I like what you've down with the basement. Be careful about adding grates to the floor though, as right now the texture makes it look almost like gravel, and not concrete.

Also, I think it would look cooler if you somehow made the ramp up to the second floor part of the concrete ceiling supports, not just pieces of wood.

Alright, eight new screens of what's done so far of my one newly revamped little room :wink:

Screen 1 - looking at the room from a corner.
Screen 2 - another angle from the same place. (Still to-do: redo that crumbling concrete)
Screen 3 - ceiling, which I'm fond of (the shadows/lighting on it, feels quite industrial).
Screen 4 - from the opposite corner of the room.
Screen 5 - looking up into the to-be destroyed apartment/hotel room.
Screen 6 - looking out a hole in the wall (the one I showed yesterday in Hammer).
Screen 7 - looking down on the basement through the big hole.
Screen 8 - out the destroyed window of the apartment. This will be fun to snipe out of, I hope.. I think I'll put a crossbow here and remove one over in the alleyway. That'll total up to two in the map, one in this room and one across the map in the top hole of the destroyed building (which is DIRECTLY across from this window, you can see it in the picture). That could make for some fun gameplay, two sniping holes opposite each other. :smile:

So I'm really enjoying destroying things now with this crumbling concrete technique. I just realized I've been talking about a "new technique" but haven't really detailed it.. basically I take a long brush, cut it up with straight lines horizontally, and then clip them off vertically. I think I might make a tutorial on this, since it's such a quick, fun method and the easiest way I've found yet. Just after I check if there are any tutorials here on something similar.. :smile:

So yeah, as far as the basement, I still have some things to do; I want more pipes and some vents snaking around the walls/ceiling to make this feel like a more cramped, dirty, rarely-visited basement. More decals, drains on the floor, more debris from that collapse in the ceiling from the apartment..

Also one of Finger's concept art images gave me an idea I think could look really cool. In the first image he seemed to destroy the upper left corner of this building (from the POV of the first concept drawing, it's the upper left, I mean). What that got me thinking about was having a huge headcrab canister just absolutely plowed straight into the building from that corner, smoking, rubble all around, just destroying the upper left corner this way.

Also a few thoughts on map performance. I'm going to have to worry about this soon, I can't get too detailed with anything here, which is unfortunate. FPS is around 35 from the top of the corner building roof where you can see basically everything, which isn't that bad considering the size of the map, but I'll have to get even more aggressive with optimization. I always do things the most efficient way possible (e.g. nodrawing all over every face that can't be seen) and I'll keep doing that but I'll also have to start using more hintbrushes to split up the leaves (notably the ones that hit the top of the skybox thus can see into basically any leaf in the map). Compile time has been going up quickly as well, though I'm not exactly worried about this. Vvis took 2 hours 15 minutes or so last night, and Vrad was an hour (x2, since LDR and HDR lightmaps are compiled seperately so Vrad runs twice).

Enough rambling for now. :smile: Gonna start working on the apartment interior.. then smash down a couple walls to lead it over to another apartment.. :smile:

Haha. 8:36 now.. :o It's lovely though. I'd wake up at like 7PM and go to bed at 10AM if I had my way.. :smile:

Anyways, yeah.. compiling+going to bed now. Did a cordon compile of the area, lighting is really cool. Did some tweaking to it.

So, see you all in 8 hours.. unless I don't ever wake up, that'd suck... You guys would never get to play the map! :wink: poof

Man you're a crazy nightowl. It's only 11:33 PM here. Lookin' forward to the new screens though.

Cool. :smile:

Yeah, I'm still up. Told you I'd probably last another four hours. :smile:

I really am confident about the way the basement area and apartment will turn out. I really like this new method of creating chunks of rock/blasted walls/floors... almost to the point where it's fun. :O

I've.. well.. just wait for it. :smile: Pillars, supporting concrete, crumbling concrete.. this area's starting to get a mood I really like. Screens will be up tomorrow whilst I compile overnig-- er... overmorning (7:20am ATM, probably will sleep ~ 8am). :smile:

Looks better, thats what I was trying to convey with my MS-Paint outline. :smile:

Alright, so I just kind of came up with a different way to redo any "broken walls" found in the levels (a more realistic concrete-type crumbling). It's much easier than either displacements or the way I did it where the concrete looked really jagged like glass... and it looks better than both to boot. I'll be redoing all the busted walls in the map this way, I think. cheers happily :smile:

Here's a screen - from within Hammer, I just got done with it: http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/4660/bustedwallzj8.jpg

Got to add decals now to spice it up a little bit, as well as some debris on the ground and inside.. and I will be working on the basement some more.

