Yeah, so it's only a day or so after my last update, but I've mapped 'til my eyes bled, then mapped a bit more for good measure. Jesse and Jon keep my spirits high by springing from the cupboard (they jostled for position with a plethora of large novelty mugs) and shouting "SHAQ ATTACK", but after the fifth time it lost its amusement. I asked them to leave -- which to their credit they duly did, but only after stealin' all my props. The mapping team is whipping the modelers into a frenzy of work. The trepids are the main victors, emerging from the battle for resources with several new automobiles, a roof hatch and a copy of "Girly World, uncensored". Craig took several hours to create the Girly World cover, even though it was a five minute job at the most. I think he was scowering the Internet for, uh, resources.

Yeah anyway. Push is coming along great now that I've switched direction slightly. Beforehand I was going for a very heavy brick look, and then I realised that I just couldn't tart it up to look as good as I had intended. Some spiffing HL2 textures came to the rescue, and I made good my escape. Think de_train meets HL2 meets hunted. Hunted finds girl, loses girl, finds man, elopes to Mexico. Refuses to return parents' calls. Yeah, that's the good stuff.

Direct all complaints to Jesse for having a women's name.

My new PC is set up and I've been mapping constantly for the last couple of days. I've still been working on push, but there's not much else to say. I'm goin' for a sort of hybrid industrial playground look; however, I've not had much practice at mapping realistic-ish areas over the years as I've been tied up in making superfluous architecture for TFC. Progress hasn't been as fast as I'd like, but it's getting there. I've just mainly been fiddling around with little details here and there and trying to shape it into the theme I'm gunning for. The main base corridor and theme is basically complete and looks quite refreshing for a HL2-based map. The area I'm spending a lot of time on at the moment is the area between the central warehouse and the base entrances. As you can imagine, the Source engine affords level designers a lot more freedom with these sorts of location. Unfortunately, with freedom and creativity comes the added burden of time :)

I plan to get at least three of my maps polished up for early September, so I'm in good stead for University starting again. Hopefully I can get some Push media ready within the next few days.

Dear Diary,

Today was hot. I ate some jam in the sun. A magical bunny sprung from the ground and threw this diary at me. It hit my head. The bunny looked crisp, you could almost say it was fried. It scarpered back into the grass and I followed it. I found a hole. I went in...

They are monsters, they make me model things and animate things. From what I can tell they are some sort of cult, ruled by one they call "Schtoofa" in this underground fortress. I am not to look into his eyes.

They are planning some sort of invasion, making maps and weapons and creating some sort of army. I made some things for their maps, they call them props. I started animating their character models today.

I shall plan my escape soon.

Goodnight Diary.

Innes.

It's been a long time since my last dev journal entry, so I figured I'd write another one. I'll just have a ssssugar packet or two...

Jesse and I have been workin' on hunted a lot more than cz2 lately. That's not a bad thing, because we really do need to finish hunted already, GOSH! With the new modeling additions to the dev team, we've been gettin' some custom props made just for hunted. This is great, because custom props will definitely help make the FF maps more unique compared to other maps in other mods in a...world. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll just say that Foantaire-Fey must be stopped! Unless you're on their side, then Foantaire-Fey must not be stopped! Either way, we think you'll like what we plan on doin'. Oh, you'll like it alright...you gonna like it or you gonna die.

Somethin' else that I guess almost everyone else on the dev team is forgettin' about is the FFMDK. That's right, the Fortress Forever Map Development Kit. I'm just gonna mention it here so that maybe it'll get you, the community, talkin' about it. Then maybe we'll be pressured into releasing it to the public. Or maybe schtoofa will delete this paragraph from this dev journal entry, so nobody will know about the FFMDK yet and it'll take that much longer to release it. Mulch has my back though, so you better watch out, schtoofa...or I'll sick Mulch the Man Beast on you. You don't want that, do you? Remember Ricky? Or is it still too painful to think about?

Anyways, if you were wonderin' about the waterfall I fell down in Colorado, well...it's in this thread on Trepid. Haha, good times...good times.

Skadaaaap!

Edit: Jon, you owe me a 12pack of good beer for leaving that FFMDKrap in here -schtoofa

(okay, so it's not krap but you still owe me that 12er)

Hi guys, my name's Craig (aka craigweb) and I'm the new texture artist on the Fortress Forever team.

Primarily my job on the team involves doing all the textures such as walls, floors, ceilings, and signage for the maps in production on Fortress Forever, so it's safe to say that until release I'll definitely have my hands full!

This week I'm mainly going to be getting the signage out of the way because the group of devs in the map development pipeline (including myself) pretty much agree that they're more important than the other map textures, especially considering that VALVe textures can be used as placeholders for the time being anyway.

Ironically my Wacom Tablet decided to die on me just a short while before I joined the Fortress Forever team, so it looks like I'll be doing a bit of shopping today before the work begins :P

Anyway, I'd just like to say it's a pleasure to be on such a cool mod team, and I look forward to the days ahead.