I wasn't knocking current speedmaps at all. I was just saying that doing a one off old skool speedmapping session where everyone actually gets into irc for 1-2 hours and makes their maps at the same time would be fun.

It's a great idea to extend the speedmaps and allow people a bit more freedom to chose when to make and how long for, I just remembered that I had a great time doing it in irc and thought it would be cool if there was another event like the old ones.

Maybe there will be during QExpo. 

i completely missed the part where speedmaps went from 2-3 hours to 8-10. I remember noticing that people stopped doing them together at the same time on IRC, and started doing them "sometime during the week" -- but i assumed they were still only devoting the allowed 2-3 hours.

So is 8-10 hours spread over a week the standard practice now or just a one-time thing for the most recent speedmap session?

One of the purposes of the short time span of ~2 hours was more people would be willing to participate if the commitment was that small.

It sounds like you guys should be calling these Turtlemaps and embracing the 1-week timelimit if that suits your mapping desires more, so that real speedmaps can still happen once in a while without people's expectations being that they have to devote a week to it. 

2-5 hours is more like it for when I used to speedmap, and I guess now that I'm free on weekends I should participate. I'll try if there's actually a meeting in #speedmap or whatever anymore. 

This clearly takes practice. I spent a few hours last night on an idea that i had- just rough sketching the level. No monsters or lights or entities beyond a player start ... and it's nowhere near done. Not sure how you get anything useful done in 2-3 hours but maybe I'm just not focused enough. No, in fact, I'm sure that I'm not. Heh. 

I found the drag copy function in Worldcraft (hold shift and drag a brush to copy it to wherever the mouse pointer is moved to) immensely helpful when speedmapping. Dunno if you already have a feature like that in toetag, but if not, you should consider it. Seriously great.

Actually, Max has a similar shift drag operation that duplicates polys and extrudes edges, so if you use that at work you will know how helpful it can be. 

 

than

I have the Radiant style duplication in ToeTag: select stuff, hit SPACE, makes a duplicate - drag it where you want it.

It's not the construction that's the problem. The problem is more coming up with the flow of the map in such a short period of time. Thinking up cool combat scenarios and stuff is not my speciality under severe time constraints. :P 

sm141 is a representative sample, both maps are longer than speedmaps often are. I don't say they're bad, just saying that you're not doing blasphemy if you make a shorter map.
I understand often this thing tries to get out of hand with ever more elaborate maps and thus the time limits were introduced.
All said in good spirit. 

Fair enough. That's good to hear, actually. I can reign in my goals a little then... 

download some of the older SM maps, they are usually either short, or have sloppy brushwork, or are unlit :) 

forced me to do a speedmap on irc. Where do I send it?

I spent a few hours, though the last hour or so was battling with a red armor that I replaced with a yellow one instead then. Stupid Ogier.

By participating in this session I make you rest look really good. 

it's a very small dm map 

by any chance, were you naming it item_armor_inv instead of item_armor_Inv? That's the one classname in quake that has a capital letter in it. I had the same problem once, long ago. 

Just upload it to the Shub-hub and post the link here.

Btw. it's item_armorInv - capital, but no underscore. 

so I'll email it to someone whoever is gonna make that. It's a tiny zip since I used only about 6 textures. But it's really lousy anyway.

Thanks for the help on the armor, I'll edit the game file. 

timelimit: 90 minutes
theme: "netherworld assembly line"
sendto: me
deadline: 60 hours from now (so you can squeeze those 90 minutes in your schedule at some point), that means I will compile the zip monday morning european time. 

 

Well, you are speedmapping for your very own fun. No-one can force you to do "by the rules". Don't take it too serious.

Finding a time to meet via IRC would be a tedious task. 

sent it to Spirit again.
If someone else ogranizes, tell me to mail them to me.
It's a bit netherworld assemblylinish in a sense. 

Or this weekend?

Or hmm? 

should be "Quake Lake." 

sm143
timelimit: 90 minutes
theme: "Quake Lake"
sendto: me
deadline: Monday morning european time.

(add fog if you feel like it supports your imagination) 

 

With the spacehulk competition having burned up in the atmosphere I've got a low-brush map half complete and I'd guess there's a few others floating about.

I'm thinking to finish it by more or less next weekend and kick it out the door, just in the interests of not fannying about.

If anyone wants to mail me their maps as well I'll bundle them up and post the link in one shot. 

pool all the map scraps together and make a chain map thingie out of it. Haven't had one of those since RPG's last map iirc.