New mappers class?

[JackGriffin]

Instead of these new mappers getting their ass paddled by the veterans it might be nice if one of the elder statesmen here would take some time to help out and offer some guidance. Perhaps make a map that has some not so obvious errors and teach these newer guys what to watch out for.

This run of half-finished, overly simple maps that are getting posted isn't going to help the community. There needs to be a support system that a new mapper can enter into and be comfortable in asking questions and getting guidance. I think it would be great if someone took the lead on this and asked to be the go-to guy for mapper questions. I nominate Nels. (I'm kidding! I'm kidding!)

It will do the community a lot of good if there's a better obvious support system in place for guys who are trying to get their Ued training wheels off. Let them know that they can ask stupid questions and not be made fun of (...ok, maybe a little). Whatever it takes to improve the average level of the posted map projects that have been getting shared. I'm not shitting on new work, I'm instead saying we could help with making it way better.

Or not, and we can all just call each other fuckface and retard. That's fun too.

[PrinceOfFunky]

I'm not shitting on new work, I'm instead saying we could help with making it way better.

If you say so...

I-m not sure of how many new mappers are coming lately, I thought the ones who are publishing maps these months were all relatively old.

[sektor2111]

I-m not sure of how many new mappers are coming lately

If they bring such a crap it's better without them... I want OLD mappers, by the way.
Seriously I have grave design flaws but my maps run smoother even on rig machines and doesn't break (MH chapter is not easy, btw). If you cannot drive a plane stop promising to your friends than you can bring them with a plane on Miami beach.
These mappers are like those saying: I'm writing books but, hey... what is that letter. He/she cannot read or write but speaks about books, seriously this is dumbness not helping.
Simplicity chapter ?
I did a map having... 10 brushes - really playable and challenging. In game it do looks more rich than is in reality. Seriously, any of my trash is way better from all angles.

Editor problems. Edy Goblin is Evil but... is more Evil with less skilled users - rushing with mouse. Let me describe some latest scenarios of mine with Editor. I was using my builders to generate some scripts. I spent there around 5 hours pushing buttons, scrolling map and Copy-Paste log. Do you know what happened later ? I closed Editor because I finished the job. Yeah, no crash, no crap. Now draw your conclusions about Editing and/or using Editor. The true fact is that I'm not even a mapper after all...

[makemeunreal]

I-m not sure of how many new mappers are coming lately

If they bring such a crap it's better without them... I want OLD mappers, by the way.
Seriously I have grave design flaws but my maps run smoother even on rig machines and doesn't break (MH chapter is not easy, btw). If you cannot drive a plane stop promising to your friends than you can bring them with a plane on Miami beach.
These mappers are like those saying: I'm writing books but, hey... what is that letter. He/she cannot read or write but speaks about books, seriously this is dumbness not helping.
Simplicity chapter ?
I did a map having... 10 brushes - really playable and challenging. In game it do looks more rich than is in reality. Seriously, any of my trash is way better from all angles.

Editor problems. Edy Goblin is Evil but... is more Evil with less skilled users - rushing with mouse. Let me describe some latest scenarios of mine with Editor. I was using my builders to generate some scripts. I spent there around 5 hours pushing buttons, scrolling map and Copy-Paste log. Do you know what happened later ? I closed Editor because I finished the job. Yeah, no crash, no crap. Now draw your conclusions about Editing and/or using Editor. The true fact is that I'm not even a mapper after all...

Well. It's a long procedure. None of us born to be a ripped faka, oras a calculus master.



BUT, we could choose to be smart later on, studyin' hard. (As I did)



My editor skill still sucks after all these years, I would still ask a lot on that Newcomer section I mentioned.
It really would do no harsh.

[sektor2111]

Before to keep quoting me constantly you can look well at Barbie's post in that new "map" thread. That's not mapping, is copy-paste. Get your pills if you think this way is the right way.

Spaming removal
I'm happily banning those images and their host because I don't need to look at more imagination spread around.

[makemeunreal]

[JackGriffin]

Well. It's a long procedure. None of us born to be a ripped faka, oras a calculus master.
<questionable images snipped>

WTF is that even supposed to mean? I honestly can't decide if you are retarded or just "in your own way weird" like the rest of us.

I miss the days when we actually discussed things and not every *fucking* thread ends up in strangeland within 7 posts. Hey admins can we get a <serious> tag for posts and have it enforced that your post is sanctioned if it doesn't stay on topic in those threads? There's a reason most of the discussions are moving to Discord and away from the forum. You just have to wade through too much to get at what you want to see. Even BeyondUnreal put their foot down over this and they are crazy tolerant. It's time to start pushing for quality posting because there's too much nonsense/useless crap.

Maybe I'm just getting too old for this and my tolerance is just not what it was. How about someone open a forum for mappers and devs that is serious and maintained? I'd love a place to post what I'm working on and see what others are doing and not have to filter out so much crap to get at the nuggets. That's precisely what makes OldUnreal so good when you need a U227 question answered. Smirf understands the need for overall quality and he attracts a core of the absolute best content creators still active in the original Unreal because of that. Same thing with UnrealSP. The expectation of quality attracts the best mappers still banging around in Ued. This place though is turning into UT's version of FaceBook. There's enough quality content to keep you coming back (the recent engine exploit discussions) but it becomes harder to filter the increasing load of utter crap that goes along with it. For me the balance scale is about to tip away from the juice being worth the squeeze.

