Before you release your map...

[legacy-Deathbliss]

Please ask yourself a few questions:

#1. Did I use a music track, or at least use the Blank.UMX method?Yes, this works with UT 2003, you just type in Blank.UMX and be sure that the file is in your music directory. If you need the file it's here in the menu to the left. PLEASE STOP USING THE SAME THREE TRACKS! There are 35 music tracks (as of the latest patch and all bonus packs) to choose from - so go through them all until you find one that fits!

#2. Did I include EVERY package I used with the level? There are two ways of handling things here... If you have only a few textures and meshes use the MyLevel trick. However if you have started a whole new theme use a seperate package with your name and the package's name (named after the theme) as the title (I.E. DeathblissRoman). You may wish to place these in a seperate folder somewhere before you zip them up so you don't have recall from memory what you used. Please ignore my FAQ which is not updated and may say differently - it is irrelevant for the most part now.

#3. PLEASE please please! Stop naming your readme files "Readme.txt"! This is SOOOoooo annoying when I'm extracting maps and I have to go in and re-name each and every one or else it gets overwritten! Just use the same name as your level - it's as simple as that! Again please ignore anything in my FAQs that may say otherwise - I've learned some things after I wrote them and I haven't updated it as yet.

#4. Is the sky animated? Please stop releasing levels with static (non-moving) skies! Do you know how big a step BACKWARD this is? Just because Epic and DE have done it doesn't mean you have to! You will find very few of these maps on my hard drive! Yes, I understand that night skies with stars don't have to be animated. But think about how much better some light, MOVING, cloud cover can look! In nay case this statement refers mostly to daytime maps - I have found MANY maps like this with static, non-moving skies and there isn't anything else I can think of that will kill a level's atmosphere faster than a static enviroment!

I'm gonna go post this in my forums too, and maybe elsewhere. Please be sure to use this as a checklist before you release your map! You'll feel better about your high quality level, and I'll enjoy playing it more!
- Deathbliss

[legacy-Deathbliss]

Here's another handy tip!

Jump into that nice water you made, and swim around on the surface for a while. Notice the color of the water surface... Now dive down into your water... Hmmm... Where did all that fugly blue fog come from? Well guess what? This can be fixed! RIGHT CLICK on your WATER VOLUME to access WATERVOLUME PROPERTIES. Scroll down to the last section... VOLUME FOG - I wonder what that means? Open 'er up and there's that uglified blue color! The higher you set the alpha values the clearer your water will be. You probably should use fog - even though it may make you level look funky from the water - so I advise setting a dark grey (50-100 Red, Green, AND blue - all set the same) with a high or maximum ALPHA. If you don't your water may look a bit weird from underneath - unless there's a setting I missed that fixes this. In any case - WHATEVER YOU DO... Stop releasing maps with ugly blue fog in the water! YOU HAVE NO EXCUSES NOW!!!

Annoying aren't I?
Deathbliss

[Angel_Mapper]

Originally posted by Deathbliss
Please ask yourself a few questions:

#1. Did I use a music track, or at least use the Blank.UMX method?Yes, this works with UT 2003, you just type in Blank.UMX and be sure that the file is in your music directory. If you need the file it's here in the menu to the left. PLEASE STOP USING THE SAME THREE TRACKS! There are 35 music tracks (as of the latest patch and all bonus packs) to choose from - so go through them all until you find one that fits!

That's a matter of taste, and to be honest, most of the music in UT2003 sucks. They should have kept Michiel van den Bos on for the music, he made UT what it was. :up: But if you don't like other people's music choices, OMG, there's an option in your control panel called "music volume". Go figure.

#3. PLEASE please please! Stop naming your readme files "Readme.txt"! This is SOOOoooo annoying when I'm extracting maps and I have to go in and re-name each and every one or else it gets overwritten! Just use the same name as your level - it's as simple as that! Again please ignore anything in my FAQs that may say otherwise - I've learned some things after I wrote them and I haven't updated it as yet.

Some upload sites automatically extract the author and playercount info from the text files, and require it to be named readme. And you're probably the ONLY person I've ever heard say they extract the readmes.

#4. Is the sky animated? Please stop releasing levels with static (non-moving) skies! Do you know how big a step BACKWARD this is? Just because Epic and DE have done it doesn't mean you have to! You will find very few of these maps on my hard drive! Yes, I understand that night skies with stars don't have to be animated. But think about how much better some light, MOVING, cloud cover can look! In nay case this statement refers mostly to daytime maps - I have found MANY maps like this with static, non-moving skies and there isn't anything else I can think of that will kill a level's atmosphere faster than a static enviroment!

Another matter of taste. Static skies work very well in a lot of situations, for instance if you wanted to convey the feeling of complete desolation in your map. Telling people things like including their name in the LevelInfo I could understand, but the sky thing is a matter of opinion.

[legacy-TossMonkey]

I agree with #1. I hate having to listen to that god awful title music, thankfully you can now change tracks with the ogg player.

#2 is also good. I hate not having the readme files there on my PC. I like to tell which levels are custom made by having the .txt file there as an indicator.

#3 is debatable. I like having a motion sky but sometimes it's just not as realistic looking as a sky I can create in terragen.