Warning really really long ztyping read ahead of you...continue on at your own risk....yes ALL of maps released thus far and then a quick summary of my current status and what not will be posted about...so yea...if you hate reading...then gtfo of this thread.
Starting Era:
Roughly around 3 1/2 years ago I became very interested in changing things within the game of TS and RA2, more so for TS since I liked the atmosphere and style better. So I did some google searches and eventually game across the Afterglow network, which I'm sure many of you know. I learned the very basics from that site. From clone units, to making new weapons, and quite a bit of other things. From there I spent time with the Rules.ini file doing trial and error. But to me, making clone units was far from enough. I wanted new graphics. So once again I searched the interwebs and came across a community.
It was actually Project Perfect Mod. I spent sometime there downloading and using graphics to implement in my own personal mod. However, while lurking as a guest on PPM I stumbled into the map archive. It interested me. But the maps there were not enough for me. So heading back to the king of all finders, google, I did another search. This time I looked at several sites. I believe some of these sites included CnCDen, planetcnc, and a few others...but of course the most important of them all...Tumsun.
After downloading and playing many more of the maps from these sites I decided I wanted to create my own. Some of the user made maps which really inspired me to make my own were the mappers Aurora, Wiziwig, Wess, Coolmoon, Blubb and a few other older community members. After another few months of lurking and practicing up on my mapping skills I eventually decided to do something I had not done to that point....join the community.
In the middle of march I joined the community of Tumsun. At the time the mapping section seemed slow and even close to dead...hell the entire community seemed like it was slow at the time. Anyways Aaday or so afterwards I posted my first map...
FS Necare:It was a cliff error, blocky terrain, random placed civilians, and repeated rocks at start points nightmare. Being a fair sized 4 player map it was something that I felt accomplished with at the time. I got some semi-positive comments but I also got freaked out when a member who didn't have FS tried playing it and said there was dirt in the water. This is of course where FS swamp tiles were suppose to be. Only 2 days later came my next...
The Open and the Trapped: This map was quite similar to FS Necare in the fact that it was still a pretty bad nightmare with blocky terrain and connection cliff errors left and right. The idea behind this map was to have 2 players, one in an open field area in which the player could be flanked from all directions and the other player to be trapped in an cliff enclosed area. Didn't really get many comments on this one except that it was a good idea to make it so that all players have the same typical strategies based on their start points or are balanced in a better way. Once again...only a few days later came my next map.
Elemental Imperative: Though not many may have noticed this but at the last minute I decided to change the map name from Elemental Absolute to Elemental Imperative. The map file was still Elemental Absolute but the ingame map name was the latter. It was a 4 player 2v2 styled map. However, playing with the AI we all know that's not possible. So you had a close encounter with the AI to your side. They weren't too close to were the map started and you were fighting but it was pretty close. Very little amounts of cliffs used with only connection cliff errors again. I got some decent comments from more people. After a small break I released yet another map...
Vae Victis: Another error filled map with some not so realistic things about and not so great lighting. But it was better than my other maps. A 3 player map that allowed for some more strategies than before. I again got some decent comments.
I think it was about at this time in which I was contacted by Atomic Gopher and create an MSN account so we could chat. From there I started talking to Atomic Gopher, Sirmods, OrcaCommander, and Modder666. They were my first 'friends' within this community. It was also around this time that I started using the cartographers forum to present WIP work. I mainly used it to get map names though to be honest.
Ionic Waters: my 5th map. released in less than a month of having entered into the community. It was here that I was graced with Wiziwigs cliff spotting eye and comments. He told me of my errors and also pointed me towards Marble Madness. I was eager to fix my errors but got confused with the back slope sets but instead of asking I looked at other people's maps to figure it out...namely Wiziwig's maps. This was also my first map with a trigger. It felt good to finally use a trigger even if it was a simple ion storm trigger. The biggest comment I got on this one was that the map lacked trees.
