RavuAlHemio/UEDRant

RavuAlHemio vs. UnrealEd

Since my times with Unreal 2, I repeatedly have to do with UnrealEd. Even though I try to avoid it as much as possible, there are times not even additional software like WOTgreal can help you out. That is when opinions, and very evil ones, are born inside my brain... perfect for a rant.

Picture yourself trying to do your first map. You start UnrealEd, wait for it to load and think, "Why the bloomin' heck didn't I just go for a coffee?!" Next time you do so, but that is when UnrealEd loads quickly, and for the next time, you leave out the coffee, it loads for five minutes again. If it was given a random number generator which chooses if it should load ten seconds or five minutes, that is unknown; I haven't looked around in the source code just yet.

Next, let's say you want to load a static mesh. You frantically search for the "Static Meshes" button, but just when you have found it, either the Unreal Error-Trapper or Dr. Watson for Windows come into action, announcing you a General Protection Fault of the application. Time to restart UnrealEd and hope it isn't coffee break time.

When you enter the static meshes tab, you have to search through multiple packages to find what you want. You plan to open all static mesh packages at once, but when you do so, you receive another GPF because UED feels insulted. Time to restart it again.

Later, UnrealEd makes no big issues. You might not have mastered the positioning precisely yet, but the first version of the map is as far as complete. But, unfortunately, Windows just had to crash when you clicked the "Save" button on the toolbar. All of your map is lost.

If you are someone like me, you would change the use of your Windows CD to a frisbee and boot your Linux partition. Good news for you, man, UnrealEd is built on MFC, which is Microsoft Foundation Classes, and Microsoft opposes Linux more than I hate Microsoft, so there is no Linux compatibility.

You fish your Windows "Frisbee" out of your trash bin, and reboot your Windows partition. This time everything is okay (except the fact that you have to make your map again, of course), but when you try to test your map, your video card drivers f%$* up everything, distorting your graphics. You figure out your friend was right, ATI cards have buggy drivers. You wish you'd get a graphics card from the competition whilst hoping this problem didn't destroy your graphics card completely.

Now you reboot your computer and can play your map - unless you are a teenager. That is when a family member with authority calls to you and tells you to mow the lawn/put away her bike/play ball games/remotely learning for school somewhere (yes, I attend one school in Austria and one remotely in Czechia, and both are boring as... my life ) /going for a bike trip/<insert action you don't feel like at the moment here>.

One of Murphy's most prominent laws: If multiple things can go wrong, they will go wrong at the same time or perfectly timed after each other from bad to worst.

Ironically, just after writing this, I have to go to (Austrian) school, and that's boring. Not really monotonous, but still boring.

Discussion

Graphik: I have felt your pain. When I had a Pentium 3 Celeron system with 256MB of memory, this rant fit my experience with UnrealEd perfectly. However, UnrealEd has been smooth sailing ever since my recent major system upgrade to a 3GHz Pentium 4 and 512MB twin sticks of Corsair memory. Your computer's speed is directly linked to UnrealEd's stability.

RavuAlHemio: I still remember trying to start the editor on a 863MHz Pentium III with 512MB of memory and an ATI Radeon 9000. It was... bad. I still had stability problems under my current computer, though, at least under Windows XP. When I downgraded to the less buggy and less memory-consuming and - it seems - more stable Windows 2000, I haven't had any big issues anymore. It's just the large amount of bugs in that software. Let's hope Unreal Warfare III will clean this up; I heard since then, they are dropping MFC - a chance for the Linux and Mac population. Well, first I will have to clean up the problems with my motherboard/RAM.

Graphik: Read my last post, replacing the phrase "UnrealEd" with "Windows XP". Efficient.

Wormbo: Hey Graphik, you seem to be replacing "Murphy" with " " for some reason.

Mychaeel: I remember he explained that to be a (rather strange) "security feature" of his webbrowser which prevents him from posting his operating system user name ("Murphy", I guess). I just wish he'd find a workaround for that instead of stripping every page he edits from all Murphys...

Dracarys: Looking at the page source, it looks like all the Murphys are Murphy (there's quite a few apostraphes in there, if they dissapear). Hm... Well, anyway, I hope they drop M$ and get a Linux UnrealEd; that would rule. Maybe by then ATi will even have 64-bit Linux drivers, and I'll be able to kill my windows partition! Why the F**k is this in italics???

Wormbo: It's in italics because you wrote an incorrect number of apostrophes. Eight of them start bold/red text and immediately end it again. This might get around Graphik's de-Murphy-izer while still showing up correctly and being easy to type.

Foxpaw: Since the UnrealEngine seems to somewhat favor DirectX over OpenGL, and UnrealEngine3 even more so, I doubt that Epic will "drop" Microsoft anytime soon. A cross-platform version might appear though.