What were you actually doing?

[ProblemSir]

First of all, im not going to discredit craka's work but let me just put this on the table.
Have a look at the stormwind map, the city is about 20 % complete and pretty much all of the map space is used, did you realize that the mapsize is too small only once you had completed that 1 quarter so you can redo it all later?
Secondly, why are there so many unfinished maps and not 1 entirely finished map? Why not finish something, then move on to the other.

All in all i would have to say all this work could have been achieved in 2 months rather than 6 years. Granted that you actually work on the map and not claim to be working on it. At the same time I can hardly blame you for it seeing as its not particulalry beneficial nor rewarding spending all that time mapping for a community of which the worth is very questionable.

What I do think however, is that you should have been more forthcoming in admitting that the project isnt actually going anywhere and potentially let someone else pick it up as you have done recently.

Overall as mentioned before i cant blame you for anything especially as the project has been going on for years i assume that as you get older you begin to see the futility of spending time making wc3 maps.

But the process of the actual mapping was performed inefficiently I cannot believe you would deny that yourself.

 

[Adiktuz]

I kinda don't like the fact that I always see you talk about the time used by the people on a map... Face it, the reality is that this is a hobby, even if people say that they are working on it, it doesn't mean that they are working on it all the time... it might even mean that they are working on it for about just an hour a day, and not even everyday...

but I agree with this:
-->Secondly, why are there so many unfinished maps and not 1 entirely finished map? Why not finish something, then move on to the other.

and if you think that the worth of this community is very questionable, then get-off, were not forcing you to be here... For a lot of people here, we find this community very helpful and a source of fun and a sense of belonging which is normal considering that a lot of people here are on their teen years and not as old as you (not sure of your age, but based on your claims on the SoE thread, I would think that at least you're out of your teen years)... mapping is our hobby, and I do believe that you understand why people spend time on their hobby...

 

[Aeroblyctos]

Hmm, I think he has a point.

Actually I have the same problem with my own big project. We map makers should just be more honest and tell how is the project actually progressing. But in the end... We are here for fun.

 

[Adiktuz]

that's a problem of a lot of mappers... always trying to make something big then becoming afraid of saying that they only have a few progress the past week... ^_^

 

[Aeroblyctos]

It's okay with small projects, but if you actually have some fans already then it's not acceptable.

Just tell the truth even if it hurts.

 

[Hawkwing]

You do sort of have a point, but two months? That's a bit unrealistic.

 

[Adiktuz]

well, he claims to be someone good at making games, and maybe can devote about 20+ hours a day to work...

 

[Magtheridon96]

Mapping is more than a hobby. I've been mapping since I was 11....

my life story =P

It all started one day.. it was a friday...
-"Come on you N00b! Login!" said my friend
-"roo2 wleh" i said (translation: wait dude in an insulting way =P)

I started up WC3 and played with my friends for an hour.
We were playing Footmen Frenzy 6.0
I loved it so much, I decided to get wc3!
But at the time, my dad was in France, and I didn't want
to wait for him to come back due to the fact that I LOVED
WC3.
Instead, I decided to download it .. it was TORTURE.
Back then, my internet was only 24 KB / sec D:
3 days later, at 11:06 PM on August 6, 2008 (I'm not kidding),
the download was complete ^^
I opened up wc3, and loved it.

Then, it happened ... a week after that, I was browsing through the
WC3 folder.. I saw something that caught my attention... "World Editor"
it said. I opened it up and started playing with it for a while.
I terrained for about an hour

A month later, I learned about the trigger editor after opening WarChasers 1.0
I thought it was too advanced xD

Now, when I look at it, all I find is leaks, repeating natives, and tard-code

For about a year, I was writing RPGs and TDs.
They all STUNK.

My first real project was a Footies map.
I made 200 heroes
The only things I didn't create were the abilities >.<

I gave up that project and started another one:
DotA 7.0 (the sequel ^^)
I took a DotA template and started working on it...

I gave up after I realized that it's not going to work out ...

That same year, I joined the hive.
I made one post and left =P

Since December 12 2008, I was doing GUI..
On August 6 2010, I returned to the hive.. (2 years exactly since the year I got warcraft ^^)
On January 23, I uploaded my first spell..
I sucked!!

