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Kyka

Your worst editing experience...

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So it occurred to me that it would be interesting to hear people's most painful or difficult editing moments. I don't necessarily mean like "I spent all day mapping and then my computer spontaneously formatted itself," though that is good too. I mean more like "I spent 6 weeks getting this texture to tile just right." or "I have spent the last year editing every sprite to make a skinny mancubus" etc etc.

Go!

[tl;dr to follow]
So for myself, converting every level in my project from limit removing format to ZDoom (Doom in Hexen) format has been probably the most tedious process ever. The last few months of redoing every door, every lift and every linedef trigger on all the maps, and scripting everything on top of that has been frustrating, but really good too, coz I know immeasurably more than I did before that. 4 months worth of all my spare"doom" time. Now I know about zwadconv, but it never worked for me. Possibly coz the levels are too big for it to work. (each level is between 45 and 55k sidedefs) But it is ok, coz the levels are far better now than they were.
[/tl;dr]

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That wasn't really tl;dr...it was only a sentence or two longer than your first paragraph. :P

I actually haven't had any really unusually annoying editing experiences like that...every so often I get the thing where I discover that some geometry failed to build properly, and realize that the problem sector/linedef was drawn like 50 edits(?) ago, and I can't figure out any way to fix it besides either deleting and redrawing a whole bunch of sectors, or just undoing back to that point. That's always frustrating. Fortunately, it doesn't happen as often with DB2 so this isn't a problem I've run into much lately.

Also, I think we all have sooner or later when we KNOW some script should theoretically be working exactly how we want it to the way we have it written, and it just doesn't. That's also a pain in the ass.

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One time I had just completed the layout for the final room of a level, and it was a pretty complex little piece of work that I was totally satisfied with. When I entered 3D Mode, Doom Builder crashed and I had not saved.

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Each time i was editing a map on Doom builder 1, seeing i used Vista, i'd get an error about 85% of the time. Kinda annoyed me because the ''fix'' for it wasn't working.

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My worst experience is working on a GZDoom map and eventually giving up on it, effectively wasting plenty of working and planning hours on something that still was far from being finished.

Still, the biggest loss was one boss fight I had done, which was actually pretty fun and tough. Time is expendable, good fights aren't. :P

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Krispavera said:

One time I had just completed the layout for the final room of a level, and it was a pretty complex little piece of work that I was totally satisfied with. When I entered 3D Mode, Doom Builder crashed and I had not saved.


Don't remind me.

I think for me it was learning that to make banners on the wall/column, I didn't have to make an entire sector, build it up, then slap textures on it. I could have just used a single linedef... there's a thread somewhere in these forums about that. Made a door stop working and what not... yeah took me a couple of days to do less than 3 min. of work.

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Well this isn't a huge deal, but I used to think that when I got a geometry error such as a 2-sided line with void on one side, I HAD to redraw. Now I've learned I can just edit the lines to make them reference the right sector.


A minor annoyance is in DB1 3d mode, sometimes you get those huge HOM-like solid color thingies. I've actually gone in and out of 3d mode 10+ times to try and get it to build properly

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My good editing experiences are those moments where I feel "Wow, this is/will be really cool!" My worst editing experiences are every other moment.

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My worst editing experiences are ALWAYS crash related. I've never really had any especially WHY DIDNT I FUCKING THINK OF THAT moments or anything like that. Mostly either saving a map in the wrong format and opening it back up to find a tangled mess of horror, or Doombuilder suddenly deciding that it hates life and tries to end it all right after I've just completed a particularly time consuming area. Doesn't happen so much with DB2, but I believe I've still had it happen. Saving often and using backups usually softens the blow considerably, though, when stuff like that happens. So I can't really say I've had any absolutely nighmarish editing experiences.

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I started seeing SLADE back in '06. We got along well for the first few weeks. She was always there for me when I needed her and times were good. She taught me how to map. We were the picture perfect Doom modding team. But that would soon change. I put my computer on standby one night, with a fresh map opened and ready to go for when I woke up.

I awoke to find that my machine had powered down for a midnight update, and SLADE wasn't there. Worried, I pressed her icon to make sure she was OK, but she didn't answer. I tried again and again to no avail. I went to the website, broken hearted, to find her again waiting for me, but something was different.

After she returned to my computer, things weren't quite the same. I'd open a map to find a mixed jumble of vertices and linedefs, strange errors, and in the end, she became unfaithful. She would simply not open my maps. She kept crashing whenever I wanted 3D mode. Our relationship became an unhealthy burden after some time.

I finally decided to breakup and haven't seen her since. I moved on to weapon modding with XWE, never to talk to my beloved SLADE again. I can't bring myself to use DoomBuilder because it makes me feel like I'm unfaithful.

...

COME BACK SLADE, I LOVE YOUU!!!

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Nothing really painful here. The one that sticks out in my mind most was redoing the icon of sins in SL map30, but that didn't really take long, just kind of surprised and annoyed I had some rather intricate sectoring for not a very intricate texture block. Custom-made texture help though ;) Should've fixed 20 while I was at it -.-

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If this were a year ago I'd like to say that my worst editing experiences were getting started on very heavily ambitious mappack ideas and getting about halfway before calling it quits.

The reason that it's not my worst anymore is that I've picked up the hobby of searching for my old stuffs and either reusing or improving on them; with much success!

