holiestcows

Had a run around last night. Great improvements from the last.
Things I thought were strange:
The spec on the asphalt. The mountains. The image mountain is of better clarity than the world machine type model. The brightness outside  overpowering I would also like to reiterate on the ladder issue.

Since I've had no internet for the better part of 3 months I decided i'd try to make something pretty, even if the gameplay turns out to be bland, or if some things make no sense: 
It's a WIP practice map, I hope you enjoy!
Sorry about the video being on rails, and the actual quality of the video being balls. I've had to use Mc. Donalds internet for a while now, and 200 MBs of video takes an hour-and-a-half to upload. 
I chose to post a video because you can't hear soundscapes through screenshots.
Thanks to the authors of Agency, and Watersource for their assets!

@Beviels
 
Essentially, before I get into my response, I want to establish I have a smurf account. I use this account to play with my lower ranked friends, who are not within the 5 rank bracket required to que, unless in a 5 man group. Along with that, I too, have had fun beating other players who are a lower rank than me. However, I dont explicitly search out for low rank players in which whom I am clearly better than due to my experience playing the game. Not all times do I also try at my max potential when I play on my smurf with my lower ranked friends, because it would not technically help them grow, if they were always carried.

With all that said, I feel as if your attitude towards smurfing and the reason it exists as a terminology, and the principle of facing players who are obviously less skilled than you, is silly. Its nothing to be proud of for winning an unchallenged situation. I recommend you stop posting passive aggressive comments in response to users. I say that not as an authoritative figure, I am not one, but as a regular member of Map Core, an environment I would prefer to stay civil. Now having said that, I openly welcome your response to my statement, and I will have no malice or prejudice reading it. 
 

@Beviels
 
Essentially, before I get into my response, I want to establish I have a smurf account. I use this account to play with my lower ranked friends, who are not within the 5 rank bracket required to que, unless in a 5 man group. Along with that, I too, have had fun beating other players who are a lower rank than me. However, I dont explicitly search out for low rank players in which whom I am clearly better than due to my experience playing the game. Not all times do I also try at my max potential when I play on my smurf with my lower ranked friends, because it would not technically help them grow, if they were always carried.

With all that said, I feel as if your attitude towards smurfing and the reason it exists as a terminology, and the principle of facing players who are obviously less skilled than you, is silly. Its nothing to be proud of for winning an unchallenged situation. I recommend you stop posting passive aggressive comments in response to users. I say that not as an authoritative figure, I am not one, but as a regular member of Map Core, an environment I would prefer to stay civil. Now having said that, I openly welcome your response to my statement, and I will have no malice or prejudice reading it. 
 

@Beviels
 
Essentially, before I get into my response, I want to establish I have a smurf account. I use this account to play with my lower ranked friends, who are not within the 5 rank bracket required to que, unless in a 5 man group. Along with that, I too, have had fun beating other players who are a lower rank than me. However, I dont explicitly search out for low rank players in which whom I am clearly better than due to my experience playing the game. Not all times do I also try at my max potential when I play on my smurf with my lower ranked friends, because it would not technically help them grow, if they were always carried.

With all that said, I feel as if your attitude towards smurfing and the reason it exists as a terminology, and the principle of facing players who are obviously less skilled than you, is silly. Its nothing to be proud of for winning an unchallenged situation. I recommend you stop posting passive aggressive comments in response to users. I say that not as an authoritative figure, I am not one, but as a regular member of Map Core, an environment I would prefer to stay civil. Now having said that, I openly welcome your response to my statement, and I will have no malice or prejudice reading it. 
 

@Beviels
 
Essentially, before I get into my response, I want to establish I have a smurf account. I use this account to play with my lower ranked friends, who are not within the 5 rank bracket required to que, unless in a 5 man group. Along with that, I too, have had fun beating other players who are a lower rank than me. However, I dont explicitly search out for low rank players in which whom I am clearly better than due to my experience playing the game. Not all times do I also try at my max potential when I play on my smurf with my lower ranked friends, because it would not technically help them grow, if they were always carried.

