P.S. The Plan

As I'm sure you've probably read by now, good map design follows a series of steps. I don't remember them, so I'm just going by my own guidelines I follow when coding a new web or windows app:

• Get the basic plan/design on paper
• Consider technical requirements
• Research tools/technologies/processes needed
• Get the technical design nailed down
• Code the stuff
• Testing
• Release it and watch it Burn

I've got my basic plan for the map, and I've spent some time with Hammer now (more on that maybe later). For Power Play I'm not gonna try custom textures or models - I'm going with what is available. Therefore, my only research is around how to make the basics, like the capture points, flags, and respawn rooms. I've logged over 10 active hours on Hammer over the last week (yes, during lunches and after work when I could), and managed to create an extremely test map that has the essential bits: spawnrooms, red and blue capture points, entities, displacements, and a skybox. Now that I've actually done it and poked around the Official Valve maps, I feel like I'm ready to start blocking out the control areas.

I am probably at what I think is at least my second favorite part of the process: the idea is still new and fresh - I literally lay awake at night and envision what things will look like. I don't see any of the roadblocks yet, everything is still bathed in the warm glow of optimism. I see the black thundercloud of Reality rising on the horizon, but it won't reach me tonight. Tonight I see this map as a certainty, an inexorable force of nature that is humming with the anticipation of being woven together with the tangled skeins of inspiration and imagination.