Screenshots

[sock]

@tabun, add some pure white point lights to off balance the yellow torches. Put some of them out, see if you can seperate the model into torch and holder so you can have more variety. Try corner/floor braziers instead of torches, have floor light sources as well.

That wooden roof style is gorgeous but extend it the length of the corridor, the flat roof corner is strange. The broken brick corner is a nice start, just need more, lifted tiles, broken tiles, corner chips, show the layers to the building, what is underneath the brickwork, another material type etc

[Silicone_Milk]

@tabun - bitchin'

[Tabun]

@obsidian: Will do. The sky is just a bunch of moving clouds, so I felt diffuse light would make more sense than strong directional. Not that most people would even notice that it would be odd otherwise. :]

@sock: for details, that's what I was planning to do. Mostly breaking wooden beams and tearing holes here and there, but I'll see if I can find better ways to do it, still. Also, some of the torches are out, just not in those shots. (Torch model is my own, and it doesn't have the light source attached, so that was easy enough.)

Side question: I know it's *bad* to use rotation tools and arbitrary rotation, but is it safe to rotate and then snap the vertices to the grid? I would expect radiant to forget about odd decimals after snapping, but everyone's been so harsh about rotation that I'm not quite sure what to think. :]

[AEon]

Side question: I know it's *bad* to use rotation tools and arbitrary rotation, but is it safe to rotate and then snap the vertices to the grid? I would expect radiant to forget about odd decimals after snapping, but everyone's been so harsh about rotation that I'm not quite sure what to think. :]

Well as a *hint* to find out where the next vertex should go on the grid, arbitrary rotation is no issue. Problem is though this rarely seems to work out. It might actually be better to convert your object to ASE and then to rotate the model anyway you please. For what you are thinking, normally the "snap to grid" via Ctlr+G should do that, only I felt it rarely worked. But manually snapping your vertices to grid should be fine. Run a brush cleanup (bobtoolz) over the whole map to be sure all the brush faces are "valid".

[fKd]

nothing wrong with rotation imo... use it all the time.... what would be wrong with it?

[jal_]

Ye, rotation is fine as long as you don't intend to continue modifying the brushes you rotated.

[Tabun]

I see. I got some nasty errors after rotating patches, so maybe it's different for brushes, too.

[fKd]

hmmmmmm maybe... but maybe not, calling engine pros! (im interested as well now)

[dONKEY]

It wont cause any issues if you make the brush or brushes a func_static. This avoids weird texture issues too. The danger is of freehand rotating brushes and patches normally is getting verts off grid. It can fix things if you snap to grid but that often leads oddly distorted brushes, sometimes duplicate planes in older versions of GTK too I think

[o'dium]

[obsidian]

nothing wrong with rotation imo... use it all the time.... what would be wrong with it?

Freely rotated brushes are highly recommended to be converted to detail, -vis does not like off grid brushes. Be careful when rotating groups of brushes since they may not rotate exactly the same or as you intended, causing fractures between coplanar faces. In many situations, you are better off converting your brushes to models and then rotating the model.

[Lenard]

It makes me inexplicably happy that you guys are all still here mapping for the best FPS ever made. Although I never got into mapping myself, watching you all work your magic was always an amazing experience for me. Such an amazing community making such incredible work. You guys are really the model on which all society should be based.

...too much?

[monaster]

Not enough, go on...

[sock]

Just a quick update on the visuals, trying to reduce the overall brown/dark palette of the level with lighter stone and make the cables more obvious so that the player can hopefully realise they are a visual clue. The level is mostly finished at this point, just need to fix up all the cosmetic stuff before a public beta.
[lvlshot]http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/moteof1cy1l_1024.jpg[/lvlshot]

[rgoer]

sock that map is looking incredible, I can't wait to play it

one crit: for some reason, the "W" shape of the wooden beams bugs the hell out of me

[cityy]

[lvlshot]http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/2082/shot0003i.jpg[/lvlshot]

Still working on q3ct3 - decided to stop working on the layout. I just want to finish this one and come up with something new. My problem is that I don't know much about how to make a level look nice since this is pretty much the first map where I work have to work on details. I know about photo galleries to look at but I can't get an idea how to make it look nice and all this stuff.

[spookmineer]

one crit: for some reason, the "W" shape of the wooden beams bugs the hell out of me

I think it has a nice presidential atmosphere to it.
Maybe that's the problem...

[4days]

one crit: for some reason, the "W" shape of the wooden beams bugs the hell out of me[/color]

aye, maybe if there was a beam running along the bottom instead or visible forks everywhere the beams meet. currently, the 2 inner beams don't look like they could be supporting anything.

[cityy]

[lvlshot]http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/7770/q3ctf1.jpg[/lvlshot]

Next one will be ctf. I would love to use AEon's template textures for the map (????)

[Silicone_Milk]

[lvlshot]http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a242/caldiar/pygame_perlin2.jpg[/lvlshot]

Brushing up on the Python language and writing a procedural texture generating tool.

First Noise algorithm implemented (Perlin Noise)

Many more to do.

[cityy]

[lvlshot]http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/2120/ctf12.jpg[/lvlshot]

I'm currently playing mid

[$NulL]

And now for something completely different

[lvlshot]http://homepages.manx.net/urtstats/images/null_c/shot0070.jpg[/lvlshot]
[lvlshot]http://homepages.manx.net/urtstats/images/null_c/shot0068.jpg[/lvlshot]
[lvlshot]http://homepages.manx.net/urtstats/images/null_c/shot0072.jpg[/lvlshot]

[fKd]

is that the source engine?

[sock]

Some changes in lighting and detail.
[lvlshot]http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/moteof1da1l_1024.jpg[/lvlshot]

[AEon]

Sock,
is this a new artistic style for a levelshot? The colors look very bleached out, dare I say actually ugly? Sure the map used to be very dark, but the current shot makes all the textures look "bad", in particular the floor. Like extreme gamma correction artifacts.