Mundinator

My TF2 Map, CTF_VILLAGE, is Done!

I just wanted to throw a quick shout out that I have finished ctf_village and it can be found on fpsbanana.com.  Love those guys.  It took me a hell of a long time to get the map done since I was moving and starting a new job AND playing a bit of catch-up for a milestone at work...but now I am done done done.

It is by no means perfect (there are all sorts of texture things and random clean-up I would like to take care of), but I am happy to put this down and move on to something new.

For those who didn't see the original ctf_village post I made a while back, here is a link to the flickr.com set where you can see all the shots I took of the level.  I did add some additional objects in the middle of the map, so the shots differer a little bit, but you can get the idea.

Enlighten Lighting Engine - Turn The Light On Plz

I am home sick today, but being my typical self, I am working away on things that I normally don't feel I have time for.  Home with a very scratchy throat, I am trying my best to not check work email, but I have a few times already. 

So, I decided to distract myself by going back through my saved bookmarks of blog post idea and I came across this gem of a YouTube video that I meant to post about a long long time ago.  First check out the video.

Alone in the Dark - A Fun Toy or Integrated Mechanics?

I just checked out the tech demo for Alone in the Dark's new engine.  I was a little confused at first as the engine claims to be "Real World" something-or-other.  Well, what it boils down to is that you can use items in the world fairly like you would expect, but you can also combine things to make better things.  I essence, your interesting things turn into more interesting things that you can do quite a number of things with.  Heh...

Ok, so that's a lot of things, but where can this all go wrong.  Well, the danger here is that the combining of objects leads to one or two combinations being king.  For example, in BioShock, you were able to mix and match your Plasmids, but in reality there were a few that were so much better than the rest that there really was no desire to experiment.

Alone in the Dark is in danger of making two things, essentially.  1) A mechanics toy.  2) A third-person game that uses 10% of that toy in order to win. 

They don't intend this, I am sure, but without the careful hand of level designers, this interesting system will not be worth all its "cool."  I hope I am wrong.  I loved the old skool Alone in the Dark games...the original was my fav.

Other Things
GDC is next week and I won't be there. :(  Sad Panda.  On the flip side, I am sooper excited to be starting my new job, so it will be just fine. :)  To all my friends who will be there, have fun, take pictures and make sure you learn something.

I still don't have furniture in my apartment...boo.

4/5 days in Seattle have been sunny so far!

 

Team Fortress 2: ctf_village

Well I've been posting it around the net a bit and even have my own 24/7 server already, so I figured I would post the same info here.

Here is my first attempt at a map in Hammer.  I am doing a CTF map for TF2 and just wanted to send out some early shots.  It's not anywhere near done, but it's out there for people to test.  I have posted it to FPSbanana.com.

The texture work in the shots provided is not done...I know some of it is messy, but I wanted to share what I have been working on and get some initial thoughts.  Prop work is light and some of the brush work is not done (roof tops need some work).  Also, I think I have like 5-6 lights placed aside from the ambient env light...just another FYI.  Lighting needs work.  Shadows need to be higher res.

Map Gameplay Thoughts: This is a small, tight map intended to encourage massive carnage in the middle (on the bridge).  Many sniper and turret locations possible here.  Battles should be decided quickly OR well positioned teams may need to hunker down for a long fight full of gibblets galore.  Beta testing will see if this holds true.

Download it and let me know what you think!

Assassin's Creed: The Parkor Game

Assassin’s Creed rocks!  I had a ton of fun with this game and have to say it’s my favorite single player game in the last few months.  Set in both the near future as well as during the Crusades, this fabulous game comes from some of the makers of Prince of Persia, so you can imagine how much climbing and falling you get to do.  Running around rooftops, stealth assassinating villains, fending off eight guards at once…it’s been a pleasure to play and I may just go back and play it some more.  Read on for my full review of another “Good Bad So What.”

THE GOOD

Parkor Across Jerusalem – The Fluid Animations

I never thought it could be so much fun to just run around in a game.  No, I don’t mean run and shoot or run and steal…I mean to say that it is a joy to just run.  Taking to the rooftops and running is the most exciting part.  You see, Ubisoft has such a slick animation system that all you really need to do is point your character in a direction and go.  The animation system takes care of most of the rest so you will run, jump, hop up, hop down, climb, mantle, dyno and swing your way along in the direction you desire.  Different rates of movement allow for different interpretations of the collision, so quick adjustments can really allow players to master movement without even trying.  What a joy.  On top of being quite nice animations themselves, the animation blending system is impressive.  Other games that claim to have fluid movement will have to now use Assassin’s Creed as their benchmark.

