Neon_Knight

Yesterday I took a really hard decision.

I cut ties with OpenArena.

Note before continuing: What follows is a loooooooooong text, so here's a TL;DR version: I don't regret my time doing stuff for OA, I'm grateful for the opportunities given, and I'm sure I made A LOT of mistakes, but certain attitudes and decisions... didn't bode well for me. Oh, and I mention almost all of my mapping contributions at the end of the article. I'm sure I'll miss something, but there's too much to remember and for some of it I have to delve into painful parts I'd rather not revisit anytime soon.

Well, where to start? From the beginning, of course. Looking back, no other place would have allowed me to grow as a dev as much as I did than OA. When I entered the forums, back in 2008, I didn't even knew what a Radiant was. All I knew was that OA was community-developed, and I got attracted by the many gamemodes it had (much like my fav game of all time, Unreal Tournament 2004). To me, the amount of options and gametypes compared with Q3 was a selling point that triumphed over that game, even when factoring Team Arena. Especially after 0.8.1 finally took the step and integrated the gamemodes and weapons from Team Arena/the Missionpack into the main game, with 0.8.5 and 0.8.8 following suit. I was never a fan of the Complacent Gaming Syndrome (to think I got my TVTropes addiction because of leilei/fromhell...) that was affecting all multiplayer games, especially when it dictated the content that would have made it into the game. When the need for competitiveness and e-sportness begin dictating the content that goes on the games, the end result is usually dull. Can you imagine Q3 without q3dm17 or q3tourney6? Can you imagine UT99 without CTF-Face or the whole Unreal series without Morbias or an equivalent? Can you imagine UT2004 without ONS-Torlan? Those levels may not be competitive, but I'll always argue that fun/wacky maps deserve their place in AFPS games. Hell, I'd even argue that presentation is as important as the content. Both Q3 and UT nailed this on their own ways, with a gladiator contest and a sponsored tournament being the framing device over which everything sits. And that works.

With OA I've learnt to make maps. dONKEY's tutorials were my guide back then, they were a very good starting point (his site, sadly, is gone :(). Talking about all my mapping productions would take half of the article, so they're put in a separate section at the end of the article. I just wish I had learned some important mapping lessons before 0.8.5 and 0.8.8 were released, especially when it comes to important topics such as item placement, gameplay and the like.

Somewhere between 0.8.5 and 0.8.8, it was decided that this version would be the last "final" version until the potential "TBA/When It's Done". Now, the decision to take this route is justified: as much as I liked OA, the "throw everything you can find on the net so long as it's GPL-compatible" policy that was implemented during the early years left OA a big mess. Inconsistency was the word. Q1 levels clashing with the more produced and better fine-tuned Q3 levels, and those were also accompanied by some fugly levels too (I did some of those bad levels, I admit, but in my defense, back in the day I thought those levels were quite neat/acceptable when that last version was released. However looking at them from today's lens, I wouldn't have complained if they were given the shaft). Character models were split between super serious characters contrasting with lewd characters contrasting with wacky characters, a literal free-for-all. I didn't mind all of this, but I can see why this would represent a problem. (On OA's defense, when OA began, GPL content for IdTech3 was quite scarce, and we had to produce our own most of the time.)

