There are flank doors on both the right and left which scouts/snipers/roamers can peak through and get a lay of the land, but in so doing they open themselves up to reprisal, which I think is a good thing for keeping the combat flowing into and out of the last point. Obviously, there are some maps which feature glass as a way of preemptively scouting the opponent (badlands is the most obvious), but they tend to have a very different flow.

A final point, if you put a glass window into a sliding door, you might be tempted to get close to the door to get a better look at whats on the other side. If you do that, the door opens and suddenly you eat a ton of spam, which creates this weird feedback loop of wanting to get close to the door to see, but hating the experience of the door moving when you get close. That's pretty similar to how doors work now anyway, and you get to preserve the mystery of whats on the other side until you communicate with your flankers.

Hi. The hiding spot is intended. Throughout the map I've pretty much removed almost every tricky prop based hiding spot (lamps, door overhangs, etc), but that on in particular someone asked me to keep. Its a very tight spot to be in and if anyone spams even a single rocket into the room before they get the health pack you're pretty much guaranteed to get a hit blip and find the person. Additionally, it doesn't provide you with scouting info, as you are stuck in a tiny room and you can't see anyone coming or going, so you are reliant on teamwork to use it to ambush a push through the alley. Obviously, you can hear footsteps and such, but that's not really concrete information to act upon. If it was being abused incredibly frequently, then I could see clipping it off, but it doesn't seem to come up that much (somewhat like the lip above the dropdown).

That corner is mostly intended to be a transition spot for flankers who are coming up from down below to reinforce. As a defender, you pretty much don't stand there as its very hard to back up from that spot, but for attackers its a notable way of applying additional pressure once you've managed to break through the chokes. I could see adding some props there, but I'm not sure a small ammo is totally necessary (there is a medium below near the pipes, and another in the room behind the point).

Awesome! Thanks Bilbert. Those issues are all easily resolved. The tiny bit of lamp protruding through the player clip is hilarious.

The handrails are an issue I've dealt with around the map already (as well as on cp_process), but just not at spawn. Pretty easy fix.

The pallet ramp is easy as well, just gotta drag the pallets back a bit to get rid of that excess collision.

The last ramps are very reminiscent of process with the angled pipes at last, but yes, more props should make it clear where you can and cannot walk.

I feel like I've seen someone (chojie?) who has a fix for overhanging rooftop pieces, something like turning the edges into a func_brush and then turning the collision off. So, I'll probably look into that.