dm_residential is a map centered around a 3-way intersection in a residential neighborhood, with a hill and seven accessible buildings in the vicinity. It takes place around early morning (or late evening); most of the lighting in the level comes from streetlights and building illumination. All of the accessible buildings have their own interiors and several ways of entry and exit, providing many potential routes around and throughout the map.
Beta 3 was released on August 8, 2007. The final version, assuming all goes well, should be released in a few weeks (almost surely before September) with only some minor tweaks to the beta 2 design.
You can check out some discussion and work-in-progress screenshots in the forum thread (see below). Thanks for looking!
I don't want to act like I've totally.. you know.. improved the map by so much percent, but.. man. I haven't played on the latest "design" yet but I can't wait. The latest iteration feels so much more "deathmatchy" and so much less "visual demonstration of a wide-open residential neighborhood". This is absolutely the feel I love and I'm so glad that I achieved it. It just feels perfect for a game of deathmatch. The feeling I get running around this build...
I've also began working on custom textures. Thus far I've created my own (well, modified the existing heavily) textures for sidewalks and corners, streets (dashed-line and non), and the general "pavement" that isn't a sidewalk nor a street (all around the map, surrounding buildings and the park etc). The originals just felt too videogamelike, I certainly decided that after making my own. They were nice to look at, but just.. unrealistic.. for example the general pavement texture I used was gray and it had these little flecks of blue in it.. it's like.. what? And the sidewalks were too littered with trash and too shiny. The roads were a bit too cracked yet stony... I love the more monotone, realistic feel of these custom textures.. that's monotone in a good way.
Not quite ready yet to post some screens, just an update to say that I'm really excited about this level now.. :smile:
Polygon salad, haha. Hahaha.. that's the best phrase I've heard in like... well.. several days. :biggrin:
Hmm.. that is correct, the stairs are the "problem" with the scaffolding. The mess of pink lines has been mostly eliminated around the posts, but the stairs are still a slight problem.. dunno what to do with them. The scaffolding is no longer in plain sight anyways, shouldn't be drawn most of the time.
But every stair, for example, adds three polygons which makes a few hundered. Plus the polygons of the posts, probably splitting up each other to even more (yea, even func_details do that, they're like normal brushes)...
That is a huge polygon salad in one place that is added to the already pretty big and detailed surroundings.
Thanks for the comments about screen 2. I'll figure something out for the windows, maybe I'll end up having to go the direction you took with resident - brick-filled windows.. :smile:
About the scaffolding in screen 6- I already rebuilt it completely using four-sided posts instead of 8-sided ones... looks much better in wireframe now. It's not in the same place anymore - hint hint - so that combined with the rebuild should mean it's not really a problem anymore.
This part in screen 2 is a great little detail. Perfectly fits the destroyed building while it's rather unique (at least I don't recall seeing it in any other map yet which is a good sign).
It's still a hole between one of the most detailed indoor section and the large, central outdoor area. It could be a huge performance problem. Maybe some very carefully planned hint-brushing could help but be aware that this hole could add a lot to to performance problems in the map.
Also, because people are starting the realism arguments... the building has many, many windows on the outside...... Window "overlays" should do the job for the inside.
The buildings in the back of the parking lot (screen 6) still look too flat compared to the others. They're dominating a large, open space and should provide a little more eyecandy. The brush-based fireladder to the left could easily make 20-30% of the FPS, so if you're still searching for performance tweaks try replacing some of the brushes by texures or models or consider moving the whole construction to the back of the building, hiding it well from vis. The engine doesn't really care about how big a polygon is. So many small ones at one place can be bad.
On topic: Over the past hour and a half I completely transformed this map in my eyes. I absolutely cannot wait to playtest a build (probably tomorrow) and show you guys what I'm up to. :smile: I think this will really improve gameplay and performance at the same time...
Posted by French Toast on
Mon Sep 4th 2006 at 6:44am
Thanks, er.. French? Toast? Neither seem to suit you alone... so... siiiigh.
Thanks, French Toast. :smile:
I'll do that for sure... I designed this when the rubble was all here and it definitely looks weird right now. I'll probably just redo it from scratch now that the theme in this area has changed.
Posted by French Toast on
Mon Sep 4th 2006 at 6:27am
About the first screen; I understand it's prelimenary, but I have to get this out there. Crumble the staircase more. It looks odd the way the walls around it have broken, but the stairs themselves remain perfect. Take large chunks out of the side, and then make smaller bits missing, and possible clip over them.
Screen 1 and 2: Right, extremely WIP.. I've been actually trying to lower detail in some areas for performance reasons, so I want to get performance all straightened out and stuff before I decide how detailed I can get with all that stuff.
Screen 6: Right, it's pretty.. hmm.. "regular". I don't really have any thoughts as to how this was made (in contrast to most of the other damage in the map) - but take this as a hint, you probably won't see it in the next batch of screens. :wink:
I really love that shot from EP1, Valve did a great job on it. I'm so incredibly performance-worried right now, I mean it's not particularly bad but it's like I'm aware of every little polygon I add. I'm really starting to think that maybe there's like "one thing" that's killing the performance on this map that I'm overlooking. I mean, it's not a very large map... not particularly detailed... I've truly optimized the crap out of it.. I feel like there's just gotta be something I'll stumble on in a few days and go "damnit, of COURSE". Though I can't think what that could possibly be.
Back to the theme ideas.. yeah, I'd really like to take this farther.. I have some cool ideas I'd like to implement (purely visual and thematic) like for example I've wanted to have this headcrab canister plowed (like at full speed) straight into the corner of the building with all the extrusions on the edges for over a month now.. I imagine these huge chunks of wall and debris littering the ground, a huge column of smoke unfurling out of the top, rebar and plaster sticking out all over... but see above about performance. I just can't deal with adding much detail right now until I feel "in the green" about that. It's much better than in the beta but something's still killing it and I'm out to find out what it is.
Anyways, thanks a lot for your thoughts, once I do a big size-reduction I think I should be greenlit for more detail and theme...
