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obake

Mapping Headaches: the Stress of Uneven Talent Progression

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It's the painter's syndrome which afflicts most of us: When is a painting finished? Only in our case it is a map.

 

At the time I'm sure that you thought your maps were excellent and accordingly published them. But now, with hindsight and acquired knowledge, you feel they are not up to your present standard. I wouldn't fret too much about this. What is in the past is in the past. 

 

But if you wanted to rework the maps, who could stop you. Maybe they will be completely different by the time you finish them.

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Not that I'm much of a mapper, but my method is to just put the maps to rest, learn from them, and do something better next time I feel like it.

 

I don't see much value in going to back to relics of the past, unless it's some release that got major attention and still has "active" players in need of an urgent fix for a big problem.

 

I think the idea of looking back and finding one's own first baby-steps wanting in some way, and then feeling like that needs "fixing" is a weird and slightly negative perspective. I'd prefer to spend time looking at the progress made, rather than the shortcomings of the past. Which I guess is a weird way of thinking about it, because you'd still compare old to new, but through a more positive lens, let's say.

 

Scrapping the maps to re-use the better bits later? Okay, doesn't sound too bad, but doesn't as good as improving on the better ideas you had in the past when you build something new, in my opinion anyway.

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I've already begun scrapping maps, taking them as they are, finishing and releasing them one by one to /idgames. It's a great enough feeling to have done something and show it to the (Doom)world, ready and playable. Plus, by releasing these scraps, I can see how far I've come as a mapper and it's quite motivating to me to finished my much-better-in-comparison project! c: 

 

I don't bother getting maps up to speed with my other ones; I don't have nearly enough free time to work on my project as it is. At least with several maps outta my hair, my project is now shorter in length, which in turn makes it more digestable for players, heh.

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I haven't done maps for anything, but I have been around webcomic circles for more than a decade and this question pops up often there. Our answer is always to keep going forward instead of redo the earlier stuff, because that turns into a vicious circle. If you go that path it's too easy to rework everything again and again because some parts will always look worse than others, and that gets you stuck.

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Ive decided to not rework my "old" maps, which I wanted to use in a map set, but instead working on newer ones.

I feel that those earlier maps are what they are, and the result of the skills I had at the time. I prefer to invest my time in something newer and probably, better.

 

 

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Well, Moonblood is a mix of reworked old maps with newer ones. And the conclusion I got was that even when I've improved and reworked the old maps several times, they still weren't as good as the new ones. These levels, even with smooth gameplay and "cool detailing", still didn't have a good and solid concept, and each one felt like a "copy" from each other, bar few exceptions.

 

I guess reworking the old material might be a good idea if you see there's a strong concept and potential behind it, if not, better try something new or replace the old that doesn't work well anymore.

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I have experienced this a few times. My first multi-level project, NoMonochrome suffered quite a bit from inconsistencies in quality. Back when I released it, I made a very poor decision of dumping two of the worst maps in the wad at the very beginning, which was a good way to ensure no more than 5 people play the wad. I should have just gotten rid of those maps.

 

Alienated was my second big project, and this time I made sure to smooth out some of the worse parts to achieve a better result. I needed to retexture or remake entire areas or combat encounters quite a few times.

 

And I think that's all you can do in a situation like that to be honest. Just redo the parts you're not happy with, and if there's too many of them, you're probably just better off removing the map from the project, and making a better one instead. After mapping for enough time, you'll get good enough that everything you make is at least decent.

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I've already experienced this with Dancing in the Abyss and Near Death Experiences, honestly as long as the maps are functional and playable, at this point there's no reason for me to go back to them because I'll never get the rest of the maps finished. Feature creep is 100% a part of this, especially with UDMF- it's the joy and bane of our existence as UDMF mappers tbh. Sometimes once the map is done you've just gotta let it go- having released few maps on my own it's definitely scary every single time but a simultaneous relief.

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I am currently in the process of reworking two 20 year old maps (one finished and unreleased and one partially complete), and while it's fun to revisit something you were once proud of and attached to; it's a pain in the ass to get it right.   Be willing to take an axe to large sections is all I can recommend.   

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As I grow in mapping, I don't get my old maps reworked cuz every map that had been finished once in the past to me is a coherent stuff and I simply can't touch it. If I retouch a finished once map, I feel that I'm doing something wrong and just wasting my time that I could use to do my new maps. If I want to release my old maps, I release them as is, saving an image of "myself of the year 201X".

 

But I feel myself right when retouching my relatively new maps (2020), particularly if there's an experienced mapper's advice on what to do so that the map becomes much better.

 

EDIT: By now, I'm creatively exhausted and just reading Doomworld's topics.

 

 

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