Journal #1812

Not much has happened but I did type up my profile for Snarkpit:

It is late, it's my third day of school tommorow and I have nothing else left to do until the morning starts.

A little bit about myself.

I am nearly 16 (29th April)
My Real name is Will Nicholls and I am from the UK. I live in Hertfordshire, Cuffley and I have a pet cat called Charlie.

My hobbies are mapping, swimming and playing games with friends.
I love to skateboard and surf.

My bad habits are leaving maps at around 80% and never actually finish them.

My mapping life has really affected me. When I started a year ago I was ever so excited when I finally got my Hammer configuration working correctly. I started mapping funny thing and then progressed onto realistic places.

My first mapping mistake was when I submitted a map pack containing my first real maps for a mod I called 'Second Chance'.

At the time it seemed like a good map to me and the replies made me rather angry. I realise now how bad it was and the stress is not my fault, it is due to my Teenage Hormones kicking in.

Half-Life 1 mapping was very entertaining and I enjoyed it a lot despite the many errors I recieved when mapping too fast out of joy.

I first played HL1 a long time ago when I was young because I remember aspects of it / visions from when I was little. Later on in 3 years my friends bought be Counter Strike for my Birthday. I had no idea it had anything to do with the mysterious game that I vaguely remembered.

One day after playing Half-Life, Counter-Strike and many other mods I wanted to make levels for it. I searched making levels for Half-Life and it led me to TWHL and Hammer.

I had no knowledge of Hammer but I experimented on my own (no tuts) and made my very first non working map. In my eyes, it was truely amazing.

I wanted to play it so I read a guide which ended up in me giving up because it would not work. Later on in the Summer (8 months later) I tried one last time and when it worked I was filled with joy.

From then on I read guides, made test rooms and progressed from there.

My past experience and tests have led me to Half-Life 2 which I have found much more user friendly. Since the completion of HL2 I made my first Death Match Map called dm_coastland.

I realise that it is not as good as I can make now a days but I enjoyed making it and it made me happy when I saw the comments online.
I made many players happy so I continued.

My next project was dm_lakeside and my inspiration came from a HL2 map by Valve. It was the one where there is an open beach and you control the antlions.

Anyway I started mapping on it each day until I came up with a sort of lake because the mountains and water colour looked exactly like a lake.

My two maps brought joy to the people that played it and my knowledge has increased since then. This is also thanks to other user maps such as Rabid's Raincheck etc.

Finally my latest project is de_boshi for Counter-Strike Source.

The inspiration of this map came from Rabid's de_raincheck because when I played his map and then looked at mine, my hormones kicked in and I was angry at the fact that my maps sucked compared to his.

Since then I have spent each day on a room and making as much detail as I can manage.
School life also interferes with my mapping life so sometimes I have hardly anytime to map at all.

My exams are coming up (GCSE) and I must revise before mapping again.

I hope you learnt something from this and also enjoyed reading it.

P.S. Sometime I will upload a picture of me but I never have enough enthusiam to take a picture and upload it.