Running from the Guards

Running from these fools is just plain fun.  Although threat levels do not increase like they do in Grand Theft Auto, it isn’t hard to get 15 of them chasing you all around the city.  A few times I even started giant brawls as I got my vigilante NPCs to join in the fun.  Towards the end of the game they stand around in what looked like packs of 8 vigilantes, so you can imagine 9 vs 15-25 guards as an impressive sight.  I did enjoy how the guards didn’t always follow you up the side of a building.  Sometimes they would decide to throw a rock instead in an attempt to knock you off.  Yes, it works and often drops you down in the middle of a bunch of guards.  I do like how the guards get progressively more difficult and more aggressive.  Players can tell which guards are the more difficult ones often by their helmet, which is a subtle distinction that I thought was refreshing.  Too often designers make enemies that are more difficult be the ones who are much larger or silly vibrant colors.  Not in this one tho… 

The Future Revealed

WARNING SPOLIERS

Ok, so I was not entirely sure I liked the jumps to the future until I got close to the end.  When it is revealed that the people holding you are Templars, the story gets more interesting.  I guess I have to say thematically I enjoyed the idea that you aren’t just going back to some long forgotten time when the Templars fought Assassins.  The story is current and is real.  Well, except for the fact that you don’t really get to do too much in the present other than walk around.  More interactivity would have been cool.  Also more ways to know what things I could interact with would have been helpful.

Combat – Holy Shit That Was Cool!

Well, tie in a sick ass animation system and rather simple combat controls and you end up with a great experience where you can seriously take on 25 enemies at once and not be totally overwhelmed.  The combat is one where you still are banging away on buttons, but the direction of your attack works much like moving across rooftops.  Basically, you move the stick in the direction that you intend your character to act and he will as quickly as he can.  The short sword is very fast at this and allows you to swing at many opponents in a matter of seconds.  This helps keep them at a distance so you can attempt to zero in on a single target to kill.

I like how, after a bunch of slower kills, the system launches you into a frenzy mode where each swing of the sword kills the lower level baddies.  I also like the counters a hell of a lot and would like to thank Ubisoft for making what seemed like 10 different finishing moves so that you don’t get tired of the same one over and over again.  Not sure if they are selected randomly or not, but it sure seems like it.

View Points

They spent all this effort on making players able to climb around rooftops, why not also allow them to climb to the top of minarets and churches?  Well, Assassin’s Creed did just that and even rewarded players for doing so with a beautiful view of the city.  The frame rates were actually rather shitty for these sequences, but I still got the point of the massive views across a city.  A city that I could fully explore!  The viewpoints mechanic is to allow your character to spy down upon the ground below for things to interact with.  A person in need of help, a thug who needs to be relieved of some information or a curious conversation that looked worth more investigation. 

The thing that really killed me about the view points, the thing that really sells it for me, is how the character assumes a gargoyle pose as he perches on the tops of the buildings and does the look around, then can jump off and fall back down to earth in a pile of hay.  The designers made sure it was dramatic by changing the field of view so that the drop looks 10 times farther than it really is.

I will suggest that if you want to see the beauty of this game, just take a look at a few of the view points as someone plays the game and I bet you will be easily convinced that this game is truly what is meant by next-gen graphics.

Cutscene Camera Control

I’m not the hugest fan of the classic cutscene where I am forced to watch a bunch of poorly animated characters tell a story with typically bad VO acting.  In fact, I rather am annoyed by it in so-called next-gen games as it feels like there just has to be a way to improve on the convention.

Assassin’s Creed doesn’t go off on a huge tangent, but it does add a few elements that I really appreciated.  Cutscenes are divided into two types; there are the scenes where you control the camera and there are scenes where you control Altair.  You still can’t really control the action much more than moving your character around, so I won’t go and say that they have done anything really amazing…but they have opened my eyes up a bit to more flexible story telling in a controlled, yet not frustrating environment.  The ability to move something gives the illusion that there still is some amount of control even though there is no real way for you to change the outcome of the scene.  If I were to take this idea even further, I would love to make it so that the Altair could interact with things during the scenes.  Maybe he could even emote, like how characters do in MMOs, to help tell the story and maybe even generate varied responses from NPCs.

