TF2 mapping
Its been over a month now, the 6 official maps are edging slowly towards the 'I've played you too much' shelf, only a few new maps have made it into circulation (that I've seen) and I was wondering if anyone here had taken the plunge into mapping for Team Fortress 2 yet?
Personally, I have. I have two ideas for maps and am roughing out the slightly less-good (imho). Only problem is, I can't seem to create a server that anyone else on the internet can see to join, so I can't flag down a friend and test my map with him.
Anyone started making maps if so what sort of maps are you making, how far through production are they....etc
Also, anyone got any idea why I can't create a server? (I have Zone Alarm installed and I've always allowed every popup that appears when I play any steam based game)
I have not, mainly because I've never done it before so I don't really know what to care about, and I can't think of a way to do the extensive testing that would have to be done.
As for your woes, what other hardware is present in your home? Routers? What IP does your ISP give you? Are they known for blocking anything?
Your likely culpret would be a router. If you're behind a router you cannot set up a server unless you set up port forwarding. From what I understand, the default port is 27015. But you can usually change that in dedicated server configs.
If you want to test a specific map with a couple people, most home connections should be fine, but I really wouldn't reccomend more than a 2v2, unless you know your connection/computer can handle it.
If you're not sure on how to set up port forwarding, let me know what model router you have and I'll see if I can walk you through it.
I've created a couple maps but nobody will join my server :p
If you're not sure on how to set up port forwarding, let me know what model router you have and I'll see if I can walk you through it.
I suspected it might be the router's fault, But giving TF2 direct access to a port will be hard, dad is pretty tight on security, having his whole business at home an all. 
You mean on LAN right? If you don't, what do you mean by 'home connection' I guess I could get a friend over with a laptop, not really ideal but I don't have another PC capable of running pretty much any steam game. (Well, dad's work PC would but I'm not even aloud to breath near that)
The thing about port forwarding, is that it's only opening that port on your computer. Unless he has buisness stuff on your comp, it shouldn't be too much of a problem.
But If security is more of an issue, you can try to emulate a LAN environment using a virtual lan. (Hamachi is probably the best one out there in terms of user friendlyness and free).
By home connection, I mean you aren't likely to have a high powered connection such as a professional game hosting company would have.
My connection has 10mbit download, 1mbit upload. With this, i've run 4v4 servers before, plus my ventrilo server which hosts around 3-5 people.
But my connection is pretty good compared to a lot of other ones out there. Thats why I reccomend 2v2 for most people.
oh, ok, maybe it won't be too hard to convince him.
My connection has 6mbit download, 1mbit upload - usually. they told us we had 8mbit download but they lied. Should be ok for 2v2, now all i have to do is find 3 other friends with tf2 
could be tricky lol.
2v2 should be enough to iron out most imperfections i guess, it cant be good for getting balence right like getting good sniping spots whilst having places to get around the snipers and so on.
Getting 4 people with tf2 won't be that difficult. Just hop on the thinkingwithportals IRC. If i'm there, I'll gladly help you test.
Most people on here will have tf2, as it came with portal in the orange box.
I missed your post!
How finished are they? got any screens?...
I've done cp_science and ctf_wall.
Once you get it playable, my biggest recommendation is to get it looking as nice as possible before releasing it for beta testing. I made the mistake with ctf_wall of thinking that I could get the layout tested before adding all the niceties, and despite repeatedly saying this, 90% of the feedback I got was "needs more detail". Server owners are sadly also a lot less likely to put your map on their server if it doesn't look pretty. I've had a lot more luck with getting cp_science on servers, even though it had/has some big issues with learning curve and cap point balance.
I also joined up over at TF2maps.net hoping it would be similar to this community, but so far their forums are useless and disorganized. The chat is pretty active and helpful, but it uses the steam chat room, which sucks. Overall it's better than FPSBanana's "community" though.
Lastly, even though my cable connection sucks and sometimes I want to leave horrible things on my ISP's doorstep, I didn't have any problems hosting up to 6 people when I was doing basic private testing to get mechanics ironed out.