k I admit it
I may have had something to say, in a thousand years... but not the way I currently phrased it, nor the way I went for it
anyway removing this is a favour. And that guy knows that - and knows what he is, for even asking it, regardless. 

but beautiful 

what? 

i'd like to look at romanian wilderness scraps: 

I have a few scraps sitting around. It's funny how you get an idea, start pounding away, get a few rooms done and then suddenly and without warning your interest and drive sort of ... evaporate. So you put the map aside planning to return to it one day. But often times that day never comes. 

...and rephrase, selecta!! 

about how we feel about finishing half-finished maps? or why we abandon those maps in the first place? 

Big Time Stuck. 

Surely the maps aren't truly 'abandonned' in a lot of these cases, but the ideas re-thought and intergrated in later works. Scraps are merely the equivalent of a sketch book... 

.. to abandon something started. so no scrap left on the road for me ;) 

The SHIFT + DEL method is best for that kind of thinking ;) 

heh I was actually about to email you asking about that map

I meant stuck as in, little or no progress for, say, five years. Lol. I VOWED not to start anything new, because this was my mapping pattern:

1) build something large, cool, and difficult to finish.

2) bah, this is boring.

3) repeat #1. 

I'm basically wanting to know about all the maps that I saw screenshots of a damn long time ago, that never came out - one example, is Kell's weird metal/arabian palace thing with the purple skybox. However I do think Roman Wilderness probably takes "most epic lag" - it's like the DNF of Q1SP. 

Im sick to death of my bloody map, but I'm just gonna bang it out and start-a-new.

If it suck it sucks. If anyone ever wants a mapsource btw then thats fine!

But I just think that if a map is 95% done then get it into alpha, and just get it working and release it, and move on. But hey - er, I dunno, I was gonna finish with something then but its gone.... 

one solution that may be interesting, is what we did with OUM
Apollo had left the project, and left a map that was 80% done, oum2 (needed gameplay tweaks, bug fixes, and a finale area). I meanwhile was sick of my map (the egyptian one). Neither was going anywhere; Tyrann (I think) had been assigned to finish Apollo's map and (quite rightly) found the meticulous bug fixing annoying. The solution was, we swapped maps. I took oum2, Tyrann took toum - and I got the better end of the deal here. Incidentally, we both got to build a boss arena in a style we hadn't been working in before (ikbase for me for oum2's finale, egyptian tomb for tyrann's toum finale).

If you finish what you start immediately, good for you. I've had maps sitting around 90% done since 2003, and only in the last couple years (thanks PM for mod and inspiration) have I had the will do all the boring, problematic work (and endless compilation) required to release them. I'm curious as to how many other mappers have the same problem - maps that are 75% or more done, that have sat around for years. I really think it's worth finishing them. Tyrann's idbase map is a good example. 

btw Necros I did actually do some work on the Unforgiven scraps you left. At one point Mike Woodham even had a look (he is the solution to this problem! We are like a fishtank, and he's (no insult intended lol) the shark, that eats corpses and converts them into useable energy).

Eventually though I decided that I was - yet AGAIN - building a new map, new architecture, etc - instead of finishing stuck maps (nsoe, arcanum, etc). So I quit on principle. 

I mapped a year to get a greek map untill it gave me more than 5 days vising.
I started from scratch and now I have a solid map that need 9 houres vising.
Still two homs kill my interest to release it.
It means working again on a wellknown course that can end up desperately repairing, not the same amazed playing with brushes as it started.

But the same urg to finish it can also create an amusing map. 

When stuck; collaborate. 

Someone else looking at your map with fresh eyes won't be in the same mental cul-de-sac you've painted yourself into. The add a few brushes, mess with some stuff and when the map comes back all the new possibilities will jump out at you.

Tronyn, sorry about the failed Wilderness attempt. Now I'm embroiled in this RQ thing and I find myself collaberating with myself a fair bit 8 maps in progress, 1 finished :P 

I find myself collaborating with myself a fair bit

I get this visual image of ijed mapping drunk/in his sleep, only to wake up later, open the editor and think "I don't remember making this!"