Scale – Graphics True To Life

Let’s first take a look at the GTA games.  They are huge, fun to play in and fun to drive around really fast.  They feel open and true to life…until you see a beautiful game like Assassin’s Creed.  The buildings, the streets, the distances and the set decoration are all true to scale (at least they sure as hell feel like it).  When I get a view from the view points above, I really feel like I am looking at a properly scaled city.  Now typically games (especially third-person games) have taken creative liberties and spread the world out so that characters could better navigate their play space, but this game seems to have proved to me that this is not required as much as it used to be.

Take these pictures as an example...

The top images show how in Max Payne 1 the level designers first experimented with space as realistically sized and positioned, but they understood that, as in seen in the bottom two images, spreading things out made space more navigable and comfortable for both the camera and the player.  Simply put, the camera in a third person game can be considered to be an extension of the physical players because it also needs to occupy valid space (space where the characters can also go).  I am going to have to go back into Assassin’s Creed to figure out how they solved the problem in a way that Max Payne could not, but what I do know is that the world in this game the world feels true to life, and it feels great.

THE BAD

The Templar Treasure

What the hell were they thinking by making the Templar treasure be some magic tech sphere.  COME ON!  Give me a break.  Where is the intrigue, the mystery?  Why did you feel you had to explain it…well, actually not explain it.  I mean, you basically went off and said that you are going to bottle up all of the mysteries of the ancient world in some silly technology that you don’t have to explain.  Well shame on you for taking the shitty easy way out.   I didn’t buy it and it makes me not want to play your sequel.  By the way...it reminds me of those exercise gyro things...

Combat – Knives and Reaction Time

Most of combat was quite fun and fluid…except for the damn knife throwing.  The “Save the Citizen” fights really were quite easy if you could just throw those knives fast enough, but for some reason they would always target someone who was farther away and in the opposite direction.  It ended up being rather clumsy each time I tried to take down 4+ guards with the knives, leaving me trying to throw knives at civilians by mistake.  On the other side of things, when I could get the knife throwing off, it was a one shot kill every time.  So…if the mechanic was smooth as silk it would have been too powerful.  Argh…

Lack of Scripted Fights

There were a few scripted fights (like the one where you are locked in the warehouse), but overall the fights were just getting everyone in the right position and then letting them all battle.  Come on…you obviously have ways to script events so why not script fights a little bit more.  I’m not asking for anything too complex, like the end boss battle, but the most common complaint I hear about the game (aside from people being thrown by the inclusion of the future elements) is that the game is repetitive.  Ok, so you have 9 people I have to assassinate…why not make each of their fights more interesting.  Maybe, at the very least, make it a bit of a puzzle on how I get to my target.  Go back and play Thief if you don’t know what I mean.

Jumping Between Cities

Ok, so I initially liked the idea of being able to jump between cities when I wanted to.  You know, without having to traverse the Kingdom, but upon further consideration I really am saddened.  I like having to travel and feel like it takes away from the size of the game (it’s a HUGE game in terms of space) by allowing me to skip content.  This skip mechanic basically rendered the horse sections as useless past the first 1/3 of the game.

So, yeah…it is convenient to skip and seems really needed, but I believe without it players would simply consider running around the Kingdom as a part of the entire game experience…which leads to my next point.

No Kingdom Adventures

Whose bright idea was it to make an entire area with nothing interesting to do?  I can’t get involved in any stories or anything similar outside in the kingdom.  This makes me wonder if the skipping between cities happened later in the development of the game after focus tests or something because people were so BORED spending all their time traveling in a space with very little to do.

Look, this one should be simple, folks.  You make a HUGE ass level for me to run around in, give it meaning.  Give it motivation.

No Random NPC Interaction

All this effort to make crowds of people and no way to interact with them?  Sure, I know they are all a part of the escape mechanic…I am supposed to work to avoid them…but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make it so that I can’t interact with them.  Guess I’m asking for too much here because this idea would require a whole new set of stories and quests and VO that just wasn’t a part of the game’s main thread.  I’ll think about this one a little bit more.

Guards Give Up Easy

The guards can navigate the roofs of the city almost as well as I can, they can peg me as an assassin just looking at me later in the game and some of them even fight quite well…but hide behind a few pieces of cloth and POOF, they give up the chase.

