The Hammer Times - June/July 2014

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Sep 5, 2010
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JUNE/JULY 2014

Lots of stuff has been churning in the TF2Maps.net machine since last issue, so let's dive straight into it!

  • Aliens have descended and the Mercs vs Aliens contest is underway. Plenty of time left to enter, so get mapping and throw in your work for the chance to a part of a 1000$ USD Prizepool!
  • The 72h mapping contest: summer edition 2014 has come and gone. Lots of amazing entries this time and it was a tough tiebreaker for the finish, but the winners have been picked, so go check out the results!
  • Like last issue, Egan has been busy interviewing well known mappers. His second video, an interview with Heyo, the maaker of maps such as Harvest, Borneo and Egypt has been released. Go give it a listen!
  • The amazing heatmap plugin has reached the stage where it's functional for you to use in deveoping your maps! Be sure to try it out and forward your feedback to Geit if you have any suggestions!
  • TFTools interviewed our very own Crash and played some custom maps on their charity stream event. If you want to watch just the interview and see Crash embarrass himself in front of a stream of hundreds of viewers, you can find that here.



Community Disucssions
We've been having quite a few discussions about the forums and community in general recently. Healthy discussion is always important enough to warrent their own category, so grab your great ideas and head over to the discussion threads and weigh in your opinions on improving our site. We have two discussions currently ongoing at the moment:



Map & Asset Highlights

While models and textures have been a little bare since the last hammer times, we've had plenty of new and promising maps to arise from the depths of hammer.

  • Crash's Glassworks has been in full development since last release, and is nearing late beta. It's turning into quite the map and has seen interested around the community, such as the TFTools stream above.
  • Umb has entered back into mapping with his beach map, Sandy Shoals. Go grab your glass, put a miniature UMBrella in and go have a stroll on the the sexiest beach map we've seen in a while.
  • Shadowslasher's been working on a map from our orphanage recently, and the newly revived Heatwave is really starting to take shape!
  • And lastly, while technically not a community map, Valve's beta maps have been recieving tonnes of feedback on our own forums. If you're interested, go check out our Asteroid and Cactus Canyon threads.

Tutorials, Resources and Guides

  • Crash has put together part 1 of his video tutorial on Clipping Your Map. It's a great video to watch, demonstrating the intricacies of clipping your map properly to improve gameplay and reduce exploits. A skill every mapper should have!
  • Idolon wrote a nice guide on How to Leave Proper Feedback. A good guide for anyone to read, by reading it you help both yourself and everyone else you leave feedback for!

Maps You May Have Forgotten About

A new segmet for this issue, this segment intends to highlight maps that were either finished a long time ago and still deserve to be remembered, or have been in development for a long time but may not have been forefront in the community for quite a while. It will hopefully bring attention to these deserving maps that have been buried in the workshop or showcase forums.


First up is PL Rust by Fr0z3n.

Rust is a single-stage payload map set in a red-dusty iron ore mine in Western Australia. It was originally developed for the Dynamic Payload contest a few years ago, however those dynamic elements have slowly been replaced to create a more traditional payload gameplay. It's most definining feature is its final point - the infamous forever rolldown of Rust. The entire stretch between the 3rd capture point and final is an uphill battle pushing towards red's defenses, and if blue isn't prepared to push then they're going to have a tough time.

Rust is still in developmnt by Fr0z3n, and is set to have a new version released soon. It's a solid payload map that's worth keeping your eye on, and we hope to see it go forward into RC.


Next is Mojave by Hanz.

Mojave is a 2 stage attack/defense CP map. Made for the a/symmetry cp contest, and doing very well by placing second, Mojave is a map with a beautiful red aesthetic and some really unique points to fight around. An all around solid map in all respects, and one that does not deserve to be forgotten to the sands of time.

The hammer times was written by Aly and quickly/hastely/poorly edited by Fr0z3nR.
 
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