Damarr: Hi Zaphod. First, thanks for coming, and please tell our readers a little about yourself.
Zaphod: Well, My real name is David Marsh, I'm going to be 17 in august, soon to be a senior, I live in San Diego, CA, and I pity anyone who lives elsewhere! I started mapping around beta 2. My measurements are 62' 32' 57'.

Damarr: What type of feedback have you gotten from players over Estate and Tundra following the release of Beta 6.5?
Zaphod: Well, soon after the release of 6.5 people started showing up at my house. It's hard to go out in public anymore and I find that I have to wear dark sunglasses and a trench coat. But the women . . . ahh, all I can say is that I'm typing this on my pool-side laptop with 7 beautiful ladies, including Euro*Brew's mom. But seriously, I havent gotten that much feedback, especially about tundra.

Damarr: What gave you the idea for tundra? What was it based on?
Zaphod: as_tundra is actually just a later version of as_desert. I got the idea for desert because I used to like playing cs_desert and I noticed there weren't many outdoor maps floating around. Then I decided it might be fun to add some snow so people could use the terr sno model. It's kinda funny how people think I ripped off as_desert and just added snow when I made them both.

Damarr: How long did it take you to put this map together?
Zaphod: Tundra took me about a month of off and on work about an hour of less a day. About half of that time was working out all the funky brush errors from the out-door geometry.

Damarr: What are your favourite CS maps?
Zaphod: Heh, I really don't get much of a chance to play cs these days but when I do I like to play 747. I think pretty much all of the official maps are pretty fun.

Damarr: Any new features or maps with 6.5 that you particularly like?
Zaphod: I like the new colt and the new sig, theres something sexy about screwing on that long, thick silencer . . . hmmmmmmmm.

Damarr: Do you intend to make more maps for Beta 7/1.0, or are there any already in production?
Zaphod: Right now I'm concentrating on fixing up estate and then I intend to take a little break from mapping and write some more content about mapping. But I'm sure the horrible disease in my blood that is mapping will not stay dormant for long.

Damarr: What inspired you to do a remake of the classic Mansion?
Zaphod: My favorite server I frequent, ApeLint, put mansion in it's rotation and it only took a round to determine that I hated it (sorry you mansion-loving freaks!!!). So I decided I would try to whip up a better looking version and see if they would run that instead, now they run both maps so I'm not sure if I succeded or failed.

Damarr: Do you think that Estate is unbalanced? Some people are complaining that like the original, either the terrorists or CTs dominate the level, with the terrorists camping inside and winning easily , or the CTs use extremely aggresive tactics and the terrorists just can't defend themselves due to how open the house is.
Zaphod: I think that the way the map is layed out it will never consistently play one way or another, but I am introducing some changes that sould balance it out a bit more.

Damarr: I've heard people talk about this ingames; why no light switches in the mansion? : ) Will they be put in later?
Zaphod: The will be a fuse box in the basement that will cut all the downstairs lights, I'm really trying to force the use of nvg's because I think they are awesome and don't get used enough.

Damarr: Are you pleased that even though its only out two weeks now, Estate has become extremely popular among both old and new CS players?
Zaphod: Sure, pretty much all I get out of this mapping stunt is the satisfaction of giving people a place to have fun, so as long as they are enjoying the map, I'm happy too.

Damarr: Thanks for your time Zaphod. It should also be noted that Zaphod has put together a guide over here, on how to avoid the problems usually associated with making a map.