Why do you map?

[Generalvivi]

i was born with a hammer in my left hand and a mouse and a very strong pointer finger on my right.

But it took him years of practice to develop that wrist action

only about a week out of teh womb ^_^

[Woe Kitten]

i was born with a hammer in my left hand and a mouse and a very strong pointer finger on my right.

But it took him years of practice to develop that wrist action

only about a week out of teh womb ^_^

Minging... does that mean you were already practicing inside? That's just sick.

[YokaI]

I hope to see a future career in it, seeing as I am a younger member and still have some pretty decent skills. The project im working on now cannot be shown to public just yet.

[Rocket_Robinhood]

ive loved creating all my life. When i was a kid it was all about lego (and it still sometimes is). Then as i started to play more games i wondered how does this work, and i wanted to add on. The sims was perfect. I could amke my own furniture for it. Then i discovered blockland (a free 3d lego based game), that i could map for. This was also around the time of condition zero which i wanted to map for but i couldnt configure hammer. So when i found out it was as easy as downlaoding the sdk for source i satrted to map.

[mabufo]

I play games... It's only natural that I want to create a little game of my own. I suppose mapping is the means to do so.

Hell, maybe I could pull an AlexRoyce and make a career out of it.

[Spas12]

I map because it is something I always wanted to do.

As soon as i played the demo for HL1 I fell in love with it. From there I always wanted to make map, and ONLY maps, for the game.

Of course time has past and modding for the source engine is a lot more popular.

[Hyp-R]

I like it cause,
it's kind of like painting a picture
that I can get up in,
and walk around.

Would you consider mapping art?

[Rocket_Robinhood]

I like it cause,
it's kind of like painting a picture
that I can get up in,
and walk around.

Would you consider mapping art?

probably, but it would be a pseudo art

[PeoplesHostile]

I map because I have nothing better to do while waiting on my new computer, personaly I think I will die from old age before I ever see it on my desk and not on paper...

[mabufo]

I also map because I've run out of time for programming, I'm too busy to learn. Mapping however, is something I already know how to do.

[Jest@]

well, i dont really map (except when necessary ) but if the question is why do you *mod*...to tell a story. that's pretty much all there is to it for me. And by telling a story i mean also creating the atmosphere, the scenario, the style, the backdrop for the story. that's the fun part - dreaming up the scenario.

The actual getting-it-to-work (mapping, modelling, coding) is almost a chore these days, with more and more external RL time pressures on me, i get frustrated at the actual making-it part cos it takes too long.

[undertone]

creation. i just love creating things. like images in photoshop, lego machines, i used to paint models. hammer is just another form of creation for me. the only thing i hate is that when playing through hl2 i see every texture and every brush rather then the entire entity.

[The Watcher]

Legos and what not always fastinated me at a young age (and still does) But my main kind of "mapping" was always drawing. I've been drawing maps/levels for games for as long as I have been drawing. It all started with the SNES Mario games like Super Mario World and Yoshi's Island. Then 3D games like Duke Nukem 3D came along, and I started doing levels for that (even merging Duke and Mario stuff together in some EXTREMELY early levels). After some years of Duke 3D, BUILD came into my life, where I could bring my Duke level drawings to life. This would be my first experience with mapping if it was called that back then. I only made ONE of the hundreds of level drawings into an actual level, and it wasn't one of my best creations. I can't remember, but my first glimpse of Half-Life came after some more years, and I had no idea what it would become in my life. After growing more and more agitated at not being able to do shit for Half-Life mapping (and seeing all my friends were able to do it), I finally found a tutorial that showed me how freaking easy it was. From then on, my skills got more and more advanced in the architecture parts. When I got Half-Life 2, and downloaded the SDK, the change from one engine to the other wasn't so hard.

I map because it is fun, creative, and can prove your skills at this kind of stuff (architecture, scripts, etc.)

[Zyggy]

I suppose I do it because i don't like to be passive. Gaming is more fun if you put something back in, because then it becomes YOUR game. It's like going to a show and being in the band. People witness and (hopefully) enjoy what you create.

[Penney]

after a quick read at a few of your thoughts, I can say that I feel like I should have came here a long time ago. I map because I have a passion, a burning desire to create something, thats artificial but seems real and is enjoyable to play. I love how you can create something, an idea, your thoughts into a level. It almost seems like it's own type of artwork to me. I love every bit of it and I wouldn't give my ability to map away for anything else in the world.