So the talk with my first community friends continued. I got linked to a hopeful forum set out for the sole purpose of hosting our own mod, The Modding Bunker. At the time it was mainly composed of Modder666 as coder, 2ndary mapper, and mod leader, Atomic Gopher as Storyline writer and ideas man, and of course me as assistant coder and mapper. The mod was called TS:TD, Tiberian Sun: Tiberian Destiny. Of course when it got posted in the mod announcements at PPM it wasn't well received. lol The idea was pretty basic...it was going to be the continuation of our own idea on what happened after FS.
Benevale:A 4 player map. Originally named Clash on the Big Bridges. It had players in the corners with equal resources and used the FS mold. The main feature of the map was a double cliff area in the center at the top of which had a small GDI base. There was only one entrance to the top of the cliff which made it easy to defend which also made it a key strategical idea for capturing especially since it had a VHM at the top. However, after sometime into gameplay a meteor storm would hit inside and destroy at least part of the base. I once again got some positive feed back even though it really wasn't anything great.
I soon got introduced to Tony. Not to many people here probably know him but he's a cool guy. He has done stuff mainly for RA2 and YR. He and OrcaCommander and perhaps some others were looking at one of the many TS->YR in otherwords putting TS units and stuff on the YR game. I became a possible mapper to the team.
Deadly Crevice: My 7th map and it marks about my first full month of being in the community. Yea..7 maps in 1 month.
Anyways this was a simple 2 player map with cliffs splitting the players and a city on top of the cliffs. The Crevice part came from the opening in the middle of the cliffs which you could navigate to get to your enemies base. Of course it wasn't the only option but it was the straight forward one. This map started my one using cliffs more even though it still wasn't a large usage of cliffs.The end of an era...
The time in which I chunked LAT down and made crappy lighting with no edits to light posts was soon to end. It was around this time though that I got introduced to another forum called Nahaira it was ran by Gosho, at the time CCCP Gosho. I had met him at the Modding Bunker. It was at Nahaira that I got introduced to a lot of people who I would later know more of from PPM and FreedomStudios.
Monkey in the Middle: This map marks the end of my early era in which I blotted down terrain in large blocky chunks of horrid ugliness. It also marked the time in which I started really using cliffs a lot more. This was my largest map attempted at that point. It was 200X56 size map. The basic layout was one player at each end of the width of the map and a player in the middle. Hence where the map got it's name. Each player started on a double set of cliffs and would need to work their way down to the middle level and cross a bridge or to the lowest level and back up to reach the other players area. The middle player was basicly screwed although he did get a bit more resources. This was also my first map in which I added map coding into so that you could capture something and be able to build a new units.
The Start of my more organized and perfection on lighting era
That's right. About the same time I was working on Monkey in the Middle I had started another map however, I was running into a lot of problems with creating that map as I wanted it to include mutations every where and to include more triggers and coding than I had used before...sadly I couldn't get it to work. But one night while I was thinking on somethings I map a new map...it shined above all other maps of mine at the time despite it's small size...
Alcedonia Terra: According to Aro it was my single most epic map and his all time favorite. It featured a very green area. Cliff's divided the players and there was but a single path to each players base. This was the first map in which I used moving vehicle triggers which I soon got really good at using. The moving vehicle triggers were of course the supply trucks...they would leave the water tank area by the lake and head to the small cliff top communities to drop off their supply and then head back...along the no trail warzone. It was this map that Denmon said I needed to make better organized villages...so I worked diligently to do so in hopes to get this map spotlighted. The map lighting is what I became very fond of. Despite not editing the invis light posts the lighting turned out well and not WAY over done with green or blue or anything. It was also the time in which I developed my unique town/city lighting with the use of alpha light posts and invis. normal lights. In the end though the map did not get spotlighted
As you guessed it. It was around this time that the forum started gaining new members to the modding world. Two of those members would eventually become my competitors. I am of course talking about Crashking and Nods Viper, AKA Aro. Aro however, started out as something more unique...he started with SP maps something which I had not ventured into that much to this point.
