Posted by Naklajat on Wed Sep 6th 2006 at 4:12am
OMGOMGOMG!
Downloading, will be back with comments
EDIT: I gave the map a pretty thorough check for bugs/exploits and took about 50 screenshots (most are exploits), I'll sort through them and write comments in a little bit. I want to play this map with 10 other people!
Posted by reaper47 on Wed Sep 6th 2006 at 1:36am
I somehow missed downloading a beta I think so these comments are probably a bit too surprised about parts of the map that are a little older. Sorry...
I just loaded the map to have quick look and it's absolutely breathtaking. The skybox is now even better than in the older version. I don't know what you've changed, maybe the bigger car sprites moving in so many height levels giving it an amazing depth. I just stood there and looking up for several minutes.
The only aspect about the visual design I feel like it could be tuned a little more is the "brightness" of some textures. The floor in this pic reflects the cubemap so brightly it looks like it almost "glows". It looked even brighter in-game and I fist thought it's a full-bright bug. The same is true for almost every metal texture. There's this "tint" or "intensity" value (I don't remember the name) for cubemap reflections in the VTF files. Maybe you should try turning it down. It just looks too bright, not like metal or anything my brain can relate to a solid surface. It's also much brighter than the few default textures that are left, which increases the contrast to much between the two sets of textures.
The new sounds are great. They reminded me of how important sounddesign can be for a map.
You announced this project as map to "push the limits" of the Source engine so I don't know how much sense it makes to talk about performance... I just think that, considering the effort you put in the current geometry and custom texturing, more custom models should be worth the extra work. They could improve performance considerably and probably even allow some extra details not possible with brushes. I see so many brush-objects that would be perfect for a prop_static and not too hard (yea, hard enough, I know
Excellent work.
Posted by MisterBister on Tue Sep 5th 2006 at 9:08pm
The final beta is now compiled and available.
This is your last chance to give feedback!
No huge visual improvements has been done since last update, only optimizations and other gameplay tweaks.
www.leveldesign.nu/skit/dm_cloudcity_final_beta.rar
The final beta is now compiled and available.
This is your last chance to give feedback!
No huge visual improvements has been done since last update, only optimizations and other gameplay tweaks.
www.leveldesign.nu/skit/dm_cloudcity_final_beta.rar
Posted by Addicted to Morphine on Sun Jul 23rd 2006 at 5:23am
Looks really good. I also think the decision to add trash and clutter was a good one. I really like the dirtier areas.
Also, I like how far your crate warehouse has come, looks cool instead of just an excuse to have crates about " SRC="images/smiles/icon_smile.gif">
Custom content goes a long way in making your map look fresh. The reskins certainly look great, along with the ships and the ads.
Definitely a massive project, glad it's almost done. I don't have any real critiques, just have to wait till I get home to play the final version when you release it. Good job!
Posted by Naklajat on Sun Jul 23rd 2006 at 4:23am
Looking very slick, glad to see you stuck with it
Posted by MisterBister on Sat Jul 22nd 2006 at 10:43am
Its been a while since i showed any images, but now i think its ready to reveal the almost final version of dm_cloudcity.
The list of features is too long to state in one go, i think its better to just write some comments below every image.
Here we go:
Lets start with this "overview". Actually i find it very difficult to make an overview of the map since it is to big both in X and Y -axis but also in Z axis.
The skyscrapers are so high![<img src=]()
" SRC="images/smiles/icon_wink.gif">.
Anyways. This scene has gone some big changes, however most of them are optimizing stuff, but i wanted to add more color into the map, so I made more commercial ads, aswell as warning signs informing the inhabitants of cloudcity district to stay where they are, or else they get "terminated". This actually has a story behind it, but i will not reveal I just yet.
Many of my textures in this scene has been remade with help from Teddybear. However its not very noticeable from this angle.
Here you can see the new spaceships of Cloudcity all of the new ships are painted by "hand", or should i say photoshop?![<img src=]()
" SRC="images/smiles/icon_wink.gif">. At first i hoped that i could make the ships func_tracktrains and then add normalmaps to them, but it didnt work out very well since the big dreadnaught seemed to overlap ships that actually was closer to the player. In general, the ships behaved very buggy as tracktrains, so i decided to use the more safe "scrolling texture" technique ![<img src=]()
" SRC="images/smiles/icon_wink.gif">.
The patient one might also witness a chase between two ships across the sky...
Here is a somewhat changed area. I thought it would be fun if I added graffiti and trash all over the place. The result is quite satisfying i think. New textures in the ceiling aswell..
