I wrote a review of cp_Steel recently, a map I’ve known about for a while but have only recently had a change to play in real matches. The five-point attack-defend control point map has quickly become one of my favorites, due to its creativity, complexity, and dynamic strategic elements.

It’s certainly unique, and amazingly well polished for a custom map, so I decided to find out more about it and the guy who made it. I interviewed Fishbus, the creator of cp_Steel, via e-mail.

1Fort: I assume, based on the complexity and polish of Steel, that this isn’t your first time making maps. What other maps have you made, for TF2 or other games? What got you started with map-making initially?

Fishbus: Yep, this isn’t the first time making a map. I’ve been designing levels periodically for the last 10 years, for as long as I can remember I have been dabbling, creating levels for games when I was young, sketching out maps for Red Alert as a little kid. I have always been fascinated by creating play-spaces. Counterstrike, Half-life, TFC and CS Source have a few maps to my name. I look back on them and find my faults with them, constantly learning from my mistakes. Steel is my first, but rather controversial foray into TF2.

1Fort: The Control Points on Steel, unlike those on most CP maps, aren’t just spots you capture to move the fight elsewhere. They genuinely alter the map and gameplay. What led you to this concept?

Fishbus: During the Christmas holidays, I spent a lot of time on a map for TF2 as the SDK tools were just released for it a few weeks before. My brother had come over too for the festive season and the new year and I was telling him about what making a map is like for TF2, he’s always given me support and always seems interested. He does like to meddle with my brain with ideas. So during one night, while messing around with hammer, we sat down and talked about how far ideas could go using the TF2 rulesets.

Ideas ranged from crazy to somewhat plausable, then at some point we came up with the thought of making a map, where points actually change the structure of the map, opening doors, blowing things up, moving things, anything that was possible using Valves hammer editor. This only lead to an idea that felt like dustbowl with moving parts, where you only move from one point to the next, even with a dynamic map it would still play the same as Dustbowl, except you would see things happening in front of you, much like the very first checkpoint of Goldrush.

Next came the idea for the last point, a point that was always the main focus of the attack, always visible but always just out out of reach. This was where the dynamic map changing had a vital role, each of the outer points was pretty much a switch in the level that create an increasingly easier opportunity to capturing the final point.

1Fort: How does the current version of Steel differ from the very early incarnations? Were there other elements you wanted to implement but couldn’t? Any elements you could implement but had to remove because they didn’t work?

Fishbus: There are 17 versions of Steel prior to the latest version (beta 4), some noticeable changes that happened was that the rail-yard that Blu spawns in was open from A to B, it allowed red to move between the two points but that only confused people from focusing on A and really stop Blu from focusing an attack on A. I really didn’t want to create a base for Blu, but it was necessary for balance and for creating a noticeable starting area for people to recognize.

The Blu starting area was supposed to tell a little back story, where they had hitched a ride on one of their trains and then drove it into Reds base after hearing that they were going to obliterate their base. For the most part, a custom modeller would have been a nice addition, a crumpled train and perhaps a box car where blu spawned from would have been nice. I’m happy either way.

D went through at least 5 make overs, I really wanted each point to stand out from each other. It first looked like a generic back room, then a pseudo control room, then an Escher painting. I finally got something I was reasonably pleased with, a back loading area for some small ballistic missiles disguised as a back loading dock. I still raise an eyebrow at it, but I’m much more pleased with it than when I first started.

I would have really liked a better way to navigate people through the map, the hydro signs were as close as I could get. I had my eyes set on a floor lighting idea to show the way to the points in play, unfortunately, apart from the extreme amount of effort on my part, it would have drawn too much character away from the map.

As for the rocket, I wish I could do more, but Valve are always staying one step ahead of their community when it comes to editing capabilities. A Goldrush style end game demolition was what I after ever since I put in the rocket over the middle point, with the rocket crashing down on to the point severing it in two and crumbling into the pit. Ah yes, how great that would be.

1Fort: The tutorial video is nice touch and is a smack dab recreation of Valve’s own videos. How did you manage to mirror their style so well? Have you had experience with animation and video making?

Fishbus: I had some help with this. I have experience with illustration and graphic design, but not so much when it came to using the source demo viewer, exporting video segments and splicing them together. I have created a few videos in the past, mainly for Trackmania as they provide a perfect suite for making videos inside the game engine, but nothing outside of it as I’ve never had the time to make videos.

In a forum I frequent, I asked for some video editing help, I mostly required someone who used a good video editing suite and had experience exporting smoothed videos in the Source engine. Thankfully I had already sparked interest with a person called FLOOR_MASTER. Some people may know him as the person who made the popular TF2 griefing videos. He had taken interest in Steel during it’s last test phases (test 13). FM runs a server where he plays a lot of custom maps, from all skill levels to all styles, good or bad, it will be on his server. Sometimes he’ll find a particular map that grabs his interest and will try to get in contact with most of the mappers; with ideas, suggestions, playtest results and possible fixes.

Already being on the same forum and liking steel from a month or two back, so we knew each other and chatted frequently about the map. He had seen my request and he happily wanted to do it.

I built up a storyboard and some requests of scenes for Floor_master as well as giving him some freedom to explore certain scenes. We also studied the Valve videos for other features and effects that we should replicate in order to seem as close to their style as possible. With my skills in illustration, I made the chalk map similar to that of Dustbowl’s and Goldrush’s video as well as mimicking the intro scene. FM and some friend from both parties played around in the map to make the scenes while FM himself spliced the final video together. He did a fantastic job in every respect. I have yet to reward him for his help. Which you will see in the final version of the map I might add.

