Level makers is kaput?

[Kat]

...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' +

[obsidian]

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.

[sock]

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.

[MrLego]

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.

[Infernis]

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?

[Hipshot]

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.

[Hipshot]

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.

[obsidian]

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.

[.eb]

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

[dichtfux]

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.