I just don’t buy it and it makes an otherwise solid chase mechanic feel contrived.  What are these boxes that I hid in?  Why are there so many?  Why don’t the guards just check inside the fucking things?  There is nowhere else I could have gone.  Yeah, I get the mechanic, but don’t get the diagetic logic.  Another logic cop out just like the Templar Tech Powerball of DOOM…

No Swimming?

I am a fucking trained sooper assassin.  I can cut down 25 men with my gleaming sword, throw daggers into mens throats from 40 paces, stealth kill unsuspecting fully armored knights from a foot away, parkor across the tops of roofs, drop 15 feet without hurting myself, dyno all the way up minarets (like 5.12 free climbs…I swear), fall 100s of feet into carts of hay and survive AND I fall in the water and drown in 0.001 seconds. WTFBBQ!  ROFLCOPTER you N00BS!

SO WHAT?

So I spent the last few paragraphs punching Assassin’s Creed in the face (maybe because without the Assassin part you just have Creed, a band I fucking love to hate), but I really do have to say this is an amazing game.  Assassin’s Creed really cracked the open world genre for me as it beautifully weaved story elements into a gorgeous setting with an exquisitely dynamic animation system.  A solid game for everyone with a next-gen system to have.  Even if you get sick of the repetitive mechanics quickly, it’s worth it just to run around the larger cities and kill guards and then parkor the rooftops.

So an analysis into how this game has helped move things forward…well animation for sure.  Making the worlds feel a bit more realistic and comfortably claustrophobic, check.  Combat better than GTA, check.  So, really the biggest contribution to games here is the way Assassin’s Creed allows players to traverse the environment.  Let’s hope that this game is studied and the ideas replicated in other IPs. Congrats on a solid game…now bring me the sequel already!

Crysis: Mass Physics

Crysis has to be the most beautufily realistic game out ever.  Unfortunately, I cannot even consider running it as I sure as hell am not going to settle for low settings and sure as hell can't afford a $5000+ new computer (being unemployed) to run it on very high settings.

Soooo, I scour the YouTubes for videos of what I could be getting IF I decided to sell my first born.  The level editor rocks, by the way...I can't wait to check it out in a year or two. :P

Check out the video above that someone made to show off the really neato physics that the engine can do.  Take note, I believe the entire thing was RENDERED at 8spf (seconds per frame), so its not like this is real time...but it's still cool beans.

The video below is just a soothing look and feel for being on the ocean.  Ah I wish I could build levels in this engine...sigh.

Kim Swift's GDC Talk About Portal

As a quick follow up to the Portal review I did a few days ago, here is Kim Swift's talk that she gave at GDC 2007 called "From Narbacular Drop to Portal."  Althought the game had not shipped at the time, its interesting to go back and see what she had to say before all the buzz was generated after Portal's release.

Here are a few things make me really happy about this whole Portal story.  First, I am so happy that a group of student developers were hired on the spot by Valve.  I have to say they must have given a hell of a pitch to Gabe Newell to hire the whole team on the spot, but more power to them.  What a great story about how you got into the industry.

Second, I am quite happy that a woman is getting the spotlight.  It's not that the other team members suck or anything of the sort, but having a big buzz in the industry come from an articulate student indie woman programmer is worth mentioning.  The industry is full of doods...some of whom sit around pondering how to hit the "untapped" gamer girls out there.  Well thinking a bit more about it now, I would have to say that Portal is a gender neutral game.  Yes the main character is female, but that's not the point.  The game is a puzzle game, but in an FPS world.

I'm gonna ponder this some more while you watch the video above.

 

Portal Review: The Cake Was A Lie

Well I just finished Valve’s Portal and I must say that I had a ton of fun.  Many of the forums that I visit regularly had a number of posts about what people thought of the game and I agree with the general consensus…the game is really well done!

It was so intriguing that I am compelled to share a few of the things that I liked, disliked and concluded from playing this small, yet polished game from a team that had come up with this idea at DigiPen.

THE GOOD

The Portal Mechanic
The game is centered on one new mechanic, the portal.  The portal is essentially a teleporter that a player can put virtually anywhere via the use of the portal creation gun.  Portals have two ends and players can walk into either one and come out the other.  The mechanic is particularly interesting because the velocity that the player has when entering the portal is preserved upon exit.  For example, imagine that a player falling at a velocity of 2m/sec downwards enters a portal with an exit on a vertical surface.  Then the player will exit the portal and be moving at 2m/sec along the horizontal. This is, of course, temporary as friction and gravity continue to affect the player as normal.

