Geocomp 4

[wviperw]

What wvip means is that the layout of the site is a little bit tacky. It's like... one of those big gaming site with all the stuff all over the place that does nothing and annoying adverts. I don't really have any problem with it, I'm just saying that's what it might mean. And it really doesn't have any adverts, but at first glance it sort of gives you that impression.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was trying to say. Also, on my 1600x1200 resolution the site banner at the top gets absolutely massive (since it stretches with res).

[Pext]

Of course, this isn't the entire story, but it is most of it. Regarding leveldesign.nl itself, to me it doesn't really fit any niche and therefore I don't go to it.

Yeah, I don't think we need another forum for level designers. However it would be nice to see a site dedicated to level designing similar to sites dedicated to pro-gaming (like GotFrag or GGL).
Such site could serve information from a few games' mapping scenes, could contain not only forums, but (primarily) articles: no tutorials or a technical stuff, but something like a "map of the month", map makers profiles, "behind the stage", interviews, maybe hardware tests, maybe some tourneys on custom levels - I think it would be attractive for casual people as well as for the mappers, it would bring closer the mappers to the gamers and vice versa.

i'd love to see such a site come to life. you would need a relatively large staff though, as you would want to cover as many games as possible.
personaly, i think mapping should step out of the shadows: fps games are to 75% defined by their maps. i don't see any reason why mappers should still consider themselves mappers for a specific game, like "i'm a quake 3 mapper".
most design aspects apply to a much broader range of games.

maybe it's time to bring different communities together. if you want to acomplish that, you have to bring a bait. content for all the games you want to come to your site.
- why restrict a design competition to a single game? make geocomp 5 a cross-game competition for every deathmatch game out there!
- encourage teamwork among the community: if the base is large enough, there can be team competitions for let's say a single player map.

[Pext]

actually, as i consider this, i would be very interested in participating at such a site. is there a chance, something like this could happen? is there anyone interested in doing some brainstorming/conceptioning on such a project?

[spookmineer]

I see what you mean, but as some aspects apply to most games, other aspects don't. It depends on the gameplay: gameplay "dictates" what works in games and what doesn't. Some mapping theories would work for game X but are totally wrong for game Y.

And there is a practical problem if such a contest would be held: hardly anyone has all the games you can map for. Judging would be very hard to do.

But I agree: some things are bound to get invented more then a dozen times, just because mappers aren't aware of maps for other games.
Maybe games can be categorized by game "type": Q3 related/UT games could share some basic ideas (although mapping for Q3 and UT-related games is totally different, from what I saw) - and on the other hand more realistic type fps games (and maybe even more types of games).

Now I almost feel guilty for not even checking out screenshots of UT2kx games... There might be some interesting ideas there, and some of the Q3 maps could invoke a new energy in UT2kx maps...

[Foo]

lvldesign is ALREADY such a site.

The issue is that people aren't so willing to migrate to a site like that, as nice as it sounds.

[Infernis]

Thanks for the explanation Lenard and wviperw. The banner issues should be fixed with the new site. It would look less cluttered I wish people would post feedback like this!

Pext, regarding Lukin his idea. Like I said earlier, we are already working on implenting a lot of those features. I'm currently having an interview with a pro designer on how he got into the industry. This will be a part of a series btw. I'm also getting ready for 2 interviews with mod teams who are modding for different games. Maps will be reviewed as well. Speaking of which, I could use another reviewer!

Any help in brainstorming new ideas, or helping out in different areas will be greatly appreciated. Basically, if you need someone to brainstorm with, you can do it with me :icon25:

[d3mol!t!on]

I like doing reviews, but it really depends how you like a review to be, especially since reviews of maps tend to be fairly oppinionated (everyone has different preferences to visuals and game play, etcetera, so it's hard to state pure fact all the time). I'll link you three I've contributed to ..::LvL before below (I've done more, but locating them isn't so easy :P), so you can take a look and see if you're interested. Of course, you have to remember that they're done in this case to help promote the maps, too, rather than major nit-picking, that's why I asked above what you really want. But I'm certainly up for it if you're interested.

- Story to tell by NecrosiS
- Halls of the Damned by StormShadow (top review)
- Grindill 2.0 by Quaker-X

[megaman]

sorry, i'm not polite.
Why i didn't participate:
0. life.
1. everytime i force myself to read leveldesign.nl i get annoyed and leave. sometimes i bitch about it in irc first.
2. geocomp rules. stupid modeling shit changes fuckery pissed me off too much.
3. geocomp got boring the moment people started copying nunuk.


also, the site you want sounds a lot like gamasutra, just with a leveldesign focus.