In the meantime, other things were happening. Sago007 (yep, the very creator of OA's insignia map oasago2, and whom I personally will nickname "The Wizard") kept releasing OAX builds with many cool features (among them a new gametype, Possession) and, well, I tried to lead a project of my own (the OA Community Mappack, another thing I'm very proud of, despite all the hassles and, admittedly, my poor management skills). The original plan was to release vol. 1 as a 6-month produced pack, then another pack after another short release, then help leilei/fromhell get OA3 released. Of all this plan, the only released product was OACMP vol. 1, which got released almost a year after its announcement/interest gauging. I got obsessed with optimizing the maps and fixing bugs and whatnot and got so tired after the release... that I didn't notice the bugs that started appearing in v1. Or the non-GPL texture that slipped out in v2. Or the progressive JPEG texture being used in v3 that made oacmpctf1 unplayable. Sigh... I do blame myself for the mismanagement of the whole thing. Neither Akom, Moixie, Gig nor Jan deserve the blame, the work they did was phenomenal (my mind is blown every time I see Jan's oacmpdm8 and its phenomenal complex bezier patch work; that said, said patches and the milimetrical measures of Jan's maps also make them quite difficult to maintain; and please, whoever is reading this, do yourself a favor and check Gig's oacmpdm10!). My only regret aside of the mismanagement is not being able to contribute anything of my own creation to the pack. When leilei/fromhell personally reviewed the entirety of OA 0.8.8 and the OACMP with a tool she created, well, turns out the entire OACMP1 puts most of 0.8.8 to shame. And I have to agree.

Later I tried to lead OACMP Volume 2 and a tribute mappack for the 20 years of Q3A and UT99... and said last pack took place in the middle of one of the most tortuous years of my life (grandma, Alzheimer). I couldn't lead it the way I wanted, so I had to drop. What can I say? The new tens were harsh years for me personally.

But back to OA3... to think we all laughed at the delays of Duke Nukem Forever in the forums, but we ended up with a project that is taking even longer than DNF to be released. Here's a cautionary tale for developers: never (and I DO MEAN NEVER) let perfectionism take the lead of any project. It just leads to delays, unnecesarily high expectations, goalposts being moved even for the slightest things, and more frustration. A better path IMHO would have been a big release a la 0.8.1 (the 0.9.0 release that originally featured GPL replacements for all shaders and textures) that culled off all the low-quality and questionable content, especially when talented mappers such as pulchr (who created pul1ctf and my favorite map of all OA period, pul1duel-oa) were around and better content kept on surfacing. THAT would have led to more interest in OA rather than a DNF-like obsession with finetuning an art direction, no matter the reason, especially when you don't have the proper tools to undertake such a task (good luck finding good md3/mdr exporter/importers for Blender, especially when it comes to character creation) and have to rely in an ugly pipeline. Maybe that's why Sago favored "release early, release often" for OAX, even though coding and asset production are two different things.

Despite everything that transpired, and my own personal problems, I always found myself coming back to OA. I don't know what it was. Maybe the fact that I had a hand on it, maybe the fact that, in spite of everything that happened and the way the game evolved, it's still a good game. Maybe that unlike other games, my community experiences there weren't traumatic enough to leave and vow to never return (though I do admit that my mapping motivation did reduce drastically after being told once "I don't give a damn about your maps" after tirelessly asking for feedback, and having next to no one defending me). So far, I was limited to mapping. I tried learning how to model, but my patience to learn stuff wasn't there anymore.

And then I began to do code contributions. With the initial guidance of Sago, I was able to contribute code to OAX and add small features. Among other things I introduced a new mode for Harvester that made skulls spawn from bodies rather than from a central receptacle (making Harvester playable in maps that didn't feature a central generator), the ability to customize capture time and respawn delay for Double Domination, fix several bugs, introduced the new gamemode checkers in order to better control what operations were done where, backported bug fixes and features from other ports... Then I got too carried out to the point that I unintentionally overwhelmed Sago. He later gave me maintenance permission for the gamecode repo. And I... got carried out in the worst sense. I put every idea I had on my head, filterless. Even those which had already been rejected such as a "drop rune" command (with a potential "drop weapon" command which I could never fully implement also being rejected). After two intense weeks of coding I released my first version of OAX, b53, with a "patch" version for b53.2 being released afterwards.