The portals are fun to play with because they are visually stunning. Looking into the portal allows you to see through the other side as if you were standing at the other end.  If one end of the portal is close to the other end, you can even see yourself…it’s quite bizarre.

The Level Design
The levels are all very well done.  There is a good balance of the various “tricks” that are possible with the portals.  They also are introduced quite well, each level building upon the previous.   The entire first 2/3 of the game plays much like a long tutorial.  The voice over does some helpful guiding in the beginning, which is tremendously entertaining.  I am not sure how many level designers worked on Portal (I was too wrapped up in the music of the end credits to pay attention) but the levels are all very consistent.  Not a single level feels like it doesn’t belong or was built by a separate set of motives.  My hat is off to the Lead Level Designer for keeping this a tight as he did.

The Coat of Paint
The game could have gone out the door without the connection to a Black Mesa test operation gone wrong, sure, but the added bonus of a playful set of tweaked out experiments made Portal more than just a mechanic game.  Ok, yes, the core experience is really just a simple game about a controllable teleporter, but the team took it so much further.  For example, there are secret rooms all over the place that are not explained at all.  All of the secret rooms indicate that people have actually lived secretly in the walls of the test chambers.  It is as if they were escaping having to do the trials.  Towards the end of the game, players break off the “tutorial” path and are propelled into the “underground” world of whatever survivalist story that these rooms are trying to tell.   

In addition to the “underground” secret passages, the game takes on an endearing tone with both the computer, who guides you through the tutorial, as well as the playful, but deadly turrets.  The computer is a warbling robotic woman who lures you onward by offering you cake if you can finish all of the tutorials.  She also periodically “messes with the player” as if she is playing with you for her own amusement.  For example, at the beginning of one level she states that the level is “impossible to complete.”  Of course, as educated gamers we know this cannot be true, but her humorous implication might make you wonder if you are about to have to think about solving the puzzle in an unconventional way.  At the very least, her voice-overs made me hesitate and be extra cautious as I played.  I have to conclude from the tutorial computer that good voice over work really can have an impact on a game.

The second, more innocuous voice work is that of the turrets.  The turrets’ VO is to the point of being cute.  They have a number of things they say based on the player’s interaction with them.  For example, if they see you they will say something like, “Hello, is anyone there?”  If you then disappear they may ask where you went.  Reappear and they will exclaim, “Ah, there you are!” and open fire. The best lines for me are when you knock them over, rendering them “dead.” They say in a sad tone, “It’s ok.  No hard feelings.”  Again, with the female sounding voice it screams cute.

The interesting part about both voices is that they are mechanical in nature, but more importantly they are all feminine.  I believe them being feminine makes them feel much more on the endearing side of coin, where if they were male they would come across as egotistical and maybe even arrogant.  Also, the voices warble, as if whatever machine making them is falling apart.  It’s even slightly pitiful sounding.  Again to the point that good voice over work has proven to really bring a game to life.

The voice work and the pleasantly endearing interaction with the turrets, along with the strange “underground” sub-text really give Portal an awesome coat of paint on top of an already fascinating mechanic. Gratz…

Developer Commentary
More companies need to do this.  The in game commentary is simply priceless…I plan on encouraging adding this to my next game.

Viral Marketing
Check this site out…it’s fun to play with.  It's been around for more than a year and it's an interesting lead into the game, but somehow I don't think it spread quite right…so…uh…FAIL! As an actual "viral marketing" tool that was put up a year ago, it didn’t really do its job, but a great site all the same.   

User: CJohnson
Password: Tier3

The End Song
The end song was just so silly that I felt it was worth another listen.  Hit the link for the tune. Johnathan Coulton writes a bit more about it in his blog here.   He posted the lyrics and all!

THE BAD

No Other People
Ok, so I am actually a little torn on this one.  On the one hand I do like that there are no people in the tests with you, but I really felt like there was a perfect setup for there to be people in the secret rooms that appear around the levels. Some sort of interaction would have been nice.  For example, upon entering one of the secret rooms a person could have at least spoken through a door or a wall.  Perhaps even something more subtle like a plate of warm food or a still smoking cigarette.  The implication would obviously be that someone was just in the room moments ago.