1Fort: Sniping indoors is like smoking indoors — it’s pretty rare that you can get away with it. What I’m trying to say is, thank you for the sniper decks overlooking Point E.

Fishbus: Indoors and outdoors are the same thing in mapping, except one roof has a sky texture painted on it. Ho ho.

The ‘blu’ sniper deck (accessible from point A) was added in beta 4, a rather new and successful addition some might think. It’s main purpose was to stop blu from making a full on rush at E and camping the spawn doors, that sniper deck was a very safe area for red snipers, demos and soldiers to shoot at anyone trying to cap E. Opposing sniper decks only hit me once I looked out of the windows and saw that it was pretty much a perfect counter to the later red sniper nest.

1Fort: I don’t see Steel too often when cruising the server lists… is it perhaps a little too complex for casual pick-up games? Do you look for it yourself to see how it’s playing on the pubbies?

Fishbus: Steel has only hit the public light since beta 4, the other versions preceding it where very hush hush and mostly played in private servers by a close knit community, who play as a team and use voice communication quite regularly. At the moment, Steel has appealed more to the clan/league types, which I think is a good result for me anyway. Some public servers play it, some even have a 24/7 steel dedicated box!

Time will tell whether the public accept the glorious maze of Steel, the initial thought so far from public players is that it’s a ‘bad map’ because they get lost in it, but I also hear a lot of retractions once they have learned the layout. I guess once the map has finally diffused on to many hard-drives, people will move away from being lost and start giving out other criticisms that won’t require me to delete half the map!

1Fort: What’s your preferred TF2 class to play? Did you do any tailoring of Steel to ensure the map favored your favorite class?

Fishbus: I never tried to tailor the map for my favoured class, but I have to admit it’s always in there in the back of your mind. Sometimes you might accidentally tailor a part of the map to your favourite class subconsciously!

I have 110 hours clocked for both demoman and engineer, two rather opposing classes when it comes to their play style. I did try and make a few special places for each class, some particular areas where they shine during a game. When I was done creating spaces for other classes to the best of my knowledge, I turned to people I knew, people who were good snipers, spies, soldiers, whatever, I asked them if there was anything I could add to help them perform better (but only if they were not doing well in the first place!). The result of my many conversations and discussions with experts of other classes was a map with the most tweaked balancing I’ve ever done.

I would like to add that I spent a lot of time making an offensive engineer a valuable tool for Blu.

1Fort: Capturing Point D raises safety railings on the bridges connected to the final cap. This prevents attackers from being knocked off so easily, but it also aids defending demomen, since sticky bombs don’t normally stick to the bridges. With the railings up, their stickies don’t roll off into the pit. Was it an intentional design to help the defenders when point D is captured?

Fishbus: Due to how the engine works, I initially wanted the bridges to be stickyable, but the source engine does not consider moving brushes to be a viable sticky/build area. However, moving models are a different story. So the railings (which are models) can have things stuck and built on them (size permitting). Considering how much of a blow Red get once D is captured, a little defensive buff here and there helps make the battle for the last point more epic.

I also now consider the rolling stickies (on the bridges) the way I intend it to be. However, I might reconsider it.

1Fort: What are your personal favorite custom TF2 maps to play right now? Anything we might not have heard of that you feel is worth a look?

Fishbus: I am ashamed to say this, but I never really get any time to play custom maps. There are some really good ones out there, but I always getting critical about them and saying things like “it would be better if they did this” or “It looks great, but why does it play so terribly?”. I have played a few custom maps, so I’ll run off my thoughts about them.

I like ctf_turbine, it’s simple, it plays pretty damn well. the map is a perfect example of how the phrase “Keep it simple, stupid” can help you make a good map. However, I always thought that the map could have done with a 2fort like safer sewer entrance. The middle of the map on most pub servers end up in complete chaos. A long, safe sideline would be the perfect solution to my gripe.

The guy who ports old CTF maps, like Mach4 does a great job in making the map look slick, I really hope he makes more original maps. I also have a friend who is making a night-time map called Industrial. It’s not out at the moment, but I really hope he finishes making it because I like what he’s doing. He is always doubting his abilities, but I think he
needs to get past this and just finish his level because, I for one, am really looking forward to it.

Redstone, a great looking map, some nice models thrown in there for good measure. It’s a fantastic map, but the symmetry is mirror, not rotational so the balance is uneven for one side. If the maker fixes this, then the map would be not great, but perfect.

1Fort: What’s next? Are you still ironing out Steel or have you begun working on something new?

Fishbus: I haven’t touched Steel since I released beta 4, at the moment I am compiling a bug list gathered from players so I can release the next release, which I plan on being the final version.

cp_Freight and cp_Desertion are two maps that I am currently building at the moment. Desertion was the map I was working on before Steel, It was a normal cp map like well/granary but it had a bit more vertical displacement overall. Freight is what I’m working on at this precise moment, a Well knock-off you could say, except the trains are much larger, a bit slower and the track spans across more than just the middle point.

I have my mind set on making a normal cp map, it’s not too hard as an A-D map when it comes to balance, and there’s not as much building involved as it’s a copy, paste and flip job. I have my sights set on a payload map after I have finished the other two.

I’d also like to do a CTF map some day, very simple, very easy and memorable.

Thanks so much to Fishbus for taking time out to answer my questions, and, of course, for making such a unique and exciting custom map.