Designer's Notes: pl_Industry

(11 Dec 2009)

(Update, 8 Mar 2010: This map has been rebuilt as Blu_Industries, incorporating a number of improvements. See the new map here...)

Pl_Industry is a map for Team Fortress 2 (TF2) that I designed. Get it here...

(All the screenshots can be found on the Narrative page, here...)

Background

"Pl_" means it's a payload map, which means that one team (the attacker) has to push a bomb into the enemy map, while the other team (the defender) has to stop them.

Kind of an absurd scenario in terms of realism, but then again "realism" isn't what TF2 is known for.

What TF2 is known for is being "a shooter for the rest of us..." (as I read on Gamasutra somewhere). It's a goofy, fun, black comedy of a game - one part Wile-E-Coyote-like violent cartoon; one part spoof of 1960s and 70s action-spy movies (James Bond, Shaft, etc); one part parody of all multiplayer first person shooters in general (and really, we all know the FPS game genre is becoming a parody of itself...).

TF2 started out as a mod of a Valve game (Half Life) called Team Fortress. The sequel (TF2) languished in "development hell" for several years, Valve trying to make it this realistic military game, until someone came up with the bright idea to take it into a totally unrealistic, artistic, genre-bending direction. Anyway, you can learn more on TF2's website. (Also, the various character movies - "Meet the Heavy", "Meet the Sniper", etc - are hilarious. Google them on Youtube.)

So I did this map out of a desire to just do a TF2 map, after first encountering it a year and a half ago. I also wanted to learn mapping. So let's get started...

(PS: I'm stuck calling my map pl_Industry, instead of plain "Industry" just because there is already a ctf_Industry map out there ["ctf" meaning capture the flag], which has nothing to do with this. My thinking is that I've laid a claim to a payload version of "Industry". Maybe I'll have to change the title later.)

Next: Originality...

(Download map...)