What do you feel made the biggest impact in your mapping career?

i realize, it is prolly a combination of all the choices, but there has to be one shining star you feel made the biggest impression.

I voted for 'another map'. If I remember correctly, I had been making JRFs for a bunch of maps. Maps by people like Gustavo inspired me to try and create something similar. Not that I suceeded of course :smile:

If anything, it was being able to work on the mod DarkTruths. While I was only a playtester, and the mod never actually went anywhere, I find it had the biggest impact on my own talent. Working with great mappers like Mr.Ben and CampaignJunkie for months on end really helped me develop my own skills. I guess the only bad thing that came from this is that I now seemed to have developed hat Mr.Ben suffered from all that time -- chronic perfectionism. I never do as well as I think I can, and thus my maps are never released or completed because I either lose all interest in them, or start them over again.

early in my career, it was mentor, Jeff Meyer was, and still is my mentor, he helped me develop my attitude toward sharing info, and assisting others, but i would have to say the biggest impact would have to be quality feedback, and a willingness to accept both positive and negative forms of it.

Definitely feedback. When I decided to show a map to the world and gain some expert advice, my skills advanced tremendously in a very short period of time. I also think that ReNo's architecture Tut's have had a big impact.

I felt the undieing need to create a map of my school... After that failed, I played with making lucrously long scripted sequences ( spelling? ). Few killboxes, thats the end of my hl mapping carear.

I picked up on quake 3. I prefur the quake 3 engine over half life, and still mod for it to this day.

ReNo and KFS have been my insperation for many quake 3 maps. I love ReNo's origianl architecture, and the ambiance on KFS's maps is fantastic. ns_eclipse is proberbly my faveourite map across all hl mods. Shame the marrine spawn got butcherd in a later patch.

ReNo and KFS are both fantastic mappers who I've always looked up to. They've provided inspiration for pretty much all of my work, and ReNo's always provided extremely valuable feedback :smile:

I picked mentor hero or peer, but it was a combination of a few people
and the attitutide towards mapping at the snarkpit in general which
brought me to the level where I'm at. Feedback would come in at a close
second.

I couldn't really pick one of these, because what REALLY inspired me was my friends playing my maps at our LAN parties. Oh the memories - such a horrid first map I created, and what fun we had on it. Well, and the reason I stuck with it was because one of my friends got pretty hooked on mapping at the same time I did - we swapped all sorts of hilarious entity stories, planned ridiculous new map chains, and utterly failed at any sort of brush work.

He would love GMDM2 if I could ever get him to play it. Rather stubborn bastard.

I voted "Feedback". If not for feedback, I'd be mapping, but my maps would be... ugleh.

I love you guys... :smile:

I vote for No. 1, if my friend Jon hadn't helped me all those times when i kept geting problems in VHE, then I would of never been able to build anything apart from killbox's.
But also Feedback helped me a-lot aswell, if it wasn't for the sort of feedback i get at the snarkpit, then my maps would be bluegh.

I would vote for feedback but the poll is broke on my firefox :\ And I just reformatted my HD so it is a fresh install.

Feedback / some good tutorials.

one thing i have noticed so far.. no one has even mentioned prefabs.. i realize many don't actually use them, but there is some extremely valuable info to be had in them..

true, none made a major impact in my getting to where i am today, BUT they could have, if i had taken entities more seriously.. i think i could have eventually learned the MM had i just looked for the best prefab with one..

anyways, the poll is what made the most impact.. not what was the sum total parts :smile:

keep voting guys.. this is one of the few truly valuable polls we have had in weeks :biggrin:

No.1

I remember I tried to map for Quake2 and HL, but it never worked (I didn't know how to set up WC :biggrin: ) Then one of my friends made a HL map, it was ugly and full of leaks, but it was a very special feeling to run around in it and kill some enemies...

Most definitely feedback. Nothing can substitute for proper feedback from people with experience.

Poll works fine with firefox for me...

Peter Manson's maps were extremely motivational (does that word exist?) for me; but of course I had to read all the tutorials I could find to learn how to use WC.

Tutorials probably should have gotten an option of it's own. :smile:

dictionary.com kain :wink:

Alien_Sniper said:
Tutorials probably should have gotten an option of it's own. :smile:

i considered it, but they always left me wanting.. very few were 100% onto themselves.. but "other" can hold tuts.

i always ended up asking someones advice on how to do what the tut said anyways.. but seriously.. how many here can say tuts made the biggest impact?

I'd put them above prefabs. You have to manually figure out how an
entity set-up works from a prefab whereas a good tutorial will show you
what to do and why you're doing it.

Alien_Sniper said:
I'd put them above prefabs. You have to manually figure out how an entity set-up works from a prefab whereas a good tutorial will show you what to do and why you're doing it.

true, but had i posted this poll at PFL it would prolly have received a few votes at least.. most here, are hard core individualists, and "prefab" is a cuss-word.

i began my forum debut at a prefab site.. i figured with only 6 slots, and one reserved for "other" that leaves only 5 slots.. prefab belonged more than tuts, because.. many use prefabs as tutorials, but no one uses a tut as a prefab :smile:

I agree, I can't imagine anyone would put prefabs as the most impacting
thing on their mapping, but tutorials teach a huge range of skills and
are a very important part of teaching people to map. Sure I've been
impressed by some prefabs, especially Yak's vehicles and things back
when I was still making horrible single player things, but though they
can be well done, they are rarely inspiring.

