Swanky wrote:The UT community has a pretty great archive right now actually. Pretty much everything has been preserved. Issue is sifting through all those files to actually find the good ones.
Of content created, not for content creation. We're talking past each other here. I'm not scoffing at those who spent time learning and improving to put quality in their work, quite the opposite. I'm saying they weren't given
proper credit for it. I never said there isn't good content to be found, I managed to collect a great amount of them thoughtout the years, I said there's no recognition in the time, thought and effort put into it reason why you
have to sift through 20k plus files to look for it. I'd rather be here goshing about my favorite community made maps than being seen with bad eyes for stating the obvious.
How many more of those 20k maps could've been great if there was more material available and incentive for content creation and how many more people would be playing them if they knew a little more about the subject? How many people here are left able to give the same feedback you gave me and how many could've been if there were threads on it? I'm not talking killing creativity, but give knowledgeable support to aid its flow (pretty much what you're doing), and as you know, to break rules you must first know them. nor I'm saying people should be forced to learn level design. Nobody was forced to learn uscript, but through community effort and support a lot of people got engaged and interested in. I'm also just griefing the past here rather than hoping for a future.
All I'm really saying is that the lack of content on the subject plus the pouring out of poor quality content that not only obscures the rest but reduces the desirability of the community for more content and appreciation for what's already available. Of course I'm not condemning those who only maps/mapped for fun, but when that's pretty all what's expected, you kill all the incentive for those who really what to get into it and the ability of the commuty as a whole to evaluate and give support to what's being done. Your surprise in seeing someone actually wanting some feedback instead of some taps on the back tells everything about it.
Swanky wrote:And with regular mapping contests I think UT also gets a good amount of maps even to this day.
I read all about the last contest, including the drama of the aftermath, which ties with what I'm trying to say.
Swanky wrote:And I think that back in 2005 when we originally released the FoT mappacks UT was really healthy for its age.
It's been 14 years and you pretty much can only count on the same names to come up of something good consistently. You're drawing the picture of a thriving mapping community when what I see is a handful of people, mostly close friends, doing all the work while the community itself is oblivious to what takes to make a good map and give support when it's needed.
Swanky wrote:Quake 3 had been on a slow decline mapping wise (can't think of that many good community maps for Q3 in general) and CS was played on mainly the same maps for the past two decades or so. So online map rotation isn't that
good an indicator on how many good maps are actually being made. Servers usually load what is most fun. With exceptions, of course.
What would be the UT equivalent of Aerowalk and Bloodrun, not in quality, but playtime? Aren't the maps in quakelive mostly community made mixed with some remakes and exclusives?
Not big on CS although I played some TacticalOps back in the day. CS suffered pretty much the same problem: A lot of maps being poured out, very few well thought out, people stuck with what they new, specially the clans that only cared about competition, not the community.
I hope we're in the same page now. I'm not talking about quality, specially when these come usually from the same authors, I'm talking about community support for mapping throughout the years that couldn't manage to get more people engaged or show awareness and appreciation for what has been made.
Also, I'm not requesting anything for myself at this point, I'm sharing my view on what I could get from the community towards mapping, and I'm not alone on that. I'm sure you had a complete different experience, but not everyone can count on personal friends for feedback. If you weren't here, who would be willing and capable of doing it? I see people with good heart, good intentions and of different areas and skills filling the void, but for mapping in general, it has always been this way. I'm not trying to find culprits either nor blaming anyone here for liking what they like and for doing what they do and keeping alive a community I've not even been part of or done something for.
Swanky wrote:That's actually a pretty easy request. Basically, the bigger and longer your line through one or multiple running and / or undivided polys may cause cuts. The bigger the cut the heftier the chance for holes and flickering.
The amount of nodes may also be an indicator. You actually have a good amount of control over it (by manually placing solids into the cut so it gets forced to recalculate) and you can also force BSP optimization through the build all menu where you can change calculation values and prioritization of cuts vs portals and such. This is also one of the few instances where a tutorial (by Hourences) was actually preserved. Click!
I downloaded his tutorials few years ago together in a 120mb pack when it was available in the forum. Very handy stuff
I enjoy doing edits and fixes I'd say sometimes more than creating my own and it gets harder when you can't change the geometry, but I'm talking of how the occlusion tree is formed, sometimes mixing surfaces
of different rooms, of different sides and angles, making it impossible to make a proper occlusion for rendering. And by flickering I meant those desappearing textures due to the fact the render engine thinks it's no longer on screen, which are quite common and can be seen occuring even in very high quality maps. It would've been nice if there were guides on these limitations before people started designing their rooms and arenas. I'm sure thousands of maps were scrapped after days or months of work because of things that could've been prevented if they had access.