Beta Editor? I dont think so....

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  • templargfx

    #1

    Beta Editor? I dont think so....

    prepare for a rant. I have to let it out :P


    I would be ashamed if I released a program as a beta, and it was as bad as this editor is!

    here is a nice "small" list of a few problems with the so called beta (should be alpha!)

    Selecting multiple objects one-at-a-time more often than not loses all previously selected objects when selecting the next one.

    DRAG-Select has a furiously long delay before it work should you reposition the camera

    draging multiple selected objects with snap-to-grid turn on will snap each individual object to the grid instead of just the highlighted anchor

    adding spawn points or object spawning will often add it to the control point nearest the map's centre rather than the nearest control point to the camera

    adding objects/control points/spawn points/object spawn points will quite often create them at the centre of the map instead of where you clicked/dragged the object.

    compiling lightmaps can quite often crash the editor

    enviroment map generation doesnt work

    creating a mini map on large maps misses out half of the objects as there too far away, there is no way to increase the editors view distance limit past 1000 (you can set it higher, oh yes. not that it does jack)

    theres no ability to flood a map with a texture (try hand-painting a 512x4 sized map!)

    even at a ground level of 100, sometimes you just cant lower that one part of the terrain

    selecting spawn points or object spawning is one of the most painful drag-select only things in the editor

    light settings are not actually saved

    telling the editor to load the roads under mod-manager actually is a bad thing and no road spline template will be available

    sometimes the mouse pointer will just plain ol dissapear until you restart the editor

    resuming your lightmap generation can actually ruin your level

    closing the tweaker bar and others doesnt change the tick thing in the view menu, and re-enabling them now has the tick showing there not there when they are

    compile your lightmaps but dont think your going to get to see what they look like when its done, all objects have dissapeared, and you'll need to restart to see them again

    sometimes when you start the editor, your objects will constantly dissapear when your near them until you restart

    selecting the axis on spawn points can be at time impossible

    aah, thats better. this is only a handful of things I have encountered during the processes of creating ONE, thats right ONE map.

    release an update already GOD DARN IT!

    share your nightmares-come-true with the editor!!
  • Karate hand

    #2
    Re: Beta Editor? I dont think so....

    i too feel your pain , i have come across a few problems in map making like yourself, more then few to quite frank, my main problem is that when u click on certain objects to paste into the map it says error reload or something like that i find that if i delete it then rebuild it works , however the editor should not have all these errors so thats why its a beta version, i too hope they release an update for this editor, very soon lol.

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    • -R|F-Glitch

      #3
      Re: Beta Editor? I dont think so....

      Originally posted by templargf
      draging multiple selected objects with snap-to-grid turn on will snap each individual object to the grid instead of just the highlighted anchor
      I actually like this feature, it works really well with trees.

      Comment

      • maranello

        #4
        Re: Beta Editor? I dont think so....

        Originally posted by -R|F-Glitch
        I actually like this feature, it works really well with trees.
        lol, you always find something positive about anything

        Comment

        • Pirelli

          #5
          Re: Beta Editor? I dont think so....

          Well, sometimes you want tot change a hill or something and you find a lot of floating trees - selecting a tree and using the select all simular objects, then drag it a tiny distance with snap will make sure none of the trees you selected are floating. (it happened sometimes that i want to select an object and...**** i had the terrain editor active :laugh: - resulting in some major rapairs afterwards when undo is not possible after a number of clicks.)

          Yes...the editor is crashing lots and its frustrating - especially when you have been running lightmap generation for hours and hours and it locks up or crash, so I hope for an update very soon aswell. Im glad they released it early cause I had fun anyway.

          Comment

          • =CC=Serpentor

            #6
            Re: Beta Editor? I dont think so....

            It is Very buggy...but I've not seen about half the problems you're talking about there. But,hell, I'd be happy with just an official statement on the progress, and/or a rough estimate on a time frame for an update. It just feels like they're leaving us hanging.:cry: and that makes me sad.

            Comment

            • =CC=Serpentor

              #7
              Re: Beta Editor? I dont think so....

              Oh yeah and for flooding color texture check out this app...BF2 TPaint made by Token.

              Comment

              • -R|F-Glitch

                #8
                Re: Beta Editor? I dont think so....

                I can tell you one thing. They're probably not even thinking about releasing an update for the BF2Editor.

                Comment

                • =CC=Serpentor

                  #9
                  Re: Beta Editor? I dont think so....

                  What, other than pure speculation, makes you say that?

                  Comment

                  • maranello

                    #10
                    Re: Beta Editor? I dont think so....