I think for me, feedback is most important, in the form of critiques
from fellow mappers, or reviews. I always try and take things on board
that people have mentioned, and even if I don't act on them on that
map, I keep them in mind for the next. Other people's maps come in a
close second however, looking at the work of others is inspiring and
motivating, often regardless of the full quality of the map.

I voted for other because the biggest impact I've had is half-life sp. And maybe it's just a running joke but Orpheus do you really not understand multimanagers?

From what I've heard, no, he really doesnt understand multimanagers.

I'd say 'other', since I always find myself wanting to bring things to maps because they'd be fun ... Only problem is, I have to find the time to finish them all :\

JFry said:
And maybe it's just a running joke but Orpheus do you really not understand multimanagers?

its true, now go ahead and laugh..

anywho's,i'm off to westminster maryland guys.. see'ya wednesday :smile:

I spent many many hours creating "boards" in a game called Hyper Lode Runner...game had a built in editor (on the GameBoy)...and even still have those levels I made to this day(drawn up on graph paper)...but it was that game which inspired the level design for me.

Then, I got Half-Life, and one day, after I first got the game, I downloaded a map which I knew wasn't a standard Valve map. There was one other guy in the map and I asked where he got this. He said he made it. HE MADE IT!! I thought to myself. Asked him how...and the rest is history.

Lloyd Morris made me want to map. I remember seeing his maps for the first time. You remember escape_reality?, Aftershok?. The thing to remember was that these maps were made old school style, before the great worldcraft improvements made mapping simpler. Alot of great mappers inspired me though, Gustavo, Mazemaster, mawibse(mountain Hamlet), Mr P.,Peter Manson, Dams,(if you've never seen his work you should check it out.). There are many I would like to list but that would become boring, as I love to drop names. So my inspiration is simply wanting to be like these guys, although I fear that may never happen.

Where can one find Dams maps? His stupid name confuses google. :smile:

I have a few posted at the diner:

http://www.hotdeathdiner.com

check in the maps catalogue. I believe his website is listed in the review as well.

Hmmmm... I don't quite remember what got me started in mapping.



What I think it was though, was my love for video games -- since I was introduced to games like Doom and Rise of the Triad (and many others -- Corridor 7, Operation Body Count, Blake Stone 3D, Wolfenstein, and Sonic the HedgeHog games :biggrin: ) at a very early age.... try 3?



Eventually, as gaming got better, I started to get more sucked into it. I don't quite remember what made me say "I want to be a video game developer " though....



Yippie Ki Yay!

My answer was/is number 1. And I have to dedicate that to 2 mappers in particular. ReNo, and Orpheus :smile:

Being so massively depressed a few summers ago that I needed to pour myself into something as engrossing as mapping to escape reality :rolleyes:

Jinx said:
Being so massively depressed a few summers ago that I needed to pour myself into something as engrossing as mapping to escape reality :rolleyes:

Dude, that's deep. You need to write some poetry.

oh, I did that too, but making temples and killboxes was so much more satisfying! :biggrin:

None of these really apply, I just sort of come up with stuff randomly. The only thing I can think of remotely is my friend who showed me Hammer, but it was really the tool itself that inspired me I suppose. I like feedback, but it doesn't really do much more than give me an idea of something that I usually was planning on anyway and if others noticed it enough then I'd implement it -or- little bugs, but those aren't much to me. Most of my maps come from a little idea and are a big mix of half planned, half on a whim sort of deal. Many areas that are very unique in my maps were literally me just messing with brushes and somehow something neat came out.

I voted for Mentor because i also got feedback from that aswell.

Working with KFS and the other great guys on NW. So much <3 for them, especially Andrew, you sir are a fountain of knowledge and insight and have really helped me further my skills. Without them i'd not be the mapper i am today.

Mad props also to WhoMe who taught me so much about gameplay, fetter for being a sexy devil and cj for making me look good!

For me, other games have definitely helped me a lot in mapping. By looking at work from professionals, trying to imitate their maps, I've been able to improve my skills a lot.

My first release was inspired by a HL2 screenshot, the map I'm currently working on is based on some Stalker screenshots as well as pictures of the Chernobyl reactor. In fact, I could generally say reference material is extremely helpfull to me.

this site is basically dedicated itself to mapping, and only 34 people map.. according to the poll census.. thats really quite shocking when you consider our membership roster is in the hundreds :/

That's the reflection on the number of people who have come across this topic, really, not everyone who has signed up visits the forums.

Orpheus said:
one thing i have noticed so far.. no one has even mentioned prefabs.. i realize many don't actually use them, but there is some extremely valuable info to be had in them...

cough that's because I've been away on vacation. :biggrin:

<A name=top>What do you feel made the biggest impact in your mapping career?</A>

Nescafe.

:razz: