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Topic Starter Topic: Level makers is kaput?
fKd
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PostPosted: 07-16-2009 06:06 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


anyone else getting the error message from level makers?

This Account Has Been Suspended
Please contact the billing/support department as soon as possible.

?? very odd indeed
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Infernis
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PostPosted: 07-16-2009 11:19 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I get the same error. So it's probably kaput indeed. I'll ask dONKEY if he knows more when he comes online on MSN.



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Anwulf
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PostPosted: 07-17-2009 03:45 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I'm guessing Astro hasn't paid the bill. He may just have let it die. I don't know if .eb can shed any light on the situation. I suspect dONKEY's probably just as much in the dark as everyone else.
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Infernis
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PostPosted: 07-17-2009 10:55 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Anwulf man, it's been a long time!

Are you still behind the great firewall?



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Anwulf
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PostPosted: 07-17-2009 07:18 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I pass by this place fairly regularly, but I'm kind of out of all this these days.

Yeah, I'm still here behind the Wall. And the GFW's getting thicker. "You haven't visited Facebook in a while" a mail message tells me this morning. While that's quite true, I won't be seeing Facebook any time soon. It's currently blocked along with half the Internet. Sigh.
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Infernis
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PostPosted: 07-17-2009 09:39 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


That's too bad mate! Still, I'm glad your still lurking around these boards :D



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dichtfux
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PostPosted: 07-21-2009 09:57 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Yes, LM is down. Sorry to say this but it will most likely stay down. Astrocreep didn't show up in months and there's little we can do about this since it's his server, nobody else has FS or DB level access. Let's hope he's fine.



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fKd
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PostPosted: 07-21-2009 12:58 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


seconded :(
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MrLego
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PostPosted: 07-21-2009 03:10 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Quote:
Let's hope he's fine.

Agreed!

It's a shame it went down and we can't get hold of AstroCreep, He put a lot of time and effort into rebuilding it from the ashes of Map-Center.

There are only a few guys with admin rights, but account was maintained by AstroCreep.



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obsidian
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PostPosted: 07-21-2009 04:36 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Well, all the LevelMakers refugees are gladly welcomed here, though you have arrived at the eve of our own demise (from IGN hosting us, anyway).



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Silicone_Milk
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PostPosted: 07-21-2009 05:31 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


that is too bad. I lurked around levelmakers a lot. I had decided to post something finally but LM had gone down that same day. Poor timing.

And I third the hopes that Astro's ok.
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Infernis
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PostPosted: 07-23-2009 01:47 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I hope he is ok too. Although unfortunate, this demise was long overdue.

I've been there for 7 years witnessing all sorts of drama. From huge arguments regarding hosting and funding, which sadly led to the departure of Paul Jaquays, to succesfull hacking attempts causing the loss of data and a whole lot of users. Even though Astro did all that he could to make a succesfull relaunch as Levelmakers.com, things were never the same again. Activity declined and now it's probably over.

Come to think of it, this really marks the end of an era. Although I might not be that active, I do lurk around a lot. In the past years I've witnessed the demise of the original Map-center, Levelsource, my own site Leveldesign.nl and now Levelmakers. Even at Doom3world I hear complains about inactivity and this site seems to be forced to change hosts.

I guess there is no real future in big mapping forums anymore. As gamedesign becomes increasingly more difficult and communities are spread over dozens and dozens of games, there is little hope of seeing a site that supports different technology and actually has a fair following of "respectable" amateur designers.



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Fjoggs
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PostPosted: 07-23-2009 09:22 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Getting used to it. ;>
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sock
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PostPosted: 07-23-2009 10:34 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


This was coming for a long time, the place was trying to be the center of everything and that is not going to happen anymore. Should of created a couple of general mapping forums and let it grow from there, instead of 15+ sub forums, it was too complex. Game communities generally come and go but unless people actually do stuff and not lurk all the time then yes things will be fragmented.

Infernis wrote:
Although I might not be that active, I do lurk around a lot.


I am not picking on your infernis but what you said is extremely true of alot of places, people can't be arsed anymore to do stuff. The new communities for engines either burn out quick because content creation is too complex or people quickly move on to other things. The good old days existed because generally mod/user made content was easier and people wanted to make content. I personally blame wow, its sucked the life out of 11 million people! :P (or so the ad banner says)



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Infernis
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PostPosted: 07-23-2009 11:42 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


When Levelmakers was relaunched it was already pointed out that it couldn’t be the center of everything and that we should focus on something specific. Unfortunately this suggestion wasn’t followed.

Well said! It’s very true that people just want to lurk around and mostly do not contribute themselves. It’s really a combination of things. You got the increased difficulty in creating custom content, fragmented communities, unproductive people and less long term commitment to games.

Come to think of it, it’s amazing that sites stay as long as they did in the first place.



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obsidian
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PostPosted: 07-23-2009 11:54 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Yeah, jack of all trades is a master of none, so they say. A community driven site based off of a common set of tools would have more lasting value. Like here for instance, is predominantly about id Tech engines, mostly id Tech 3, but 4 and in the future 5 engines could be posted here as well. But very little about Unreal or Cry Engine or anything else (with the exception of a few pretty screenshots by members on other engines).

With the forum migration, we may slowly convert into a more id Software focused gaming community site, but that will be a long time off and we'll play it by ear to make sure we don't alienate anyone in the process. Over the years we have actually merged a bunch of the subforums as needed. Level Editing Forums and Modeling Forums were actually two such subforums that we merged due to reduced traffic in Modeling and we have a number of people including myself that are well versed with both level editors and 3D modeling apps.



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Infernis
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PostPosted: 07-23-2009 12:08 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Could you name a common set of tools for me please? Because I immediately think about programs such as Photoshop or Blender and I have this feeling that this is not what you are referring to, or is it?

For Id tech 4 Doom3world is definately the main source of information but this site certainly is a home for Id tech 3. I wonder which site will draw in the audience for Id Tech 5.

To be quite honest, I almost never leave LEM. I wouldn't even know the other forums. But I do hope this site will survive for a long time. I'm just really curious as to how editing communities will evolve and that's why I've posted more today then in the last month :D



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obsidian
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PostPosted: 07-23-2009 07:33 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


First of all, I'm speculating when it come to the direction that this forum may become. That all depends on the needs of the community, whether people will visit here more often if we dealt with all id Tech stuff or just Q3.

By tools I just mean that id Tech tools are still using Radiant in some shape or form so a lot of the basic concepts are common and adaptable between engines. Much more so than going from id Tech to something else like the Unreal Engine. You can always tell someone to miter those corners and bend those patches and watch out when using subtract, which you can't always do with other engines.

The community here has a bunch of people who have twiddled with various games like Q3, Q4, D3, ETQW, etc. So if a user were to post some questions not related to Q3, you'll see a fairly good chance that it'll get answered. Perhaps more so in the future if we become a more id Software community site.



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Mr dk
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PostPosted: 07-24-2009 06:28 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Sorry for what is my third change of nick, I keep forgetting my darn passwords after I have changed email accounts.
I tend to agree with all of the above. The Q3 modding and mapping era was kind of a golden age for amateur designers. Not only was there a number of very bright and talented people developing aspects of the engine/compiler, a large pool of gifted designers always raising the bar higher, but also a huge fan base that made producing work worthwhile. In addition to this the Q3 engine and associated design tools was straight forward enough that you could very quickly start to build levels and see your efforts in action. As one's skills and ambitions developed the scope was still there to do much more exciting things with Q3 than simply slapping a few brushes down in the editor. But the new titles....well in time alone it's beyond the scope of most individuals. So many new skills and applications need to be learnt; games increasingly make use of professional 3D applications, and in the case of unrealed seem to be designed more or less exclusively for the use of a certain one. The free alternatives are powerful, Blender is a fantastic application, but again this can lead to finding work arounds for problems that nobody has tried to answer before.
Unless a designer is happy to use other peoples assets and move them around in side a kind of lego kit editor, by the time one has learnt all the new techniques....the community has got bored and nobody plays that game any more.
I guess the new wave of artists and designers that will work as professionals in the industry will be graduates, not plucked from the modding/mapping community.

I too wish Astro well, many thanks for the support you gave both to me and the community over the years through Map Center and Levelmakers.

dONKEY.
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Silicone_Milk
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PostPosted: 07-24-2009 06:42 PM           Profile   Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I knew it was you just from the dk in your name. Is that odd?

Everybody pretty much nailed it. Tools aren't as easy to use/learn anymore and by the time people are able to produce something worth playing, the game has died.

Very interesting how that works... I wonder if making a game that focuses on being modded would be a success.
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pjw
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PostPosted: 07-24-2009 10:40 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


dONKEY, have you tried contacting the admins re: regaining your old account/pass? Shall I?

Silicone_Milk wrote:
I wonder if making a game that focuses on being modded would be a success.


Funny that. I've gotten very addicted to making tracks for the "Trackmania" series of racing games. It basically uses a modular system that allows different track "blocks" to be combined in an almost infinite variety, and then you do basic trigger/camera systems for replays, etc.

Once you get used to the tools and the few hundred "legos", you can make something very polished, comparable to the tracks that shipped with the game, in a day or two.

The game isn't as popular in America, but is much bigger in Europe and elsewhere. Also, since the tracks are created from pre-made parts, each track is only a few KB. The track repository for the latest version of the game has nearly 100,000 user-made tracks now...

And Nadeo (the company responsible for Trackmania) is currently working on "Shootmania" and "Questmania", which will be an FPS and an RPG, respectively, created around the same concept...

With games getting generally more complex, I suspect the community creation aspect might end up migrating to this sort of thing, rather than trying to take on the learning curve involved in "from scratch" game creation now.

[/semi-derail]
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Mr dk
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PostPosted: 07-24-2009 11:49 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Hi PJW, having my old nick back would be cool...I am the most disorganised person I know!
I've never played Trackmania, but I seem to remember Bill Brooks posting some tracks on his old FPS site ages ago.
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sock
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PostPosted: 07-25-2009 01:59 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Mr dk wrote:
Unless a designer is happy to use other peoples assets and move them around in side a kind of lego kit editor, by the time one has learnt all the new techniques....the community has got bored and nobody plays that game any more.


This is what a level designer is nowadays (professional as well) when you work with some of the current engines (unreal/cryengine), you are basically just moving prefabs around. It started with unreal tech and nowadays most people think a level editor is just a box of lego bricks, no creatively at all. I recently tried to post some of my current Q3 stuff on an art forum because I felt it was more artistic (stupid of me for thinking this :P) than gameplay oriented and was told you are just using other peoples prefabs! Here is a small selection of some of the quotes I was told. :P

Quote:
If you used a map editor, it's using pre-rendered shapes and textures, which is the equivalent of a dress-up game. Whereas with 3dsmax and zbrush, these are all made from scratch, and you have to write where lines and nodes go.

Quote:
The only difference being that we at least know that levels created with editors are usually made of prefab materials.


Most people accept that level design has changed and MOD making communities have changed with this, people hardly mod anything nowadays, they open the sandbox/legobox editor, shift stuff around, share with friends and then do something else. The days of actually creating the environment yourself is gone, level design is something else, mostly scripting and lego arrangement and forums like these will have to accept that.



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Mr dk
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PostPosted: 07-25-2009 04:02 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Oh lol!
It's good to hear you think of your designs as art, that's something I haven't heard for ages. I love it when a statement is made (like those made about level editors) out of ignorance and presented as a statement of fact. I guess that's pretty common these days. *Shuffles off looking for walking stick*
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pjw
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PostPosted: 07-25-2009 10:06 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Mr dk wrote:
Hi PJW, having my old nick back would be cool
Do you remember your actual username? Was it just "dONKEY", or...?

sock wrote:
I recently tried to post some of my current Q3 stuff on an art forum because I felt it was more artistic (stupid of me for thinking this :P) than gameplay oriented and was told you are just using other peoples prefabs!

...(snip)...

Most people accept that level design has changed and MOD making communities have changed with this, people hardly mod anything nowadays, they open the sandbox/legobox editor, shift stuff around, share with friends and then do something else. The days of actually creating the environment yourself is gone, level design is something else, mostly scripting and lego arrangement and forums like these will have to accept that.


First, and most importantly: Fuck those people. Right in their ignorant, arrogant assholes. They can all go choke on a bag of dicks while dying in a fire.

Second, it seems like you're overstating things a bit with your final paragraph. It's not like there's always a nice, crisp dividing line between "creating the environment yourself" and "using other peoples' prefabs". If you're not creating any models for Q3, are you creating the environment yourself? Well...yes, because you're building the majority of the environment out of brushwork, in most cases.

So what about when you use more models? What if 25% of what's around you is other peoples' md3s? What about 60%? Is there some strict cut-off where you're no longer "doing it yourself". How about the size of the models involved? I don't think anyone would argue that if you grab a model of an entire level that someone else made, and add items and triggers, then you're "using other peoples' prefabs". Fine.

What if only individual rooms are models, and they can be joined up with one another in a huge variety of ways via different connections and (separate) hallways that link up to all sides. If you create a unique layout with these rooms, and add hand-placed effects and liquids and hazards and lighting, are you "creating the environment yourself"?

Heck, what if you build something out of bricks, and each brick is a model someone else made?

Maybe it's just semantics, but I don't think that creating the environment yourself and "lego arrangement" (which sounds very dismissive?) are mutually exclusive, and I think that there can always be artistry and craftsmanship involved.
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Kat
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PostPosted: 07-25-2009 07:42 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


pjw wrote:
...Fuck those people...
Not "people", 'kids'. And judging by the responses, no ones looked at socks website to see he's actually a pro in the biz, one of the very people some of them aspire to be. I wonder if they can spell 'irony' :shrug: + :rolleyes:



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obsidian
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PostPosted: 07-25-2009 07:59 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I don't see how anyone looking at sock's work would think "prefab". Fact is, they either didn't really take a look at his work in the first place and just glossed over it or they don't know what the hell they're talking about in the first place.



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sock
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PostPosted: 07-26-2009 01:27 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


The whole art portal episode taught me that very people actually know what a level designer does and also what actually all the different engines do! It was a very disheartening week for me because of the stupidity of their comments but I will not give up that easily. They won the first round but I will keep pestering the site with images until they relent! :P

I still believe Level Design has changed over the years and I firmly believe that MOD sites will have to adapt as well, specifically specializing in what they offer to communities and not try to be the center of everything. Coupled with active mod people and good hosting any community should survive.



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MrLego
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PostPosted: 07-26-2009 08:36 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


The use of a prefab is not a crime, it's an efficient way to get something done. The creativity is still there because the designer still has to create the first occurance of the prefab, similar to the artist creating their work. The difference is that the artist would go and create the same thing all over again from scratch, while the level designer may use that time to create something new and unique.

Currently I spend a good portion of my time at work modelling and designing automated assembly machines in 3D, if I had to create every nut, bolt and screw every time they were used, I would never get anything done - or get paid.

The problem with many artistic people is that they are not under any constraints or time limits for their work, they just let the creativity flow until they are satisfied with the results. They have no concept of of a schedule or deadline and think reusing something is a shortcut or cheating.

If they were more familiar with gaming and the work that goes into creating a level they may not be so quick to judge Socks work. If they knew more about the industry they would see that Sock is an artist, just in a different type of media and with a different set of tools.

Back to the original topic of this post...

One of the nice things in being part of a site like LevelMakers was seeing peoples work in other games that I currently don't play or am not fimiliar with. In any given week you could see new screenshots or downloads for Quake 2, Quake 3, Crysis or any of the other games supported there, as well as assistance to a editing problem.

A solution for a problem editing Quake 3 may be helpful to a ET, RTCW or Jedi Academy mapper, but those people wouldn't necassarily come here for help because this site is not about their game.

Other than a few terrain tutorials, we could never get the Quake Wars forums going - mainly because Splash Damage did a great job on their Community Site that there was no reason to go elsewhere for assistance and partly because that community did not grow like other games when the SDK came out.



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Infernis
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PostPosted: 07-26-2009 01:24 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


sock wrote:
The whole art portal episode taught me that very people actually know what a level designer does and also what actually all the different engines do! It was a very disheartening week for me because of the stupidity of their comments but I will not give up that easily. They won the first round but I will keep pestering the site with images until they relent! :P

I still believe Level Design has changed over the years and I firmly believe that MOD sites will have to adapt as well, specifically specializing in what they offer to communities and not try to be the center of everything. Coupled with active mod people and good hosting any community should survive.