Heres an image of the warehouse. not much has changed, except for new textures, and of course a soundscape.
In the early days i had a big brown carpet on the floor in this room to give it a feeling of luxury. The place was supposed to be a waiting room for passengers departing from cloudcity. Though I had lots of complaints from people wondering why the hell i had that carpet lying on the floor. When searching for other solutions i found an image of an hotel with a marble floor, and i thought that looked quite good, so i decided to make for this room as well. I also added the city-symbol on the floor as reminder who is in charge. As you can see, it resembles the one the combine use. However mine is more skyscrapish i think![<img src=]()
" SRC="images/smiles/icon_wink.gif">.
Heres the elevator shaft. I added red light in the shaft to the left, instead of white to indicate that something has gone badly wrong there. The atmosphere got alot more hostile that way, just the way i wanted it. The newly added soundscape helps out with that quite well. Ive also added automated freight elevators in adjacent shafts.
I couldn't really figure out how to add crates and explosive barrels into cloudcity at first since i didn't know any modeling. However one evening when i did a walk through of the current build with a few friends I got the suggestion to "simply" re-skin the current wooden crates and the barrels. All i had to do was to de-compile the models, make an entry in the .QC file to point at another texture location and then recompile the models under a new name.. Sounds easy right? Well.. It took me at least 6 hours to figure out how to do it. Thanks to tons of bugs and stuff i almost gave up. However the feeling when i finally made it was quite satisfying![<img src=]()
" SRC="images/smiles/icon_wink.gif">. The crates might need more polish, but I'm quite happy with the barrels. All tagged with the cloudcity logo.
Heres an in-game image of the construction site that i showed early pic's on about a month ago, or was it two? I found it very hard to make a good overview in one image. The place fells alot better in-game than it does looking at this image.
Heres the Lab again.. Not much has changed except for new textures and a soundscape.
Other changes/additions:
Added sound, everywhere.
It took some time, but i finally managed to add soundscapes in all areas. I had big troubles finding a suitable soundscape for the outdoor area, so I made my own. Its a mix if sounds from Hl2 as well as a mixed recording from a highway in Texas i found on the Internet. The result is quite good i think.
Added support for team play.
Ive also added spawn points for team play, however i haven't had the possibility to see how the game play works in this mode, yet.
Weapon placement completely remade.
I decided that the old placement of weapons was quite bad, so Ive been tweaking it like mad. Thanks to my "testing-team" Ive managed to make the map alot more balanced, however more testing is required.
Custom textures remade.
Almost all of my textures has been remade with help from Teddybear.
Thats all for now. The map is VERY near its final version, there are a few bugs and glitches left to kill... All i can say is sooon.
Some images in this post have been automatically down-sized, click on them to view the full sized versions:
Some images in this post have been automatically down-sized, click on them to view the full sized versions:
Some images in this post have been automatically down-sized, click on them to view the full sized versions:
Some images in this post have been automatically down-sized, click on them to view the full sized versions:
Some images in this post have been automatically down-sized, click on them to view the full sized versions:
Some images in this post have been automatically down-sized, click on them to view the full sized versions:
Some images in this post have been automatically down-sized, click on them to view the full sized versions:
Some images in this post have been automatically down-sized, click on them to view the full sized versions:
Some images in this post have been automatically down-sized, click on them to view the full sized versions:
Alright, time for a big update on the project.Its been a while since i showed any images, but now i think its ready to reveal the almost final version of dm_cloudcity.
The list of features is too long to state in one go, i think its better to just write some comments below every image.
Here we go:
Lets start with this "overview". Actually i find it very difficult to make an overview of the map since it is to big both in X and Y -axis but also in Z axis.
The skyscrapers are so high
Anyways. This scene has gone some big changes, however most of them are optimizing stuff, but i wanted to add more color into the map, so I made more commercial ads, aswell as warning signs informing the inhabitants of cloudcity district to stay where they are, or else they get "terminated". This actually has a story behind it, but i will not reveal I just yet.
Many of my textures in this scene has been remade with help from Teddybear. However its not very noticeable from this angle.
Here you can see the new spaceships of Cloudcity all of the new ships are painted by "hand", or should i say photoshop?
The patient one might also witness a chase between two ships across the sky...
Here is a somewhat changed area. I thought it would be fun if I added graffiti and trash all over the place. The result is quite satisfying i think. New textures in the ceiling aswell..
Heres an image of the warehouse. not much has changed, except for new textures, and of course a soundscape.
