Screen 1: It's "very preliminary" so I won't look too hard at it. I think it'll work better than the massive pile of debris that was there before.
Screen 2: I like the look of that. The minor issue I have is there needs to be rebar sticking out in other parts of that floor so it looks consistant. I know it's still WIP so if that was planned just disregard this. That's a great way to do that spot though, IMHO.
Screen 6: The neatness and angularity(is this even a word?) of that hole in the asphault bothers me, it has since I first saw it. The sides of the hole would most likely be sagging and the edge where stuff broke off would be crumbly. I know there's a finite amount of detail you can have with brushes, so I don't know how you could fix it without a lot of modelling. How were you envisioning that hole was made?

I've also noticed there are some places that look like they've have been shelled or bombed, but most of the area is untouched. This is a matter of thematic continuity and immersion, picking a theme and taking it as far as it will go. I don't want to tell you how to develop the theme of your map, but I think it would be neat to have it at the edge of an area that got heavily bombed, and have one side of the 3D skybox look something like this, while the other side has buildings with little or no damage. I really like how this map is shaping up in any case.

EDIT:

think smaller

Turn it into a RATS map!!! :razz:

Alright.

I haven't written any updates in.. quite a while. I've been doing a lot of work since Beta 1; revising, retweaking, resizing. Just before I take a huge turn with the map I thought I'd show you a few screenshots of how it's looking at the moment (i.e. the last few screenshots where the map is rather recognizable!). :smile:

I've reduced the parking lot by about half, widthwise. This allowed space to move the restaurant/cafe building over quite a bit, and the one next to it as well. The map's farthest end has been capped off as a result, meaning a smaller gameplay area (better IMO, though still not optimal). Vvis has been slowly decreasing in time, I'm now at an 8-minute Vvis and a 25-minute Vrad. This follows several hours of optimization, hintbrushing, and geometry tweaking. The entire cafe building has been rebuilt and retextured from the interiors up. I like the design of it a lot more now. I've also created a rudimentary yet surprisingly sufficient skybox which follows the road along a ways until it turns off to the right, allowing me to cap the player's view with several buildings.

Thus, screens:

Screen 1, a very preliminary version of the direction I'm headed in with the bottom of the destroyed building. More interior, less rubble.
Screen 2, more WIP of how I'm doing the lower sniping spot.. with a chunk of debris held on by rebar. Yeah, it's definitely too "supported". :smile:
Screen 3, redone destruction upstairs.. now including the windows being removed.. I'll do this elsewhere as well.
Screen 4, looking out the upstairs hole.. note the apartment building having been rebuilt and moved over. :smile:
Screen 5, now really note the moved buildings and (a bit) smaller playing area.
Screen 6, halved parking lot..
Screen 7, 3D skybox environment extension.

I'm excited where the map is headed and I don't think the next set of screens will be very much recognizable as Residential, other than maybe the lighting.. yeah, that will give it away. :biggrin: I don't want to give it away but think smaller... :smile:

I'd like to get out a beta2 release or a final within 4 days or so... don't really plan on the final, but a beta is possible.. it will probably be either beta 2 in a few days, or final in around a week.

Haha, so I just spent like 20 minutes writing up an email/description/whatever to email the filefront guys to post it up, submitted it, then went back to filefront. The file was already there and uploaded like yesterday, someone else did it for me I guess :wink:

Here's the URL. updating the one in the profile too
http://halflife2.filefront.com/file/HalfLife_2_DM_Residential_Map;68579

Working for me. But yeah, I'll try and maybe get it up at Filefront or something.

Quick update: Completely cut down the level to the playable environment, and began extending the environment out with a 3D skybox. Liking the way it looks, just need to add more. Also I hate working with 3D skyboxes because of the scale, it's hard to get textures scaled right and stuff.

Could you upload the map to somewhere else please? I'm recieving a 'forbidden' error when I click on the above link.

Yeah, not only was Vvis helped majorly by the size reduction but FPS went up about 10 in visually-intense areas (at the farthest ends of the street, and atop the hill overlooking everything).

I'm not yet ready to post screens, 'cause I need to start extending the environment out (3D skybox time). I'm looking forward to doing the same to the other end of the map as well. Very soon...

ReNo: Ah, interesting.. I'd known that areaportals have to be either on or off for everyone at the same time in multiplayer which rendered them quite useless, but I never fully understood what they did anyways. They're just like occluders, from your description. :smile:

So anyways - I did a lot of work on shrinking the map last night. On the end with the restaurant and destroyed building, the restaurant building is much closer to the corner one with the hallways, as a result of the parking lot being about half its old width. Now there's a turn at the end (the main road turns to the left). I then "fit" the skybox texture down to exactly where it needed to go - just along the buildings and roads, to prevent unnecessary leaves. This should be a major performance improvement because there's much less draw distance. When I do it to the other side as well it should help a lot.

So guess what, I compiled it last night and the shrinking of map size as well as the skybox-fitting reduced vvis from.. 1 hour and 30 minutes approximately, to under 20 minutes. Hell yes. :biggrin:

I'll post up a few screens later today or maybe in a day or two if I want to keep working on it. It's very WIP.

Area Portals do work in multiplayer actually, they just aren't quite so useful as they would be in single player. You can still get a lot of benefit from their use however, as while you won't likely get much benefit from linking them up with doors (in multiplayer doors are rarely used and if they are used, are normally gonna be left open), they have another very useful trait - they clip the rendering of the area on the other side of the portal to what you can see through the portal. So if you are in a house and you can only see out through the front door, there are probably a whole lot of props and polys you can't see off to the sides of the door that are still being rendered due to the way the leafs are split up. Put an area portal in that doorway and only props whose bounding boxes have a direct line of site to the actual player through the area portal will be rendered. The more visual openings between areas the less useful they will be, as you will need to fill all the holes up with area portals and each one you place incurs extra computational costs, but I've found them to be effective in a great deal of places. Easiest way to check whether you are getting benefits is to make two compiles of your map after placing them - one with the area portals vis group turned on, and one with them turned off :smile:

I wonder why it doubles the line space... That thing was supposed to be clearer, lol

Areaportals don't, but areaportalwindows do (that's like a fade-scale for blocking visibility.. if you're nearby, you can see into e.g. a debris hole; far off, it fades out to a certain texture or something, hiding everything behind it).

I see what you mean with your crude illustration. That's something else to consider if it comes to that, thank you.