This is an all-out rage on Epic's (and other developers of UnrealTournament 2003-2004) and I'm taking no prisoners. You have been warned.
Please do not change anything above the Comments paragraph
Contents
File structure
Duplicated objects and/or packages
How could they possibly do it worse? Putting everything in one file would actually make things look tidied up!
First of all, we have the texture/static mesh packages. Who started adding duplicated packages in the first place? I'm talking about the X_ and AW packs, which are copies of the original packs and then contain an additional 2-3 new objects. What's the point in duplicating the package at all? It would be easier and more efficient to REPLACE any broken objects and then add new stuff to a *_2.utx package.
The argument that there were three studios working on it doesn't work, not when mod developers scattered across the world are doing a better job.
Fix: Repair broken packages and make *_2 packs with additional objects.
Mini packages
Packages with less than 4 objects in them could have been merged with eachother (simular objects). Example: Put all alien textures in A
lienMisc.utx and all generic space textures in Gen_Space.utx. This the way it was (mostly at least) in UT. Yes, there were mini packages in UT as well, and they were equally annoying. However, they weren't all over the Textures directory!
Fix: Merge packages of simular content. Exception: *_2 packages
Categories in packages
Or the lack of them. Though quite a few packs are decent, most of them have NULL (0, zero) categories. Until you manage to learn all the meshes' names you'll have scrolled through each pack at least 50 times. This is NOT one of them "happy mapping"-factors, if anyone thought so.
Another part of this is the quite well managed packages which seem to have been done right only to find the Misc category filled with things which could have been added to category Deco to give the impression of order. Now I have to scroll through big rocks, pieces of terrain, arches and plants f different sorts only to find the door I was looking for.
Fix: Add all the basic categories such as Deco, Wall, Floor, Base etc and sort objects accordingly.
Naming of packages
How am I suspected to find snow textures which in UT were simply enough in GenEarth.utx or maybe another package (if a special was needed) when they are spread across five packages, none of them named anything logic like Ground.utx or Snow.utx. Sure, often you find the package names logic, but the ones named after the map are awful for easy finding. Unless I know ArboreaTerrain.utx was the right one (I'm probably wrong again), I'll spend time opening desert/tropic packages before finding snow.
Fix: Logic, self-describing, package names. Note: In UT2004 you'd have to redo almost every package and split packages for reorginizing
UED stability
Under Windows ME
UED 2 vs UED 3
How can you manage to break something so completely without doing anything to fix it? UED 2 did crash often if you didn't know what you were doing, that's all true. UED 3, however, crashes at purely random times and situations. In example, selecting surfaces works most of the time, but every now and then it kills UED. Using Ctrl+Alt select doesn't seem to work at all.
It worked, why did it have to be broken? When most developers finally spend time releasing working versions of their tools, Epic is going back in time and breaks compatibility.
Fix: None, just don't break it!
Exporting content - Brush to .obj file
Was any time put on checking if this worked? Ok, UED 2 had the broken Save Brush and Open Brush, but at least there was a working alternative. There was never any useable file format you could export to, but then again, it wasn't in the list either. With UED3 being changed in so many ways, would it really have been so hard checking if it worked?
The only clue I have to the exporter's broken-ness is that what I'm trying to export isn't triangulated. This makes the whole idea of exporting brushes for any other format than .t3d seem like a useless "feature" in the first place.
Fix: Make sure exporters can perform the basic task of exporting.
That's it for now, next time I'm pissed off I'll write a little something about stability.
What sparked this rant/rage was UED crashing before even opening
Comments
EntropicLqd: I hear you man. It was this sort of thing that sparked The Curse of Static Meshes. And you've not even mentioned the fact that a large number of the meshes and textures used within each of the levels are actually contained within the level's MyLevel package. Meaning that you also need to memorise a list of the levels that shipped with UT2004 just in case you want them.
You've have thought that Epic (or one of their associated developers) would have written a small commandlet that replaced one package reference with another to allow textures, meshes, and whatnot to be moved between packages relatively easily.
Count me in on this bit of fist waving.
Tarquin: The overall fix is: 1: use version management such as CVS, 2: better communication between developers
Legal: Exactly! Using a CVS and actually cooperating with other studios would have made it look less amaturistic. I wouldn't be happy releasing anything in that state. I just hope they learned something with this and wont do the same thing with Unreal Engine 3, I can't even estimate the filesize of that!
RegularX: Aw, I was hoping for more rage from the title ;) ... but I agree. I haven't had enough experience with the textures to comment, but the mesh packaging is atrocious.
LegalAssassin: Belive me, it was more of a raging rant when I wrote the first draft. I made it a bit more constructive to make it somewhat credible... Part two of this will most likely be up soon, as my entire computer is freaking out at the moment.
Tarquin: can we mention MESHES THAT ARE OFF GRID?
Legal: I thought that was the point of The Curse of Static Meshes... ;) And to be honest, to me that is not a huge problem in relation to stability or finding things at all.
WheatPuppet: That's why I don't play with the map editor very often, it makes me angry. I feel your pain.