So there was the recount, but something's missing, isn't it? Well, it does. Going back to OA3, I admire leilei/FH creative skills a lot (such a shame you can't see the amazing things she's been cooking for OA3 because of obnoxious a-holes), and I will always be grateful to her for allowing me to contribute to OA and letting me grow, but in recent times, I had the feeling that anything I would do would piss her off. I propose an UGC system? It triggered her. I propose ways to preserve content? It triggered her. I started uploading old stuff in order to free my HD of it? It triggered her. I unintentionally named a function with a double entendre I had no idea it existed? It triggered her. And the last straw was her threatening to revert everything I did in OAX ever since I took the reigns. So I did that for her and I left. I'm at a point of my life that I just can't stand certain attitudes, at least I won't if I'm not being paid well first. While at a certain point I can understand the triggers (as a dev, few things are as annoying and distracting in the bad sense as people spreading BS&L regarding a game you're developing, which some a-holes have been doing with OA3), it's just... too much. Don't ask me about OA3, if it'll be released or when. I have no idea, and I don't recommend asking lei/FH herself.

In fact, I don't even know what's next on my future. The idea of making my own fork has been on my head for quite too long, but honestly I don't have the management skills to pull that off. If I can't get a simple mappack out of the way such as what happened with OACMP2 and the Q3/UT tribute mappack, how can I expect to get a full working game out?

So, what am I going to do? In the immediate future, tie all the remaining knots. Finish and release all the remaining stuff I had in my WIP folder, including OACMP1 v4 (sans a few lighting bugs and some QoL stuff, it should have been released a long time ago), the other maps I intend to retrieve, finish and release (if only to get that stuff out of my HD) and even release a player skin I did once for 0.8.8. And then yeah, call it quits for good about OA. I thought about destroying everything, but maybe someone can find enjoyment in the stuff I release? Neither me nor nobody will ever know.

Outside of OA I do have some things to keep me busy from the RL shit that's happening in this part of the world since December 10th, 2023. Provided no bad things happen, I intend to participate in the potential Q3 Anniversary Tribute that's under discussion on MapCenter (not sure how the map I'll make will look in Q3 though, or even how it'll look in my own head). And perhaps release some of my OA stuff for Q3A itself, under the GPL license of course.

I wrote a lot, and I'm sure I'll forgot something. There's too much to remember, but that's everything for now. We'll see again... somewhere, I guess.

So... how much did I do (mapping-wise)?

My first "properly" released map for OA was am_labyrinth, quite basically what the name says, a maze. Afterwards I've finished the first version of a map later found in 0.8.8 (am_lavaarena), with two CTF versions following suit. All three maps can be played in OA 0.8.8, though if you want to see how the LavaArena series would have continued, there's oac_lavaarena for your downloading pleasure. Also for the original am_lavactf, I recommend downloading the map patch.

The third original map I did was not only my first contribution, but also, perhaps, the most significant (at least for me): am_galmevish, my very first contribution to OA, and perhaps my only "hit" of sorts. It was a mish-mash of three separate Unreal maps: DM-Gael and DM-Leviathan from UT2003/4 and the Morbias series. The first test version of the map was finished in an hour, I remember that day having to take the bus for academic reasons. In its heyday, to my surprise, the map saw quite the online play, so another (IMHO lesser) version was released for OA 0.8.5 as am_galmevish2. Both maps can still be played in OA 0.8.8, though for the first, you may want to download the Older Versions pack (I recommend this version over the original for a lot of reasons) and for the latter I recommend downloading first the patch. And if you want to take a look at how the series would've continued, there's oad_galmevish for your downloading pleasure.

