Why do i always give up on my maps after about 20 minutes ?

[The Real Helicon]

Why do i always give up on my maps after about 20 minutes ?

can any one help me co3 i have some good ideas i just give up on them : (

[Arkive]

What you need to do is break them down into chunks, and tackle each chunk one at a time. You're likely being overwhelmed by pondering the entire map at one time and thinking to yourself, "Jesus, I'm never gonna finish this bloody thing!" Breaking it down into smaller pieces and tackling each of those should alleviate that overwhelmed feeling. On a side note, I would tackle the hardest problems first, so in case you find something is impossible to do, you can create a workaround for that before creating other sections of your map that are dependent on it. Good luck...

Jeff

[Hetemti]

Arkive is right.

First thing you do is make a plan. Just a very basic layout of what you want to build. Once you have a plan, pick a starting point. A big room works fine.

Make the big room. Once it's completed, spruce it up and make it look nice. Not necessarily finished, but nice.

Now add a hall/doorway and another room. Once you get this done, drop in a playerstart or two, click the master rebuild button, and run around in it a little. TAKE NOTES. List anything you want to change, and whenever you have "mapper's block" or are two rooms further down the line, go back and fix these things. By letting them be for a while, you will feel better about fixing them, which will make you want to continue working on your level. Go back to UEd and add the next room. By setting your goals to be just the next room and not the finished map, not only will you stick with it, but once it's "done" you'll still want to add more to it.

Damn. In two minutes of keying I figured out the motivation tactics of mappers everywhere. I need to become a psychiatrist...or at least find some way to get paid for this. :p

[Fuzzpilz]

You can also be discouraged by the first real map you made, either because it turned out awful or because it became quite nice in the end and the thing you're currently working on doesn't look anything like it yet.

[SpyderBane]

Yea try perfecting small areas of your map at first...if all else fails take 5 and play ut for a bit once you're in a killing mode go back and map some more this helps me a lot...
Regards,
SpyderBane
P.S. I'm surprised Helicon tsk tsk tsk; )

[smally]

Another good thing to do for inspiration is go into some of your favorit maps in a practice session with no bots. Just walk around and admire the things you never get to appreciate when you are running around in a deathmatch. Look at all the small details and try to find inspiration from some of the things you like in your favorite maps. Often you can find something and add a little custom touch of your own or even merge two ideas into one to come up with some real creative designs. And by the time you change the textures to what you are working with in your map, scale it to fit where you need it, and add a couple "wouldn't it be cooler if i did..."'s etc. etc. Nobody will likely even know where you got the idea from ;)

[ZodiaK]

I'd suggest not opening the epic maps in the editor until you're quite familiar with the editor, gone through the tutorials and built your first two-room s-and-the-playerstart levels. at first they just seem too depressingly complex and overwhelmingly and utterly un-understandable. at least to me they did. after you've done something yourself, then they're of course a very valuable source of information.

walking around with no bots was a good one, smally. i haven't really done that since i first got the game and tried to learn the levels a bit. it's really useful for picking up the details and ways to accomplish things.