No offense Sock. But if someone as respected as you, gets dishearted by a couple of ignorant kids, then what 's this world coming to? They won the first round? Your in a league of your own and why keep pestering them? Never argue with idiots, they drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience!

Which site is it anyway?



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Hipshot
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PostPosted: 07-27-2009 05:24 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Infernis wrote:
sock wrote:
The whole art portal episode taught me that very people actually know what a level designer does and also what actually all the different engines do! It was a very disheartening week for me because of the stupidity of their comments but I will not give up that easily. They won the first round but I will keep pestering the site with images until they relent! :P

I still believe Level Design has changed over the years and I firmly believe that MOD sites will have to adapt as well, specifically specializing in what they offer to communities and not try to be the center of everything. Coupled with active mod people and good hosting any community should survive.


No offense Sock. But if someone as respected as you, gets dishearted by a couple of ignorant kids, then what 's this world coming to? They won the first round? Your in a league of your own and why keep pestering them? Never argue with idiots, they drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience!

Which site is it anyway?


As I see it: It's just not a bunch of people/kids/idiots, it's game dev as a whole. It has changed a lot since Q3 was released. Since a game today is 80% art and 20% level design, or level design in the credits, or no level design at all - I would say that a majority of the people at forums aimed mostly at graphical creation (but still maybe even game related), don't know what a level designer is or what he/she's good at, or should be good at. It might be hard to believe for people outside the biz, but I have come across graphical artists that thinks a level designer is working to place their props in a sunny place so it would look better in their portfolio, not caring about game play, optimization, scalability, etc.



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PostPosted: 07-27-2009 05:44 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


More on topic: Even though I think It's sad that LM died, I fully understand why, as everyone else said, having too many focus areas is really bad - and I really hope a future Q3W doesn't end up like some other forums.
A while a was afraid to the extent that I almosted PMed Obs (when he was talking in another thread about it) just to say that it would be really bad to have all iDs techs in the same forum if it's made the way LM did it.
I don't think that will happen though, the future will tell.



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obsidian
I'm the dude!
I'm the dude!
Joined: 04 Feb 2002
Posts: 12498
PostPosted: 07-28-2009 10:33 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


It would all have to depend on the traffic and the community's needs. No sense in creating a bunch of empty subforums nor having a single crowded forum with too broad a scope.

But in the meanwhile, if people want to drop by and post the odd id Tech 4 editing question or pop in a screenshot from some other game engine, I'm all for it. While id Tech 3 is our main dish, we can certainly enjoy a few sides as well.



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.eb
Recruit
Recruit
Joined: 11 Aug 2009
Posts: 1
PostPosted: 08-11-2009 11:36 PM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


Hey guys, I decided to 'google' Levelmakers to see if anyone was talking about the closing. Found this thread..& here I am. Interesting discussion.

- I have not heard from Astro. I would think that he would contact one of you map-center veterans before me.
Anyways..someone suggested that I contact him via phone, but I think that is a bit much as that would be overstepping the bounds of privacy IMHO. Besides, it is just a website. I am sure he is fine & that he found a new life to live.

//
I don't mean to be crass, but if he had cared about the community at all, I think he would have saved the DB and site files for someone to take it over. In my opinion, this entire ordeal(levelmakers) was never about the community, it was about trying to keep his nickname "cool". Sorry if that offended anyone but it is such a shame to have witnessed the mishandling of the site, the ignoring of the abundant-available help and the ignoring of the attention that people requested.
..it was doomed to die before it even opened.


Speaking honestly.
.eb
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dichtfux
clueless
clueless
Joined: 02 Feb 2006
Posts: 571
PostPosted: 08-12-2009 03:26 AM           Profile Send private message  E-mail  Edit post Reply with quote


I don't really know Astro but I doubt that he simply let it die because he didn't care for it anymore.

I mean it's just a website, yes. But on the other hand it only takes 15 minutes to give somebody else a DB dump and some gzip archive of the site's files so they can continue it.

Agree that the site had by far too many subforums. There were sections that had like 3 posts. Maybe it's even better that it died this way.

Btw: Our data server is still available here, you can find a few LM members in #levelmakers on irc.freenode.net from time to time and I contacted a few team members and published a small note on LM's demise here.



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