Current screenies and download now in beta 4 poat.

Thank you

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Redwood, thanks for the walkthrough. In reply:

1. Interesting point about the stair cases. Consider it done in beta_last!

2. I have seen the dissolve function used in another map. I like the idea.

3. I will research the no_drawing of unseen brushes, but in reality, what could be the performance boost expected?. For example, I tried turning many,many brushes into func_details but all it did was increase my compile time by umpteen thousand minutes without any noticeable framerate increase. My point being, if you pay attention to vis and how it works, combined with solid construction, the difference would be unnoticable to most.I really need to study up on optimizing though, and I could also use a good bare bones noobish tut on lightmaps and area_portals as well.

5. I left v_physycs on with the lamp, to do just what it did to you. It's not really a trap or a hazard if there's no danger.. There were a few other areas though, as pointed out by Reaper, where I turned the physics off on the lamps to facilitate jumping along. Maybe I can build a cylinder brush and add the decal to that for some depth.

6. I jump that gap all the time, (although I suspect in my minds eye I already know where the ladder_dismount is, hehehe.)

7. I have yet to cheange the texture in this area, dirty brick with some decals was the plan.

8. I player_clipped the pipes to keep people from getting stuck in there. If I unclip it and put a weapon in there?. I'll try it out.

9. LOL

10. The darn freight elevator. I just can't get it perfect. If I turn off v_physics on the door, maybe the illusion of movement would be enough. Also to be tested.

11. Theres no gap, I have checked and rechecked. I think I need to change the angle of the brush intersection so you can't see out of it. It's already in the works.

Thanks again for the very nice walkthrough.

Well, I've been wanting to put my two cents in for this map for a while, but I have just been waiting for the right opportunity: Here, we go!

-Well let me start by saying this map is great! It is very well constructed and it looks darn sexy! I'll admit that I'm not totally sure of the local for the place, or why certain things are the way they are, but whatever the setting may be, it serves up some good 'ol deathmatch fun! (My guess is that it's some kind of industrial gas processing plant with teleporter technology?).

Now I know you're a fan of the teleporters, which is fine by me, but something that I wish you would implement in this map (different from your other maps) is that you play a sound that can be heard world-wide when a player jumps into any teleporter. I wasn't expecting to be teleported upon entering the elevator, and for a couple of seconds I thought my HL2DM glitched-up on me. Perhaps you should stay consistent and add your glowing sprites in there and in the other few places where a player can teleport; it just makes sense imo. A player could only get angry at the level designer when running away and hiding from a cooked grenade only to be teleported unintentionally into a bigger firefight without the awareness of what just happened and getting killed over it!

Some good things about your map that I liked:

• Weapon placement is plentiful and so is the health and shield dumps. A+ in my book!
  
• The vertical gameplay is awesome, and the "shoot-through" grating allows lower-ground players to get the upper hand when desperate.
  
• Nice to see some useful player clipping where needed along railings and model appendages.
  
• Lighting seems sufficient; not totally awe inspiring, but it keeps the place interesting.

Now some things that I think could be improved (with screen shots!!):

^Here we have some clipping issues. Where I?ve placed the red boxes in the pic are the areas I think you should include some sneaky clip brushes that ramp over those valve wheels and the electrical switches to the left. I kept getting hung up there. Also, (like RedWood already pointed out) perhaps add some glass behind those valve wheels in order to keep players from wasting their time to see if anything is back there.

^I think for the pipe tunnels you have here, you may want to add some nice clipping brushes that slowly guide players towards the center of the pipes, because I found that maneuvering to the left or right while in the pipe automatically puts you in crouch mode; that can get very irritating when running away from someone. You may want to make the invisible clip brushes like wall ramps instead of being flush with the edge of the pipes like I have mistakenly shown in my pic.

^I tried to break the crates that are in the way here, but found that they are unbreakable. I think you could save people time by replacing those prop crates with some brush-based static ones applied with that obvious crate texture. This would let players know that they can't get past these crates, and could stop wasting their time trying to pick em up!

Beyond that, the most noticeable thing to me not mentioned here, are the overstretched textures! Why on earth would you purposefully overstretch wonderful textures in an engine that supports high res textures! I mean, I can understand about saving resources and whatnot, but it really detracts from the map in certain areas imo. I think you should reconsider...

One other thing about "nodrawing" unseen textures: It's not necessarily about run speeds. Yes, enough textures applied with nodraw will make a difference, but what makes more of a difference is the size of the map. If you did nodraw every surface that couldn't be seen, you could be saving your map 1 or 2 Megabytes! >imo, that's worth the trouble.

All-in-all, this is a really sturdy map that's already good enough for server rotation. My above comments are merely nit-picky things and I wouldn't worry about them if you don't get the chance. Take them for what they're worth. I can't wait to see this map finalized! Awesome job so far!

Thanks for the valuable insights and the nice walkthrough Riven.

I have already begun to implement many of your suggestions. The pipe contraption thing has been mooved back and I put a glass window in front of it. No explanation for such a thing, but it looks very nice to my eye. Perhaps I'll make it a hinged window with something valuable in there, but we'll see.

Likewise I have clipped the breaker panel across the way.

The pipe tunnels.........

I am considering getting rid of those and lessening the amount of teleporters in the map. If I keep them I will devise a way(perhaps with clipping) to keep the player centered. In answer to the next part (and adding to Redwoods last comment), I am adding sprites,sound and lights at each teleport destination, color corresponding to the origin sprites. I will tie them into the trigger multiples at the origins so they cannot be tripped by passers by. That should help a bit.

The crates in the lower room are an obstacle actually. The re-supply crate is the only other place to get RPG rounds, and I wanted to make the getter vulnerable to attack if they chose to go in and get them. You think brush based crates would look better than the models? As for the ones between the pillars, I will give them chuckability, solving that issue.

Overstretched textures. In most cases I only try to stretch textures to fit a particular brush.(i.e so I have a proper fit with trim and all from floor to ceiling on a wall brush).Or of course, to prevent tiling. The brick textures just seem too small to my eyes and I usually like those increased to .45 x .45. If there is an areas you feel are lessened visually to a degree, please feel free to point them out though, as I am open to using another texture, or re-sizing them if it can be done.

I will also spend a morning or two at the back end of this no-drawing unnecessary surfaces.

To Redwood:

I added a trigger hurt inside the combine ball spawner, but I would really like to have the player dissolve effect . I just don't know exactly how to do it. Some pointers in that area would be great!.

Thanks to both of you for your great ideas and walkthroughs. You'll get a heads up in the read-me fer-sure!

Just some realizations here.
Firstly, I will release a final of dm_striker as is(with the changes I have made from beta 6 in tact) very soon.
Secondly, I have to agree, after several hours of playtesting on the FF servers that the map is a bit convoluted and somewhat confusing to new first time players, and at last I will concede.... it's too big.

So many times I have heard this from players with reguard to stonepark, and waterwerx(My first map in source) and now, this one(although stonepark was basically an architectural killbox, and i still tend to disagree on that one). If a player load of 6 can't find each other to reach 50 frags in 10 to 15 minutes or so, it's a big map and people start to drop. dm_hiatus seems to be properly laid out for DM, so it is with that in mind, that I am going to shrink the map. I will re-think the vast confusing layout and re-release sometime soon as dm_striker_jr.There are so many parts that I like, but I need to fuse them into a more coherent layout. This will be my goal. Look for dm_striker final hopefully by tomorrow morning. Look for a new post for dm_striker_jr soon thereafter.