Hey!! Welcome to the Commnuity.
I checked out your map the other day and considering you have only been mapping a short time... well done! The truth is that depending on what your personal goals are, mapping takes a LONG time to learn, and a LONG time to make anything decent. Depending on your background there may also be other skills outside of hammer than need to be learned, gimp/photoshop for texturing, modeling with Max, maya or blender, sound editing etc etc.
Im sorry to say it but there is a bit of a saturation of fairly average, bland urbany-industrialy-dusty(!) defuse maps out there now, its not like we need anymore. Thats not to say these maps are bad, not at all, often they have been mapped perfectly adequatly, work fine etc etc but are just a little uninspired, and kinda forgettable and interchangable.
There are definitely some mappers out there exploring more interesting themes and concepts but often they dont have the time/skill and/or resources to really do justice to their ideas... unfortuneatly the more "experimental" projects often take alot more time and effort than maps that are just the next group of boxy-warehouses and industrial sites in the infinitely explanding urban-industrial warzone of CSS. What is very rare are maps that have a great concept AND have the time and experience needed to produce a polished work, here is one good example of this:
http://gamebanana.com/css/maps/65487
Nice concept and amazing assets.
One good way to try and avoid the above problem is rather than making full-sized de and cs maps, concentrate more on making smaller, gg, fy, aim style maps. A few years ago 90% of gg maps were just dev-texture boxes or Mario-style maps... the last couple of years I have been seeing more and more interesting gg maps.
The advantage of course is size, gg maps can be very small, small or medium in size and its often a very good way to explore a concept or idea without needing to make a full map. I really recommend it as a way of exploring ideas, whether its texturing ideas, or layouts, or models or themes or whatever.
The other good thing about gg-type maps is that the gameplay style means that these maps dont need so much high level detail. GG is much faster than de or cs and player generally has alot less time to look about them, so small details are nothing but noise or a distraction. A gg or fy map is usually presented as a whole (normally most of the map is visible most of the time) so if your overall concept creates a good asthetic then that should be enough in itself to sustain the interest of the player without needing to add too much smaller detailing.
Making smaller maps like this means that you can make something interesing and impressive that catches the players attention and imagination without needing to spend 6 months or a year making it. A couple of years ago I wanted to try out a little idea for fun to see how it worked and what people thought of it so I made 2 maps (gg and awp) and I think the whole project took me a little over 2 weeks. Whereas a full map normally takes me a year.
(If you're interested btw, here is the link:)
http://gamebanana.com/css/maps/151170
Unfortuneatly I never did find out what people thought, i think it was the most ignored submission ever posted on GB!! :)
Anyway, whichever route you choose to go, I look forward to seeing your future work.
Gmaps.
g-maps@hotmail.com
