25th Anniversary of Unreal Tournament

[Feralidragon]

Are you talking about Fudgonaut,Qjitro or rather me?

It's of course about you.
Who else is bringing a completely unrelated issue about said game to a topic that has nothing to do with it?

Especially when warned more than a couple of times already.

[UnrealGGecko]

@gamerz31w one more Jazz post from you outside your thread and you're banned, NO MORE WARNINGS!

Back to topic: Yea 2 years might be too long, but then again, I'm soooo slowwwww regarding mapping, it might still not be enough for me.
IF I find time, I might have an idea with Darji16, but I'm curious if there's anything that can be done with CTF-Kosov

[gamerz31w]

Oops sorry my bad. In that case let's discuss just only about Unreal Tournament videogame series. From now on.

[fudgonaut]

but then I made the math and started to wonder why we're talking about this 2+ years prior, seems a bit premature.
...
I am quite sure that most people may only do something about it maybe 6 months to a year before the actual anniversary, whereas most projects being suggested here are likely to never see the light of day.
...
I don't see many people being able to stick with the plan for that long.

I was in the industry for 15 years and worked on 22 titles. I went from QA tester to designer to producer and witnessed every aspect of production. If there's one thing I've learned is that there's no such thing as starting a project too early.

In this case everybody is an unpaid volunteer, doing it for the love of the game. People with families, jobs, other real-life obligations — all of which take priority over this. To make content worthy of a 25th anniversary, I don't think two years is too long at all. Real-life circumstances may force people to bow out — then there is enough time for someone else to pick up their work & complete it. Or if the project finished ahead of the Anniversary date, there's nothing wrong with that.

You are a well-established & highly regarded member of this community and your opinions have impact. When you post things like this, it works against the enthusiasm & commitment I am trying to generate here. I politely & respectfully aks you to refrain from doing so, or share any further concerns or criticisms via PM instead.

Thank you for your understanding!

[gamerz31w]

but then I made the math and started to wonder why we're talking about this 2+ years prior, seems a bit premature.
...
I am quite sure that most people may only do something about it maybe 6 months to a year before the actual anniversary, whereas most projects being suggested here are likely to never see the light of day.
...
I don't see many people being able to stick with the plan for that long.

I was in the industry for 15 years and worked on 22 titles. I went from QA tester to designer to producer and witnessed every aspect of production. If there's one thing I've learned is that there's no such thing as starting a project too early.

In this case everybody is an unpaid volunteer, doing it for the love of the game. People with families, jobs, other real-life obligations — all of which take priority over this. To make content worth of a 25th anniversary, I don't think two years is too long at all. Real-life circumstances may force people to bow out — then there is enough time for someone else to pick up their work & complete it. Or if the project finished ahead of the Anniversary date, there's nothing wrong with that.

You are a well-established & highly regarded member of this community and your opinions have impact. When you post things like this, it works against the enthusiasm & commitment I am trying to generate here. I politely & respectfully aks you to refrain from doing so, or share any further concerns or criticisms via PM instead.

Thank you for your understanding!

Were you involved in original Unreal Tournament?

[Feralidragon]

Spoiler

I have also been around for many many years, and while I don't actually work in the game industry itself, I have been a tech lead for around 12 years now (and I am sort of a product owner too now as well), and created plenty of tech that serves several millions of users every day and granted the company I work for millions in revenue, so I also have made plenty of projects and I have seen how projects come along, and how they run their course, and I have seen the opposite: that committing a huge amount of time to a single project doesn't mean it will actually get finished at all, or have any quality, or even be relevant by the time it's released, and it actually often doesn't.

But this only means that there are different perspectives on the same thing, with different results, which is to say that you cannot use your own individual perspective alone as a basis to understand when it's actually too soon or too late (just like I cannot use mine), because perspectives and experiences differ.

So rather than respectfully asking for me to refrain from giving my own opinion, I would have preferred if you just offered your counter point on why doing something like this so soon is objectively better, because you might have a point and a strong case, and even examples, on why this is such a good idea to do now, enough to convince everyone that I am "wrong", and I would be perfectly fine with that (even because I too would prefer this to work out).

In my own experience, it's very easy to be excited to build something, sometimes years in advance, only to be met with frustration when the passion burns out completely on people, or/and the project itself becomes irrelevant over time.
Meaning that all that time you supposedly have to be able to deliver something, actually ends up working against yourself because it just gets super tiring without being necessarily worthwhile by the end of it.

