That's silly. How is editing inside forge any different from designing something on paper, except that the editor is fully 3D and the design (once finished) is also your first draft of the map? Yet you admit that the map you thought had the best design you now believe wasn't "designed" at all, and you have yet to comment on if you've downloaded a single one of these maps... hmm. Yes, people are probably too sensitive. But you walked into a thread with five map authors and basically said that four of them put no thought into their map design. And now you're hiding behind "brutal honesty." I can't speak for the other guys, but personally I welcome any kind of detailed feedback - if it's coming out of a mouth I can trust, from someone who has actually played the map, and someone who is willing to hear counter-arguments. As far as I can tell you're a guy with unknown credentials, who glanced at my map thread for a couple minutes and gave me "brutally honest" feedback that I didn't hear from the literally dozens of guys who actually played the map. So it's hard to take it very seriously. As a reason for you personally not to vote for it? Cool. It may simply not be your kind of map. But when you make a public announcement that discourages people from voting for me, and then won't respond to a perfectly reasonable counter, it does tend to grate.
Make a decent map, and we'll make an arrangement. [br][/br]Edited by merge: I did not say they didn't have thought put into them, so do not claim that I did. If someone lets my one statement affect how they see the map without looking themselves, they are an idiot. Again, I'm done arguing.
Actually designing a map doesn't have to be on paper, it just have to be a mode, and idea of what you are trying to built. Frankly, I'm one of those people who doesn't give a **** about designing a map on a piece of paper, I just go to forge and forge, Hardcore, and look where's it got me.
Well if that was the smartest way to go about it, then professional level designers wouldn't spend months designing maps before they actually create it. Throwing pieces down and hoping for the best is acceptable for forging a map casually, but when you get serious, you will start pre-planning your maps to ensure that they play well.
I'm curious to see Mineral now, I will have to DL and see if I can get in some games soon. I'm glad to have had the privilege to play most of these; all deserve to win based on their excellent gameplay and interesting concepts. I can't wait to get back on more and get back to playing them all! Lets try to get back to the maps, we're not going anywhere with the argument at this point as neither side is bringing up any new points.
Even after planning it all on paper, there is no guarantee of how it will play. You cannot possibly predict what will happen when you first run a series of tests. You will undoubtedly have to make many changes as you go along anyways. Bungie tested their maps hundreds of times, but within a week or two of Reach coming out, people were already breaking them in ways that could not have been anticipated. I don't pre-plan my maps, but I know what I'm looking for and what will most likely work. At most I have a general layout in mind that evolves as I lay down pieces. I guess my point is that both methods are valid forms of creating a map and whether or not you plan them beforehand doesn't designate one person as casual and another "serious" about map-making.
Simply put, pre-designing your maps is a smarter way of doing it. I understand forgers like to go into forge and start laying objects down, but anyone who takes map design serious plans it first. I don't want to argue about this either. I have learned from experience how much sketching my designs help, and all of the best forgers I know pre-design their maps.
To reiterate a question I asked before, how is editing inside forge any different from designing something on paper? You can plan just as easily with forge pieces as with a pencil and paper. Perhaps MORE easily, since you are planning with the actual building materials, and the "design" ends up being in three dimensions and to scale. This isn't like building a real cathedral on the fly - editing on a massive scale in forge takes just minutes. Rebuilding an entire map with major structural changes from the first version might only take a few hours, unless the map is absurdly complex. I'd be interested to know if you could look at my released maps and even tell which ones I pre-planned on paper (some meticulously) and which ones I built in forge, with no prior idea of what I was going to make. Feel up for the challenge? I can link you to the map threads. I believe that you probably won't guess correctly on more than 60% of them (barely better than random chance, in other words). If you're up for it, I'll give a list of the answers to a third party to prevent any monkey business. (Sorry to anyone else who finds this off topic - I just think it's an interesting philosophical question.)
That would be difficult because with each map you make, you become more experienced. If your design knowledge was consistent throughout the making of all of your maps, I'd be up for it.
We can skip the first few maps. I think I definitely got better at forging as I went - the first 3-4 maps I made in Reach were kind of sloppy, even when I did plan them out. We can also skip the minigames because they don't really count. That would still leave about ten maps, I think.
This really can't be answered because it all depends on how good you are at designing a map. But, I can confidently say that you designed Boiling Point, which is your strongest map thus far. (if not, you got really lucky with the connection) EDIT: I do see some connection issues NVM
Poll has been updated to close Friday night instead of Sunday night in order to give me time to write the results. Keep em' comin, you only have one more day!
So you are or aren't up for this? By the way, even the maps I planned may have some minor "connection issues." I don't pre-design in Sketchup or on graph paper. When I come up with designs on paper, I'm just guessing how many units long and wide they will be, and even which particular objects I'll use to build them in forge (though usually I'm about 75% right - once you forge enough maps you know the object palette like the back of your hand). It's more of a general floor plan - where the walls, doorways, objectives, height changes, etc. all will go. I draw them out pretty carefully but the finished product still may end up being fairly different from the drawing.
You draw the maps for a general floor plan, but if you drew it more in detail, it would help you drastically. I draw maps up so I can detect any problems with balance, flow, connection, and LoS. I will add that a simplistic layout does not necessarily need to be planned out, but I find simplistic maps very boring so whether you draw it or not, I don't care for them.
Would it now. I gotta admit, it's a little tiresome getting condescended to, whether you're doing it intentionally or not. You can discover those same problems by running around/revising the map in forge and playtesting it. Anyway, I can assume you're dodging this little light-hearted challenge, so never mind.