But I can think of numerous times where I either started a new map from scratch, and spent a good 3-5 hours making this huge layout with all this detail, and switching in and out of 3d mode on doombuilder too fast and causing it to crash, losing all the data. I NEVER remember to save regularly in anything. Especially mapping. I'm pretty sure there has been some great maps in the past that Doombuilder shit all over and we'll never see again.

Thankfully doombuilder 2 is a bit quicker and more handy, as well as being much more stable (has not crashed on me yet)

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Patrick said:

I finally decided to breakup and haven't seen her since. I moved on to weapon modding with XWE, never to talk to my beloved SLADE again. I can't bring myself to use DoomBuilder because it makes me feel like I'm unfaithful.


You map with XWE? That's what I'd call the worst editing experience.

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I'm not too sure, pretty much every new editing feature I attempt can be nightmarish (first 3d floor, first script, first custom texture, etc.)

I think my worst would have to be drawing my first custom monster only because it took so painstakingly long to do. But I was using MSPaint at the time, so now that I'm better with Photoshop I can do more monsters with a little less hassle.

But, I think that this would compete heavily with scripting.

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Creaphis said:

You map with XWE? That's what I'd call the worst editing experience.

I said:

I moved on to weapon modding with XWE


:P

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Probably some of my early attempts at doing stuff with portals back around 2006 or early 2007, before I really knew how to use them and I was just trying to shoehorn them into already-built areas without really understanding how to use them. These attempts often involved horrific trickery and gross mapping hacks that would make SoM cry if he knew about them.

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I had just finished a map for a good friend (who says that doomworld is ghey) when my computer overheated - I had not saved.

I still have a sadface from that moment :(

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Trying to make a door when I first using DoomCAD 6.1(the first level editor I've ever used years ago before using Doombuilder 1 & 2), which I thought was complicated but later on turn out to be simple -_-;

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Spent a couple hours trying my hand with DoomCAD a long time ago but not really knowing the basics on getting a map working. That map never worked either, and had too many errors methinks.

Not to mention the annoyances I dealt with making levels with DCK, the periodic crashing when using the alignment tool. That pissed me off quite a bit up until Doom Builder arrived, which I switched to in a heartbeat.

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Creating my masterpiece over the course of two years and losing it to a hard-drive failure.

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Basically every time trial and error situations come up. When logic fails or my brain is too limited to figure out a setup/script/function and I have to spend hours changing some tiny value, then recompile and test ingame, adjust it again and so on...

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My optical mouse is behaving weird since a while. It makes doubleclicks when I don`t even do anything almost permanently and cloeses applications and internet explorers. And because of this, Doom Editing becomes a torture. After I almost drew the last line of a huge sector, my mouse decides to go all whacky and screws everything up, displaces the line and makes the sector pretty much useless. And this happens all the time. I hate optical mouses. Well, I better take a break from Doom Editing for a while, there are worse things to worry about.

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I am having similar problems with my laser mouse (Razer Copperhead). It constantly doubleclicks, and every now and then it'll get "stuck" in that I'll try to move it, and it just kind of tards out. *shrug*

That said it's not bothersome enough just yet to not be usable. I've had it a few years though, so I imagine it's pretty much just time for a new one.

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Ignis Affero said:

I'm not too sure, pretty much every new editing feature I attempt can be nightmarish (first 3d floor, first script, first custom texture, etc.)


This. I totally relate to this.

neg!ke said:

Basically every time trial and error situations come up. When logic fails or my brain is too limited to figure out a setup/script/function and I have to spend hours changing some tiny value, then recompile and test ingame, adjust it again and so on...


Also, I totally relate to this.

And the tardmouse thing that has been mentioned several times. Relate to that too.

I guess I am pretty good at backing up over the years, coz i have never lost more than a days mapping. Though even losing a day can be pretty painful. Even losing a few hours work sucks. I have lost lots of individual chunks of mapping tho...

Ed: 2 years worth of work. Man. In the words of Bart Simpson “I never thought it was humanly possible, but this both sucks and blows.”

Also my condolences to Patrick, dude you lost so much stuff. I hope it all comes back, I really do; not just the Doom stuff, though for sure that as well, but all of it.

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I lost like 2 hours of work in my early days of mapping when using windeu. An very large section of my map gone in an blink of an eye, alot of swearing was the result. I've tried the editor again an while ago though, making an single room with all the detail took me far longer than with Doom Builder.

Nowdays with Doom Builder these problems are an thing of the past, so no real annoying crashes to worry about anymore. Altough I save every time I make changes. Doom Builder has not crashed so far, and that gives me some degree of trust in the editor.

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I tried to add custom textures to a wad today ; it took me about half a hour of fighting with XWE and SlumpEd to get it to work. At least, I hope it does. I haven't the slightest clue how the whole thing works though.

This being my worst editing experience, compared to the horror stories from people who've been here longer, probably says a lot about the quality of documentation and tools we have available now thanks to the community. Mapping in Doom nowadays is much more newbie friendly than in any other game I've played.

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dutch devil said:
I lost like 2 hours of work in my early days of mapping when using windeu. An very large section of my map gone in an blink of an eye, alot of swearing was the result.

That has happened to me in respect to editing DOOM graphics, a university exam, more than one long email or message and some literature, and it was nasty. On the bright side, the second attempt always produced better results than the first.

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