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dm_spoorloos
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 Re: dm_spoorloos
Posted by CrazyPunk on Wed Jul 19th at 11:20pm 2006

First, let me introduce myself:

I am CrazyPunk, located in the Netherlands in the city of Emmen.

I live in a pretty cool place. It's a squatted storage building with a little office part, located on a bus / train station.

I've been interested in map making since I started playing computer games. The first maps I've made were for an old 3drealms game called Shadow Warrior. These maps have never been published and were lost when my harddisk died.

A few years later, a friend of mine introduced me to Half-Life. I asked if I could also make maps for that game and he supplied me the tools. I did not had an internet connection back then so I had to help myself most of the time.

I made three initial maps for half-life 1 and one for counterstrike & the specialist. These maps barely compiled due to the way I managed to get over the engine limits time after time and were sort of heavy on the framerate, but the few people who've played those found them pretty cool.

Then my interest for mapping was brutally raped by my mother & my stepfather. They told me I was wasting my time and should go find some real hobby. I told them this was my hobby and could become a serious job in the future but they kept saying I was just wasting my time and didn't even bother to look at what I created. I went trough some pretty crazy situations and then got busy again with a new year of school.

Things went in such ways that I ended up here, in a squatted storage. I've found myself being able to map without feeling some unexplainable hesitation against it in the time I lived here and I actually enjoy it again. I've started building on a map of our house for the specialist, but then got Half-Life 2 and the sdk tools...I converted the map to the new engine and got stuck on the enviroment for a few weeks...then I decided to draw how the enviroment looks and started working on the map a few days ago...with satisfying results!

Here's a link to screenshots of the map. Enjoy!

http://bassie85.spaces.msn.com/photos/



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 Re: dm_spoorloos
Posted by Gwil on Thu Jul 20th at 12:51am 2006

Can I suggest you post screenshots that people can see in this topic without having to click external links? It seems a silly idea, but you'll get a lot more responses <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_smile.gif">






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 Re: dm_spoorloos
Posted by Juim on Thu Jul 20th at 3:12am 2006

Well, first off, I would like to say that I have never read such a detailed back story about a mapper in one of these posts, so congrats on that being a first.

I also took look at the screenies and my first impressions are all good so far. Nice lines, with attention to detail. Initially, i would say that the screens you posted are crying for a 3d skybox(something I must research on my own current project). I would recommend some lighting other than the env_sun above. The map has too many dark recesses in critical viewing areas. Other than that it's too early to comment much further. Keep up the good work.





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 Re: dm_spoorloos
Posted by CrazyPunk on Thu Jul 20th at 11:09am 2006

<html><head><link rel="stylesheet" href="themes/standard.css" type="text/css"></head><body topmargin=2 leftmargin=2>OOps...double post :S




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 Re: dm_spoorloos
Posted by CrazyPunk on Thu Jul 20th at 11:11am 2006

True, I am going to experiment with 3d skyboxes soon and much of the enviroment is to be put in a skybox in the near future.

The lightning sucks indeed, but I'm experimenting with that on-the-fly...the plan is to make the light come is such a way it creates sunlight on the terrain and hopefully a full vis+rad process will make the ambient lightning such way that it also lights up the insides of the storage complex.

I was also thinking on making the light setting more nightly due to the huge visible areas of the map, with a gloomy blue night sky lightning and maybe some fog on the terrain as well, and then put lights inside the storage and on the still-to-be planted light posts.

And for screenshots - the map is still in such a state that altough the screenshots look nice, those area's are not even close to finished yet. When I got more finished areas I shall post some decent screenies.



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 Re: dm_spoorloos
Posted by Captain P on Thu Jul 20th at 6:22pm 2006

Looks pretty accurate for a real-life recreation. And it's nice to see yet another Dutch mapper, too. <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_smile.gif">

While the map looks good so far, I'm a bit worried about the performance. The map looks very open and you're probably still going to add a lot of detail. How does the map run so far?

// Also, msn photo stuff is slow... :P


Create-ivity - a game development blog



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 Re: dm_spoorloos
Posted by CrazyPunk on Thu Jul 20th at 6:51pm 2006

Well - I haven't dared to run the vis process on the map yet but performance is becoming a bit sluggy on the far ends of the map...I was planning to use a 3d skybox but I think I am also going to use a night setting with some fog, if possible - night settings saved me from much framerate issues in the past, and if done right it looks really cool

Does anyone know how much different lights can be placed alongside eachother? I might need to make a row of yellow/green lights but I do remember that the hl1 rad process kept bugging me with "too many light styles on a face" messages for hours while compiling one of my previous maps...



