Oct. 22th, 2002
10:35am

So its been a few days. I've done absolutely nothing on my map. Well, that's not totally true, I did change the sun angle to 75 (I think it was at like 50 or something). I just felt like the sun was too low and caused the shadows to block out too much.

Anyway, I've kinda hit a funk with this map already. This is normal for me. At this point I'm basically ready to scrap it and just not do a map. I go through this at multiple points with every map I do. I think I've discovered why though, I'm feeling overwhelmed with this map and I'm not sure where to start. When I look around the map I see so much that needs work and so many things I need to do that I just freeze up and think that I shouldn't finish the map. The other thing that I keep thinking about is the fact that I doubt this map will get played for more than a week. It just all seems rather pointless when you think about the fact that I'm about to spend a couple months on a map that will get maybe a week in the spotlight and then be forgotten. Well, if history is any indicator it won't be forgotten, it just won't be played. People might say "Oh, I liked that map nib (or whoever) did but I just can't find it on any servers", but the end result will be that this map (like most customs) will likely be out of circulation in a fraction of the time it takes to make it. Oh, and the other thing I keep thinking about is the fact that, if this map takes a full two months to finish that puts me in the middle of December. There has been some talk of Enemy Territory coming out in November. I am of the opinion that as soon as Enemy Territory is released, vanilla wolf is dead. Making a map for a game you expect to die soon is very unmotivating.

Anyway, I'm going to shove all those feelings aside and get back to mapping (hey, I'm a guy, that's what we do with our feelings). What I think I'm going to do to help get past feeling overwhelmed is pick one easy task to start with. That is going to be doing some of the perimeter buildings and walls. Most of the outside buildings will be solid with either very simple texture based windows. I'm also going to swipe a lot of textures from the Max Payne textures that Remedey was kind enough to release for public consumption. I'll post my progress later this afternoon.

Oh yeah, in case you missed it, I've started a sticky thread on Tram Design where you can come and discuss anything you want to regarding my diary and/or map.

4:58pm

Well, made some headway today. Actually got a few buildings textured and started working on the inside of one building that players will be able to enter. FYI, when you do look at the map you're going to see me using what I've seen called the "caulked hull" method. This is basically where you build your walls out of structural caulk and then create detail brushes that are textured on the face that is visible. The detail brush is put flush in the structural brush. This is actually a combination of two different things, the caulk hull method and the practice of not overlapping textures. To get a good feel for the map while looking at it in the editor, compare what you see by filtering out caulk (alt+6) and then filtering out details (ctrl+D). You'll notice that with nothing filtered its difficult to look at because of all the overlapped textures, but if you filter caulk you can see what it will look like in game. If you want to see what the engine sees while doing the vis process, filter out the details (with the caulk visible).