Community log #2: That was a hell of a road…

Before starting this, I wanted to apologize for the delay. You are probably asking “Why say sorry, if it wasn’t promised?”. Originally, Community log #2 was supposed to appear in September, a week after the first Community log (published on Discord– will be shared at the end of this article), but due to many changes and preparations for the HAMMER MONTH II, I had to cancel it.

Originally the concept for Community log #2 was to show you the roadmap for this year, as well as that new admins have new ideas and plans for this year and potential plans for the future. The roadmap was supposed to show history of what happened before reorganization, during what I dub the “Great TF2C competitive depression and bot spam” era. Although original community log was scrapped, image of the roadmap and future plans was not! I can show you the unfinished roadmap here, if you are curious, look below at what month this roadmap was supposed to be shown.

Some things that I can say from the scrapped idea that still hold true are:
1. We still have ideas for next events, that is not a Hammer Month. Take a note on blurred text on roadmap.
2. We are thinking to do this event this year. However, we cannot guarantee it.

I hope despite the original log not being finished and eventually being cancelled, the material above can still do the job.
Now let’s talk about the second topic: Behind the scenes of preparing the HAMMER MONTH II.

“Oh man, where to start…”

The idea for HAMMER MONTH II has begun with Nova suggesting to do a Hammer Month again. After a brief talk with them, I took the idea to Jaws and asked him if TF2C Mapping Community (“CMC” as we call them) wants to do another Hammer Month again, after a one year break and the Steam release. Eventually we agreed to organize the HAMMER MONTH II in October/November (23-24, 30-31 Oct and 6-7 Nov) with no objection from the other admins in TF2C Competitive community.

Güven despite stepping out of administration took part in helping to organize this (and thank God for him– without him this event would never happen). He also suggested to keep the name of the original event and just add the “II”. First thing he taught me was how to set deadlines and planning for this event in admins’ internal tools. Second was how to communicate to reach to an agreement with the Mapping Community and EMINOMA, about posters, announcements and a schedule of when announcements will appear. Last lesson was to split tasks between staff members and oversee it… (on which I failed it hard from start to end, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves).

First thing was to choose maps for the HAMMER MONTH II. Event was organized BEFORE the end of the Art Pass Contest, so I chose the maps for this event (all CMC mappers who were not happy that their maps weren’t chosen– you know to whom send Spies and Snipers). All maps I chose were the most popular on CMC Discord at that time, so I didn’t dive deeper in all the maps, with two exceptions: vip_duumvirate and vip_marbles.

Marbles was considered due to its “close miss” in the previous HAMMER MONTH. The idea was to finally show this map, but unfortunately sandwich had already abandoned it.
Duumvirate was considered thanks to being a “certified hood classic” in TF2C Competitive in the past. I chose to not include this one to focus on other, fresh maps rather than the old ones.

After that, I asked Jaws to invite other admins from CMC to confirm the map pool and for the rest of the organizing process. And this is the part where the original plan falls apart…

Initially we experienced the SFM problem that made it very difficult for dekrzz to make a banner, which forced us to take in-game screenshots. But this was nothing compared to the next item– “me”. More specifically, the list of habits and situations below.

1. Lack of organization skills in online projects, made by people form a vast array of countries.
2. Lack of communication from my side and being scared of pushing people around (to avoid being received as a not-nice person).
3. Mainly as a result of #2, being a “one-man-army”.
4. Having too much on my head. Everything was during the start my second-year studies.

Lack of communication and following-up from my side, carried over all initial problems until the end. I delegated tasks clearly to staff members, but then left them alone. When 3 days were remaining before the original announcement date, almost nothing was done. No finished promo image, no video promotion, no communication with CMC admins, no prepared announcement and article, no official map pool (I was the only one who tested the maps). I was improvising then.

During this time, I decided to crunch it in the next few days to finish it myself, but Güven intervened to state a few things. Firstly, he thought I was too proud to ask for help (to which I replied what my main reason was when solo-lifting this– see #2 in the list above). Secondly, he told me that I could just move event date for a few weeks, which we ended up doing, and then everybody helped me organize this mess I created.

First thing Güven suggested for the process was to ask for help testing and choosing the maps for the pool. For this our consultant Ta5K and moderator elektro were asked, which eventually provided a lot of insight full with serious competitive experience. I also asked Voodoo People to help me make the map pool, due to having bigger experience on CMC and its custom maps.

After testing the suggested/reviewed maps, I made the official map pool and gave directions to each member what they need to do. First thing for the admins was to invite the map makers to join our Discord server for this event (that’s when I and Xinayder realized that 4 of 6 maps in the pool were created by Orizyre!)

Now the rest should be easy, right? Well, maybe on the outside, but not inside me, related to debates over the working “philosophy”.
I gave a shot at the event/article banner. It didn’t start as something serious, but eventually evolved into a good shot of Engineer on koth_pitfall, and was liked by the team. However, this received a good scolding from Güven, who, despite really liking the banner, thought that the initial nature and intent of this non-serious effort should’ve been communicated better with the staff member who was already appointed to make the banner and actually did one, partially.
Another criticism came when I tried to finish the image and the article at the same time (usual “one-man-army” habit), which resulted in me patching the first line of text over Xinayder’s edit, then dekrzz patching the dates and the map pool onto that, producing an image having different text fonts, styles and colors, credited to 3 separate persons. I think it has its own charm though…

After all was done (banner, article, map pool, promo video, stakeholders being involved and informed), last thing was to make a coordinated Discord announcement together with CMC, and unfortunately I wasn’t at home at the time. So, part of writing and organizing this fell upon Xinayder, but after a brief involvement by my side, it was managed. It had a day of delay on it, and maybe the lesson learnt here is how to anticipate and deal with nobody taking the responsibility of an action (like the big event announcement, in this case) in your absence.

Man, that was a hell of a road… Not only I created and managed (doubtfully) it, but also it was my biggest test, on how competent person I am, and the biggest life lesson I received. I made many mistakes and I could almost have messed it up or ruined it, and in the end, if it hadn’t been for the help of my friends, we wouldn’t have been able to present HAMMER MONTH II to you.

Thank you for reading this wall of text, and until next time.

Reactions

A cookie will be set in your browser upon reacting.

0

0

2

2 Comments

Güven

It's a modest take on the organization of HMII and his personal capabilities by kotowski, and too much credit to me, and I think the hardships and the temporary congestions he mentions in the article are only natural to almost every process, and very much expected as part of the learning for any new administration. If anything, as a true son of the community since its very first months, as far as my humble observation goes, he shows full responsibility, ownership, and isn't afraid to punch his way through all these hardships, which are far more valuable and rare qualities to come across.

Nov 6, 2026

Vooglet

It's Hammer time!

Nov 6, 2026