Add more detail to the skybox, it's really horrible. Adding more detail wont raise the R_speeds alot since this is a 3Dskybox. :wink: By detail I mean that you MUST add displacments to the skybox, it's really flat. No plot of dirt in the wild is flat.
Add mountains and big hills to make it look better. Add small detail like bushes,bolders and trees.(the texture isn't enough, it now looks really strange, a few tree models will be enough though) Add a train track in the skybox, to make it look logical.(nobody will make such a long tunnel(from the mine until the horizon)) Remember, train tracks are usally on raised dirt.(no grass)

Edit:

The walls in the room at the top of the shaft are really bland, do something to spicen them up. Don't know what though. Maybe lots of horizantal and vertical support beams. The main problem with the walls in the junction with the floor, I can't tell what about the ceiling for It's not in the screeni.

Ahh finally I can see. :smile:

The first thing that strikes me, visually, is the boxiness of the surroundings (skybox). You need to break that up! Try to "cut off" a part of the square shaped layout, add a landmark in the distance with a few seperate hills instead of a constant "wall" of grassy terrain.

The buildings themeselves look nice now, maybe there could be a little more cover in the between areas, also vertical gameplay seems to be hardly existing in the outside. Again, I think it would be a good idea to make the roofs of these buildings easily accessible.

New screenshots. It's dusk now, and I've gotten both the 3D skybox and an env_sun to work. Retextured some of the buildings.

Elon Yariv: I made sure to include a shot of the shaft entrance

Please post more pics of the room at the top of the shaft that enters the mines.

I take each and every one of these ideas into consideration -- often
trying it out. If I like it, it stays. For example, I've made it muddy
as hell now.

A few other changes include doubling the depth of the mine shaft to
3000+ units, although only 1800 of them are "accessible"; that is, the
elevator only goes down to the first level. The second level is flooded
and has corpses floating in the water.

Also, I've added crab canisters to show the Combine's "Ravenholming" of the mine -- I plan to rewrite the story.

There are also several more weapons, supply caches and some secrets..

So make the inside area not grassy but muddy. The iron ore clean and light it much better if it's not abandoned. And by that I mean that most of the whole area will be lighted not only a few desolated spots.

I'll probably rewrite the story.. some of the stuff I've added that I'd
like to keep wouldn't fit the current story, like the headcrab canister
that punched a hole in one of the bunk houses

Trees!!! :razz: Maybe not in the mine but in the skybox at list.

I like it when there are only a few lights makes it feel more abandoned. Why is there a train in there if the place is abandoned? The cars I can understand but trains are too valueble to be left like that.

The map's beta filename is oreminenite2a.. The 2A is from a system I've
developed, albeit a very basic one -- add a letter then a number and
alternate between the two when making a drastic change..

People join in the daytime as well -- pretty much whenever. The
community seems interested in the map, but unwilling to download it via
my SLOW upload rate (1 kb/s :|)

I run the server straight from my computer overnight; it's just the
default HL2DM server name because I don't have the money or need for a
full-time server, since (I find this kinda funny) I make DM maps but
suck in DM.

The server usually starts around 12:30AM Central and stops when I wake up around 6:30AM

What's it called? Or what is the beta map called for that matter? I'd be interested to join and have a look!

The reason everyone's talking about the map being to dark is that it's a problem that often takes a while to show up. People don't indemidately notice it but after a while they do. It just happens. Also it's very easy to change!