[Carbon]

makemeunreal is an odd guy, for sure, but yes, we all are in our own way. I think something pushed mmu over an edge recently and something snapped. I hope he gets back to his old self soon; I saw his work improving and there's potential there for sure and I don't want to see him feel marginalized. He's part of this nutty family.

But yes, this place is generally getting a bit strange. OUR and USP went through some weird times as well, so maybe it's just a phase. I like the idea of a learner mapping section; I think this would go a long way to keeping the forums generally cleaner and focused.

[nogardilaref]

Well, honestly, I don't think that there's a need for there to be this split.
Not only you don't see this kind of separation anywhere (even in places like DeviantArt), it presumes a newbie mapper to be worse than a veteran one.

As a software developer myself, I have also my own team of developers, and they are mostly seniors by now, and I do prefer seniors for obvious reasons.
But I already had seniors which were so laughably incompetent at the job, that I would rather have a junior do it.
On the other hand, I had juniors who had zero knowledge about the programming language we used and our practices, yet in the span of just a month was writing code with the quality expected from a senior, which was awesome.

It all goes down to competence and humbleness.
No matter how good you think you are, there's always someone a lot better than you. Always.

Therefore, a new map from a newbie could be the expected "garbage" of the kind we all did once upon a time when we were newbies ourselves, or could be a true form of art into itself, or at least have a very interesting concept, you never know.
But the crucial part of all of this is how willing is the author of such work to be honestly criticized by others.
If they accept the criticism they're given (and note that accepting != agreeing), and work towards improving oneself, whether or not they're "juniors" or "seniors", people will feel attracted in helping you out and watch you grow.

So it doesn't really matter if someone is new or not, just post the work and do not be afraid of bad criticism, learn and grow with it instead, because the rest of the world isn't much nicer than this either, so you better start getting used to it.
True honest criticism, highlighting both the good and bad parts of any work is still the best compliment one can receive, since for such a criticism to be formed, that person had to look closely into that work, had to give some of his/her attention to what you did.
Of course, some will still be harsh and highlighting only the bad things in the most crass way possible, but because they're harsh with everyone since they have quite an ego and sense of elite themselves, but that's about it.

Now if a newbie comes thinking we ought him/her attention from the start, only because "UT lacks mappers", oh boy, be prepared to get more than criticism, and that kind of attitude acts like a shield for incoming information about how to improve oneself, so that person will never improve anyway and we're all better off without them.

Having that said, folks like Jake19 started with the wrong foot, so if he's willing to start over and reflect on this, and put his own ego aside, I think most of us (me included) are more than willing to keep providing honest feedback and how he can improve things, so he can even be more proud of himself of achieving higher heights.
It's completely up to him, and any newcomer which comes along.

[Chamberly]

I'm all for posting the requisite education for new mappers to be aware of and follow important instructions.

Even though we do have plenty of sources laying around, scattered and some are not very good at researching to gain the knowledge or some just want the bare minimum that would do just enough harm.

[Tyr]

I would love to see a consolidated knowledge base about mapping instead of scattered information around the web with more than 50% dead links.

[Terraniux]

Willing to apply, but I am not perfect as well . I still suck at bothpathing and other things. But I have a pretty big portfolio.
My MH tutorial will include all of this.

If I may, let me suggest Smeerkat as a candidate as well He is a native English speaker, knows his stuff, and is a calming / relaxed guy.
Not to put him up to work or something, but he can explain everything like well. I can do it too, but I ain't that crystal clear because I aint a native English speaker.

Another idea that hit me (as well), is that by any new registration or mapping topics you should be noted about about the current tutorials that exists.
Also that you should be aware of any commentary, whether good and bad. And how to deal with that.

On my current to do list

MH - Tutorial for beginners and advanced
4096 compilation
Assault tutorials
More mapping creation tutorials
- Learning bothpathing. ( Yes Nelsona I will learn it 1 day )

ok im back to work. let me know what your think about this.

[sektor2111]

- Learning bothpathing. ( Yes Nelsona I will learn it 1 day )

There is a small secret there: This stuff is easy with the right GURU. I advice you to ask Higor politely on a private chat with you using screen sharing or whatever methods. He speaks english more properly so he can explain what's the deal and if exist a magic or a logic in this chapter - you'll be surprised to see how easy can be dealing with simple fields if you can understand that life form with no blood called Pawn. A lot more simple than fixing a badly messed up geometry.
You don't have to be worried, I'm still experimenting myself new methods, trying to figure all new power which XCGE might offer to its user.

[Terraniux]

- Learning bothpathing. ( Yes Nelsona I will learn it 1 day )

There is a small secret there: This stuff is easy with the right GURU. I advice you to ask Higor politely on a private chat with you using screen sharing or whatever methods. He speaks english more properly so he can explain what's the deal and if exist a magic or a logic in this chapter - you'll be surprised to see how easy can be dealing with simple fields if you can understand that life form with no blood called Pawn. A lot more simple than fixing a badly messed up geometry.
You don't have to be worried, I'm still experimenting myself new methods, trying to figure all new power which XCGE might offer to its user.

Roger that. Help me remembering this. Thank you!

[Kajgue]

I think saying that new mappers should simply stay away from mapping on any platform is pretty unhelpful for their communities, not only that but the development tools (Ued, etc) are not meant to be exclusive. I think that MMU just means that a novice mapper couldn't reach the skill or experience without practice and/or constructive criticism.

I also think that everybody should be entitled to fulfill their ideas.