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Colosseum
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 Re: Colosseum
Posted by Zevensoft on Sun Nov 7th at 11:56pm 2004

This is a map I just completed. Some r_speeds might be a bit high (1080 at max), due to lots of 7-part curves.

Compile time:
csg - 10.85 seconds
bsp - 6.32 seconds
vis(full) - 8.32 seconds
rad(extra) - 30 minutes 40.95 seconds

Due to gameplay concerns, the moving platform in the middle is set to passable, and a clip brush provides the walkway. Hopefully this means zero lag issues.




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 Re: Colosseum
Posted by The Mighty Atom on Mon Nov 8th at 1:04pm 2004

7 parts??

Why don't you use 8, 12 or even 16? Those are easier to handle for Half-Life then 7 sides.





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 Re: Colosseum
Posted by Orpheus on Tue Nov 9th at 3:33am 2004

? quoting The Mighty Atom

7 parts??

Why don't you use 8, 12 or even 16? Those are easier to handle for Half-Life then 7 sides.

hmm funny, i read it differently, prolly because i have tried circles in hammer.. it doesn't like them if they are to big and to many sided.. it crashes..

but if he took 7-8 sided pie shapes and made a 56 sided circle, it would work OK..

i doubt he has 56 sided circles, but that how i read it..

BTW, that is one fine looking area you have posted.. i always like DMC textures

[addsig]



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 Re: Colosseum
Posted by Zevensoft on Tue Nov 9th at 10:31am 2004



This is a 7-part curve. It is made by creating a triangle half the size of the original area, then aligning and manipulating 2 triangles on its corners such that the vertexes reach 1/4 of the way along the edge of the triangle. If you combine 4 of them you get 32 sides (the flat bits aren't shown here).

The shape is not a perfect circle, but it's fairly close, compiles fast and without error, and also works well ingame (strafe into the corners and it guides you around).




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 Re: Colosseum
Posted by Orpheus on Tue Nov 9th at 10:48am 2004

you are creating a texture alignment nightmare but, to each their own..

still a good looking area.

you would be far better off using the arch tool for that complex a corner..

[addsig]



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 Re: Colosseum
Posted by MisterBister on Tue Nov 9th at 5:09pm 2004

Since im in a good mode and have nothing else to do i chose to take a closer look on your map and give you some feedback.


My overall impression of the map is that it looks pretty good, very good in the "main room", but in the other two small rooms the detail level is depressingly low.
Just take a look at this picture:

The detail level is near zero which is bad in my opinion. You could easily make it look so much better without spending weeks at the computer, just add some pillars, supports or something like that.
One other thing i noticed was the sharp shadow to the right of the pic.
Personally I think sharp shadows is perfectly OK, as long as they dont appear in the half-life engine, it just looks awful.
To fix this you could easily add the bounce option in RAD if youre using batchcompiler and then set the number to something between one and three.


Heres another example of the low detaillevel in some areas:

First of all i wonder why there almost no red light in this room despite two gigantic red lamps.
Secondly, why are there water falling down there? At first i thought it was some kind of a portal but then i realized its just made for the looks. Well it doesnt look good at all to tell the truth. Remove that thing completely or change the texture of the water to something more interesting.



Very nice touch, looks awesome. But i would prefer if you had only one of these in this map to make it more special. But thats only my opinion.


Heres a pic on the good parts =).

This is the main room and I can clearly see that you have spent most work on this part which is good, always put the most work on the main areas.
I love the way you have done those lightingeffects in the ceiling, it looks really great.
That swinging bridge with the "quad damage" thing in the middle is also a VERY GOOD touch, really a great idea (dont be suprised if you see something familiar in a map by me in the future ^_^)


Final thoughts:
Your choise of textures isnt very good in my opinion, the lack of detail in the textures gives the overall detail impression a smack in the face.
If i where you i would look around for other wadfiles with better textures.
There are alot of great stuff out there, you just have to find it =).
furthermore I would be delighted if you did something about the areas around the main room which, all of them, looks very dead and they have no details whatsoever.
Now you might think that im a bit mean to you by saying all these bad words about youre map. The reason why im so hard on you is because i can see that you can do alot better than this.

If you are afraid of increasing the r_speeds to much then I can give you some advice.
First of all you simply dont need to make to many faces on all the rounded corners and cirkles. Im pretty sure that you could decrease the number of faces pretty significantly and yet no one would notice.
If you still want the player to be guided around the corners you would simply fix this with some clip brushes.
I always make my curved cornes like this:

I cant say if my way of making it reduces the r_speeds, compared to yours, but personally i think its a clean and simple method.


As i said, the map looks pretty ok but if you could change the points I mentioned above, it would look superb.
If you change the issues i mentioned above or not is entierly up you, but if you dont then please bare this thread in mind when you make your next map .




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 Re: Colosseum
Posted by ReNo on Tue Nov 9th at 5:27pm 2004

Take a look at this tutorial for more insight into curves...

http://www.snarkpit.com/editing.php?page=tutorials&game=HL&id=4
[addsig]



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 Re: Colosseum
Posted by MisterBister on Tue Nov 9th at 5:32pm 2004

? quote:
Take a look at this tutorial for more insight into curves...

http://www.snarkpit.com/editing.php?page=tutorials&game=HL&id=4


Well welll, you learn every day throughout your life i guess...
Seemes like i have done wrong during all these years.. Thats too bad ^_^.
Thanks for the info reno.




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 Re: Colosseum
Posted by Zevensoft on Tue Nov 9th at 7:12pm 2004

? quote:

As i said, the map looks pretty ok but if you could change the points I mentioned above, it would look superb.
If you change the issues i mentioned above or not is entierly up you, but if you dont then please bare this thread in mind when you make your next map .


Thanks, I'll have a look at revising it Your comments were greatly appreciated. As for the style of the curves, the way they're built means you can progessively increase/decrease their detail, with some func_wall_toggles.





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