Tiberium Delusion: The start of my light post editing. This was my largest map. It had 6 players and was for the most part a mutated landscape. It had highlighted the lighting around the molds and it looked quite nice. The map was almost a spotlight on PPM however the only thing that kept Muldrake from spotlighting it was my addition of Sniper towers and two new aircraft one for each side which had strong weapons but were limited in the amount you could get. It was "nooby like" in his words. Which shortly afterwards I agreed. However, for some reason I didn't get motivated to change it to try to get the spotlight.
Shortly after this release I had an eureka moment. I had finally got the one trigger I had been trying to get to work on my map that I had started way back during the time of Monkey in the Middle. This was of course due to the help of the wagnerma forums mostly.
My first epic mutation map was completed...
Tiberian Epicenter: The map was heavily mutated and had a total of 5 VHMs. The map was a 3 player map. The map was split vertically in half by a twisting river. Two players on the left and a third player on the right side. The players on the left side had bridges connecting to the player on the right side. The map contained Ion Storms, meteors, mutant opposition forces with modded buildings to act as their base. Which if captured would allow you to use them to your advantage. It also had a spawning tiberium creatures around the VHMs and most importantly it contained a working speech trigger. The feedback was quite positive. Many voted for a spotlight including TitanMarkII. His influence and Tratos' liking of the map got it spotlighted at Tumsun making it my first spotlighted map.
Paradox Islands: Another map in the series. It was my first island map. Fairly simple it was two players on their own islands connected by a long bridge. The lighting highlighted areas and was fairly good. However, gameplay of the map itself was fairly boring as you might have guessed. However, this map would later influence me for other things. In the comments at PPM however they suggested turning the map into a snow map so I could make the gameplay a bit better by connecting the islands with ice. At the time I was inexperienced with the snow theater and even more so with the ice. So I opted out of that idea...
It was somewhere around these maps released that all Nahaira things moved to FreedomStudios. Also around this time or perhaps earlier TS:TD was given up on and we went our own ways for the most part.
Mutation Triad: Another 3 player mutation map. This one had a unique evacuate the civilians trigger set though. It made me happy. I had fun playing around with this map and in my attempts to get the supply trucks to work a certain way I came across the Reinforcement Spamming thing. Nothing beats seeing an entire screen full of loaded trucks slowly trying to cross the map with more coming and following them. Of course that was fixed by the time the map was released.
So after another released map I looked back at the idea of a snow map. All of my maps at this point had been temperate and it was starting to get dull. So I decided to change it up.
Yukon Pass: Name was thought up by OrcaCommander. It was a small two player snow map. But it held fast game play with a pretty nice layout and lighting. I had to battle some new challenges with it being my first snow map. Blockier lighting, different types of LAT that looked weird IMO, and different buildings and trees just made mapping a full map in the snow theater feel weird. However, I finished the map and it turned out quite well. Well enough to get spotlighted on PPM, making it my first spotlight on PPM and my 2nd total spotlight.
At this time Tumsun was finished....however, new life was given to it as it evolved to Tibweb! Also around this time period that we got hit by a growing pain who was a very persistent annoyance worse than any bot could ever wish to be. I am of course talking about Christian_93 (*shifts eyes in hopes that the evilness doesn't kill someone and make him come back*) He posted tons of thoughtless maps and other things and had many attempts to run his own forums because the admins here, especially The DvD, were "evil" according to him. Ahh though it wasn't all bad. Looking back and remembering his catch phrase of "DOWNLOAD CASERO 2 NOW!!" makes me laugh extremely hard. Yet another thing at this time was the start of my 6-player map Aergus Terra...started before the move to tibweb it was a very nice looking mutation map with a nice feel on it. However, shortly after the move and working on it I had to uninstall and reinstall TS and somehow in the process even though I could have sworn I had moved it out of the Westwood folder it vanished. Thus the project was lost which was a hard hit to me. Though it only gave me inspiration to make a better version later...though it has yet to happen it still made me get better.
Frozen Fate: My first map released here at tibweb. It was my 2nd snow map and it was yet again a success. Perhaps one of my favorite maps of my entire line of works. It stands out as it is a unique work and it marks the end of another era in my progression. The 4 player snow map played well and featured a very unique purplish lighting. Something different than the traditional blue snow map lighting. It really map it stand out from the crowd. This map was the first map to get spotlighted on both Tibweb and PPM.
