Great lighting, texturing and atmosphere. I don't usually play DM but this looks like it will play well :smile:

YES, Please! I can't wait to see the finished version. I'm submitting it to our local server as soon as it's done :cool:

Thanks so much, Riven. :smile: I spent an hour or so going through all the updates again myself (dunno if you went into that much detail, but..) it was fun remembering all the changes I went through. :smile:

Anyways, it was certainly a great learning experience.. this probably gets said a lot, but considering what I knew about level design when I began and what I know now, it's really no wonder why it took so long. I'm absolutely looking forward to starting with a blank canvas, surprisingly, putting all of this new knowledge to good use with something hopefully a bit more fun to play on. :smile:

I've had a few ideas for a new map floating around, but nothing very specific at all. Next time I certainly want to do something a little more original in concept. We'll see what might come of that. The timeframe at the moment seems to be beta 4 in a couple days, final in about a week or a tiny bit more, and depending on how school treats me, I might have up a new concept in a couple months. And this time I'm definitely going to figure out the layout and design BEFORE I start building, not months after. :wink:

So thanks again Riven, for your kind words; hope you enjoy beta 4 when it's out, this thing's finally almost done. :biggrin:

I just have to give you two big thumbs up! This map is certainly amazing. I was doing a skim through all the past pages just a few minutes ago and I gotta tell ya, this map has come a LONG way. I downloaded every version and have appreciated everything that I saw you do with it, and am just in shock at how nice it has come out!

I feel ashamed to never have given a comment for it, although I did give you one in the map's profile when you first posted it :wink: . All I can say is that to "improve" it any more would be overkill and a waste of time. This map is up to Valve quality and beyond, and most anyone who plays it won't be thinking of what could make it better.

I just hope you don't get discouraged with a blank canvas again for your next project after working so long on this one, because you have quite some awesome skill at level design, and I'd like to see what you cook up next! I just hope that I'll be able to see it within the next year, if not this one, lol.

I just wanted to give you a congratulation for your accomplishment, and wish you the best of luck on your next project! :smile:

Haha. I promise there will never be a beta 5. Unless I get some great idea and totally redesign the map again... hmmmmm... :wink:

And thanks RedWood :smile:

Do beta 4, just try to refrain from beta 5. :wink:

I agree with Reaper, but i was vary impressed with the change you made to the construction site. This look far more realistic.

Haha. Thanks reaper47... this was the conclusion I finally arrived at myself last night. About damn time, I suppose. :smile:

I was thinking about all the problems, mostly the ones presented by the destroyed building and the blue sniper building it connects to; how boring they are. I wanted to replace them (surprised?). :smile: I discussed with a friend some possibilities for a new big open building to replace them and it was driving me crazy that this wouldn't help all that much with the layout.

And then I finally decided, it's too late and there's no way this map's going to be all that good, no matter how much time I have spent or will spend on it. There are some major problems and it's going to be easier to start over anyways. So yes. This is basically the final layout save for some potential little tweaks. The map's not in too bad a state as it is... everything's properly clipped and lined up and for what it is it shouldn't run too bad, it's just on the big side. Might be ideal for full servers.

And that's just dm_residential. Pretty much no matter what. And that's finally cool with me. :smile:

I'll be reconsidering the beta4 idea... I might just go straight to final. I'm confident there are no exploits or accidentally-reachable areas... and for what it is it's not looking too bad.

So thanks reaper47. I am in fact looking forward to doing a new one, if-- no, when I come up with an interesting idea. :smile: I've learned too much with this one to not try to put that knowledge to use.

I'd really like to see a new map by you, from the ground up, with all the things you learned (especially about layout) from this one. The stripmall/office bit does look better than the construction site but it's still trapped in a square-shaped hole in the middle of the map. The streets will always be too long, the buildings too confined. To some point these layout issues even affect the visuals (like this street that just goes on and on in a straight line).

Changing individual buildings all the time doesn't do the map much good IMO, because the large-scale layout (the two streets, the red building, etc) always stays the same and was originally built to connect totally different places - and probably has always been too open in the first place.

