How much time do you spend in Ued?

[smally]

I was wondering how much time some of you guys spend in the editor each day/week? Also could you mention about how long it takes each of you to make, let's say, a 1 on 1 DM level?

It seems to me that alot of good mappers can turn out quality work many times faster than me. Perhaps it takes me such a long time because of a lack of detailed planning. Usually I like to just get a general idea in my head and maybe sketch out a rough floor-plan and then jump into the editor. Most times once I'm working and see how it starts to take shape then a whole lot of things get changed from what my original idea was. Anyway just to answer my own questions for you guys and get us started... here goes.

I would guess I spend an average of 1 to 1 1/2 hours a day(maybe get nothing done on some days & others I may get 2 or 3 hours in)

So I guess in a week I'll do 5-10 hours.

And for a good quality 1on1 map (although I rarely seem to finish a map completely before I get drawn into another idea) I guess it would take me 3-4 or more weeks! That's a long time huh?

I get the feeling that some of you could kick out a 1on1 map in a day or two. And not just crappy maps either, while I'm not an editing god or anything I think my ability and attention to detail is very good. So I get the impression I am just very slow. And I've been editing for a while, I just don't know how some of you do it! Please tell me I'm not the only one that works this slow. Perhaps I'm too much of a perfectionist. Often I find myself spending alot of time scaling and panning textures to fit perfectly. On some textures on abnormal objects I find myself scaling them to the hundredth or thousandth decimals so that they fit just right. I know that's a little unusual because I've looked at the work of some of the most popular mappers works and seen that they don't align every single texture like that. And their work looks fine but for some reason I just can't get myself to let it go! If I know a texture is not aligned it bugs the hell out of me until I can't take it anymore.

Well anyhow if you have some advice that will help me be more productive or maybe you could just tell me that I'm not the only one out here that works extrememly slow it might make me feel better

And please if you read this thread take a minute to answer the three questions. Every bit of info helps (even if it makes me feel like a lamer).

 

[cool breeze]

Yo Smally,
you think your slow? Well heres a shot in the arm for ya. I hardly ever actually finish what I start. If and when I do, im not happy. Im approaching my 40th birthday in a couple weeks, and the imagination it takes to build is not there.
Age I think is one of the factors. For instance, when I was growing up we only had one color TV. That was in the livingroom. My skateboard was a 2x4 piece of wood with cut up steel roller skates mounted to it.
Those are just two examples, for my reasoning. Today the younger generation has more hightech imput, and saturation. More things for the mind to draw from! Some of the wildest and coolest maps I've seen are from teenagers.
Now, another factor is the way you edit. I never have the whole level worked out before I start. BIG MISTAKE! Then there is the style of editing, what to do, all the subtractions, then adds. Do you subtract one whole area then start adding inside?
My last comment,(since I could go on forever) is the advanced knowlege of the editor. Some are fast learners at things like solids, semi solids, vertex's, bsp solveing, and level layout(game flow).
My best was 4 weeks on a map that I thought was great. It was made in Unreal. Back then I saw very few homemade maps, so it seemed good. In the end, the map was not pathed, it had those little white wholes in it, and it is now boring to play.
Although I dont match up to those great mappers, it does'nt matter. Im having fun!
Oh, 1hour in the morning, 1hour at night. The rest of my time home im checking out this forum.

 

[Phierce]

Well, Smally, at least you will have good quality maps since you fix every texture and every little thing. Time shouldn't matter that much, unless you're getting paid and have a deadline, or even if you're not getting paid and working on a MOD team or something.

If you're having fun, that's all that really matters. I wouldn't worry about not finishing maps every few days.

 

[Euphoric Beaver]

Yeh I used to be very slow and am a perfectionist aswell.
Kinda annoys me when I put brickwork in cause they take ages to line up with the correct bricks.
Now i've learned.

Pre draft work is very important. And not just simple box things.
Writing out areas also seems to help and you must be flexible, when i'm building, alot the artitecture is dictated by the textures so you must have a clear idea of what you want in this room and how you want to achieve it ect.

Also I seem to be getting into the habbit of editing something in the level rebuild then test it in-game. Which is a bad idea.
I'm gonna try to make numerous changes, add rooms ect, then rebuild and test.

And I try to get the general layout of the level done before any lighting and decos are put in. Just add some ambient lighing.

But the most time I spend is looking through textures.
Someguys on here have a big book with all the textures printed off. I really must do something like that.
What I might do is export all the textures and put them in groups like water and wall, then I can just flick through to get which textures I want.

 

[Bean[FuzzMod]]

at least:

10 hours/week

at most so far

30 hours/week

 

[Karsehole]

It takes me VERY long to make a map.