It is in the Half Life World
It bothered me a little bit that Valve feels the Portal world has to be an extension of Half Life. Sure it fits, but it was a chance to start a new IP if they wanted.  Instead they put it into their existing IP, even though Half Life already has enough to stand on its own and Portal won’t sell more because it is in the Half Life world.

No Multiplayer
ZOMG multiplayer would have been great!  Now, if this weapon makes it into the full world of Half Life it is unlikely that we are going to see the game with JUST the portal gun.  Odds are it will be used along with all of the other guns from the Half Life world.  Not to mention, I bet it will be limited with a number of uses as it will be too powerful.

I would rather like to see a multiplayer where portal guns are the only weapon.  Then, players can gather power-up that give them abilities.  For example, the ability to jump very high or the ability to run very fast.  Maybe to limit it, players can only pick up one ability at a time.  Essentially, these added abilities should work in conjunction with the portal idea.  It would also be interesting to have different sized portals, portals that timed out, portals that were one use, etc.

There are quite a few interesting possibilities with multiplayer…it makes me wonder if they already have it at Valve, but it just wasn’t ready.  Ponder this for a moment…someone fires a rocket at you.  You turn and shoot a portal at the wall and then the other end portal by the person who just shot the rocket at you and BOOM they are hit by their own rocket.

The Hidden Areas Were Not Useful
I found something cool and was hoping to get something cool out of it.  If the hidden areas had something of interest or value, it gives a reason to find other hidden places! But, FAIL, all intrigue and no payoff. As I mentioned earlier, there could have been some sort of interaction with other humans here. Nothing required, but would have been a good way to continue the excellent story that the developers set forth.

Limited Portal Placement Not Explained
It really bothered me that I could only place portals on a specific texture with no explanation behind it.  Sure, I understand it from a gameplay stand point…many of the levels would simply be too easy if the portal could be placed anywhere, but only being able to use it on that single concrete texture felt a bit contrived.

SO WHAT NEXT?

Episode 3?
More than one person I have talked to has said that they think this is essentially the demo for Half Life 2: Episode 3. Well, first lemme start by saying that the amount of buzz generated by this game suggests to me that Valve is dumb if they don’t do something else with this mechanic.  I personally stand up and suggest that they separate it from the Half Life story and make it a completely different thread in the Half Life world.

I think everyone who is speculating that Valve will use the portal idea as the core of Episode 3 is right.  Now, the really interesting part is going to be how they take this mechanic and place it in the “real world.”  That convenient concrete texture is not going to be as convenient outside.  How will they limit its use?  It will be interesting to see how Valve combines the portal gun and other guns.

Does this Mechanic Redefine Space?
This portal mechanic seems to be generating more buzz that I expected, but now I have to really ask myself why?  What is so damn interesting about this mechanic that has players AND developers talking?  Well, first of all it is a really fun mechanic to play with.  Forget jumping or finding elevators to get up higher…simply use a portal!  Space as we know it in the FPS is now thrown out the window.  Dropping from a high elevation is now a GOOD thing.  Getting across a lava pit is now trivial.

I follow up with a final thought…isn’t the portal idea simply a teleporter where you control the two endpoints?  Teleporters have been in games for a long time.  Why has this iteration been so damn refreshing? My answer is that it’s the coat of paint that they apply.  Without that endearing, yet twisted narrator, I don’t believe the game would be as interesting…at least not to me…but then again I am a sucker for those extra bits.

Where Have I Been, Team Fortress 2 and DE_FOREST

Catching Up
A lot has happened since my last post, but lemme just say in brief that my gamer world has been turned upside down.  Gods and Heroes has been canceled by Perpetual Entertainment and the entire development team has been dissolved.  Some of the team was moved to Star Trek Online, but not many.   I wish them all the best.  It was a rough ride and I am sorry to see GnH get thrown in the toilet, but no matter what special words you put on it...my work...our work has been tossed aside.

Make Yer Own TF2 Map
So, enough about all that.  What I really wanted to share with everyone is that someone found a way to let peeps build TF2 maps now, even tho the SDK is not out.  So, check this mad link for all the info.

ZOMG Amazing CS Map!
Lastly, I wanted to take my hat off to Robert Briscoe for his amazing CS: Source map, DE_FOREST.  Hit the link for some pics and the download if you want to check it out.