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 Re: dm_spoorloos
Posted by Captain P on Thu Jul 20th at 8:54pm 2006

The number of lights isn't a problem, the number of different light styles can be. More lights only change the way the lightmap looks, it's still the same size. An animated light however, one that changes intensity, means a different version of the lightmap has to be built for every different intensity of that light (of course, only for the faces that are affected). When two animated lights are animated the same, the same amount of lightmaps would be generated than for one animated light. But imagine the two lights behave differently: the number of intensity combinations radically increases. That's why the number of light styles that hits the same face is so limited, filesize (and also memory) issues.

So it's not the color or brightness or such that makes you hit this limit, it's the animation. I think you don't need many animated lights there anyway so I wouldn't worry too much about it. <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_smile.gif">


Create-ivity - a game development blog



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 Re: dm_spoorloos
Posted by CrazyPunk on Thu Jul 20th at 10:21pm 2006

yay, then I got nothing to fear :P

I've been experimenting with 3d skyboxes a bit...and I was wondering, could I make the skybox "connect" to the level? So that the surrounding architecture would be easy on the engine yet still looks like a part of the map?



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 Re: dm_spoorloos
Posted by G.Ballblue on Fri Jul 21st at 3:36am 2006

I am absolutely digging that train track.

In screen 3, those trees seem to be rather... awkward, as though they're not quite connected to any grass. That also look like the same exact tree, just rotated :P Don't know if anyone pointed that out yet; I haven't read the whole thread.


Breaking the laws of mapping since 2003 and doing a damn fine job at it



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 Re: dm_spoorloos
Posted by CrazyPunk on Fri Jul 21st at 7:24am 2006

I know about the trees, I just put them in for a quick detail fix for test runs...they'll get better on the way <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_wink.gif">



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 Re: dm_spoorloos
Posted by midkay on Fri Jul 21st at 7:30am 2006

I checked out the screens and "read more" screenshot gallery. The brushwork looks quite nice, but it's a bit hard to tell - the map is so dark! <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_smile.gif">

I'd suggest adding (or increasing) ambient lighting (via light_environment) as well as overall lighting. Outside looks quite dark considering the sun, and most of the inside shots are like 50-75% black/very dark pixels.

From what I can see, though, it looks good so far. <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_smile.gif">



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 Re: dm_spoorloos
Posted by Orpheus on Sat Jul 22nd at 2:17am 2006

I guess that because we have no traincars that look like the HL2 ones around here that I am basically tired of maps that have them. However, we definitely have areas that look like screen #3 and somehow it reminds me of home.

Can't say much about screen #2.. It looks like walls made from mattresses. <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_lol.gif">

I'd like to see a possible screen of the trees with leaves. Is that possible?





The best things in life, aren't things.



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 Re: dm_spoorloos
Posted by CrazyPunk on Sat Jul 22nd at 12:35pm 2006

uhm...is it possible to make leafs on the trees then? or are those also models?



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 Re: dm_spoorloos
Posted by G.Ballblue on Sat Jul 22nd at 5:48pm 2006

I think leaves on trees are generally 2D textures with alphamaps that look like leaves. Or something.


Breaking the laws of mapping since 2003 and doing a damn fine job at it



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 Re: dm_spoorloos
Posted by Addicted to Morphine on Sun Jul 23rd at 5:14am 2006

Change the skin of the tree model from 0 to 1 in the model properties in hammer.

It should go from being bare to having some leaves.

Edit: Typo





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 Re: dm_spoorloos
Posted by midkay on Sun Jul 23rd at 5:24am 2006

Right, where some == as close to "none" as possible while not being "none" per se. <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_wink.gif">



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 Re: dm_spoorloos
Posted by Addicted to Morphine on Sun Jul 23rd at 5:40am 2006

Haha, yeah you got that right. There are about 12 leaves on each tree. <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_smile.gif">



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 Re: dm_spoorloos
Posted by CrazyPunk on Sun Jul 23rd at 8:29am 2006

lol....12 whole leafs

does increasing the skin number also affect the amount of leaves? hmmm....

*runs off to hammer*



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 Re: dm_spoorloos
Posted by CrazyPunk on Tue Aug 15th at 3:53pm 2006

I didn't made much progress with the map, I picked it up again today after two weeks of rest or something...:P

there is a bug somewhere and I've nearly tracked it down, and I've also done some minor improvements, mostly grouping together the func_details where possible.




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