How early should I start a thread for my map?

[Tarry H Sruman]

Make a thread as soon as you are ready for strangers to look at it and call you gay over the internet because of their perceptions of its quality based on three screenshots.

[stevethepocket]

Quote:

Originally Posted by grazr

Well you can kinda guess about capture times if you're experienced enough, but that's why we have alpha (pre-artpass) testing. To make sure the map becomes balanced if it wasn't on its first release. Your first 1 or 2 map releases are almost garaunteed to have a number of issues like skewiff respawn waves and mis-timed control point timers. The point is to knock out 2 or 3 alpha's to hone those settings down with a little trial and error.

What I meant was, to make sure you didn't forget to add all the outputs and whatnot. Sometimes maps slip into public tests with actual bugs. Double-checking the associated entities in Hammer is the best bet for catching that sort of thing, but if the map has never been played before at any stage, it can't hurt to do a dry run on your own.