In the early days i had a big brown carpet on the floor in this room to give it a feeling of luxury. The place was supposed to be a waiting room for passengers departing from cloudcity. Though I had lots of complaints from people wondering why the hell i had that carpet lying on the floor. When searching for other solutions i found an image of an hotel with a marble floor, and i thought that looked quite good, so i decided to make for this room as well. I also added the city-symbol on the floor as reminder who is in charge. As you can see, it resembles the one the combine use. However mine is more skyscrapish i think
Heres the elevator shaft. I added red light in the shaft to the left, instead of white to indicate that something has gone badly wrong there. The atmosphere got alot more hostile that way, just the way i wanted it. The newly added soundscape helps out with that quite well. Ive also added automated freight elevators in adjacent shafts.
I couldn't really figure out how to add crates and explosive barrels into cloudcity at first since i didn't know any modeling. However one evening when i did a walk through of the current build with a few friends I got the suggestion to "simply" re-skin the current wooden crates and the barrels. All i had to do was to de-compile the models, make an entry in the .QC file to point at another texture location and then recompile the models under a new name.. Sounds easy right? Well.. It took me at least 6 hours to figure out how to do it. Thanks to tons of bugs and stuff i almost gave up. However the feeling when i finally made it was quite satisfying
Heres an in-game image of the construction site that i showed early pic's on about a month ago, or was it two? I found it very hard to make a good overview in one image. The place fells alot better in-game than it does looking at this image.
Heres the Lab again.. Not much has changed except for new textures and a soundscape.
Other changes/additions:
Added sound, everywhere.
It took some time, but i finally managed to add soundscapes in all areas. I had big troubles finding a suitable soundscape for the outdoor area, so I made my own. Its a mix if sounds from Hl2 as well as a mixed recording from a highway in Texas i found on the Internet. The result is quite good i think.
Added support for team play.
Ive also added spawn points for team play, however i haven't had the possibility to see how the game play works in this mode, yet.
Weapon placement completely remade.
I decided that the old placement of weapons was quite bad, so Ive been tweaking it like mad. Thanks to my "testing-team" Ive managed to make the map alot more balanced, however more testing is required.
Custom textures remade.
Almost all of my textures has been remade with help from Teddybear.
Thats all for now. The map is VERY near its final version, there are a few bugs and glitches left to kill... All i can say is sooon.
Posted by Naklajat on Sat Jul 1st 2006 at 11:29am
Neat. I look forward to seeing the finished product
Posted by MisterBister on Sat Jul 1st 2006 at 10:26am
Progress:
The LAN is over, and we all did have a really good time. I got lots of valuable help from Teddybear and we remade almost all of the custom textures I made . Lots of stuff has been either added, changed or removed since the last update, however i dont feel im ready to post pics just yet.
Currently im drawing spaceships and commersial ads for the map aswell as struggling with the final (and most difficult) optimizations. Im also playing around with throwable objects and how they change the gameplay.
Currently they work great and are alot of fun, but the problem is that i will probably have to make my own props before the final launch (wooden boxes doesnt look good in a sci-fi environment) and i know very little of modelling. Hopefully i could get some help with that from another friend.
Thats all for now. Hopefully I'll be able to give you a big update with lots of new stuff in a couple of weeks.
Progress:
The LAN is over, and we all did have a really good time. I got lots of valuable help from Teddybear and we remade almost all of the custom textures I made . Lots of stuff has been either added, changed or removed since the last update, however i dont feel im ready to post pics just yet.
Currently im drawing spaceships and commersial ads for the map aswell as struggling with the final (and most difficult) optimizations. Im also playing around with throwable objects and how they change the gameplay.
Currently they work great and are alot of fun, but the problem is that i will probably have to make my own props before the final launch (wooden boxes doesnt look good in a sci-fi environment) and i know very little of modelling. Hopefully i could get some help with that from another friend.
Thats all for now. Hopefully I'll be able to give you a big update with lots of new stuff in a couple of weeks.
Posted by MisterBister on Wed Jun 7th 2006 at 3:45am
ive had lots of crits about the spaceships so ive decided to make new ones.
Me and Teddybear managed to create the first ship today. Took quite a while, but it was worth it =).
The image is taken from below, and the yellow lights are headlights.
ive had lots of crits about the spaceships so ive decided to make new ones.
Me and Teddybear managed to create the first ship today. Took quite a while, but it was worth it =).
The image is taken from below, and the yellow lights are headlights.