                    Originally posted by =CC=Serpentor
                    What, other than pure speculation, makes you say that?
                    DICE worked 2 months for 1.03 patch and here we are with something that is supposed to fix the bugs, but instead of fixing them, it generates more bugs. People are definetly impatient in the 21st century. They buy a product, they have expectations, if you don't meet their expectations, there is always another product they can buy and be happy with. That's why thousands of people play DoD:S or CoD2 everyday instead of BF2. Just think. You are an average gamer. You don't even know these forums exist, so you don't even know the workarounds for most bugs in the game (hardware or software). You buy the game. It doesn't work, or it lags, or you get kicked for teamkill. This happens and happens and happens, and you say f- it.

                    I don't even think 10% of the people playing BF2 now will be playing it by christmas. I like the game, don't get me wrong. If you know good people, and have a nice squad, it's really fun. But this doesn't apply for everyone. The game sold about 1.5 million copies. You, me, or people on this forum, or people in planet battlefield, make only 10 or 20 thousand of this 1.5 million copies. Rest of the people don't have clans, or teamspeak servers, or they don't want to just play the game hours hours hours and hours to have fun.

                    The reason why BF2 was sold so many copies and was very popular when it was released have many reasons:

                    1. It had great team play. For the first time in the history of FPS games, you must have actually depended on the person next to you, you couldn't win the game by yourself as you did in counter strike.

                    2. It had wide variety of resources. Different weapons, kits, vehicles, planes, artillery etc.

                    3. Again for the first time in the gaming history, it actually was awarding you for your performance (ranks and unlocks) so it made you think you were doing something special

                    But after the release, the game turned out to be a disappointment for most people. Nobody knew that they had to buy 2 Gig of RAM or $500 video cards to have a decent game play. Nobody knew that they had to have at least 1.5 MBps (there were exceptions) internet. There were also many flaws about the game. The game was unrealistic, but that was something that people should have considered before buying it. It was an arcade game not simulation, i agree. But, even for an arcade game, there were so many mistakes, bugs, flaws. If i listed them here, it would take me at least 3-4 hours just to write them.

                    But what did the gamers do?, they trusted DICE, because dice said they were gonna fix all those issues. The memory leaks, connection problems, bugs, flaws etc. So we waited, waited, waited, and finally we got our 1.03 patch. But what did we see? The game got worse. The server browser, the red name tags, AA guns weren't fixed, instead they were now working much much worse.

                    Those were the things DICE had said they were going to fix in the first place. How can a company like DICE could actually make those little things worse instead of making them better. Now everyone says "if you can't fix them, justlet them stay the way they were, don't make them worse". Well they are right.

                    AND, now people are not patient anymore. They dont wanna wait for the patches, fixes, because they are great new games out there. The games which you can buy from the store, install and play with no CTDs, no bugs, no lags, and with decent hardware configurations you can play them with really nice settings.

                    It's even impossible to have a nice teamplay experience right now with BF2 let alone playing in custom maps. I have been involved in mapping since the day BF2 editor was released, and yet i have never seen a server that has over 10 people playing a custom map over 20 minutes. There have been really great map releases. Most of them even are better than original BF2 maps, but it turns out: 1. Decent players really lost their interest for BF2, and 2. 99% of the rest of the people are interested in gaining ranks and getting unlock weapons.


                    They won't release a patch for the editor, even if they do, it won't be before 2006 summer,here is why:

                    1. They will see that the number of people playing BF2 will keep decreasing if NOT, they will see that either nobody plays custom maps or mods, or very few do.

                    2. Even if they do release the patch, it won't be within the next year because DICE Canada is responsible for BF2 editor and it is much much smaller than DICE sweden. and we all saw how long it took DICE Sweden to release a patch.

                    3. The BF2 editor is so buggy i can't even begin to tell you how much work it would require to fix that program. I am a programmer myself, and i can tell you that BF2 editor would require a team of 100-200 people working constantly for at least 6 months just to make that editor actually a "beta" program. It's not even a beta program, it's alpha.

                    4. Also, the most important reason is, it is free. Meaning neither DICE nor EA will be making any profit from BF2 editor. The only reason they released a BF2 editor or MAY relaease a patch is because they saw how many people played DC mod in BF 1942. Many people bought the game just for the mod (so EA made a lot of many because of a mod). If EA suspects even the posibility that people are not interested in playing custom maps or mods, they will not release a patch. OR, they will release something with the name of patch that basically doesn't do any good.


                    I don't want to be the sarcastic dude here. But this is the way it is now. Sad but true...

                    Comment

                    • MackTheKnifeAU

                      #11
                      Re: Beta Editor? I dont think so....

                      I was starting work on my 2nd map (a while after my first map was released), used some 3rd party tools\progs to get some heightmap imported from real world terrain, and used a wonderful tool that added textures to the map (either high, sloped, or normal) terrain so I did'nt have to paint it myself. So after getting that done, I try to get my sand to look normal, realise it's some stupid fog setting, change it, it looks stupider, any water I have looks retarded.

