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Reinvigorated mapping feelings!


DeTeEff

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8 hours ago, Fieldmedic said:

the dev team still cranks out exellent content!

There has been quite some fluctuations in the group of active devs over the years, though'. It's not like one team has been working on TDM for 15 years. 🙂Many devs burned themselves out, which is only natural! So don't beat yourself up over it and enjoy your returned joy for mapping. 🙂 I think everyone around here is happy that it and you returned!!

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1 hour ago, STiFU said:

There has been quite some fluctuations in the group of active devs over the years, though'. It's not like one team has been working on TDM for 15 years. 🙂Many devs burned themselves out, which is only natural! So don't beat yourself up over it and enjoy your returned joy for mapping. 🙂 I think everyone around here is happy that it and you returned!!

That is true... But I have felt bad for not delivering anything useful, when the mod still is going strong. I've had my times when I've thought the mod would die out and Springheel and Melan and Grayman are left alone in this empty void :(

The main reason for my absence has been because I don't progress with the mapping process and get stuck; I have difficulties with imagining a scene without building it first. And when I've put down 3-4 hours into a scene I find out I need to change everything and kill a bunch of darlings and then the motivation dies...

Hope it stays with me longer this time! I've got several projects/areas mapped out so I should be able to finish something... BTW, is Sotha still actice or is he busy boxing and parenting? ;)

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11 hours ago, Fieldmedic said:

I have difficulties with imagining a scene without building it first. And when I've put down 3-4 hours into a scene I find out I need to change everything and kill a bunch of darlings and then the motivation dies...

Then build simple brushwork-only first (and not much texture work) to get a feel for the scene and do a detail-pass later?

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11 hours ago, Fieldmedic said:

But I have felt bad for not delivering anything useful, when the mod still is going strong.

There's no need to feel bad about that. We all have different energy levels and amounts of available free time.

I find it helpful to set realistic targets, rather than taking on a massive project and then giving up because it seems so overwhelming. For example, I aim to spend one or two evenings a week working on something mod-related, even if it's just adding a small section to the DR manual, doing some minor C++ refactoring that hopefully moves towards fixing a bug, or cleaning up one of the Blender export scripts. You'd be surprised how quickly a small thing each week adds up to something more meaningful over time, and is infinitely better than doing nothing at all.

Likewise, as a mapper you might be able to contribute small regular tasks like helping to design a prefab or model for someone else's map, rather than taking on a large mapping project from scratch by yourself.

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2 hours ago, STiFU said:

Then build simple brushwork-only first (and not much texture work) to get a feel for the scene and do a detail-pass later?

Started to to just that. Blocking out sections with void sealing caulkwork and then building my street sections inside these areas.

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5 hours ago, OrbWeaver said:

For example, I aim to spend one or two evenings a week working on something mod-related

I understand where Fieldmedic is coming from pretty well, because I am also a very sporadic contributor and sometimes I kind of have a bad concsience about that. About once a year, I have a phase where I am really enthusiastic about a project for TDM and hustle like crazy, but the rest of the year, I mostly just hang around the forums. It's just that free time has become scarce, especially since my son was born, and I also want to play games, enjoy a movie or go out sometimes. But there really is no reason to feel bad about anything, because this is a community project and, first and foremost, a hobby.

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15 hours ago, Fieldmedic said:

 BTW, is Sotha still actice or is he busy boxing and parenting? ;)

Sadly Sotha hasn't been around much in the last year.

 

Check out the prefabs too...you'll find a LOT more time-saving stuff in there than the last time you were mapping.

 

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1 hour ago, Springheel said:

Sadly Sotha hasn't been around much in the last year.

 

Check out the prefabs too...you'll find a LOT more time-saving stuff in there than the last time you were mapping.

 

Too bad. Well, at least he made some really nice missions :)

 

Yes, I remember fiddling with your exellent modules and during my sporadic mapping over the last years I've created some by myself, although my are all made in DarkRadiant. My brain isn't ready for Blender or any advanced stuff just yet :D But it's really nice to create them and then being able to relatively quickly create alleys and stuff and get a better vision for where to add objects.

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I've played your missions and loved them, excited to hear you are reinvigorated about mapping and can't wait to see what you come up with next!

You ought to hang out on the discord channel for DM, as a noob mapper i've had a TON of help and inspiration fine tuning the process and finding my ideal workflow, just from talking to other mappers and getting ideas on how they work. It's also fun to have a finger on the pulse of the mapping community, I find it helps inspire me to keep hustling, kind of a healthy competition to keep my self motivated. When you got like five or six people asking you every week how your map is going, its hard to get lazy!

As my father used to say, "A grenade a day, keeps the enemy at bay!"

My one FM so far: Paying the Bills: 0 - Moving Day

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@Fieldmedic I tried to send you a PM, but you're not able to accept those currently, so here it is in public -

Subject: Request for Use of your ANTR Billiard Table

I'm leading an effort to create a new FM (working title "Away0"), which will be a prequel to my "Away1: Air Pocket" FM. This extends and re-images Atti's 2007 "Setting the Scene" mission. A beta-release might be expected in Q1 2021.

The map includes a large  4-story building, which is being recast as a casino and entertainment complex. In one of the rooms, we'd like to include your billiard table, balls, cues, and cue rack from A Night to Remember. Most likely this would be in the "Map Room", a members-only lounge.

Might we do so? You would of course be given credit... and let me know if anyone else should be credited for these billiard-related assets. Thanks for considering this.

Geep

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@Geep

Oh, doesn't it work sending me PMs? Strange

Anyhow, you are free to include my work. I'm flattered :)

Tips! This table/balls was made way back when the game was "plagued" by a bug that made the vertexes slide, especially on brushes with intricate angles. That mean that the models MAY have "holes" and things might be unaligned.

 

@Jedi_Wannabe

Glad you liked my missions! Looking back on them, I'm not that impressed myself, and that's mostly because I did a lot of experimenting and going outside the box regarding gameplay and design. My future missions will be more straight forward and a general boost in design.

I have Discord installed but how do I find you? Is there a generic TDM-channel? Discord-noob here :D

 

 

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Welcome back, and hope we will see something from you again! Sadly, I have not been very active either; the last time I touched DR was in 2016 - I am planning to change that, but life always gets in the way. Whether you will make something or just play the new missions, it is great to see you again!

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Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 7/7/2020 at 2:14 PM, Fieldmedic said:

Hello!

I sat and read a book and felt an urge to map/play TDM, so I went to the computer and started up the mod and saw that my current version was out of date. I haven't mapped (seriously) for some years but I see now that you've released 2.08! It makes me really glad and brings tears to my eyes that the dev team still cranks out exellent content! I must bend away my thoughts and thinking of "I cannot make anything useful..." and try to make another mission!

In other words, Fieldmedic is not dead, I'm trying (again) to take up mapping!

Cheers!

Looking forward to seeing your next WIP! :)

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