Split from ATCS Update thread because of MAJOR_OFFTOPIC. First post is hidden, basically is menace ranting against matth’s remakes.
So basically anything concerning your opinion on remakes.
Why not? Maybe its a learning experience. Maybe because he’s bored. Why should we even care about his reason?
Everything that happens on this website in any capacity, like this very discussion, is because most of us have way more free time discussing or contributing to a “dead game” than we know what to do with. We could all be actually playing the game instead of being here, except we don’t because we are human beings who choose to spend our free time in ways that interest us. This is no exception.
Perhaps your post might have been less autistic if you actually backed it up with some sort of actual criticism of the OP’s output, but your argument is basically:
make original maps pls cus this not original ur stupid enough to update shit map IDK
I agree. Go learn how2radiant and show us what it takes to be a real baller.
but wait, i didn’t mean myself
2 Likes
Yes pls moar OC maps U could have spent all this time making other sexy stuff like nova
ATCS remakes are barely ever played and even less if you only change the looks of the map
Would’ve been more interesting making the ATCS 2015 textures less yellow hued than releasing “ATCS Update”
There isn’t much to learn from changing just the graphical aspects of a single map over and over.
I spent some of my free at some point in time around 2007-2009 making my own original maps, only one of which I ever released (cuz it was shit enough for me to complete in like a half hour). The problem was I never gave enough of a shit about any one map to actually add details and textures and lighting and the complex boring shit that makes a map “look good”. You can ask MaeJong, I remember showing him a screenshot of one of them. I still have the .map files lying around somewhere if you really want proof, but most of them are pitch black and untextured. So…
So: don’t put words in my mouth. I have a lot of respect for a lot of mappers, but it’s hard to respect a guy who just releases the same thing over and over with the tiniest changes to something he didn’t even create, especially when that guy gets praised for doing almost nothing. Mappers such as Ingar (Methane, Nano, Procyon, Sirius, Vega), Supertanker (Chasm [Unvanquished map], Gamma Core, Spacetracks, Station15), and Trak (1984, Cerberus, Eden, Thanatos) have shown time and time again that they can make a fun and unique finished product. (It may be worth noting that Ingar made ATCSHD, but it seems he doesn’t consider it to be “one of his maps”, since it’s not on his website; in the post on the Tremulous.net forums about it, he explicitly lists all the people who helped, especially superpie who made the HD textures.)
Compare that to Matth’s maps since he started mapping for GrangerHub: UTCSUD (effectively a UTCS remake, using the same base), ATCS2015 (ATCS with clutter added and worse FPS), ATCS-R (ATCS with unbearable shadows that make it impossible to see anything), Tremor Remake 2016 (literally a Tremor remake, doesn’t even try to hide it), and Nova (a port of a Quake map). The worst part is that most of these remakes don’t even try to “remake” the map, they just try to make it look prettier. If you want a real “remake”, look at MaeJong’s Arachnid2. He intentionally added things to make the map more competitive and fair, adding cover for aliens to approach down long hallways or help them build bases, but without completely changing the map to be something entirely different. He took a heavily human biased map and made it much more fair. In contrast, Matth took UTCS and added hallways and base locations and a fucking invisible ladder hidden inside a pipe. It’s largely unnecessary, and while it does end up being a fine and fun map, it’s less “original changes” and more “let’s throw in everything we can possibly think of and see if it works out”. Another example of changing a map for the better would be “tremor112”, which, if I recall correctly, was just a version of Tremor where the underground exploits were all fixed.
In my view, there are two things good mappers look to do:
- Create fun and original maps to be played on servers which allow custom maps
- Look for problems in maps and find solutions for those problems
The shitty graphics on ATCS aren’t a problem, and making half a dozen alternate versions of ATCS isn’t a solution. It’s barely even “mapping” to just redo the graphics and skybox on a map.
Happy now?
@Menace13 , in general for your above posts, your criticisms of Matth’s remakes and your praises of the remakes of the mappers you listed can just as easily be swapped, and those criticism and praises contradict each other.
In general Matth does both.
It is a problem if you are forced to look at it for so long so often when so many players keep insisting on having it played, it is literately sickening. Yes game play is the most important aspect (imo), but the other details that make a map look look and sound very good are important as well, especially if you are going to be playing a map on a regular basis. Going the distance on the details requires a certain level of skill, interest, and patience.
ATCSHD is hardly an improvement even visually. In my opinion ATCS Update has better visual improvements.
His Tremor remake is called Tremor 2016 (not 2015). Which, imo, is significantly improved over the original Tremor in both appearance and in game play (as a side note this remake also prevents the glitch building underground).
Regarding ATCS 2015, even though fundamentally it is mostly the same game play as the original ATCS, and I personally got tired of ATCS game play, ATCS 2015 is my favorite of the ATCS remakes that have changed the game play very little (I do however find the game play topologies of ATCS on ice and ATCS X2 interesting though).
Regarding UTCS UD, the original UTCS had kinda crappy game play, UTCS UD is vastly improved in game play and in appearance. There are a lot of options for building both alien and human bases, there are a lot of options for flanking, it is pretty well balanced, and the outcomes of the matches aren’t very predictable/limited in general. UTCS UD (not the original UTCS) is also one of the favorite maps of the current player base.
Btw some other maps Matth made (originals, remakes, and ports): Mission Edge, Narrow Edge, Star ATCS (very very different from the original atcs to the point where I wouldn’t classify it as a remake), Edge 1, edge_gloom4, and more that I can’t think of the names now off of the top of my head.
Just considering mapping, Matth has contributed greatly to the Tremulous community over the years, and continues to do so (he has also contributed greatly to Tremulous in modding).
It is still not a problem in the slightest. I know multiple players who use lightmap because they don’t give a shit about the looks of the map and would rather have better visibility. You could make a map be entirely pink-purple and have pornographic pictures for a skybox and call it FUCKSIA and it would still be a fine map if the layout and gameplay worked out. It’s stupid to determine the worth of a map by its visuals. The reason ATCS is played a lot is because it’s simple, relatively fair, and has non-stop fighting. Personally, I’ve never even thought of ATCS as looking like shit, I just think it’s a shitty map because it limits gameplay. I’m sure that going the distance on the details requires skill, but I’d rather any mapper spend that time making sure the map is actually worth mapping before making it look beautiful because I know that a few certain people who run a certain shitty server have a tendency to say “HOLY SHIT THAT MAP IS BEAUTIFUL. IT’S GOING STRAIGHT INTO THE ROTATION.”
If I recall correctly from chats with Ingar and others involved, ATCSHD doubled the resolution of all or most of the textures in the map. I doubt Ingar even spent much time working on ATCSHD since the textures were all prepared beforehand by superpie, but that is neither here nor there. Visual improvements don’t even matter, so the argument of which ATCS looks best is already moot.
Typo. Fixed.
As I haven’t played it once yet, I can’t really say if this is the case, and thus I will not comment on the gameplay changes. Furthermore, I only mentioned it to fill out the list of maps posted on this forum by Matth; the topic here is ATCS remakes in general, and more specifically this newest remake of ATCS.
The majority of people I have talked to about ATCS 2015 said they dislike the gameplay changes in comparison to the original ATCS, and I am included in that group. The ladders on roof make it harder for aliens to take control of the outside, and the death zone around the outside without walls is a pain in the ass since if you pounce up there accidentally you will not be able to just move back and only take 5-10 damage from the electric wall, you’ll be facing 50-100 damage or maybe even death since you can’t just pull back and not land there. Not being marked off is also annoying as all hell for jettards. The windows in the hall provide shit gameplay because humans can crouch in them and be hard to hit by rants or aliens can hide in there against s1 humans and not be seen until they are too close. The non-solid boxes in the hall were stupid since they were clearly there but didn’t exist, so people could just hide inside them and be invisible except to radar. The lights on the walls near the floor which were solid caused problems for anyone standing near a wall in the wrong spot.
ATCS on Ice is a good map except for three things:
- The ice greatly hinders aliens and makes the bunker base almost invincible.
- There are so many ways to flank someone underground, but the front area is still a straight path and is unconnected. Because of this, the outside area is usually ignored.