I didn't say what I said to demotivate people, but rather to adjust their expectations and rethink what they really want to do, because I am trying to be realistic here, given that I have already seen plenty of projects being born in this very forum over the last 15 years (I believe?), and I have seen that it doesn't actually take very long for people to be burnt out and demotivated, and jump out, yielding worse results overall in relation to people having a more limited time span to dedicate to a project.

So, generally speaking, in such projects (especially concerning UT99), we get far more motivated people and widely better results if the projects are kept on a tighter schedule, with a fixed release date that can actually be foreseen.
This is why things like community map packs have been working relatively well every year, by having around 3 to 6 months as a timeframe for people to produce something (even though they can work better and planned more in advance in those cases).

Anything any longer than that and the likelihood of the projects even getting finished decreases by a whole lot.
And there's no shortage of examples of long term projects failing exactly over being "long term".

So my words there are meant more as an advice and a warning for you guys to think more about, based on what I have seen thus far, because a community setting is not the same as a professional setting.

Having that said, however, I will give you this:

You are a well-established & highly regarded member of this community and your opinions have impact. When you post things like this, it works against the enthusiasm & commitment I am trying to generate here. I politely & respectfully aks you to refrain from doing so, or share any further concerns or criticisms via PM instead.

Thank you for your understanding!

I have heard this exact thing, in the same exact sense of the word, from my own boss, early this year (just replace "community" by "company" and it's almost word for word).

I fully understand your sentiment and what you mean to say, but I also don't agree that my word has such a strong impact as some may claim to say, because I have already said far more "controversial" things with next to no impact on people's own opinions of something.

I even doubt that what I said is going to actually be read by most (my texts tend to be large after all, making them skipped most of the time), and even those who read will likely still commit anyway if everyone else is committing too, either now or in the future if this project is still alive by then.

But, because this is not the first time I have been told this directly, and within the same year on top of it, I will respect your request and do exactly what you asked, not only here but in other similar topics that may arise.
What I posted above is the last where I expressed my true opinion on this sort of topic (even put it in a spoiler), that is of course only when my own opinion doesn't match the portrayed enthusiasm.

It's not my intent to rain on anyone's parade.

[fudgonaut]

I even doubt that what I said is going to actually be read by most

Well I for one, read and give weight to your posts

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, you raise many valid points and I by no means want to quash your opinon. If you (or anyone) ever wants to start a separate topic about the joys & agony of software/game development, it would probably make for some interesting discussion and perspectives!

[Neon_Knight]

Looks like the winning idea here is taking "unpopular" official maps and trying to improve/facelift them.

Which I'm definitely interested in seeing. So long as nobody proposes the obvious choices, lol!

[fudgonaut]

Looks like the winning idea here is taking "unpopular" official maps and trying to improve/facelift them.

Which I'm definitely interested in seeing. So long as nobody proposes the obvious choices, lol!

Which maps would players most like to see re-imagined, maybe the mods could set up a poll? Maybe I can figure out how to set up a poll on Goolge docs...

[TankBeef]

I will be honest. I do not feel too much enthusiasm about map remakes. But who knows.

Here is main reason why:

https://utcc.unrealpugs.com/rulesets/99 ... s?tab=view

These are mostly (not all) remakes by MoxNix for the pre-alpha. They may look "beautiful", until you start playing them. Then you get that feeling that "something is not right". The gameplay definitely feels "off". Try them and you will see what I mean. So...I don't know...

[Feralidragon]

Perhaps a better way to imagine the kind of expected outcome is by checking existing remakes like this one:
https://www.mapraider.com/maps/unreal-t ... -Face-Palm

[TankBeef]

Perhaps a better way to imagine the kind of expected outcome is by checking existing remakes like this one:
https://www.mapraider.com/maps/unreal-t ... -Face-Palm

Creavion maps are among my favorites. Wish he was still around.

[gamerz31w]

Foregone Destruction in Jungle? Looks interesting.

[fudgonaut]

Perhaps a better way to imagine the kind of expected outcome is by checking existing remakes like this one:

Creavion maps are among my favorites.

I will be honest. I do not feel too much enthusiasm about map remakes.

This project doesn't have to strictly be stock map remakes. If there's something else that you would like to make for a 25th Anniversary project, that would be cool.

[Neon_Knight]

Looks like the winning idea here is taking "unpopular" official maps and trying to improve/facelift them.

Which I'm definitely interested in seeing. So long as nobody proposes the obvious choices, lol!

Which maps would players most like to see re-imagined, maybe the mods could set up a poll? Maybe I can figure out how to set up a poll on Goolge docs...

Or maybe set a pool of allowed maps and let mappers pick from them.

Here are all the official UT99 maps: https://unreal.fandom.com/wiki/Unreal_Tournament