After 0.8.1, I got a confidence boost that led me to output even more stuff: am_mckinleyish (a loose recreation of q2dm1, with the 0.8.8 map am_mckinleyish2 being extremely different; the original version was restored and is available for downloading as oac_mckinley), an attempt at an ice map called am_icyhell (yep, also restored and available for download as oac_icyhell), a recreation of the Unreal series' third party series of maps CTF-Thorns (playable in 0.8.8 as am_thornish and possibly the only playable OA map that features every single item available in the game -sans the Grappling Hook and the cut Portal item from TA-), two recreations from scratch of two Q3 third-party maps in oa_reptctf11 and oa_reptctf3 (the originals for Q3 can be found here and here, oa_reptctf11 can be played in OA from 0.8.5 onwards, while there are two versions of oa_reptctf3 for your downloading pleasure in oac_paintemple and oac_paintemp2). And last, but certainly not least, an attempt at a competitive map that didn't pan out despite all my efforts: am_underworks. It later got a much better attempt as am_underworks2. Both versions can be played in 0.8.5 and 0.8.8 (the latter with changes), but if you wanted to play them without the problems, I've got you covered: the Older Versions pack has both am_underworks and the 0.8.5 version of am_underworks2, while there's a slightly changed version of am_underworks2 with support for the OAX Possession gametype available for download as oad_underworks. Oh, and this map is also available for Nexuiz (not sure how well will it play on Xonotic) as am_workingnex. Other small projects of mine were am_harv-sod (a concept map that displayed how well Harvester works with non-base layouts, available for download as oah_sod), am_tdish (a 1-hour remake of DM-TrainingDay from UT2003/4, available for download as oad_tdish), t1-outerfac (the arena portion of a failed tutorial map I did once, available for download as oad_outerfac), oa_rooftopff (an experimental map that took place atop of a huge tower's ceiling where only "push" weapons were found, available for D/L as oad_rooftopff) and two attempts at a tutorial map, one of which can be downloaded as oa-tutorial.

But my mapping work didn't stop there. I also had a hand on several third-party maps: my first remix was a map I liked a lot, but which used textures that were cut in 0.8.0, therefore I offered to update its theme: boczeq's blitzkrieg, available in OA from 0.8.5 onwards as blitzkrieg3 (updated version of the map with support for Possession as oad_blitzkrieg); two unreleased retexturizations of q3dm6ish as q3dm6ish-v3 (the previous v2 version was made by TRaK and went down with 0.8.0, I still have to restore and upload this version; if you want to know how an updated version of q3dm6ish would play, well, I have to offer oad_castlegrnd) and q3dm6ish-ctf (which has also been restored and is also available for download as oac_q3dm6ctf), a remix of hydronex called hydronex2 that got the approval of SavageX himself! (Playable in 0.8.5 and 0.8.8, with a crazier remix called oac_hydro3 -f.k.a. hydronex3- available for D/L as well). In 0.8.8 I also contributed to other maps: czest1dm was remixed, am_spacecont was a remix of sago007's RedishF with the space theme of its inspiration (custom UT99/UT2004 map DM-1on1-Contact), and I also had a hand on both of [uM]Meisterlampe's maps (mlca1 and mlctf1beta) with... mixed results. mlctf1beta in particular had a set of walls which I tried to use to reduce the number of FPS in the middle, and it didn't work, so not only I reverted this change in the aforementioned map patches, but I also released a version based on Meisterlampe's original mlctf1beta called oac_encephalo, which has more... appropriated features.

Projects that didn't made the cut for OA 0.8.8 and are available for download include a remix of czest1tourney called oad_czest1v1, a port of Nexuiz's bloodprison map as oad_bprison, small fixes and Possession support for HyperNewbie's hntourney1 as oad_hypern1v1, a port of Aardappel's dm2ish as oad_dm2ish, a remixed version of dm4ish as oad_dm4ish (f.k.a. dm4ishv2), two remixes of oa_dm1 (one on my own as a yet unreleased oa_dm1v2, and a collaboration with kit89 -creator of oa_minia- called oad_q1dm1), finishing up andrewj's restoration of R.P.G.'s rpg3dm1 as oad_rpg1, a remix of czest2ctf as oac_czest2, a remix of oasago2 taking place on daylight as oac_sago2, finishing off sp1r1t's oa_bod as oad_bod and two retrievals from the old SVN: oac_avdbases (a.k.a. oa_bases3plus8, OA's only official asymmetrical CTF map) and oad_dm3ish (yet another Aardappel recovery).

In the next days I'll finish and release more stuff, so you know where to look.