On April 20, I learned vJASS ^^
It was because the pretty colors in JNGP caught my attention xD xD

And that my friends is the story of my WC3 modding life.
I once made a TD.. it was SUCH an epic fail ... the towers moved xD xD

I bet you read my life story

 

[GhostThruster]

Tl;dr

 

[Magtheridon96]

w00t?

 

[Adiktuz]

me too, Tl;dr

 

[fladdermasken]

Secondly, why are there so many unfinished maps and not 1 entirely finished map? Why not finish something, then move on to the other.

Most likely because staring at the some spot for hours wondering what the hell you should do is less productive than starting fresh. If you get bored or run out of ideas, it's better to take your mind off it and do something else.

A change of pace every once in a while is crucial if you want to remain sane

 

[Aeroblyctos]

A change of pace every once in a while is crucial if you want to remain sane

Still sane, still same project.

 

[fladdermasken]

Still sane, still same project.

I feel like you want me to say kudos.

 

[Dr. House]

First of all, im not going to discredit craka's work but let me just put this on the table.
Have a look at the stormwind map, the city is about 20 % complete and pretty much all of the map space is used, did you realize that the mapsize is too small only once you had completed that 1 quarter so you can redo it all later?
Secondly, why are there so many unfinished maps and not 1 entirely finished map? Why not finish something, then move on to the other.

All in all i would have to say all this work could have been achieved in 2 months rather than 6 years. Granted that you actually work on the map and not claim to be working on it. At the same time I can hardly blame you for it seeing as its not particulalry beneficial nor rewarding spending all that time mapping for a community of which the worth is very questionable.

What I do think however, is that you should have been more forthcoming in admitting that the project isnt actually going anywhere and potentially let someone else pick it up as you have done recently.

Overall as mentioned before i cant blame you for anything especially as the project has been going on for years i assume that as you get older you begin to see the futility of spending time making wc3 maps.

But the process of the actual mapping was performed inefficiently I cannot believe you would deny that yourself.

This post really suites your personallity specialy when you got like 5 posts and 0 reputation. Besides that i would advice you to take a better look in how much time Craka has spended on his project. Besides that finishing 1 map and than a other yes i understand your point but i think everyone deals with the same problem its called Motivation. Besides all this you say it could had been all done in 2 months. Ill dare to say i put in all my reputation to make a bet that you are unable to do such a thing. Your also say that this community its wurth is questionable well lets just say your additute is also questionable.

Sorry if this has offended you but posts like that are just useless.

 

[Orcnet]

It's okay with small projects, but if you actually have some fans already then it's not acceptable.

Just tell the truth even if it hurts.

even when people starts to gang bang you and bake you for dinner, that's for sure.

 

[Craka_J]

I don't check this section of the forum that often anymore, so I missed this thread. But! Since you want some questions answered about Wc3:WoW's development process on the maps' terrain, I can obviously provide those answers!

To start off with the Stormwind map, I was becoming over confident that we'd be able to include or at least get a lot more started for the Alliance in the "upcoming" BETA release. However, I didn't always have an active World of Warcraft subscription, the WoW Map Viewer tool was very glitchy, and it actually slows my computer (or the World Editor, I couldn't really tell) down to have both World of Warcraft and the WarCraft III World Editor open at the same time. So it kind of slowed the process and it was pretty frustrating to deal with.

On top of that, I decided to make the World Editor auto-save every 5 minutes because I have experienced editor crashes countless times, which would often completely kill off my motivation for sometimes months because of the usual loss of my tedious work. So, with the auto-save, that was never really that big a problem anymore.

To answer why a lot of the maps were so small, we didn't have JASS New Gen Editor or anything like that. We only used the World Editor. So the maximum map size was about... 256x256. However, I'm not quite sure why the previous terrainer of the maps like Central Mulgore only made the map 150x150 (or whatever it was) instead of 256x256. Anyway, with Stormwind, I knew how to expand the map dimensions finally beyond 256x256 up to 480x480. So I figured I would just expand the map as I went along.

Turns out though that I eventually became bored with working on Stormwind and also realized that I should probably prioritize finishing some Horde terrain first like Orgrimmar or Durotar.

