SubJeff on 24/8/2006 at 14:43
ALthough I enjoyed TDS it was a let down for reasons I've stated.
The Cradle was good for many reasons, but it still suffered from the engine choice. And you cannot make the same type of level every time. The variety of mission types is severly limited in TDS by the engine.
After I started this thread I decided to finish another, smaller, mission idea I have - just because. But the editor crashes on me all the time now so I've given up entirely.
scumble on 25/8/2006 at 09:46
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
Why? Classic Thief still has a lot of life left in it. People are
still doing new things in DromEd, and the missions get played by a lot more people.
Since DeadEd doesn't support so many things that DromEd does, and TDM will, you're just inflicting brain damage on yourself by continuing to use it.
I'm afraid that's pretty defective logic. As far as it goes, for many people T3ed is perfectly fine for learning many of the skills in level design, which are generally transferrable. Any 3d model assets can be re-used elsewhere. It's also a little more accessible than Dromed, although not as complex. Even if you don't produce a final mission, the experience is still valuable.
Durinda D'Bry on 25/8/2006 at 10:49
By the way, I think some of DromEd designers cannot use the same approaches they used for architecture creation - need to create static mesh in 3DMax each time you have to have paricular terrain. This may stop them from using T3Ed until they have huge library of static meshes. Approach with static meshes is very useful for team work and for individual work it is problematic sometimes.
SubJeff on 25/8/2006 at 21:38
Yeah, T3Ed is rubbish for terrain. Another rubbish thing about it. You can you that UEd BSP creator thing I mentioned in some other thread (search for it) but it's fairly inflexible and omgwhathappenedtomylevelperformancedamnitit'sonlyasmallbsp.
sparhawk on 28/8/2006 at 17:40
Quote Posted by scumble
I'm afraid that's pretty defective logic. As far as it goes, for many people T3ed is perfectly fine for learning many of the skills in level design, which are generally transferrable.
Yes, you are right there. If you plan to map for Unreal, then you can learn a lot of skills and the knowledge is transferable from one Unreal map to any other. Especially in terms of level design, you can NOT learn on one engine and hope to transfer your knowledge easily to any other engine. It depends on what you assume with "level design skills" though. If you just mean the level layout, you can learn that on almost any editor, but that doesn't help you anything. You must be able to transfer your level design into a playable map which runs smoothly, and this is where your logic falls short.
ZylonBane on 28/8/2006 at 17:53
Quote Posted by sparhawk
Yes, you are right there. If you plan to map for Unreal, then you can learn a lot of skills and the knowledge is transferable from one Unreal map to any other.
But TDM doesn't run under the Unreal engine.
sparhawk on 28/8/2006 at 22:08
You're quite a smart one. :)
ZylonBane on 28/8/2006 at 22:11
Well one of us has to be.
sparhawk on 29/8/2006 at 09:55
Some day you might also join my level.
Ziemanskye on 29/8/2006 at 10:04
There's also the acts of thinking in the requisite dimensions, being able to plan for and read orthogonal views, texture and lighting and colour/mood theory, thinking in terms of performance/cost - yes they change from engine to engine, but you need to learn to think like that at all.
Object placement, signposting, when to script and when to let the AI do it's thing - something that is transferable: the methods of implementation might vary but the ideas remain the same.
I mean, yeah - Doom3 and all it's variants use a different editor and work on Additive geometry with a different lighting model and probably need objects to be built to a different scale.
Doesn't mean you can't learn anything from TDS before you move over though.