If there are any comments or suggestions - maybe I can get one or two before I head to bed between one and two hours from now (knowing me, though, could be four hours). :smile:

back to work

Morphine!

Thanks.. slowly it's improving. :smile: Yeah, chose all textures that would only have one window per tile instead of two like before. Looks much better this way IMO.

So, yeah. For the window I'll certainly take care of that soon, I might end up redoing this entire blown-out bit (four displacements; one per each side). Whether or not I do, I will have to do some cutting-up of the brushes that this building consists of in order to correct the distorted window you can see there. :smile:

Hm, interesting @ the bricks idea. I'll certainly change these at some point (same texture for all three buildings, mostly placeholder) - I wonder how brick would look there, so the exploded hole in the wall would be seamless with the rest of the wall.

Nice idea with the block... no need for a drawing, I know exactly what you mean. In fact, that just gave me another idea, some supporting pillars scattered around the basement might look cool.

Yeah, Finger - a tutorial would be very cool. :smile: It's very cool that you explained it here but for other people who aren't reading this thread, etc.. going into detail on a seperate tutorial would be a good idea.

And yeah - that plaster wall.. sigh. I just don't really know what to do with it yet, go with displacements I probably will. (Talking like a jedi, I am!) Nice concept art that is (alright, that's enough of that). :smile: It seems like it'd be quite a pain to accomplish with the clip tool though... (or the vertex editor for that matter). So I might give it a try, but probably end up going with displacements.

And yeah.. I really don't have the least idea where I'd be today had I not posted this map so early and recieved so many comments from everyone here. I truly wonder what the map'd look like. :smile: I'm very glad to be the one on the receiving end of this excellent stream of comments, [constructive!] criticism, suggestions...

Thanks to everyone who's helping me out with this. :biggrin:

[edit]
Oh yeah.. forgot to mention.. right now I'm working on that basement. I'll try the retexturing/pillars/boxes ideas. :smile: Working on the to-be apartment interior...

The retexturing and extrusions were a huge step in the right direction :smile: I think your map looks much better now (finally those windows have been thinned out :smile: )

I noticed in screen 3 that the hole in corner of the building would have shattered the window right next to it. You could cut out a window-sized hole in the texture that's overlapping the exploded section.

I'm not a huge fan of the gray concrete texture serving as the base of the yellow-white extruded building. How would it look with red brick or another less monotone texture?

Lookin' forward to you filling the basement up with some junk, some props etc. Wouldn't hurt to make the room less of a square by adding a big block into one of the corners (in essence making the room 6 sided instead of 4). I'll draw you a picture if my words fail to express what I mean.

Finger, that critique was awesome. I learned a lot just reading it as well. Why not write up a tutorial about drawovers? I'm sure a lot of us would love to know what program you use, if you use a tablet, where you start, and how you think about improving a scene.

Also, I agree with Elon Yariv about the hole in the wall. Additionally, what I noticed was that the broken plaster bits don't look as realistic as the brick. The plaster bits don't look like they should be breaking into such sharp triangles, or so many triangles. Why not just smooth things out a little bit, like bigger flatter chunks of plaster chipped out of the wall. Something like this:



Not exact, but you get the idea.

One last general comment. It's nice to see so many people helping out. I can't remember the last thread I read (anywhere, not just here at SnarkPit) with so much consistent in depth constructive criticism. I don't mean this as a way to toot my own horn, but rather to compliment everyone else who has posted in the thread.

Looking forward to more, as always :smile:

Nope, I mean the door is from the front of the restaurant - the front door. :smile: (Broken off its hinges and laid up against the wall)

But yeah, alright.. I'll de-square this hole in the wall. :smile: