Big dreams. Small steps.

[macksting]

I was little but a small child when Marathon 2: Durandal was new, and it would be a few years yet before I'd have my first computer, an ancient Commodore 64. Our third-world budget didn't really facilitate a Mac habit.
My first real taste was while singing in the chorus of a high school production of The Wizard Of Oz. I was desperately trying to think of something other than the tripe I was being asked to sing from our box seat/teacher's lounge overlooking the auditorium/lunch room, when I saw another chorister playing a familiar-looking game on his laptop.
He didn't get the blessed thing back until the performance was over. I was ravenous.

So here I am, a decade.5 later, trying my hand at making a few maps. I'm working on the geometry and textures of my own little Hello World (10 print "hello world", 20 end); later I'll probably test my skills by building 5-D Space in Marathon Infinity style. That's not for a while yet, though.

Anyway, I'm probably a couple years from anything grandiose or extremely ambitious, but I'll be studying good maps and bad, learning what to do and, more than a few times, what never to do again.

Glamdring out. See you starside.

[ukimalefu]

hi and welcome

[macksting]

Thanks. I'll take another shot at this thing called "sleep," and hopefully I'll be prepared to follow the leads and advice Ryoko has conveniently offered in his thread.

[Crater Creator]

Good luck in your efforts.

P.S. Wow, someone was playing Marathon on a laptop while they themselves were supposed to be performing in a chorus? And not on like a tiny netbook, but a 1999-era laptop that probably weighed 6 pounds or more? That's insane, or maybe vidmaster-worthy. I'm not sure which.

[macksting]

Oh, I performed along with everyone else. There were long stretches when we weren't singing. So I was singing, too. My heart wasn't really in it, though.

[irons]

Nice to see you on Pfhorums, Glamdring.

[macksting]

Didn't really have much to contribute up to now, so it never seemed important. Suddenly I've got Weland on my box and am trying to suss out the Visual Mode plugin, and... well. Here I am.
Glad to be here.

[RyokoTK]

You should probably use Vasara instead of VML, it's got a much more intuitive GUI.

[macksting]

Any good instructions for it? I didn't really find much on my first pass.

[Hopper]

Vasara was only released a month ago, so you won't find others talking about it yet, but there are instructions in the Read Me file, and the Vasara thread has more instructions and tips. I'm biased, but Vasara was designed specifically for new mappers, to be easier to learn than Visual Mode.lua, so I hope you give it a try.

[macksting]

I'm not really happy with the Visual Mode interface, even as I'm learning it rapidly, so I really must give it a shot.

[Ares Ex Machina]

Vasara's help is also in the header. The top of the screen is a guide of sorts in and of itself. Also biased.

[macksting]

I disappeared about a year ago! I'm back! Now running Weland in Linux instead of XP, and am already trying to make a horrible new level that nobody in his right mind should ever try to craft!

To my knowledge, it's original.

[Tycho X]

I disappeared about a year ago! I'm back! Now running Weland in Linux instead of XP, and am already trying to make a horrible new level that nobody in his right mind should ever try to craft!

To my knowledge, it's original.

Welcome back : )

[macksting]

Aw, thanks. I'm actually having a huge amount of fun crafting small, strange maps. I'm working my way up to bigger ones.

My present little duelling map, Cataract Bowl, is built such that I attained a top speed of about 25 without explosives or a single dedicated man cannon. Rather, the outside walls are all minor man cannons, a. 4 flow (generally about 8 WU on level ground) facing on a steep sloped (but not overly steep) bowl. If you can angle it right, you can pass along the outer wall and pick up a shitload of velocity.