Mokagogo said:
After all, Valve could have said, 'Our games are perfect the way they are. If we hand out level design tools to every idiot, there'll be loads of really poor maps for our games out there, and who wants that?'
Funny you should say that, actually. Before Valve released the SDK, anyone interested in Level Design for Half-Life had to search for the editor to utilise it. 99% of maps produced and released for Half-Life and it's mods were professional, original, not broken and had months and months of work put into them before they saw light of day. Each map released was literally amazing. The effect that this had was that
only people who wanted to
actually make maps, made maps. Not every dog and his friend who owned a STEAM game.
As soon as hammer was made available to "every idiot" through STEAM the custom community saw a flood of "LAWL LUK my first map PLZKTHX", "box maps", "aim maps", "orange maps", "mario maps", "surf maps", "sniper maps".
This initial influx of (pardon my french)
Bullshit, destroyed the reputation of Level Design, particularly the custom content of TF2 and even Counter-Strike Source. Although Counter-Strike had a strong custom content scene before Hammer was made available by defualt to the Half-Life community. The majority of server owners that may have run custom content stopped or didn't because players were put off by the crap that was out there (short of Orange only servers which mostly see 14 year old CS players in them). The "actual" Level Designers that came from other mods and games had to fight tooth and nail to gain any sort of respect from the gaming community in general and still fight to have their maps put on servers.
I can't imagine how much the initial custom content hurt TF2. I tried to show a friend TF2 and how amazing it was. We joined a server and the map changed to MarioKart. It was embarresing to try and impress a friend with the art style and gameplay of TF2 when they are thrown into a spawn camping marathon with bright ammetuer custom content like that. He thought the game was "a joke". It pissed me off.
The majority of these pathetic maps are produced because those involved don't put in the time necassery to produce a
worthwhile map (although i imagine some time was probably put into the custom materials implemented in mariokart). They just want to show off to their online friends and get instant recognition for their work. Which is why places like FPSB are full of idiots.
I still stand by the concept that Valve released their vmf's for
experimental use. Changing ammo packs and items and editing things
here and
there is fine.
Documenting it is fine. Releasing it for playtesting and research is fine. Releasing it to the public and expecting the more experienced Level Designers to pay you any mind beyond "what a waste of time" is not a realistic expectation.
TF2maps.net isn't close minded. There is just a certain level of professionalism and will to learn employed by most members. People are here to learn, improve, and be creative. Not re-hash stuff other people made in a get famous quick scheme. People here expect some work from you. Not border-line plaigarism.
I don't expect Valve released the vmf's to see 50 different versions of gravelpit (or any other of their maps) running, although i admit it would be
interesting to witness the gameplay changes and statistical differences; but they didn't release it so that people could edit small bits of
their work and claim it as there own production.
The smartest idea would have been to notice how you thought lumberyard would make a nice PL map and produce a layout
similar with a refreshing new detail 'paint' job.
This is all i'm saying. Throwing in some tracks and pasting in a new mode entity setup just wont cut it.
P.S. We would love to see your original works.