Another turning point
Frozen Fate inspired me to work harder on layouts. My layouts pre-dating Frozen Fate were really just a flat surface with cliffs stuck between the players. Well that's the basic idea of them anyways. However, it also lead to my run of 2 player maps.
Holixe River:The first of many maps to be named using a unique set of names that relates to my user name and other names I use on various other online places. Holixe River was formed to be more layout thoughtful. It featured a river splitting the two players horizontally. It was a green growth area and each player had 3 direct ways to get into the other player's area. It is also one of my favorite maps of my total works. Not to mention it was yet another spotlight at both Tibweb and PPM.
However...having taken some time off and the lose of Aergus Terra made me want to make a mutation map. The entire time I made Holixe River I kept wanting to add mutations in but I wanted to keep it a TS only map. So I decided to do something different for a change...
Desolated River: Taking Holixe river and making it a full out mutation zone. The lush greenery of Holixe got turned into a lush and dense mutated land. It looked good. Just as good as the original in a way. About the only things that didn't get changed were the cliffs, original tiberium pits, the basic layout and player start locations. The conversion to mutation was a success. It also got spotlighted on PPM putting my total spotlights at 5.
Now that I got the mutation need out my mind I went for another two player map without the need for FS. But I still wanted that Apocalyptic look. I devised a devious lighting! mwhahaha (yea it's starting to get late)
Cliff's of Asvetia: Another map named after the unique name set. It featured a dark redish lighting that gave a dark feeling of dread. I also believe that it was my first map using the day/night loop. One of it's main layout designs was a middle circular canyon which dropped down and at the bottom was an array. Not really the most likely place for an array to be put but I thought it looked cool at the time. Was spotlighted at PPM
I believe it was around this time that I had made an idea to start a campaign based mini-mod. The project got it's name from Gosho after we were discussing somethings through messengers. It was known as TS: Ascendancy. It was going to be my own addition to the TS world. It had some work done for it and I had started collecting graphical work from various people who permitted me to allow their work as it fit with what I wanted. However, the project didn't quite last...
Leviasc River: Yet another small 2 player map. This map was similar to Holixe River in that it had a river splitting the players horizontally. However, in this map there were only two small points in which land actually touched the water. This map featured a neat-o blue lighting with which the green tib fields looked nice in. It also had a somewhat functional train trigger. It worked fine it was just that the tracks weren't set up right so the train would run into itself and destroy itself. Sadly I didn't figure that out before release but instead tried several other things to get the train to run without destroying itself and was only somewhat successful. Got spotlighted on both Tibweb and PPM.
After all these new temperate maps I decided to go make another Snow map. However, I kept with my trend of two player maps...
Frozen Nightfall: My third snow map. It featured a dark yellow lighting. It was a snow community being hurt by tiberium and meteors. Kinda unique seeing as snow maps are generally the more peaceful type maps. The players were split obliquely by a canyon. In the canyon rested a mutant haven which used to be an old civilian town which held an old GDI base. The map had a nice feel to it and proved to be a nice layout idea. The map got spotlighted on PPM and eventually here.
Frozen Nightfall roughly marked the first full year I had existed in the community. I had started out as a pretty crappy mapper and quickly became a mediocre mapper and then a fairly good mapper and towards the end of that year I hit a rank in which some would call an expert mapper. Having released 20 maps within a full year I would hope that would be the case.
Now it had been too long since I released a map with more than just 2 players. I had been working on a 4 player mutation map for awhile but it was giving me trigger problems for the longest while and the lighting wasn't that great though for some reason I liked it at the time. Eventually I came to my senses and changed the lighting and had different ideas for some of the triggers and dropped a few.
Trivial Lands: This mutation map was somewhat set up with a 2v2 possibility. 2 players on each end of the map length wise. Still separated by enough space and cliffs the players close to each would have fast paced battles. Tiberium pits were everywhere and VHM pits were between the players on each side. The VHM pits would spawn tiberium creatures who would go out and attack you making it a deadly spot to be in if you weren't paying enough attention. The map got spotlighted here at tibweb.