Unfortunately, I was very disappointed with my work on Durotar. I only worked on the Valley of Trials map I think, but it kept ending up being inaccurate. Whether I was placing hills and mountains too close to each other than they were in the game or having to redo the road out of the area because it was really off, there was always problems with it and there still is. I personally think it's hugely noticeable and it turned me off a lot. Which is why I liked working on and reworking Orgrimmar! Orgrimmar was definitely the most fun... zone... to terrain. Especially once I started scaling all the buildings and the environment a lot huger to make it feel more like an MMORPG. But my reasoning for not finishing Orgrimmar was because I didn't have the right environment assets I needed to finish it. I wanted to make Thrall's Chamber an enterable building, but that never got started on because I didn't know the right way to approach it, and I DID do the Valley of Honor, but lost it all in an editor crash before I started using the auto-save feature.

As for my announcements of the mod making progress, which you think was a cover up, we actually did make progress. Most of the time it was when the coders would say they were pushing to finish a system that was cool or something and then we find out that either the system started to conflict with other systems, the coders simply lost interest, it would take a lot more time to finish, etc.

I was very optimistic and enthusiastic with Wc3:WoW at times and very pessimistic at other times. If the coders were working or even a modeler was making an attachment model, I'd be happy and trying to revise terrain or whatever. If I felt like I was the only active working member of the mod, I'd gradually get less and less confident that the mod would succeed and would just quit.

As for my game development skills, I was working with a bunch of indie games --- just about all of them failed except one or two so far --- throughout the development of Wc3:WoW because video game creation was more of an intriguing and fascinating type of project to work on. And when you're working on games, the work feels more original and like the skills you gain from it could prove to be more beneficial in the game/mod development world.

But I'm rambling on about all sorts of stuff right now. Did I miss anything?

 

[ProblemSir]

Oh looks like I was email subscribed to this thread.
Dr.House, sorry i just dont have time to deal with kids who can't even type a message without making a horrendous amount of grammar errors, i JUST dont.

Well Craka this thread was made for you and you should know that it was by no means intended to rip on you or anything of that nature. As a matter of fact I dont even play games, it is exactly BECAUSE this project is so old (development had begun when I still played games) that I was somewhat nostalgic about it.
Anyway I will have to cut this short now, gotta run !

 

[Dr. House]

Oh looks like I was email subscribed to this thread.
Dr.House, sorry i just dont have time to deal with kids who can't even type a message without making a horrendous amount of grammar errors, i JUST dont.

Well Craka this thread was made for you and you should know that it was by no means intended to rip on you or anything of that nature. As a matter of fact I dont even play games, it is exactly BECAUSE this project is so old (development had begun when I still played games) that I was somewhat nostalgic about it.
Anyway I will have to cut this short now, gotta run !

Sure talk about my grammar errors while we actually are talking about something else than that. I would seriously think about how to write a post next time you write one cause you really have a lot to learn.

 

[Yabooer]

Oh looks like I was email subscribed to this thread.
Dr.House, sorry i just dont have time to deal with kids who can't even type a message without making a horrendous amount of grammar errors, i JUST dont.

Well Craka this thread was made for you and you should know that it was by no means intended to rip on you or anything of that nature. As a matter of fact I dont even play games, it is exactly BECAUSE this project is so old (development had begun when I still played games) that I was somewhat nostalgic about it.
Anyway I will have to cut this short now, gotta run !

Don't criticize others on their grammar and punctuation when you are also unable to type. Also, this was indeed to "rip" on him and to say that you were not doesn't forgive that fact.

The progress stopped due to multiple reasons, which if you took the time to read through some of the archives (Or since you said you've been following up you should know) that progress stopped due to progress on Ardent Heroes, our current project. We have more of a duty to them now than to this project which could never sustain progress for more than a month due to coders.

Please, I know this is the internet, but take it easy on rude comments and keep them to your self.

 

[monkeypieman9]

need i repost what i have on every other thread...

 

[TerraNexx]

Its quiet unfinished..I've chosen undead rogue and got some tauren warrior
And peons and grunts in orgrimmar were mine so i could move them and build shit with them -.- So many work to do, but could be an awesome map one day

 

[Adiktuz]

I believe that it was clearly written or at least clearly understandable that the uploaded campaign was not on a playable state...