I think everyone has the experience of finding themselves staring at some inanimate object for long stretches of time. My fiance found me in the front door, mesmerized by the spot of sunlight flickering on the grassy knoll area next to our apartment. She thought I was having a petit mal seizure of something.
"Sweetie, what's wrong?"
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i noticed something today, i never did with my old machine and its lower settings. things you pick up with that hurler weapon, cast shadows, but you do not :/
as for doom 3, i re-installed it in my new machine, and cannot wait to replay it. yes people, i like doom so much i actually struggled through it on my old system. i was, and am still, more of a doom fan than HL. *ducks objects flung my way*
as for its repetitive looking levels, i found it to be more of a comfort, than a nuisance. it reminded me that real life structures are exactly that, repetitive. imagine a hospital map, or a school, or even a military base. they all are repetitive, we have just spoiled ourselves into believing that mapping should be diverse looking with interesting, and/or eye catching architecture.
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in a nutshell.. this says it all. :/
i was watching my brother-in-law play Halo2 on Xbox.. the levels were blocky monstrosities. i couldn't help but notice that even a first year mapper could have done better. 
perhaps i am over-critical, but critiquing maps has made me realize just how well mapping can be when the author applies themselves.
Agreed. Deffinetely.
I sit and play sven-coop, or Counter-Strike, and wonder, "How could anyone make something so simple?" I'm used to seeing you guys "knock something up" that's twice as good! In half the time!
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) i might think less "ooooo perty" and more "how can this be
True Orph, but that is only because of cost constrictions etc. If you go to a big university, museum, modern airport, etc. You'll notice that they go to pretty extreme lengths to make the buildings interesting. Besides, I see not reason not to improve on the real world where you can.
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I read a forum post elsewhere a few weeks ago by someone who hasn't created any custom FPS levels himself and wouldn't know where to start if he wanted to. Basically, he was solely a gamer. He said he ventured into an editing forum for the first time and read about sv_cheats 1 & noclip, so decided to try them out himself.
He was horrified that the geometry just stops and the world doesn't continue onwards beyond what is seen when not using noclip. He said it had totally ruined the illusion of FPS games being a real world for him, and he wouldn't play FPS games with the same wonderment as before. Kinda amused me that some people obviously think that beyond the areas they're allowed to traverse is a fully functioning ecosystem or something, like developers create masses of extra content that won't actually be seen at all. 
I've started to take more notice into real world wonders since I started mapping. Reflections from the surface of the water and things like that. I've also lost the "fear factor" from horror oriented games. Seeing the other side of games has definedly changed my view of them, but all in all I still enjoy them as much as before. I'm currently playing Sid Meier's Pirates!(the new one) and despite the fact that I've become rather FPS oriented lately I find it very enjoyable. Sadly I have to leave back to the army in less than 6 hours...
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time to make a portion of my village in hammer i don't even talk to people whom only play anymore, assuming i know that they are such. i have had way to many bad confrontations from them with their attitudes on how a map should play.
without a working knowledge of what is involved with mapping, there is no common base to draw upon, it would be like attempting to describe the color blue to a blind person.
by and large, players are stupid people IMO and do not deserve the time it would take to establish that they don't have a clue.
i am not trying to incite a revolt or to get someone to defend these people either. sometimes the smartest people in the world can be so dumb on certain subjects, and players are totally in the dark about mapping.
they remind me of very small children "give me what i want" and actually have the nerve to blame YOU if the map fails to achieve their wants.
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Hmm, he must be extremely naive. You should tell him that we actually live in a matrix and everything is an illusion (just to mess with him).
Oh, and ask him to give you all his money, because it's all an illusion anyways.
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