Around the time of Frozen Nightfall being released I had started work on my biggest project. Continuing on with the more than 2 player type map I felt it was time to get influenced. I wanted to make another island map...but more than just players starting on separate islands. I wanted them all to start on one large island. So I thought this map through a lot and eventually made my largest map which would use a trigger not used in most MP maps. The trigger idea was inspired by an RA2 map I had played a while back which intrigued me.
Yelcraz Island: Returning to the name set that Holixe River, Leviasc River, and Cliffs of Asvetia used I made this map. The main feature was the giant island known as Yelcraz. The area of Yelcraz and it's surrounding area was a large resort area. It made for a nice fairly urbanized look. The main trigger feature was of course the expand map trigger. By taking the first civilian array you expand the map to allow the smaller islands and also the main land by viewable and usable. This opened the map up for more routes and more tactics. I thought it was a good idea. Map got spotlighted at both Tibweb and PPM.
As someone pointed out on PPM Yelcraz can also spell El Crazy if the letters are rearranged. It seemed fitting with it's map idea and the amount of time I took thinking it out. However, Yelcraz did have it's flaws such as pushing civilians that were outside of the original visible area to different spots than where they were placed. I had intended to go back but first I wanted to take a break from that map and finish up another map. Sadly I never went back to fix that. Instead I worked on another map...that headed me off to my tranquil state of maps.
Lake Istelv: Yet another map using the name sets. This 4 player map had a few cities with a nice lighting. It's main layout feature was of course the lake with the two rivers feeding water to it and the island between the two waterfalls which had no real use in the public release version. There was going to be a special edition of it for TS:RO but I never really got around to finishing that version. The map got spotlighted on both tibweb and PPM. Putting my total to 11 total spotlighted maps between tibweb and PPM.
However, my map output and work progress was slowing way down. I was starting to build up more and more WIPs around this time. It was starting to get hectic. Eventually I decided to finish one of my WIP maps which had been WIP for a long time as it started back when I was going to be a mapper in one of Harv's mods. Since it had been a WIP for awhile it came from the mutation era of my works.
Tiberian Ring: This 4 player map was made more or less to be a tournament map. It was very symmetrical like without being 100% symmetrical. It of course got it's name from the map design being a ring. From the ring of water in the center to a ring of cliffs which kept building upwards. It made for a nice 4 player free for all map that made you use the starting heights to your advantage. Eventually I converted the map to RA2/YR.
Now I had started many other maps. My interest was really starting to fade at this point but I didn't want to admit it so I kept trying to regain interest by starting new maps. I also announced/started TS:CO, Tiberian Sun: Covert Operations, around this time. TS:CO was really just the change from the mini-mod based campaign of TS: Ascendancy to a fun mission project to resemble TD's Covert Operations expansion.
All of which was really in hopes to keep my interest up.
Finally...my last map released to this date...
Moonlit Waters of Esvia: Again with the names from the one set. It's name is also kind of a mouthful but it didn't just sound right leaving it as Moonlit Waters. The map started off as a very small 1v1 map of a size of 50X50. I soon expanded it to it's final size mainly to allow for higher tech battles and more build room. It was going to be an infantry wars only map but I didn't really feel like coding it all. The layout was pretty interesting and was something I kind of just made up as I went. The most unique thing about this map is that ALL of the tiberium was located in the middle between the two players. Meaning that it was well worth the fight over.
Moonlit Waters of Esvia was released about 2 months after my 2 year mark of being in the community.
So...there's the overview of all my released maps...If that wasn't long enough for you then don't worry. Here's the after part of my story.
25 maps in roughly 2 years. That's a lot of freakin maps! Sadly I have about 20 maps in WIP form still. My motivation and interest in modding started to die around the time after Yelcraz. It wasn't so much finding the balance of real life and modding as much as it was just the interest fading. I am still trying to find a way to regain interest and finish up the unfinished works that are sitting on my hard drive.