[obsidian]

Personally, I'm more for a web site with a purpose. A web site that is too spread out without a clear focus will just lose track of everything that it was supposed to represent and any sense of community will be lost. It needs to serve a specific community and serve it well.

[Silicone_Milk]

maybe we could do a merge of the better-known Quake 3 development sites under one name so the fragmented community will be brought together...

When I say we I mean they (they being the site owners/admins)

[a13n]

What an actor! :icon6: :icon8: :icon7:

[Infernis]

sorry, i'm not polite.
Why i didn't participate:
0. life.
1. everytime i force myself to read leveldesign.nl i get annoyed and leave. sometimes i bitch about it in irc first.
2. geocomp rules. stupid modeling shit changes fuckery pissed me off too much.
3. geocomp got boring the moment people started copying nunuk.


also, the site you want sounds a lot like gamasutra, just with a leveldesign focus.

Hey, everybody is free to have his own opinion. No worries! But please tell me why you get annoyed if you read anything on LD?

d3mol!t!on: Yeah, I'm interested. Drop me a line at infernis @ leveldesign dot nl and we'll talk. Are you the same Demolition as on Levelsource btw?

[d3mol!t!on]

Are you the same Demolition as on Levelsource btw?

Yes, yes I am

[Silicone_Milk]

dont know why my revious post didn't show up even though I was positive that I posted it but Ill just post it again.

I mentioned in my post that never showed that somebody should take the existing quake developing sites and merge them together into one large quake developing site so the fragmented community will be brought back together.

[obsidian]

maybe we could do a merge of the better-known Quake 3 development sites under one name so the fragmented community will be brought together...

When I say we I mean they (they being the site owners/admins)

This post? Somebody needs a visit to the loony bin.

[dnky]

'....maybe 'we' could a merge....' that would be fine if 'we' owned those sites. Unfortunately, although this has been discussed amongst various parties I really cant see it happening, however good an idea it is in theory. Self inflicted fragmentation of the already shrinking community will continue I fear.

[Foo]

Everyone wants to be the webmaster.
Tis that simple.

[4days]

Everyone wants to be the webmaster.
Tis that simple.

lol, aye. and anyone who actually wants a job like that isn't ready to do it.

the geocomp could've been better timed, and maybe done with a little more promotion - but it's good to hear that another one happened.

i've used geocomp maps to show people how computers can be used for art - not arsing around in photoshop art, but proper art that makes you swear out loud.

it'd be good to see that continue, even if this one hasn't gone too well in terms of turnout.

[Silicone_Milk]

maybe we could do a merge of the better-known Quake 3 development sites under one name so the fragmented community will be brought together...

When I say we I mean they (they being the site owners/admins)

This post? Somebody needs a visit to the loony bin.

oh.. um... sorry I didn't realize I posted on page 1 and not page 2. doh

:icon32:

Dnky: I mentioned that when I said "we" I meant the webmasters of the sites...
And theres no way in hell Id ever want to be a webmaster of a game development site... way too much work. I already did my fair share of server hosting and web-mastering =P It's like one big digital headache.

[dnky]

The webmasters own the content, and if they have no interest we lose the resource. It is all very sad.

[Infernis]

I started LD because Mapcenter was suppose to shut down. I offered Astrocreep to save it's content and merge it with LD. He wasn't interested.

Levelsource died out, I offered the same thing an Redfella accepted so none of it's content was lost.

I don't care about being a webmaster or owning the content. I only care about preserving that which we all love so much. Too bad most webmasters tend to disagree.

[spookmineer]

:icon14:

[spookmineer]

oops

[spookmineer]

wow... :icon27: 3 times in a row

[MegaMan44]

But please tell me why you get annoyed if you read anything on LD?

1. twisted
2. neodynium
3. iirc: bad thread titles
4. noobies asking questions that were answered years ago
5. "hey that rocks!!!" on bad stuff (not the only forum suffering from this)
6. no valuable information for me (anything worth reading tech related happens here or at *sigh* d3w).
7. twisted
8. no guys i know/like hang out there (and don't at other places)
9. func rules it all. (i miss shambler:/)

i sometimes check the screenshot thread, but content is crossposted most of the time anyways – and the content that isn't isn't exactly… important.