Fabry Design

TF2 Map Development CycleJun 29

As of recent I’ve seen some confusion and abuse of the different suffixes one can append to a map filename, and I thought I’d clear it up by how I think it should be. This is only my opinion, but I hope to bring some general consensus and standardization to the map development cycle.

Alpha

The alpha stage of a map is the first stage. An alpha map consists of just brushwork and the required props and game entities to make a map work. This stage of the map development cycle focuses solely on gameplay. There is no need to worry about visuals or nitty-gritty detail, you want to test your map as a concept. Alpha maps are textured using the dev textures or with minimal texture work done.

For Team Fortress 2 maps, it is advised to use dev/dev_measuregeneric01b (a gray texture with faint 16-unit divisions) for floors and dev/dev_measurewall01d (a gray 64 unit division texture) for neutral walls. For team bases, customdev/dev_measurewall01blu and customdev/dev_measurewall01red (blue and red versions of the 64-unit gray wall texture) can be used for walls.

Alpha maps should be minimal. Cubemaps are not necessary, nor is custom content unless it is critical to the map layout in some way. You want to keep the filesize minimal as you are going to be releasing alphas in quick succession and no one likes downloading the same large map three times a week. Don’t be afraid to release as many alphas as you need to ensure that your map is perfectly how you want it to be.

Goals for Alpha:

• Test layout
• Refine layout
• Ensure good gameplay
• Release as many as needed to test
• Keep filesize small

Beta

The beta stage of a map is when it becomes a detailed piece of art. It is critical that all gameplay issues are resolved before releasing a beta. Beta is not to be taken lightly, it is when people are first introduced to your map how you envisioned it. And if they don’t like it because it doesn’t play very well, it is no one’s fault but yours. You should have tested it until it was good. Gameplay issues in a beta aren’t just about having to delete detail work and redo it, it’s about people’s opinion of your work and whether they really want to download a new version of it, because the last one wasn’t fun at all.

While you shouldn’t be afraid to release a new alpha, you should be about betas. Releasing a beta every week isn’t going to make anyone (and especially server owners- uploading new maps is a pain) happy. Besides, any fixes you should be making will be small non-critical visual things, right? And those don’t require instant patching. Wait a month or two before releasing a new beta. Fix as many of those small things as you can per version. I wouldn’t recommend going past three or four betas, it only shows that you didn’t playtest the alpha enough or are being paranoid about small details.

Once you have a beta version ready to go, you need to promote it. There’s various mapping communities and TF2 communities that play customs who have forums you can post your map to.

• TF2Maps.net is TF2’s premier mapping community
• MapCore is a level design industry forum
• GotFrag has a TF2 maps forum
• ETF2L is a comp league with a general TF2 forum

And the list could go on and on. Post your map within any TF2 communities you’re part of. You want to spread the word and get your map played on as many servers as you can if you want it to get out there and be popular.

Goals for Beta:

• Detailing
• Optimization
• Spread the word
• Make as few releases as possible

Release Candidate

So you’ve gone through a couple betas and your map seems like the best it can be. There’s nothing much left to do after a few last fixes and you’d like to tell the world your map is complete. Upload this version and you’ll not have to upload another version again. Time for a release candidate. Treat a release candidate as your final version, but with that small bit of padding just in case anything goes horribly wrong.

I’ve noticed that releasing maps as RC has become popular lately, which is good, but it also seems people are arbitrarily deciding to make their map RC instead of beta, and end up with three release candidates. Don’t jump to RC just because you feel like it. RC means Final, without the ugly _final tag or releasing your map as the “pure” filename (cp_yourmap), which will cause that ugly _final to be added if it’s an otherwise awesome map and some big corporation that publishes TF2 contacts you about it…

Goals for Release Candidate:

• Small fixes
• Final release
• Only one RC

But why not Final?

I’m a firm believer no map is final. Even Valve updates their maps, and community maps that get packed into updates get updated. Releasing a map as “final” is just limiting yourself from cleanly patching it, and while you should have a perfect final release, Murphy’s Law comes into play just often enough that there’s too many maps getting updated after being released as “final”.

Standards for Naming

Keep it simple. Use the gametype, the map name (single word in case of multiple word names), and the version number.

A control point map (any type) with the named Mapname in its second alpha release would be:
cp_mapname_a2

A payload map with the name Stovepipe Wells in its third beta release would be:
pl_stovepipe_b3

A capture-the-flag map with the name Yourmap in its final release (release candidate) would be:
ctf_yourmap_rc

If you are testing an individual stage of a multiple stage map, place the stage name before the version, and version only that stage. Same goes for multiple stages but an incomplete map.

The second alpha of the first stage of a PLR map named Yourmap would be:
plr_yourmap_stage1_a2

The first alpha of the first and seconds stages of an attack/defend map named Yourmap would be:
cp_yourmap_stage2_a1

Finally, you’re wondering about things like _a7b or _b2a. Sub-versioning isn’t necessary. Just increment up a full number. Special cases do exist in which a sub-version would actually be useful to use, such as when Shmitz was testing an individual round of his territorial control map Meridian, which was named tc_meridian_b4boat.

Conclusion

Alphas are to test your map layout. Beta is when you detail your map and make it a piece of art. Release Candidate is your final release. Maps named Final suck. Stick to conventions.