I am a Photographer Now

I am not sure if and when I ever take up level making again, at the moment all my energy goes into taking photographs and working on them in Photoshop.

But being are already here, why don't you just have a look and see for yourself at my photo blog "The Daily Photography of Andreas Manessinger"?

UT2004 is slowly waning?

It is now about 40 hours that I have updated my original Alpha announcement thread for DM-Noxious-Fumes at the Atari forums, and up to now only four people have responded yet. Sure, I had a problem changing the thread title, so it still says Alpha 4, but I am constantly bumping the thread to hold it in the top five. It should really get the attention of people browsing the beta announcement forum. The problem seems to be, that there are none!

Hmm ... makes me curious about the download numbers for the map :-)

DM-Noxious-Fumes is in Beta!

Who would have expected it :-? Well, here ist is: DM-Noxious-Fumes-beta-01 is up for download. I have just announced it in my forum thread and some 30 minutes later RichyB had already tested it. Amazing :-)

ThunderTom's map DM-Octagon after I fooled around in UED and added the sky I've made for RichyB. Just needed a place to post the image. Probably not what Google intended Blogspot for :-)

DM-ADVMAN-02-alpha3 posted

See the new alpha version of my current work on my mapping site.

DM-Sweet-Death at 1000 downloads !

Two days later than expected (it really begins to slow down now) but there it is.

Richyb asked me for a skybox for his next map. The one I originally used for DM-Sweet-Death before I came up with the final was too dark, thus I created this one. Quite nice, isn't it? 

DM-Sweet-Death approaches 1000 downloads, next map in alpha1

973 downloads that I know of, we'll break 1000 tomorrow, and that's in less than two weeks! I even got the offer to map professionally for some children's game, though on an engine I don't know. I had to decline as well, but, WOW!

On the other front there has been quite some progress. I have put up an alpha test site with an early concept build. In general people commented quite favourably, with the three most prominent issues being accessability of the top level, non-intuitive jump pads and weapon placement.

After quite some experiments with combinations of lifts and ramps I have decided for alpha2 to stick with jump pads, but with special ones. Basically they are indicated by a mesh, but actually have jump pad actors on all sides. The idea is, that when you approach the jump pad from any side, it will propel you in the direction of your movement. So on one spot you actually have 4-6 jump pads. The bots like the idea and it should fix issues one and two. We'll see if this makes the map too bouncy. It positively accelerates gameplay, though.

Issue three is, that hitscan weapons should be placed at the lower level and flak/rocket launcher at the top. I've changed that as well.

At the moment I redesign the atrium structure to facilitate top-down movement. Basically it should always be possible to drop down one level. The blue area is already changed, the red area comes next. I am not sure what to do with green and pink, though. Probably I keep pink being more interior-style (quite like gameplay there, especially the nasty surprises when you go for the health in the basement). Green needs to be fleshed out more, though. It's a bit lifeless there.

Other experiments I've done, were with textures. The skybox I already have, suggests that stone, if used at all, should be of a light to middle blue/cyan. I have tried to recolor some retail textures and found, that the blue's interaction with colored light is horrible. Nothing I haven't already read in one of Gui's comments to some map a long time ago, but hey, you have to try it always yourself :-) I'll invest some more time, but most likely this means, that the map will use a metal or shiptech theme, with humanoid architecture still being an option.

Lesson learned

This night (I mean it literally :) I have changed weapon and item locations a bit, put more things to the upper story, but the result is only a little bit better. Fact is, that it's very fast to get down by jumping and slow to get up over the ramps. No wonder that all action concentrates on the ground floor. I need jump pads!

Well, I'm not sure how much of the layout has to be changed to accommodate the jump pads. Maybe I'll have to replace some ramps. The problem is, that ramps of course wind up along the walls, thus taking away the logical places for jump pads. Should I combine lifts and jump pads when replacing a ramp? Sounds promising. Lifts from ground to first floor, jump pads from ground to upper floor, ramps in two of the areas. Hmm ... seems like a major overhaul.

Feedback, next map

DM-Sweet-Death is now up on 5 sites and has altogether at least 716 downloads so far. Not too shabby for a week :-) Feedback is mixed. The hardcore crowd on Nalicity seems to hate it, in general reactions are very good. I even got an invitation for a mod project. I had to decline, but I do feel honored.

On Saturday I have begun work on the next map, this time a rather small deathmatch map, run-down sci-fi/industrial (not really decided yet) with a quite interesting skybox. I have a layout that is very much oriented on those DM maps that are commonly referred to as having good flow. Well, items are set, pathing is done and the first time I tried, the bots played like shit. All action on the ground floor. Oh well, I'll have to shuffle weapons around tomorrow.

The idea is, to get the map playtested before it is even properly textured, lit and decorated, i.e. at a time when it would not hurt to throw it away altogether. We'll see.

Up on Levels4you

Well, things go fast now. DM-Sweet-Death is up on Levels4you and has already 8 downloads there. I really wait for the reviews.

Up on Nalicity, review requested

DM-Sweet-Death is now up on Nalicity. I've just added some map information there and requested a review. I have also submitted it for a review at insite. They prefer Nalicity as download site, thus I had to wait.

Updates to my mapping page

I've just added substantially to my mapping site. There is a whole new page about gameplay-related feedback to DM-Sweet-Death. It's quite amazing to see people's reactions and get a feeling for how this map fares in the real world.

First advertisements in the forums done

I have posted the announcement in the Atari forums and on Unreal Playground. So far reactions are a mixed bag. The visuals seem to please, but two people claim bad gameplay, basically flow-related. We'll see.

The next days I'll submit it to NaliCity and Insite for reviews. Btw, it's now up on Mapraiders, too.

DM-SweetDeath for UT2004 is uploaded to Unreal Playground !!!

I did it. i really did it. I've just uploaded DM-Sweet-Death to Unreal Playground. Now I only have to announce it all over the place. Oh well. I guess, that's work for tomorrow.