So I've spent the last few days drooling over Crysis videos and screenshots.  I cannot wait to play that game or get into its level editor!  Anyways, I finally get the urge to do some jungle slaughtering so I pop in my FarCry discs and start installing the game again.  I recently reformatted my PC because Windows doesn't like me replacing motherboards like they're hot-swappable devices (weird huh).  But that's for another post.

Once FarCry was installed I patched it with the latest updates, and that's when it hit me.  Shit!  I didn't backup any of my FarCry maps that I created!  I backed up everything else before the reinstall but not those damn maps.  Oh I was pissed.  I spent literally hundreds of hours making some awesome maps (both single player and multiplayer), but never got around to finishing them.  I had this awesome mp map that took place on an oil rig, and a string of sp maps that included huge mountains, underground bases, and even a massive earth mover.

But those are all gone now, except for one.  My first mp map that I created, finished, and published online.  It's called 'MP_to_trade' or 'MP_trade' (screenshot above).  The FarCry community seemed to enjoy it.  So much so in fact that it was eventually put into the Unofficial FarCry Tournament Map Pack.  I'm still thrilled to see this map out there and freely available to download.

So I downloaded that map pack and installed it.  Got online and immediately created a server with my map running on it.  It was great fun and brought back some good memories.  Memories of me staying up until the wee hours of the morning, contacts permanently stuck to my eyeballs, and bladder ready to explode.  Sweet memories.

But that was one of the coolest things about FarCry was its level editor called Sandbox.  I never used such a simple and fun level editor since Duke Nukem 3D's Build editor.  You could literally just draw the terrain, paint textures and vegetation, and drag and drop items onto the map.

Actually the Sandbox and Build editors had something in common that made them fun and easy to use - you could immediately jump into the level and try it out.  I could build a room or area of the map, put some enemies and items in it, then just hit a button and BOOM, I was in the game and could walk around, shoot things, etc.  You cannot do that with most other level editors, and that's the thing that turns me off about most of them.  The fact that in order to test your map you first have to build some of it in the editor, then your have to compile it, then save it, then load up the actual game, then finally load your level into the game.  I mean, we could be looking at a 5 minute span between just editing your level or making a minor change and trying it out.  That just wouldn't work for me.

But the Crysis level editor looks to be just like Sandbox.  I can just simply throw together a quick little area of the map, then immediately test it out.  So I cannot wait to get into it and start messing around.  Oh god, here come the late nights again.