Just been mulling around the office lately, wondering... Why did you get into mapping?

It's all your fault I got in to mapping , 100s of hours gone, once you start watching your tutorials and using hammer, there is no going back

Bored

To me, at first it was to develop new puzzles for Portal2 (since I have never ever mapped before this game)... Though soon I discovered that hammer is an art tool and that you can create whatever environment that's in your mind... you can express yourself with it creating new worlds and stories... Now that I discovered that, it's hard to return to a previous point (I guess I reached the point of no return ).... I love creating, thus mapping... and I just want to create better and better environments/maps/worlds each time.... And I doubt I'll move from Portal, because I also love puzzles, and developing them... So I wish I could never leave this hobby (ofc it would be awesome to be able to work for this, but since it's not possible, it's at least my one and only hobby)

I finished portal 2 and I wanted more. Figured the only way there would be more if people started mapping. Thought I'd join them.

TIL I'm one of the few to actually map before Portal 2...

TopHATTwaffle wrote:
TIL I'm one of the few to actually map before Portal 2...

LOL yeah, I've watched like 80 or more tutorials by you for CS! But it's fine, I've learnt a lot from them since both are powered by the Soruce engine!

josepezdj wrote:
LOL yeah, I've watched like 80 or more tutorials by you for CS! But it's fine, I've learnt a lot from them since both are powered by the Soruce engine!

That was the point of them. At least you noticed that... You would not believe how many times people ask "That is CSS, I need a TF2 tutorial!" Silly folks!

Because of creativity. I wanted to map for the original portal before Portal 2 was out but I didn't have it.

When I heard that the authoring tools were in open beta I downloaded them and spent about a week reading every page on the VDC's "List of Portal 2 Entities."

When I was like 10 or 11 I think, I found out that you could make maps for Duke Nukem 3D. I grabbed the map editor and made a square room with random textures and put a stripper in the middle.

While I had been programming and making games before then (using a game/program called ZZT), it was at that exact moment that I decided I wanted to make games for the rest of my life.

I used to make some really shitty deathmatch maps for Unreal Tournament 2004 back in the day. Now I just yell at people and make youtube videos when I get hilariously drunk.

I wanted to see what I could do to expand puzzles with the elements already available in Portal 2.

I also wanted to make chambers/worlds that was in my head into something I could interact with.

I first tried it because of a CS map maker called Buck Nasty. It didn't go well, but I tried again following the release of PTI, which has gotten me to where I am now.

I also found lots of maps made by other people for portal and I wanted to make maps too. So I started learning to use hammer.

I wanted to do something creative and I am quite bad at drawing and writing so mapping was a one way to do it

MrLate wrote:
I wanted to do something creative and I am quite bad at drawing and writing so mapping was a one way to do it

Your pain... I feel it!

I first had Portal on The Orange Box for the Xbox 360. I feel in love with this game, and after some searching, I found that PC users can make and share maps. Sounded fun. Got a copy for the PC which at the time was a piece of garbage, and eventually got into PC gaming in general. Yet, I still mod/create more then I play.

That was 5 years ago, and now I'm finding just mapping is getting stale. With tools being more broken which each game, and more limits being applied, I find it just pointless for me to just map and make textures for a game that is finished. I've begun working with the Source code, and creating entities which was a breath of fresh air. Now I was coding and using my own entities to create something, and it kept me busy. But when most of it is done, it is just the mapping that is left to do.

In general, I mapped because it made me feel smart when something worked, and there was always a step to climb. I became a psychopath at the I/O system to a point were I did some ridiculous things. Now I fear that I'm near the top of the stair case.

Well, i watched yours (and a lot of others) tutorials and solved to try make maps for cs or hl2, but i never came up with a good idea for it so one day after have played portal 2 i played some custom maps and solved to waste some time playing with the authoring tools, fortunatlelly something good popped up, and since then mapping is a wonderful hobby for me .

Ps: btw, why did you stopped to make tutorials =\ ?

npc_msleeper_boss wrote:
When I was like 10 or 11 I think, I found out that you could make maps for Duke Nukem 3D. I grabbed the map editor and made a square room with random textures and put a stripper in the middle.

My story. Except I put a bazillion enemies.

I've always opened the editor to play with it if it had one. My first proper map was made in the first Call of Duty (United Offensive). Though I never could release them because I didn't have any internet.