Not to bad as a matter of fact i like it except that the lighting could be better><and a 3d skybox would help

I understand what you are saying. Just playing around and glad you guys are throwing ideas at me. I am not much of an artist yet so flat walls happen alot with me :biggrin: I just added an oak tree model in the middle of it and it looks very cool. Helps provide cover and gives any snipers a bit of a challenge. I agree the floor texture on the ceiling is tacky. Dunno what to do there :smile: Im coming up with ideas as I go and you guys are helping too.

as for buildings being flat Im hoping adding some more junk near them will help them look a little less flat.

Bad idea, IMHO. Junk can add detail but you have to use brush geometry and lighting (!) to make the architecture look any intersting. Try borders, non-rightangled walls, wall columns ect. Add different lighting with shades of yellow(warm) and blue(cold). Get photos of places that look cool and moody and copy bits of architecture.

What about the lights inside that one building? They look to tacky?

I could be mean now and say the inside looks like Wolfenstein 3D... The old Wolfenstein 3D.

sry, but the extreme (floor texture for the ceiling) texture choices make the "flatness" of the walls omnipresent. The layout is completely right-angeled too.

Updating all this to a decent looking Source engine map will be a lot of work and requires to completely overthink the architecture. I think it will be hard to just "add on" what's there.

Great Ideas! I do plan on adding more stuff or "junk" like barrels and things like cars so on and so on. This is just the start (and a lengthy one I might add) I do plan on making displacements with the grassy area as well. as for buildings being flat Im hoping adding some more junk near them will help them look a little less flat. The railing are prop_statics lol :smile: I will get to work right away. What about the lights inside that one building? They look to tacky?

Well, I've never been a fan of fy maps. At least I don't think it makes sense to spend a lot of time in detailing those as they are purely a, well, "fun" experiment.

I'd say the main problem, visually, is that it still looks like a HL1 map. Flat buildings, no borders/details ect. Prop_statics and a skybox with some buildings in it could help. The CS theme and textures are all about realism but it's hard to get that layout to look "real". Maybe a wartorn building.

Well adding a 3D skybox would definitely help :razz: And I would also recommend making the grass terrain into a displacement map, since that would help too.

It also appears to be a fairly open map -- not necessarily a bad thing, but it needs some cover. The only things that there are to hide behind are the walls.

You may also be able to make it more interesting looking by changing the environment light angle, adding a sun entity if you don't already have one, and also consider adding some "junk" (barrels, broken bottles, trash, etc) since these always make things more interesting, at least from what I've seen.