                      The editor crashed to desktop 4 times, and reset my pc completely twice today. Also, the stupid fog or whatever makes the sand look purple, I added 2 spawn points to try and load it ingame, it crashed.

                      I can't be f****d wasting my time on this POS editor anymore.

                      Comment

                      • maranello

                        #12
                        Re: Beta Editor? I dont think so....

                        Originally posted by MackTheKnifeAU
                        I was starting work on my 2nd map (a while after my first map was released), used some 3rd party tools\progs to get some heightmap imported from real world terrain, and used a wonderful tool that added textures to the map (either high, sloped, or normal) terrain so I did'nt have to paint it myself. So after getting that done, I try to get my sand to look normal, realise it's some stupid fog setting, change it, it looks stupider, any water I have looks retarded.

                        The editor crashed to desktop 4 times, and reset my pc completely twice today. Also, the stupid fog or whatever makes the sand look purple, I added 2 spawn points to try and load it ingame, it crashed.

                        I can't be f****d wasting my time on this POS editor anymore.
                        welcome to our world

                        Comment

                        • CrimsonBlaze

                          #13
                          Re: Beta Editor? I dont think so....

                          If it resets your computer completly then your graphics card would be overheating... I had that problem when I realised I had it set on overclocked mode while I was working on a map (well it happened 4 times before I realised)

                          The editor doesnt like people multi-tasking while loading a map or doing something like that. Thats usually when it crashes to desktop for me - also dont get impatient with it..

                          For your water just copy it from another map...


                          I think im the only one here who thinks that it should be classed as a beta release. There are bugs in it yes but thats expected from a beta, deal with it. Ive dealth with far more unstable beta releases before, ive actually even dealth with more unstable final releases before! If this was an alpha release there would be roughly about 30-70% of the features we have now implemented 5 mins before release and the editor would crash after every 1-3 actions or just completely not work for anyone. Im sure very few of you have dealth with Internal Alpha releases before and also with them is that theres limited hardware/software configurations to work with so when you think youve fixed everything and release a public beta - a hell of alot of unexpected errors come up for people due to all the different configurations...


                          @maranello: That's probably the shortest post you've ever made :p

                          Comment

                          • maranello

                            #14
                            Re: Beta Editor? I dont think so....

                            Originally posted by CrimsonBlaze
                            If it resets your computer completly then your graphics card would be overheating... I had that problem when I realised I had it set on overclocked mode while I was working on a map (well it happened 4 times before I realised)

                            The editor doesnt like people multi-tasking while loading a map or doing something like that. Thats usually when it crashes to desktop for me - also dont get impatient with it..

                            For your water just copy it from another map...


                            I think im the only one here who thinks that it should be classed as a beta release. There are bugs in it yes but thats expected from a beta, deal with it. Ive dealth with far more unstable beta releases before, ive actually even dealth with more unstable final releases before! If this was an alpha release there would be roughly about 30-70% of the features we have now implemented 5 mins before release and the editor would crash after every 1-3 actions or just completely not work for anyone. Im sure very few of you have dealth with Internal Alpha releases before and also with them is that theres limited hardware/software configurations to work with so when you think youve fixed everything and release a public beta - a hell of alot of unexpected errors come up for people due to all the different configurations...


                            @maranello: That's probably the shortest post you've ever made :p

                            LOL yeah

                            I agree with you about the editor being beta. For a normal program, yes, you are right. But for a program, which a multi billion corporation releases (yes EA didn't code the program, but they pay for the company (i.e. DICE) who programmed it, and at the end EA released it), it is definetly a big disappointment. If it was some X company which consists of 5 coders released this program, i wouldn't complain at all. But these people make billions of dollars everyday, and we make them rich. I don't want to really go into the debate of EA promising editor before game release and didn't keep their promise, the thing is, there hasn't been 1 complete tutorial about the editor. LBrown still says he is typing the tutorials, it has been months and months since first he said he was making tutorials. I wonder what kind of tutorials he is making, it looks like he is actually writing a book . One last thing. When the tutorials are released, you will be so suprised to see that you already know 99% of the stuff in the tutorials. There are things that you guys know about mapping that EA's mod team has no idea about

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                            • =CC=Serpentor

                              #15
                              Re: Beta Editor? I dont think so....

                              I think the editor is great. For the most part though its thanks to the mapping/modding comunity for figuring out workarounds for most of the problems involved. Its a POS, yes. But the community members actually make it a ton better. I like it. It feels like we're all learning together and for me that makes it even more fun. I'll keep hoping for an update and working on my map.

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