I admire mappers!

(deej) #1

Yes I do! After installing so many beautiful maps on our servers, I kinda wanted to learn it myself. So I installed the proggies, read the forum, read the tutorials etc…

Well after a few days of tinkering with Radiant I can say the following: I have found a new and utmost respect for all you mappers. I lack the creativity and the patience you guys have to map & map & map.

So congrats to all you guys and keep it up!

P.S.: this thread was written after I night of juggling with Radiant & almost anting to throw my pc out of the window(s) :bash: so feel free to ignore it (/end rant)

(Loffy) #2

Hej deej, thx for your kind words.
We all have different learning-styles. I hate reading boring stuff. When I must learn a new thing (complicated thing), I prefer to see others do it or a similar thing first. Manuals suck. (I bought a tv yesterday and a what’s-it-called… tv-table. It took me 1 hour (!) to put together that tv-table - it came in a box. All the time I was sweating lika a pig and thinking: I don’t understand. What piece goes there? Am I stupid?) When it comes to radiant, I was helped by the video-tutorials over at www.3dbuzz.com, because as I said I need to see it before I can understand it.
Doing > theorizing
// Loffy

(nUllSkillZ) #3

You shouldn’t give up.
At the beginning all is tough.
Because everything is new.
But you have one advantage.
The world best forum to answer your question.

(TerraForma) #4

Thats it…! Well spoken :clap:

greetz

(MadJack) #5

Also Deej, don’t forget the learning curve is pretty steep. We all have our strengths and weaknesses but all in due time :slight_smile:

I don’t know what tutorial you read but I can tell you that some of those tuts aren’t worth much… They lack information, aren’t linear, don’t explain enough. Some go into too much details and some jump from A to B without any reasons.

I would highly suggest you read a good tut that is on you level of expertise. Don’t try to go too fast. You’ll burn yourself. Oh and one more things. Don’t get too attached to those first maps, you’ll scrap more than one as you learn :smiley:

(=DaRk=CrAzY-NuTTeR) #6

awww isnt that nice, sum1 who respects our work

well at least sum1 cares, anything we can do for you? :slight_smile:

(deej) #7

turn me into the world’s best mapper? :slight_smile:

(MadJack) #8

Hey why not! :smiley:

There’s only you to put barriers down and break them up too :slight_smile:

(Boleth) #9

Yea it is really hard at first, you’re like wtf? why is that line running down there and why wont this do that? Its simple enough, just move damn you!
and
“Brush? whats a brush? is it how you colour the surfaces?”
But with the help of these wonderful people my first map is almost completed, just need to add the flag and script and its pretty much ready for an alpha release.
Thanks again everyone :clap:

(Mean Mr. Mustard) #10

Thanks for the kind words deej! I was at your point 10 months ago…it takes time to learn radiant and scripting. I would suggest making small test maps. I did so for every part of my map - single stage constructible, dual-stage constructible, truck, etc… It’s always easier to work with a little test map to work out the ‘kinks’ in mapping.

And as you probably already know, this forum provides lots of help. We’ve all been in your situation and some previous mapper helped out with answers. Just post questions (no matter how ‘n00bish’ you think they are) Some one here will answer it - because we’ve all been through it!

Keep on mapping!

(FireFly) #11

I’m with Mean Mr.Mustard: making small test maps, Don’t try to create the map all at once, just start with little pieces like a building or a prefab. That is how I started mapping 2 years ago and that’s the way I still map these days.
Some mappers here at the forum have 3 months of expierence some have 3 years (or more) expierence, but they will be more to happy to answer your questions and share their knowledge…

(Ifurita) #12

A little bit of prior planning and forethought doesn’t hurt either

(Sanius) #13

:bump: hehe yes! I have been mapping for almost a week. I am only making small maps to test out my stuff. I have gotten ladders, doors, making rooms connect…ect. I am still learning tho! hopefully soon I will be ready to make a real map. Not a day goes by where I don’t bother iffy on how to apply a shader, or make this work, or whatever. :slight_smile:

(Orange) #14

Damn! I knew I was running too fast… I always do it.
Well… you can’t stop me now so don’t bother trying.

Anyway, I know my map is going to look like hell (without the special effects…) and I’m not sure about the gameplay either but I do know that after this map, if I won’t give up (I really hope I won’t) every map is just going to look better and be better…

Believe me deej, I know what’s frustration and I know the feelings of “this isn’t going to work” and “f**k with this…” but whenever I feel like that I just leave the computer, let my poor brothers touch the computer after looking at me and wondering why do I keep trying, go out, tell my friends to come play soccer in the Moshav’s (Israeli version of a village) asphalt soccer field and come back after 1-4 hours with fresh mind and new ideas and continue my work.
You can’t give up so fast… If you don’t have enough patient work just a little every time and you’ll see you can work for more time without losing the patience or at least do more in the same amount of time.
And about creativity, I also don’t have much creativity but sometime you just have an idea popping up from no where…
When you have an idea, no matter how complicated or silly it looks, write it down, think about it a little more, it may give you more ideas, and so on until you find an idea that looks nice to you.
You can also try to find things that inspire you… search images.goolge.com, watch the history channel, read articles on WW2 operation or any other war’s, go for a walk and look what you have around you, think as a small child playing hide&seek. I don’t know…
I just took a paper and a pen and started drawing an area I where I want to have a forest, then I decided I want to have a crashed cargo plane, then I thought that if there’s a cargo plane there are probably scatterd crates containing ammo, health, some documents maybe, and so on…