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What Is Wrong With Quake Mapping In 2017?
FrikaC once supplied information to refute some of my idealism about the works of Quake. He said that the greatest Quake works were a means to an end ...

1) Mods like Navy Seals by Gooseman. He was fleshing out his ideas --- Gooseman created Half-Life Counter-Strike, the most popular game of all-time

2) Many mod authors -- like the outstanding Starship map by Neil Manke -- were to pad resume items and proof of talent for a career. Neil Manke went on to do numerous commercial works. (Is Neil Manke dead?)

3) In 2005, Nexuiz came out. The DarkPlaces-base mod that changed everything regarding open source and was previewed across the country at GameStop stores. The goal was to prep DarkPlaces for greater things.

The short version -- many of the greatest works of Quake were done for resumes, proof of concepts or because at the time the Quake engine worked as a great prototype for something greater.

Is this the wrong perspective? You decide!

A proper reply must ...

1) take into account the career aspirations of early Quake mappers or ...
2) the early relevance of the Quake engine to the games industry or ...
3) Demonstrate that a monster count of 79 or less is most suitable for a level, whereas a count of 87 demands too much of the player to retain attention and interest ... or ...
4) say "fuck it" to the idea of someone dictating the definition of what a "proper reply" is.

If you think your post meets any of the above 7 criteria items, please post your thoughts below!
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Can't say anything about other Doom sites because I don't frequent them. 
 
Other way around, Sevin. 
#23 
Wow, I see some of the func posts, but what is the mysterious community of quake shitposters that 95% of those tweets are sourced from? A little bit scary to know that exists. o_O

Starting to feel like we're in a bit of a bubble-within-a-bubble here. 
 
but what is the mysterious community of quake shitposters that 95% of those tweets are sourced from?

OTP's Magnum Opus. 
 
 
I'm not 100% sure what the topic-to-be-debated here is. :-)

If the proposal is that Quake content creators are all just portfolio-padders, I think that's pretty indefensible.

First of all there was only a particular window in time during which this could ever have been a useful job-seeking tactic; it wasn't a widely-understood notion when Quake first came out, and it certainly isn't going to get you anywhere these days.

Second, it doesn't jibe with my memories. I feel (with no real proof ATM) that a lot of the mappers/modders/coders during the Quake heyday were college kids excited about games and the internet -- but with absolutely no interest in a game-industry career. Quite possibly that's just me extrapolating too far based on my own experience, but eh.

Finally I don't guess I really care if someone creates a great thing as a portfolio piece. All that matters to me as a user/player is that it's great.


(As for shitposting, I'm always sad when a small community gets all dumb and hostile about trivialities rather than enjoying the fact that there's a group of folks having fun with a common interest. Func isn't as bad as most, but yeah it has cycles of crappiness.) 
Weeelllll... 
Back in the 90s, the games industry had a much more "rock star" sheen to it in the eyes of bedroom modding nerds, because games were mostly made by small teams of geeks who often became rather rich and famous if the thing was successful - in fact, the media was all over this, giving a lot of press to games dev personalities (Romero, Molyneux, Sid Meier etc.), as well as the games themselves.

So, I think the games industry seemed very attractive back then, and a lot of people were motivated to try to get into it.

Nowadays of course, most of the industry is a miserable revolving-door sweatshop full of outsourcing and faceless execs managing armies of low-paid brick-in-the-wall graduates who don't even know what project/studio/part of the world they'll be working in this time next year. 
 
There is no real issues, but influence of so many good mappers kind of makes it harder to figure out what you as a mapper are personally trying to achieve, or what are your goals.

When it comes to mapping, I just had an idea or ideas and want to see is it fun, will I continue pushing its boundaries or not. I'm glad that some of those ideas worked just fine.. also seeing people playing your own creations makes you happy that you stayed around. Developer's goals and player's expectations are something I need to learn more about. This community is pretty active and that is a really good thing. Not like one other community I was part of back then, community died and I was still making content for it, to a game nobody played anymore.

At least Quake has an active community still going, that is why I want to learn to make something great to those people, and also let the outsiders know too that Quake can be almost anything you could wish for, from the old-school fps game title. 
 
There's nothing wrong with Quake mapping in 2017.

However, Quake engine coding still needs improvement (and I'm also guilty of this).

One of the reasons why Quake mapping has improved is because the tools have improved. Tools are used for creating, and engines should be used mainly for playing.

The tools have improved because their usability has improved. Their robustness has also improved, but many great maps released in the last year are still compatible with vanilla Quake; the main factor that helped their creation was usability, not robustness.

Just my two cents. Now I need some sleep� 
I Am Wrong 
my contributions have been reduced to the occasional random drunken comment which only reduces my shaky reputation and I need to GO MAP. Unfortunately my only remaining connection to this community is reduced to 15 minutes every month or so to drool over some Sock screenshots and sigh over what once was. What's wrong with Quake mapping in 2017 is RL. 
Agreed... 
I keep saying that I will try to configure J.A.C.K. and ericw's tools to make me a dirty phong map but then I just end up warching someone else play Quake on the Internet.