So just how many works do I have sitting on this thing?
well...let's go on and list them...
TS:CO maps all of these are SP maps
GDI maps:
-Unnamed (SMMC attempt 1)
-Escape to Revenge (SMMC attempt 2)
-Hurried Help (SMMC attempt 3)
-Bridge Brigade
-City Protection
-JumpJet into Delusion
-Unnamed 1
Nod Maps:
-No Redemption for Failures
-Contamination Time
-Unnamed 1
-Unnamed 2
-Unnamed 3
Forgotten/Mutant Missions:
-Unnamed 1
Total unfinished SP maps: 13
Total thus far: 13
Now for unreleased MP maps...
-Belzrian Mountains (5 player snow map. basic layout done.)
-Kalistia Lake (2 player snow map. Near finished however, Ice for lake doesn't work properly nor does it regrow no matter what i've tried.)
-Necare Remake (4 player detailed remake of FS Necare. Part way finished. Still needs much work.)
-Deadly Crevice Remake (2 player detailed complete remake of Deadly Crevice. Near Completion needs tunnel fix to make it work with curve.)
-Quick map 1 (2 player temperate map for TS. Pretty much Completed.)
-Velilian Islands (4 player temperate island map. Near Completion needs trigger fixing.)
-Volcanic Illusion (2 player mutated temperate map. Near Completion just needs better ligthting, special triggering and coding)
-Death of a City *working name* (4 player temperate mutated urban map. Near Completion)
-Train City *working name* (3 player temperate map with 2 cities)
-Island of Mutiny (3 player temperate map. Hardly started)
-Tiberian Sanctuary (5 player major mutation map with some urbanization in middle. Was fairly close to completion. Map file is currently MNIA {Missing Not In Action} seeing as it wasn't worked on regularly in a long time)
Unfinished MP maps: 11
Total Unfinished sitting somewhere on my hard drive: 24 maps
So yea...it's hard to drop 24 or maybe even more works. Hence why I really need to find motivation and interest in modding and mapping. To think I have almost 50 maps total sitting on my hard drive that I can clearly say are my own. Sure theres probably around 6 that aren't even close to being finished and about half of which still need final touches and edits, but still...that's a lot of freakin' maps!
So currently i'm in the state of pondering on what to do with this lost hobby of mine. Should I just leave it? Or should I keep pressing to regain interest? There are ups and downs for both parts. So what will happen if I do either option?
Well if option A happens then this is what will occur:
I will make an announcement on both here and PPM about my leaving. I will then drop a folder containing all TS:CO maps and a notepad file of what each maps plans where and also the tutorial.ini which won't be very organize sadly because at one time I was using a separate clean of the original TS texts one. In the post with the TS:CO maps will be something along the lines of me giving TS:CO to the community. Meaning there will be no true mod leader for it but that anyone can add their own SP maps and anyone can finish what I had left and make the collection grow and then TS:CO can be updated from time to time with community input maps. Along with that I will send select MP maps to select mods of my choosing for which maps. However, there will be plenty of MP maps to be left for the public to finish. I will of course continue to pop up on the forums...but I will simply become much like Wes. A phantom that appears at times to add random input into the community and what not. The only chance that will get me to make something once again would be a TS OMC which is doubtful.
Option B: Well to be honest...i'm not sure what would happen lol. It's hard to say for this one. However, I know that I will simply finish up any existing works and most likely not start anything new.
Currently I am standing close to the half way mark. I'm not certain on which way I will choose to go. However, I am leaning towards option A. However, after making this post and reviewing my old works and my WIP works and just seeing the shear amount I have of total works and unfinished works it kinda makes me want to stay. So hopefully I can find the motivation to finish up the works.
Phew! What a long post! Took me a few hours to type even! lol
Sorry for the long read but yea....it was more or less something I did for me. It's a reflection of my time spent in this community to remember the times. Perhaps you got something out of it too if you actually read it all. =)
*will add minimaps to ALL released and unfinished works to the exception of the SP TS:CO maps in the next few days*
But hey, congrats for all the time you wasted among us Ixith! 
