. I could have used all the original geometry and lighting from the Epic maps since the rooms that I'm using are very close to the originals, but I am creating everything from scratch because I want it to feel very close to the original but still have a bit of my mapping in it 
.To be honest I should probably have taken most of the old brushes and just changed up some little things, that would have been much quicker and I would have had more chances of making it in time for the deadline, but I am having much more fun this way
. Since the map is going to be much bigger than Bluff I also need to have cleaner brushwork to avoid BSP errors, and some of the old Epic maps have a lot of off-grid brushes and weird semisolids.@Frag Thanks man, but I doubt I'll be able to make it in time even for the second deadline... I'll give it my best though
As for the cheese, in the last couple of years I've started using this approach of completely forgetting texturing and lighting until most of the architecture is done. The visual part of the map has always been my weak spot, and my old maps were generally composed of square rooms crammed with all sorts of trims and pillars.
With this approach I'm forced to think more about "real" architecture, which means caring more about the basic shapes of the rooms and walkways rather than just taking cubes and filling them with trims, and this cheese approach really helps a lot with this since trims don't help visuals at all when everything has the same texture.
Just my freakin luck! 
and yes, I checked both this and the one I play at...
)