Well, here we go. This is I Can't Believe It's Not Total Carnage, the only map I contributed to Eternal. I suppose I'll share the story of its creation.
I spent a very long time starting this map. I have at least 5 aborted beginnings for this map, and I didn't work on it too much until mid-July. That's a chronic problem I have with mapmaking - I can never get started. When I did start it, however, the first area I constructed was the first area of the map. I wasn't completely sure where it was going. I was thinking about making the player find some way into the third room (the door to which refuses to open) in order to open the bigger door to the next area, but that idea fell apart when I couldn't think of any good way to incorporate any sort of vent system.
Once I worked all that out, it took me a while to get started on the next area. One thing I thought of (I thought of alot of things which aren't in there, didn't I?) was having the player spend most of the map going around the large area with the power distributor, and then finally gaining entrance. The player would then go to the other side, do something to deactivate the distributor, and the entire level would be nearly pitch black. The player would then need to find his way to a newly opened area or something, and the level would be repopulated. But that wasn't how it turned out. The first thing I made was the area directly outside the first area (the one with the paths to the stairs and the elevator), and from there I made the stairs. Again, I was very unsure what would result, but once I made the area at the top of the stairs I knew, and then I made the big distributor room. The switch and health recharger in this area, by the way, make no noise - very irritating, especially for me.
After this I was again stumped as to what would be next. After several false starts I created the area at the bottom of the elevator. Here I tried to give a sort of realistic touch to the level - I placed a locked door in a corner, suggesting that this was a junction between areas, and also a sort of excuse for the presence of the sewer access (because the most accessable place for a sewer access would be at a junction between areas - that way each area only needs one...if you get what I mean...no, it doesn't make too much sense to me now either). I had a sudden inspiration when making the area at the top of the stairs and created the large access tunnel where juggernauts were lined up.
Ah, now onto the sewers. As a few of you may know, this architecture is lifted directly from my map Shake Before Use in Ellio7t's "Where Angels Fear to Tread." The architecture in THAT map was inspired quite a bit by "Tilo's First Solo Map." I remember some comments I had recieved from Goran much earlier about Shake Before Use telling me that the sewers were too bland. So, I tried to spice them up by adding the long lights and sewagefalls. There were orignally drones coming down from the sewagefalls, but that wasn't working out. In the area with the wires down here I spent a while trying to make the door with the wires behind it stand out - please tell me if I achieved this. I also placed the wires directly underneath the large door that smashing them opens, so you can, I believe, hear the door opening once you smash them.
Originally I had about 13 Major Invisible Compilers in the distributor, but my brother complained (:-P). A big problem here is that it's very hard to hit anything on the ledges around the distributor - I overlooked this when making it. From here on out are my least favorite parts of the level - the parts that were rushed. The deadline was drawing near and I was eager to finish it. To get the player to where I wanted them to be I made the dead-end sewer with the maintenance terminal. The terminal teleports the player to an area overlooking the distributor room. There's a big glaring mistake in this room - the light shines on the floor and ceiling, but the wall it should be shining on is as dark as the rest of the room. Open the door and jump down into another area looking onto the access tunnel filled with juggernauts - one of the juggernauts should be active now. I have no idea how that happened, but I didn't even notice it for quite a while. The terminals in here are also quite hard to activate. There's a switch in here opening the door to the next area. One problem I have with the upcoming room is that you can't just jump down into the next area - you have to wait for the platform to carry you back up and back down before you can progress. In the elevated tunnel I originally planned for the switch to open the big door you can see - poly limitations kept that from happening though.
In here is one of the stupidest things in the level - a MOAH that's stuck. I had this problem with the MOAH in the first room looking onto the access tunnel, but I fixed that. For some reason I didn't do anything about this. The final room, as you can tell, is a major rush job. Once you smash the wires you can return to a terminal and be teleported back to the first area - and now the door into the third room will open. In there you'll be ambushed by a horde of enemies - I was in an evil mood :-P. And that's...the end. I've heard plenty of praise for this map, but I don't really understand why - I personally don't like it too much.
