Thread closed? 

1. Every book is a brush set of brushes. Looks like the overdetailing fad finally caught up to the Quake mapping scene. I'm just glad that it did so when the community was mature enough - the results aren't nearly as bad as what was happening to Doom in the 00s.

Still somewhat alarming. 

"every brick is a brush" is fine if you can imagine stripping away all the detail and still ending up with an interesting space. If the space is super-detailed but otherwise essentially a box room then that's a problem because it shows people are considering detail as a more important goal than creating interesting form on a larger scale. 

Is people moaning about free shit to play for a 20 year old game 

Amen. 

If Quake mapping was for anything BUT resume padding, I can only imagine that we'd have an even lesser community. 

I just joined the mapping community in late 2016, and i have to say that i enjoy it very much.

MapJams, twitch streams, people sharing information and inspirations.

also wierd funny stuff like this thread is quite fun. :D

Its great that the quake community has veteran mappers and professional game designers. And that quake mapping can be a stepping stone for a game design profession for those who are ready to work for it.

I think the engine can create amazing stuff,
one of the recent highlights for me was Skacky's egypt jam map. The design and feel of the map was well exicuted, it had a feel to it that the map could continue beyond its borders. 

Agree with Fifth as well.

In terms of 2017, it looks great...I don't think there is anything wrong with mapping except I feel this community is unnecessarily harsh on newcomers. I find this place pretty unapproachable at first glance (and first impressions are important.)

In order for the community to not completely go stagnant it is important to welcome people coming in with interest in mapping. Yes, it gets annoying when basic questions are asked constantly but it's just the nature of things.

The insane participation of Retrojam 6 gives me optimism for 2017 for Quake mapping. I'll be down for future jams to be sure and it looks like we have an influx of new mappers as well so that's all good stuff. 

I find this place pretty unapproachable at first glance (and first impressions are important.)

It's just a few bad apples. I've seen the mapping help thread full of activity over the last year or so, full of new people and veterans helping them out with things.

The biggest issue seems to be new users creating threads to ask a question. You can't blame them, that is normal behaviour on 99% of other forums.

Also, this thread is silly. What problems? :D Go map! 

I can't wait 'till the 2018 edition of this thread. 

worst thing about it is amazing mappers crushing my self confidence =P

I know I know... git gud, etc. 

people moaning about free shit to play for a 20 year old game

I hope by "moaning" you didn't mean criticism in general. Because whether the content is free or not shouldn't matter at all. 

"what was happening to Doom in the 00s."

Kinda interested in what you mean here, I mean in terms specific specific examples of WADs that go overboard. I've only played a handful of WADs from that era, but I mean, a lot of levels in say Alien Vendetta still look good.

RE: Bloughsbourg, that's interesting--I always found the folks in Mapping Help thread, my go-to when I was starting my first map, very helpful, even in cases where the answer to my question was obvious or where I could have done just a little bit more work to find it. As for the general mood of the forum, there are certainly a few prickly regulars here, but I guess it helps that I've been using the internet since before I graduated from elementary school, so I know a thing or two about trolls (having been on both ends of that equation plenty of times, heh).

Anyway, if anything I'll say 2017 will be a terrible year if ORL and digs don't release another map. 

Alien Vendetta is a vanilla wad, so it would've been hard for the authors to really go to town on detailing.

I was referring to a certain mapping style where even borders have borders, and everything somehow looks even more surreal than in the original game, despite the frequent attempts at realism.

Knee Deep in ZDoom comes to mind, especially the places where the authors simply took the original Doom geometry and added a bunch of semi-random cracks and bumps.

Simplicity is another one - less controversial, but perhaps even more symptomatic, as the underlying level layouts featured in this wad are very simplistic and boxy.

I haven't played this stuff for quite some time, so my examples may be off. 

I'm not surprised FrikaC has that perspective. Disappointed maybe, but not surprised. It's the opinion of someone who thinks more features make a better product. It's simplistic.

The darkplaces engine is a feat of programming, and for him, obviously it was a means to an end. He clearly wanted to build his own experience by creating his own engine, and that meant building a set of features that were not in the original quake. Now, if you want a good engine to play Quake with, not an engine which will look good on your CV, you'll have a lot of issues.

You'll find the aesthetics are incoherent, you'll find a lot of the features don't play nicely with the assets of the game, and you'll be disappointed that projects built upon Darkplaces are not compatible with almost any other engines.

People who have stayed in this community generally don't believe there is anything wrong with quake mapping in 2017. We might have been amused briefly by a proof-of-concept that turned quake into a Rally Driving game, or a sword fighting game, or a platformer, or a RPG, or a Navy Seals game, but we're in it for the long haul because we're happy with quake the way it is, and we don't need it to be something it's not.

This is a great year. Everything i've seen from people here tastefully, even artfully builds and expands on the original quake. At this point in time many of the mappers here are master craftsmen with years, decades of experience. If you think fucking Nexuiz is the best thing thats happened to Quake, i'm sorry, you really cannot be helped. 

Let me clarify that the Mapping Thread is a great asset and I meant what anon described as in a general prickliness. It's apparent in all forums but I guess since this one is smaller it is more noticeable.

Poor example on my part.

Anyway, yeah Jams are fun, mapping assistance is great...more of that and 2017 is cool. 

Amen II: The Amening 

Moaning is what I find a problem. Criticism is fine as long as it's valid and helpful 

TBH, I'm not entirely sure what's the problem here.

So some of the popular works of the past weren't exactly conceived as ambitious masterpieces. Does that make them worse? Quake itself is a hastily assembled mess of ideas held together with bubble gum.

Besides, we live in a different era now. People who mod Quake are doing it because they like Quake, not because it's hot shit.