Ho-hum... 
Hey Now.. 
I was taken slightly out of context. IIRC, I pointed out that (most) people that tend to make "total conversion" type projects aren't in the community because they like Quake. They are in the community to take advantage of what it has to offer almost from a tools perspective. There was an army of programmers that showed up when Quake went GPL and then they marched on as soon as Quake 2 was GPL. A lot of works are for the love of the game, my point when we had this conversation like ten years was that's not strictly universal. I don't think that is a controversial statement. For my part, I never did anything to get hired, I just do stuff for fun and to bolster the community if I can. 
I'll Tell You What's Wrong... 
...nothing!

However, it is apparent over the last several months or so that we have some extremes in percieved map quality/output. On the one hand we have highly polished, 'professional' level maps, and on the other hand several somewhat 'newbie' style maps. It is a bit deja vu but perfectly acceptable to me - I play them all.

But I must be a weirdo anyway (a bit like Shambler!) because I never mapped for some aspirational reason, I never mapped for the community; I mapped for me and my kids - For My Babies was not some play on words, it was a fact.

When someone picked holes in my map, if I thought they had a point, I simply put that thing right in the next map. I did not go back constantly 'polishing' old maps.

Wasn't it Carl Jung who said, "Man's task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious." Yes, he did; pretentious twat. 
It's Been Before 
http://celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=60238&start=1 look at this thread

so, you all should:
1. stop panic
2. go map 
Maps 
However, it is apparent over the last several months or so that we have some extremes in percieved map quality/output. On the one hand we have highly polished, 'professional' level maps, and on the other hand several somewhat 'newbie' style maps.

....and all the ones in between!! This winter has had the full spectrum of Quake releases from the most noobish to lots of straight up Quakey maps to the most epic, and the plentiful small, simple, but high quality ones are very welcome. 
 
#8
i didn't find this board unwelcoming
some of the troll comments are harsh, but they have a point, they're not meaningless and for the sake of trolling.

#22
it seems to me that doom mapping is quicker than quake mapping. making a really good map is always hard, though. 
Okay So Having Read This Thread More Clearly.... 
....it's complete fucking horseshit. Baker I presume you got hexcalk and madfox to write it for you and then Mugwump to rephrase it into something that approximates English but still makes no sense whatsoever.

Firstly, the title doesn't have any relevance to your post. You ask "What's wrong with Quake mapping", then try very hard and indeed successfully to avoid actually mentioning anything that is wrong with Quake mapping let alone what might be reasons for it.

Secondly, given that the whole thread is a tangent from the title, you list two mods and an engine which have almost nothing to do with what anyone thinks of as actual Quake mapping on here i.e. fairly Quakey Q1 SP (or DM). I suppose Neil Manke's stuff did contain some possibly interesting maps but I for one found the overriding mod content to be unplayably unappealing. Are these the greatest works of Quake?? They're certainly the greatest works of NOT-QUAKE.

Is this the wrong perspective? No, because it's scarcely a perspective, yes it's blindingly obvious that some mods (and maps) were created as resume works, no it's not at all clear how one can contrive "something is wrong with Quake mapping in 2017".

Maybe the title would have been a worthy question on it's own. The only thing I can think of is some mappers getting put off by thinking they have to match AD quality, when decent normal maps are still just as valuable and enjoyable as they ever were (like the Jams so far).

HTH. 
I'm Sorry 
I presume you got hexcalk and madfox to write it for you and then Mugwump to rephrase it into something that approximates English but still makes no sense whatsoever.

But lmao

topher, That's good to know.

I think Shambler hit the points directly on. 
/Thread 
 
 
yeah i was going to say, the title says "2017" but all the examples are from over 10 years ago. 
 
and in 10 years if quake mapping isn't dead somebody will resurrect this thread and shitpost about it too. 
I'm Sure It Has Another 10 Years In It 
 
@Shambler 
Nothing wrong with a thought-provoking conversation. --- Some replies to these kinds of topics will go negative -- that's fine! and expected ..

... anyone can do them, but they don't bring thinking to the table.

Lack of Progression/Building to conclusion

There are few maps or sets of maps these days that build towards a conclusion. Intermission teleporters that transition to the next level were used as a reward or checkpoint.

Lack of a customized experience

Also a lack of specific maps bringing a new experience to the table.

1) Koohoo had a green Chthon
2) Lunsp1 had red mega enforcers
3) One Upon Atrocity had a dragon as the final boss, and fire shamblers
4) ARWOP had hell dogs
5) Marcher Fortress had spiders.
6) Cyberdemons in Event Horizon 
 
#48 
Good job on not including Quoth, Rubicon 2, and AD, aka the mods that have been consistently helped mappers supply new content for the past decade.

Or is this another roundabout way of trying to educate us plebeians about how everything is irrelevant, and RMQ was the savior of Q1? 
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