With all that said, I feel as if your attitude towards smurfing and the reason it exists as a terminology, and the principle of facing players who are obviously less skilled than you, is silly. Its nothing to be proud of for winning an unchallenged situation. I recommend you stop posting passive aggressive comments in response to users. I say that not as an authoritative figure, I am not one, but as a regular member of Map Core, an environment I would prefer to stay civil. Now having said that, I openly welcome your response to my statement, and I will have no malice or prejudice reading it. 
 

@Beviels
 
Essentially, before I get into my response, I want to establish I have a smurf account. I use this account to play with my lower ranked friends, who are not within the 5 rank bracket required to que, unless in a 5 man group. Along with that, I too, have had fun beating other players who are a lower rank than me. However, I dont explicitly search out for low rank players in which whom I am clearly better than due to my experience playing the game. Not all times do I also try at my max potential when I play on my smurf with my lower ranked friends, because it would not technically help them grow, if they were always carried.

With all that said, I feel as if your attitude towards smurfing and the reason it exists as a terminology, and the principle of facing players who are obviously less skilled than you, is silly. Its nothing to be proud of for winning an unchallenged situation. I recommend you stop posting passive aggressive comments in response to users. I say that not as an authoritative figure, I am not one, but as a regular member of Map Core, an environment I would prefer to stay civil. Now having said that, I openly welcome your response to my statement, and I will have no malice or prejudice reading it. 
 

@Beviels
 
Essentially, before I get into my response, I want to establish I have a smurf account. I use this account to play with my lower ranked friends, who are not within the 5 rank bracket required to que, unless in a 5 man group. Along with that, I too, have had fun beating other players who are a lower rank than me. However, I dont explicitly search out for low rank players in which whom I am clearly better than due to my experience playing the game. Not all times do I also try at my max potential when I play on my smurf with my lower ranked friends, because it would not technically help them grow, if they were always carried.

With all that said, I feel as if your attitude towards smurfing and the reason it exists as a terminology, and the principle of facing players who are obviously less skilled than you, is silly. Its nothing to be proud of for winning an unchallenged situation. I recommend you stop posting passive aggressive comments in response to users. I say that not as an authoritative figure, I am not one, but as a regular member of Map Core, an environment I would prefer to stay civil. Now having said that, I openly welcome your response to my statement, and I will have no malice or prejudice reading it. 
 

overlay on wrong face? :S

And you can see thru the A site cans...

Hey these are my thoughts on the tactical/balance side of the map
A site seems too easy easy to hold; T:s have thousands of little corners and spots to check, whilst incapable to smoke off any of them and CT:s only needing to turn their heads and take one step to hold another entrance added to the fact that T:s have no cover when entering the site. You could easily fix this by making the site have windows/skylights to throw nades into, now there is no reason to take A site as T without CT spawn control.
Middle (The small door room) is incredible bad to attack and defend: You need one sniper to hold long A whilst still having someone to look at the door room, which is incredible hard to pull off because if the player dies in middle, player holding long A is doomed: they can't look at long A anymore or they get flanked, and watching middle is impossible with sniper as it is clearly close ranged. Add that to the fact that there is no cover for CT:s holding aggressively, forces the CT:s to play close to the trains, making it useless to fight for the control of long A in end of the round as T:s have simply too many spots to be at, making it too risky to peek there. I would recommend adding some cover for CT players in long A.
B site is the most balanced site I have ever seen! Every tactic and every nade has it's counters and weaknesses. Nice job! Although I think you should connect Long and short B somehow, now it takes too long to rotate from one path to another. Also the railings in rafters should not have collisions with bullets and nades, it's hard to throw nades to rafters and the bullet blocking can be annoying.
Overall: The map does not have rush site, making eco rounds very easy to lose as terrorists, whom have to take long, very nade based routes to sites where CT:s can control every area with their sniper rifles and Molotov cocktails.
Also, change door prop to more worn out model, it looks way too good for it's surroundings. Move Spawns equally outwards, T spawn gives no actual reason for players to take the longer route to A, it looks so useless that I am sure many will totally ignore it, as it does not move you inwards in the battle.
PS: What train model you used on this map? I would like to use it too!

W               T                      F
If this is not in next operation I will blow up Valve Headquarters!
As a terrorists that is.
 
Also turn the layout 45 degrees, it looks stupid when it is like that...

