The only thing in your post I hadn't planned on doing was rotating the buildings, which I will do. I was going to put in a turn for the road, but it was such a bitch and I held off on it. Everything else is planned for a later stage. Right now I'm trying to get the basic brush work and sequences in, then I know where not to block off points with props. Thanks for the crits.

Fill those interior spaces up with something - benches, pillars, low divider walls, planters, timetable boards, trash cans, etc... At the moment it feels unfeasibly wide open and empty. The city area looks to be sticking too rigidly to a grid style layout, complete with 90 degree corner. Try and pull buildings back a bit so they aren't all lined up with one another and the pavement so precisely. Also, go crazy with overlays - obviously this is still early days and typically overlays are one of the latter stages, but you are using quite large expanses of the same texture so overlays (together with some contrasing lighting) will help break up the repetition a lot.

I don't really like posting these because they are in editor shots, and there isn't really much to show, but I've been back for a few days and it just feels odd to not showing anything.

So, these are from my upcoming singleplayer mod. The subway has around five or so hours of work and the city has about a days work.







I'll post an update in a few weeks.

Ah, I knew I was forgetting something :smile: , thanks for reminding me Morphine. I've forgotten to add the shadow controller.

I really like the open battlefield idea, just because I'd like to play it and see if it works well or not.

As for the recent screenshots, it seems like the light environment doesn't really match the skybox. Since it's a sunrise I'd expect long dark shadows contrasting with bright streaks of light in the areas getting hit directly by teh sun. There just doesnt seem to be any shadow or light anywhere besides the skybox. It could just be my monitor or it could look different in game, but thats the impression I got from the screenshots.

Fair enough. As it stands this might just be an exercise in HDR
lighting and outdoor mapping, since the performance isn't that crash
hot. The performance is really one of the main issues I've had with the
open layout. The headgerows, hills, walls, buildings and objects seem
to provide enough cover, and the hedgerows in particular break it up. I
also varied the heights of the terrain to create seemingly natural
walls and barriers. Its meant to be fairly open though, as an
experiment in a different layout to the standard forced path fair. I'm
also working on a more standard layout map which will be set at night.

it looks like really nice use of displacements and overlays, AS. i'd have the same concerns as gwil, though, that it might be a little too open.

That shot isn't the best, its actually running along the top of the
mini dam/walkway, like a fence. The map is laid out like a triangle,
with the spawns on each end of the right angle, and the flags/map in
the area between (For visual reference the dam is the lowest point in
between the two spawns. The crossroad is the furthest/highest point at
the centre of the right angle. If that makes sense :razz: ). The idea was
that rather than having the generic path based layout, I'd still
restrict gameplay to a similar sized area, just make that entire area
open. This way it would actually encourage more team play and tactics,
with every game not ending in a face off over the central area. More
like a battlefield.

Looks great still, although i'm a little concerned the openness could
affect play, and may be prone to random/spawn nading or MG whoring to
lock down the map.

Be interesting to see how it plays, because it certainly looks
beautiful at the moment. Although i'm not sure about the metal fence in
shot #3, just doesn't seem to gel with the idea of this being rural
France.

Thought I'd post up some new screens for my latest dod map. I've been
finishing off some sections, adding a little more detail, got the HDR
lighting working, and been trying to optimise the hell out of the
thing. At the moment the sweet, sweet water is killing my frame rate,
and my attempts at optimising haven't made much of a difference. The
fps on my machine, which is about mid range, is between 30 and 70
frames a second, mostly around 30. That is with HDR on though. Anyway,
it might be another one of my 'pretty' maps that no one plays. Enjoy :smile: .