- There are no new base locations added, so it’s still rather stale.
ATCS X2 is a terrible map, unarguably. You can’t tell which of the two halves you are on except by whether or not there are buildables there. Both teams start with two Overminds/Reactors and way more BP than can actually be used. The outside area is massively open which makes aliens have a really hard time fighting outside. Thus, the map is human biased, and since the two halves are unconnected except by the outside, as long as humans maintain their base which is on the opposite half as the aliens, they will be basically invincible since outside is easily controlled.
I won’t argue that UTCSUD is a bad map, because it isn’t, but it has a ton of problems that Matth ignored by saying “oh, I’m done editing that map”. And while you say there are new base locations, in reality, the only viable human base is still human default, and aliens still don’t have any particularly strong base locations and mainly survive because they have a dozen ways to flank anyone who tries to go all the way across the map to reach their base. The original UTCS was much more human biased because there were only four ways into/out of the middle area because the two “stage 2 areas” accessible from the middle didn’t have the drop-down from the upper path. Humans could easily control the two ways aliens have to get into it because of the long hallway on the top (which is bad for aliens) and the big open area directly outside the bottom opening (big open areas are also bad for aliens). UTCSUD went straight from that and turned into an alien biased map because humans can’t get half way across the map without getting killed from behind by a million flanking aliens. It’s silly that there is still only 1 middle area that everyone has to go through, but there are 10 entrances into that one room (2 from each of the two stage 2 areas, 2 upper paths, two lower paths, and the two pipe entrances). It’s now almost impossible for humans to control the middle area, so aliens have free reign over most of the map. I think the only way for humans to win without being stacked to hell is to rush down the aliens before they get goons and WAY before they get rants. UTCS was always a popular map; the primary reason UTCSUD is popular is because it’s a bigger, “more complex” version of UTCS. UTCSUD is definitely better than UTCS, but I still refuse to believe that Matth could approach UTCS with the intention of fixing its problems and decide that UTCSUD was the best way to fix UTCS.
And how many of those are played on a regular basis? I rest my case.
I’m sure you’re the kind of person who would claim that the mappers of the hundreds of zombie mode maps were “contributing greatly to the Tremulous community”, too. Did I contribute greatly by releasing 1 map that was utter shit? If not, then how come another guy releasing dozens of maps that are fairly bad is “contributing greatly to the Tremulous community”? I’d argue that the majority of people who consider themselves or who are considered by others to have done a lot for Tremulous didn’t do shit in the grand scheme of things. Owners of popular servers that helped keep the Tremulous community alive, people who added useful and helpful commands to the QVM, people who released maps that are played on a daily basis even now; those are the kinds of people who “contributed greatly to the Tremulous community”.
And, all in all, this entire conversation is about the map ATCS Update, as the map rests on the laurels of its predecessors seeing as it adds nothing new to the map pool, community, or Tremulous as a whole.
YOU STOLE MY IDEA I WILL SUE YOU
I am sure he didn’t mean that matth is invalued, but more that the way he spends his time remaking older maps is a waste of time which I can somewhat agree on. The question is not whether he is providing a lot of good work & effort on those remakes, the problem lies in that a lot of people will prefer the gameplay of the first map to the remake regardless of how good it looks, and because it is accessible as a stock map (no 30mb DL), and/or doesn’t bring anything really new to the map, and is the original. Example with tremor: It looks really good, it is still tremor and the map has small differences. Those small differences will outweight most of the hard work put into making it look beautiful for a lot of people, because those small differences were important to those people in the original map (Ex. The different boxes in box room made alien base building less viable.). Where, if he provided a new map, with original gameplay (like Nova), people would actually be intrigued in it and probably play it a lot more since it provides new, different, maybe innovating gameplay experiences. The good looks would make it better in any case because people haven’t experienced a different version of the map, and because it is the original one. A lot of people on tremulous are purists; I think you figured that out by now. That does mean some of them will deny any remake of ATCS because there are already a shitton of them and doing anything worth consideration on the map would have to be something really consistent. Now, if the new map has shit gameplay or not, is a different question.