For the love of the mapping gods: stick with the current layout now! Don't change anything more or you'll just find a million more things to tweak and test and change. In order to really get it right, you'd need to be still able to bend, break, cut and rearrange every single part of the map, freely. But the only chance to do this in a reasonable time frame is while still drawing on a piece of paper. And that time has passed.

Get it done quickly. Fix any remaining bugs, be proud about this pretty darn impressive piece of mapping and move on to a new map. Or it'll drive you crazy. :biggrin:

I think you're starting waste a lot of good ideas and thinking on a ground layout that just doesn't fit.

Hey all... again. :smile:

So, following on the tradition of the first two betas, I went and made some major changes to the map after the third beta release. The changes focus on the construction site.

It's become evident that the construction site seems to contribute very little to gameplay. Reaper47 also pointed out that the design of it is kind of erratic and unrealistic. I was pretty aware of this, but I went after that design because I thought it'd be more fun to play on. Reaper47 had some great ideas to give the construction site's layout a little more purpose, but since it seems that either way it makes little contribution to gameplay, I'm getting rid of it.

I initially tried simply moving all of the buildings over to take up the space it left behind.. it all lined up perfectly and I loved it at first - I've always been looking for a way to cut the map's size down somehow. But that quickly died out too: the map was too closed off.

After some discussion with a friend it was decided that a stripmall could work well there, with some office space on top. I created a basic design that I later ended up destroying (literally) as a result of the bomb that took out the building across the street from it. the gameplay it gives is way more straightforward and hopefully it's the last change I have to make.

In fact, it'd better be the last change I ever make, because I've pretty much committed to the size and structure of the map by carefully reconstructing the skybox brushes around the edges of the outside buildings: any changes in layout will be a bit of a pain now. And since I've committed to the layout, why not?: I've created a 3D skybox to give the level some perspective. The change in the feeling of the map from having buildings and hills surrounding the playable area is surprisingly good.

Other changes that I got several complaints about... all of the spotlight beams have been reduced in intensity, and there are no longer any super-bright sprites or beams. I've also done a lot of maintenance work like clipping the tops of all the buildings, both for players and physics objects: you can no longer toss physics objects anywhere outside the actual playable area. Also, all the HDR effects and blooms have been toned down a lot... the map is a lot less bloomy overall.

So without further ado... pictures.

Looking down the street (excuse the lighting on the skybox building). Looking pretty similar to before...

... and the new stripmall/office building with the connecting ramp collapsed to bits. You can run up the right or jump up the left. (No longer just blank sky down the street on the right!)

A view from the sniper building. Some little skybox stuff in the background, I like those smokestacks and the subtle bloom around them. Still need to add handrailings along the edge of the stripmall here...

From atop the stripmall itself. An entirely new texture for the debris down there, as well as some physprops - need a few more.

From below. Still not sure if the Citadel will stay - I added it a long time ago just as kind of a test/experiment and I kind of like the way it looks, although it doesn't entirely make sense here, it could still be passed off as some kind of mysterious structure? Adds some visual interest from the POV of players on the ground... any thoughts on this issue are very welcome. (Also, the spark on the left... is that the best-timed screenshot ever or what? It's just beginning to erupt...) :smile:

And one more from one of the ramps.

On the roof of 1532 is where the skybox really looks nice, to me. I still have some lighting tweaks to do but I'm nearly there with it.

Atop 1532 looking the other direction - a nice contrast to the other shot, the buildings here are shadowed out by the hill a bit.

Also, two examples of some lighting adjustments I made to make things more atmospheric and interesting: the stairs along the back of the destroyed building, and one of the gates inside the sniper building. Thoughts?

So that's the very latest on the map, I wanted to go straight from B3 -> final but it looks like I'll end up putting out a B4 in light of all the changes.. very soon. Hopefully by the end of the week. After gathering any last comments, I might still be able to crank out the final in time for my goal release date: before September 5th (when school starts).

So please, let the comments and crits fly. :smile: Thanks for looking as always!