The Big Secret Project

Okay... this one is hopefully dropping soon, and partially the reason I haven't plugged a ton in here lately. This project has been in the works for awhile, and after this past weekends secret test, we're getting ready for release.

Introducing... Trainsawlaser.

Yes, after 13 years, we're doing it. Trainsawlaser is being reborn into a fully polished, fully detailed, ready for Scream Fortress map. I've been lucky to bring on Void, known for Boardwalk, Mannhole, Megaton, Atom Smash, Sandcastle, Slasher, Monster Bash, and like, a TON of other work in the game, to fully artpass the map. We've also completely re-recorded all voice lines, working with my bandmate Ben (UEAKSpearmint on the discord/ testing server), to modernize and redo all of it. Plus, y'know, keep it a little more PG-13 than it was before.

The scope of the project is slightly slimmed down from the base version, we have decided to remove the bosses from the map, as the scope creep was creepin' and we feel like it's more suited to casual game play without them. We did however maintain the kill counter and every 100 kills still plays a unique line and spawns spells into the map. The kill counter has also been brought into the modern age with vscript integration, allowing us to have a lot more control of it, and do some fun stuff like have unique lines for a dead ringer spy trying to trick he-who-sees-all, among other things.

Void has been working to give the map an artpass worthy of it's time frame, shooting for an industrial desert train yard, going for old-school TF2 aesthetics to match the old-school shenanigans of the map. So far he's been killing it, and he's just wrapping up the final sections of the map.

We also brought back on FissionMetroid, the original Particle Guy I've been working with since Trainsawlaser and Wubwubwub were first born. He's always been a part of my goofy ideas, so I'm happy we were able to bring him back. He's completely redone all the laser particles, and included some other fun stuff we've thought of over the years.

Screenshots are from our previous test, an incomplete version that we wanted to test functionality with.

I have been super excited to bring this map into the modern era, as it has always been a massive marker in my mapping career, being probably the first "successful" map I had ever made, which catapulted my notoriety in the community and allowed me to get involved in a number of big events, like playing the map on Tip of the Hats with Star and Jerma, for example. I'm sure there's some of you who have been keeping at least a loose eye on my career that only first learned of me around then! You could say this entire thing has been built on the back of Trainsawlaser and the like!

Keep an eye out for more on this VERY soon, we're hoping to hit the workshop ASAP to meet this years deadlines.

Side note, if you haven't voted for Blocked Event on the workshop yet, that is available and could use the boost. There's been some bad actors downvoting anything new lately, and it's made it struggle to stay on the front page.