Sun, Oct 22, 2017 by doppel

In honor of this week's map, Kalinka, we took some time to ask Jusa a few questions (Thanks Jusa!):

Kalinka is the name of a rather famous Russian folk song and often associated with the soviets here in Finland, so thats where the name comes from. The map was first called cp_cccp (USSR in Russian) as a wip name but that was a bit silly and confusing, so I changed it to Kalinka, which I bet is much more memorable as a name.

I wanted to create a map that was set in the TF2 universes Soviet Russia and really wanted to work with 5cp having done Koth and A/D before. Thats where I started to build from.

It's really hard to estimate how many hours I've put into it since mapping is something I enjoy a lot, and when you really enjoy the work you do you, don't have to keep staring at the clock. I'd say the number of hours is still in the hundreds.

Figuring out a neat mid was a bit challenging and took a few iterations, I think I had 3 completely different versions of mid in total. Also my limited knowledge of how 6s works in the begining of the project really added some challenges later on.

As usual, Kalinka had rather limited amount of feedback for it during the very first versions, which is kind of a shame since thats when the feedback is most valuable. Mid was propably changed most drasticly. That being said, I got some really great feedback and insight into the way 6s works from a person more knowledged with the level design theory behind good 6s maps.

It's hard to say. Not many huge layout changes are a good idea at this point (since I had to go through detailing quite a bit already to get Kalinka into my portfolio last summer) but I will always do my best to change what ever players think need changing.

Currently Kalinka is my only active project. I took a break from TF2 mapping during the summer and had a level design internship. I did work on cp_Hadal with Fubar (maker of cp_Vanguard) and that map turned out pretty neat. Not really a 6s map but maybe the HL leagues could give it another shot as a steel type A/D.

Any thoughts and comments are welcome, whether you like Kalinka or hate it from the bottom of your heart, make sure to let me know in the thread here at UGC forums [cp_kalinka] or any of the other threads listed there.