That lighting is intense! I like it a lot. Best of luck

Keep working on the map and stay dedicated, more people will comment. Overall though, Rome is definitely a beautiful place in areas, I hope to see you follow through with the theme. 

Ohh, wow... that´s the 3rd best thing that´s happened to me today and possibly all year. Really makes me feel good to see that my favourite "map maker" commented here. Thanks a lot!

IllFonic is looking to hire a talented level designer to work off-site on a project we have in the works codenamed Project Advena. The game is a very atmospheric adventure experience. The artwork in it is fantastic. We really need someone to help us implement the play by play moments. We have not announced too many details about this project, but it is a great opportunity for level designers who love scripting.
This is all UE4 work, heavy knowledge of blueprint is required. 
Because the work is off-site, we request the candidate be able to work during the same time we are working here in the studio. This means people in very different time zones will need to adjust (we're in Denver)
Paid position, pay is negotiable and varies by candidates experience/skill level.  I will need to look at examples of blueprint knowledge.
please email me at kedhrin@illfonic.com if you are interested!

 
 
 

Drake's new album Views is different, but solid, very laid back and chill. Meanwhile, Deathgrips new Album Bottomless Pit leaked, and I have given it a listen, much heavier and aggressive than usual, but I can dig it. 

highlight the 'clutter' you are meaning with screenshots etc and I'm sure it'll get picked up. Valve people are part of mapcore but rarely post.
While I don't agree with valves method of gathering feedback for their new maps (I think it would be better to make the community aware of intentions beforehand and incentivise players to try the map before adding to the 'actual money' pool) they have improved the other 3 recently added maps dramatically since they were introduced. They do listen to a great deal of the feedback but that doesn't always mean that they agree with it.

I'd like to thank everyone for the invaluable feedback you've given me! I'm ready to start mapping again, and definitely have to motivation to work on a new project.

To start off, I've only been mapping seriously for 1 - 1/2 years, and have improved quite a bit over that time period(I'm amazed at how fast you can learn a skill). Right now, I'm working with the Source engine, and I know the next step for me is going to be asset creation(ie. Material Design, Modelling, and much much much later Programming), but as far as level design goes I'm at a loss. I've read all of the articles on the sticky, and even though when I read over them once or twice I notice new things, I really lack in execution. As far as technical knowledge goes in the Source engine, I'm pretty confident that I know 80% of what I need to know for just level design(Never really messed with logical entities, and various unknown unknowns).  
The main thing I struggle with is more broad things like developing an Aesthetic from scratch without relying on cliches(powerful tools no doubt) too much, and just coming up with ideas in general. I'm also -really- bad at keeping things basic when I start a level, I can't seem to get any level layouts in my head without actually opening up hammer and working, which in turn, creates some pretty stilted works. I've still got creative juices flowing, no doubt, but due to lacking some basic skills like the one I just mentioned, most of my projects come out pretty unflattering. 
Here is some of my stuff, in no particular order in terms of date: My Imgur Album. 
Is there anything you can suggest to me? Because I'm plateau-ing hard, and can't think of a way to get better, despite knowing the problems. I feel like I'm applying too many rules to myself, and it's messing with my ability to map, but feel those rules are necessary progress as a level designer, and to create something worthwhile.  
Any help on this would be greatly appreciated, and thanks for your time!

Going to wait a few weeks for this, new SC2 expansion coming out will keep me busy.

Yeah I just finished this. First horror game ive played in a long time, and not chicken out due to the horror. Not to say it was not tense or scary, I just was so enthused in the environments and story I couldn't stop playing. 

Its fucking great, and the story is Top Sci/Fi ! <3

I just want to give you my condolences. I love my grandparents and to me, they're a special type of family member, that a mom or dad cant be. I hope the best for your family.
 
I got promoted to Manager at my job(spoiler its a TYPICAL FAST FOOD chain) and ive been purposely just working max hours, then working out in my free time, then sleep and repeat. I recently got out of a relationship which was mutual on both parts, but I would of rather it not of ended. With that being so, ive been just distracting my self and staying pre-occupied, but with that, ive lost all motivation to do any type of design. I dont know if im apathetic currently, or just temporarily uninspired? My question, to all of you older dudes, is it uncommon as an artist to just lose interest / their muse to design for periods of time?