Thanks for your thoughts, SkaarjSniper
What you're saying sounds reasonable... for anyone who truly desires to make use of today's tech for game development.
As for myself, mapping is purely a hobby amongst others. I don't wish to become a professional developer, and I'm not passionate enough to spend at least several hundred hours per year on mapping (although I do believe I spent well over a hundred hours doing this last year).
Unreal/
UT is great fun. I wouldn't call myself a die-hard fan of those games, as in truth I don't get to play them (or any game) that much. But they are awesome games, and they are familiar, and I
do enjoy mapping for these games because 1) there's something sexy about the old engine (PS: graphically it permeates not only my memories from
Unreal/
UT but also, in a slightly different but obviously similar way, my memories of
Deus Ex) 2) the engine is at a very interesting crossroads, being both sufficiently advanced to fulfill my occasional gaming (and obviously mapping) fantasies
AND sufficiently "simple" that I can hope to do something nice with it without spending thousands of hours on a single map.
Going back to this ongoing discussion, I can assure you I wasn't deluding myself with ideas of trying to equal the impact of the mothergame with a community-led pack that, from what is being said here, aims to be more of a fun, friendly event of sorts to celebrate aspects of the game that we all continue to enjoy after all these years. When I initially bumped this thread, it was with the desire to see a new "casual entertainment" mapping event for this community. Nothing groundbreaking. And after 4-6 weeks, we'd have a pack released for all to enjoy and if, thereafter, there's a desire to improve/expand the product further, so much the better. Besides that, we are, of course, all aware of the big, serious projects that continue to make progress behind the scenes and which I, for one, will be more than happy to enjoy when the good folks behind these mastodonts finally release their baby.
But heck, the idea emerging here is for lighthearted stuff in comparison. Which is not to say that it cannot result in some awesome maps (if history is any indication). I know doing something like this would stimulate me and be lots of fun, and I believe there are others who feel the same way.
What is also cool about this is the get-together feel, without the pressure which could possibly arise from very ambitious projects, and it allows inexperienced mappers like myself to make something alongside more experienced mappers
which I think is super cool!
PS: and what AlCapowned said, too.