shit happens.

I found rebuilding crucial things is done quick, a day of lost work was redone in 2 hours for me, knowing what was already in place sure helps. Also things profit from being touched twice and more often in general.

Go map! 

I think jackhammer does a backup when you save or run map. I'm seeing extra files in my map folder with date / time appended. 

Get something like attic-backup and set it up for your sources as part of your build process. Costs pretty much nothing, deduplicates and rocks. 

yes, we can! 

I've got my map structurally finished as of this morning. Nothing left except some trimming, lighting in one new large area, a few things for the player to do, and some monsters to kill.

Monsters could be a problem. Mostly one big area, much of it visible from the start, makes placement challenging. And I really dislike teleporting enemies in if the player can see or hear it. But I've been thinking about it for a few days and maybe I can figure out something that'll work. 

I'm nearly done with this small map, but I'm still thinking of the last two rooms and I'm procrastinating alot as of late. 

Two areas will be largely unfinished. I am working on entities and making sure you can get through the map. If I have time I will add a few secrets (I have one right now) and additional spawns, but I don't want the map to be too hard to get through. Many ideas scrapped and I am just trying to make sure it is playable.

I don't have a ton of time to make this happen... just went too far with my concepts. :-p

Pacing will be all over the place. 

Last night it took 71 minutes to run Light on high quality. I stopped VIS early because it looked like over an hour for that also. Why oh Why did I make a big cave? I've never had a map take this long to build. Gah, back to mapping. 

the peak of my mapping skills. This is probably the biggest challenge so far: to release it anyway. 

I'm still working on some of the last parts of my map, I've got to figure out what to do with the seccond part of my map, get the lighting correct and have it sent to a tester. I'm not sure if I'll be able to make the deadline, It might end up as DLC. 

How does DLC work? What qualifies as map jam DLC content? 

As we are getting close to the deadline, I should explain how you should get your level to me :) (another thing I forgot to put in the main post, yay!)

When your level is finished, you should e-mail the full compiled level, any required files (.lit file for coloured lighting etc) and a readme.txt for your level to me at Darren.Weekes@gmail.com

Your levels changelevel trigger should go to "start"! Important!

It will take me a few days to compile the pack together, get a start map sorted and test everything, so if you have an updated version of your level after the deadline date has passed but the jam hasn't been released then feel free to send me the updated version!

Once the jam has been released, any further updates to levels or levels that were unfinished before the release and have now been completed, can be compiled into a "map jam 6 DLC" and released separately. 

You should really include the .map source too! I suppose you don't have to, but it's common practice in the community these days to include your level's source. 

Yes, please include the source .map file! 

 

http://www.twitch.tv/ringofquaddamage/

Let's see if this works... 

Your levels changelevel trigger should go to "start"! Important!

Glad you cleared that up. I thought I was going to have to ask. Wait. I have to write a readme file?

(currently up to 1108 brushes, 10 monsters, and down to only 6 CutNodePortals_r warnings) 

Added some new stuff, hopefully I can make this map at least vaguely worth checking out! haha :)

http://i.imgur.com/L9s3yce.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/sldsDET.jpg 

My map is on the harder end of things right now. Not enough ammo, not enough health, and I still have to include the enemy spawns/teleports... :-p One day left! 

Back up your data, then back it up some more.

My external drive has failed. Not just this map, but tons of personal work is now lost.

I know most of you are probably more experienced than I am with this stuff, but in case you're not, IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU, so even now if you haven't yet, make copies of your maps and files and put them on another drive. There is still time for things to go very wrong.

I'll see if some kind of recovery can be done, but this looks like the end.

The bright side is I learned what I wanted to learn from this jam and I'm already working on another map during lunch hour at work (and backing that one up properly).

Looks like I won't be submitting this time though. Still can't wait to play the finished pack! 

Hard drives fail. All brands. Back up your data, ffs. 

 

NSAcloud rebranded as [cloud storage service name] :) 

That really sucks :( It's a horrible feeling when you lose files like that. It happened one time to me and I've always kept hard copy and online storage backups since then. Never again!

Still, I am glad you are continuing with the mappery! Even if you can't submit for this jam, there are always jams happening! 

cause my life is an open book to be spied away.