I've been tied up with university work (learning HLSL, doing a terrain generation application and sound programming stuff) lately, so not a huge amount of time to spend on mapping. I tend to spend a lot of time documenting, bug finding and generally making sure things are running OK with the mod. Mapping keeps being demoted in my priority list a little too much so I'm trying to get back on track -- I am a level designer after all, sometimes I forget! My stuff was in good shape before I went on a haitus of sorts, so I'm back into it now just trying to round off the maps and move on to new stuff or help others.

I've spent the last few days remaking parts of bases so it fits on a 32 unit grid, as I was sick and tired of textures not matching up; I'd be spending ages alligning textures (particularly floor textures) in areas I was only partly happy with, then I'd tear it all down and rebuild it, wasting time in similar places. Take it from me, never build your basic geometry on an 8 or 16 unit grid! I ported the basic bases geometry from an old HL1 .rmf of mine (before I discovered the wonders of 32 unit grids) and didn't bother setting it on the grid when importing it. In retrospect, I wish I had done this in the first place. Everything is pretty much done now so I can get back to editing the interesting bits rather than enduring countless hours resizing brushes, moving and nudging vertices and so forth. It was horrendously boring work, but it was worth it as the .vmf is now a lot cleaner and everything matches up more nicely just like my other projects.

In other FF news:

Several new weapons are now fully animated and ingame; fooley cooley and decs have been working up a storm during the last few weeks -- expect to see some results of the fruits of their labour very soon. These newly added weapons include the super shotty, knife, super nailgun and spanner. The spanner in particular is a gorgeous creation, I can't wait for you guys to witness this stuff! Fooley cooley always amazes me with his ability to get things feeling spot-on first time, nearly every time. Bile's super nailgun is looking spiffy, too.

Finally, we've had some good applicants for the texturing and sound positions, and we'll be getting back to these people very shortly. Thankfully we've filled the sound position opening already (that was fast!). Things are looking healthy.

We may well be looking for an additional level designer in the not too distant future, so look out!