 

[smally]

Hey Ciced, You say you spend alot of time looking thru textures? Well I would definitely have to recommend UTX-Viewer for ya. I don't remember the exact site it's on but I know you can either get it from or link to it from fordy's site at http://www.planetunreal.com/fordy
This is a very nice program. You don't have to load up each package like in the Ued browser. You start the program and all the textures are there for ya in .UTX format. The one drawback is that it doesn't work for animated textures. But that isn't too big a problem becuase that's just mainly water and special effects textures. So if you just wanna find textures for you walls, floors, cielings, pillars, steps etc. then NO PROBLEM

The other thing is about aligning the brick textures. When I have to align any of those textures that's a pain to do like bricks then I will choose a very easy texture to align (Pick a 256x256 texture) and align that texture (One example of a texture I use is SkyCity.UTX > Deco > SCLOCK) on the surface and then just change the textures back to brick and they will all be aligned for ya Hope that tip can save you some time!

Oh, and while I got your attention another great program to have is called TexAlign 2. You can pick that one up too while you're over at fordy's site. This can be a great program because it can tell you exactly what to scale your textures to on slanted surfaces and pillars and more. You can punch in the dimensions of you pillar and the size of your texture and it will give you the #'s to punch in for alignment and you get a perfect fit. You can even have it work directly with Ued and you don't even have to punch the #'s in if you want!

I love these programs! Every time I want to work on a level I load up Ued, Calculator, UTX-Viewer, TexAlign 2, and if I'm gonna do outdoor terrain then I will use Terra-Edit. All these programs make life faster and easier for level editing and I hope if you don't use them already that some of you will give them a try. I think you can find all those programs (except calculator, you should already have that one) on fordy's site.

 

[Euphoric Beaver]

Thanks! I will deffiently check the UTX viewer out but did you know you can do calculations in any input box.

 

[Euphoric Beaver]

I just had a look at the UTX viewer but it doesn't seem to do much. You still have to look through all the texture packages.

 

[Rocketman]

hours?

I spend, at least 8 hours a day in the Ed. Course, alot of that time is spent in photoshop making textures. (I make textures as I need them) It's sick man, The first thing I do when I get up is take a leak, get a big drink of Mt. Dew and hit the Ed. I'm in the same boat with you guys though. It takes me a long time to finish a map. Most of them I bail on, cuz I learn alot making a map, and want to make something better. I havn't released a map yet cuz I want it to be pretty smooth. Get a rep like Faceless... hehe... When I get done with the Asylum, I'll release a DM and a CTF Map along with it and try to get hosted. Should be pretty soon.

 

[Toomanyaardvarks]

you think your slow? Well heres a shot in the arm for ya. I hardly ever actually finish what I start. If and when I do, im not happy.

beh, i know what that feels like and i'm not even out of high school. attention span, man, i have none. i've had so many great ideas for maps that are killed because a: i lost interest, b: i had a better idea, or c: i sucked at mapping (i have an incredible map idea i've carried for more than two years; i've actually created three complete and different versions of this map, all of which are utterly awful).

 

[Lemoni]

time in ued

2 fing long but dont have any thing to show

 

[Voodoo_180]

I NEVER finish any maps. currently in my To Do folder i have 4 Strike Force maps that have barely passed the subtracting main brushes stage, two have textures and a bit of lighting but the rest i just totally lose interest in. so now i'm puruing the coding route to fame. haven't made anything yet but i have ideas. they'll probably stay in the drawing board section though as well.

 

[DRT-Maverick]

Hehe, I have UnrealEd2.0 startup when win2k does, it doesn't bother me, and I usually load one or two more editors up, I have enough RAM, 704MB, so it's not too obsurd.

 

[Karmadude]

I spend more time fiddling around with the editor than I do actually playing the game. But I am still learning how to use UnrealEd 1. I am still in the lanning stages of my map. Oh well.

 

[DRT-Maverick]

Check out Unreal2, get Unreal Tournament though, you'll need that for U2, U1 and U2 are literally the same, eccept UEd2 has a better interface, not only more user friendly, but more editable, meaning you can set up your own personalized menu, script buttons that do stuff that isn't originally in UEd2, etc. Wonderful program.

 

[Karmadude]

I have UT, but I play Unreal more.
I can't get UnrealEd 2 to work though. I load it up, then while it is still loading up, it crashes. Everytime.

 

[Mr.muffins]

well karmadude

you know you could fix that UED2 crash . If the error message you reiceive involves the words "richtext" you probablly need to replace existing drivers. I had a similar problem a while ago with Unreal1, and i just installed some VB runtime libraries (dont recall ecaxtly what it was called)
BUT i do know i got the drivers from microsoft, just head over to their site for drivers.

speaking of UED, i used to have this great map (wont give out the name, out of sheer embarassment) that i had worked on for a while and when it was finished, it bombed. There was some sort of an error that was just HUGE well over the size youd expect. anyways, i used to many texture sets and coudnt retexture it in one set.

i spent two weeks at nearly 3 hours a day (around 30 total) and now, i have no inspiration left. here is a picture if my doomed creation. man was i dissappointed... but sooner (or later) i might get another idea.

 

[common]

aw-man

thats looks like an awesome map...wont load???
send that to me utcommon@yahoo.com

 

[Mr.muffins]

actually, i found a solution to my problem a few hours ago! so all i have to do is employ it and i should be fine.