Something I want to mention - I've been thinking for a long while about turning this into a darker, evening or early-morning map, instead of a bright, sunny day one.

The reasons are mostly that bright maps are fairly typical, and that I think it'd be cool to have street lights illuminating the roads and stuff. Potentially a lot more atmospheric/artistic.. glowing streetlights and lamps with a pink, dark, cloudy sky at dawn versus a simple bright sun against a light blue, clearish day.

I only tried a few compiles tonight to test a prelimiary test effect out (chose a skybox and set up light_environment and then did some streetlight illumination). I already like what I'm getting although it certainly needs some tweak work. If I could get it to look like I imagine in my head, I think it'd look really excellent.

Here are some example screens. Note that I used cordon on this compile to cut off some compex interiors so I could compile this quickly enough. I've tried to take the screenshots from angles where it's not so obvious that brushes are cut off, etc, but if you see anything strange, don't worry. :smile:

1) http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/3572/residentialdark1gq2.jpg

2) http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/5033/residentialdark2ex5.jpg

3) http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/6877/residentialdark3px8.jpg

4) http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/4896/residentialdark4nk4.jpg

I think the street lighting should be a bit brighter and more "harsh". It looks a bit too .. even. I think. Any thoughts, anyone?

Yep, all sounds good.

Been feeling a bit tired today - I'll go to bed quite soon. But I mustered up the determination to create another interior - another store (this one, I think, I'll call a restaurant :biggrin: ) next to the other one - on the ground floor of a building which you said looked like one of the best areas of the map. Now you can go from the parking lot into this new area. I want to also let the player go from this area directly to the older store - a blown out wall - instead of going out of this area around into the store. I also want to give a passage from store -> alleyway. Straight on through, as suggested roughly by your, er, flow chart. :smile:

I'll try and finish off the restaurant->store->alley connections tonight and post up a screen or two tomorrow.

Also, I just remembered. I was playing dod_jagd earlier with a friend and took some note on the way Valve dealt with destroyed buildings (which look excellent). One technique I spotted frequently was roughly-clipped jagged world brushes lined with rounded displacements around the jaggies. It's quite a nice effect. I can't find any screenshots on my disk, nor any online, but I'll snag a few tomorrow. Kind of hard to describe.

Anyways, off for the night - laters.

Additionally, when you add routes along the edges, don't just do long straight corridors, but rather have a variety of rooms and areas. For example, you could have certain bits of walls torn down or blown apart so that the player is running through apartment after apartment, instead of just down the corridor. Additionally, texture different buildings uniquely on the inside so they don't all blend together, or use some sort of architectural themes to clue the player in on which part of the map he's in (ie. a s**tty, dirty apartment in one area, and a high class hotel in another). Make each area memorable so new players can learn the map quicker.

Glad you liked the flow chart thing. :smile: Keep pluggin'!

Love the flow map. It looks great. I've been wanting to do something like this - I mean, alternate routes and stuff like that. I've been playing some DoD:S lately and Valve's maps always impress me as far as giving players plenty of choices as far as routes from anywhere to anywhere. I did a bit of that with the destroyed building - two ways in, four ways out - but mostly everything else is quite straightforward and sealed off, and I'd really like to give something like your map illustrates a go. More entrances, more routes.

The spawn points - also right. I might simply delete them all when I'm done with the map and replace them in ideal positons. I haven't had any complaints or problems with the mentioned corner one, but it could certainly be moved elsewhere.

Screen 1: Yep, the outside's just textured like a building so it doesn't look like a concrete box. I'll blow out the windows or.. something... we'll see. :smile: Certainly agree that the inside+outside don't quite mesh..

Screen 2: Alas, I don't think it can [be fixed]. Maybe I'll replace the props with a displacement or something. An alternate route up would be interesting. Maybe from the back via a ladder or something.. that should come as part of the "adding more flow" bit.

Screen 3: Ah, the floor is quite thin, you're right. This entire upper level came as a total afterthought of adding the hill.. I just had to kind of throw it in there quickly so we had the functionality, but I didn't have time to detail it very much. Layered textures is a good idea. Rebar, chunks of concrete, all that must come as well, of course...

The windows? Oh, um.. they were erased by.. a.. residential neighborhood-hating Source lord. Oh, I mean - yessir, I'll do it soon. :wink: That whole outside and inside needs to be retextured, even..

Stuff is piling up for me to do indeed, but keep it coming as long as you can. It's really nice hearing others' thoughts. :smile: Thanks for the layout suggestions and tips!

OK looked at the new screens.

Looking at the overview, I had a few ideas.

-There doesn't seem to be a lot of potential for flow through the map. When I DM, I don't particularly like to camp one spot until I die, but rather I enjoy coming up with a route I usually take and do laps, picking up health and ammo and fragging along the way. Some of the buildings in the map only look like they have 1 entrance, and other areas (like the bottom left part of the map) look like there's unused space where no one would bother heading to because it's either out in the open and/or no weapons ammo there.

-I'd put 1 or 2 more entrances into the buildings, so that people can enter them easier, and just have more choices when it comes to moving about the map. Also, I'd punch a hole through certain buildings, or just add entrances, to increase flow and choices. Obviously, if you do add new areas (I hope you do) you'll need to put ammo or health down to entice them into that area or to preven that route from being ignored.

-Some of the spawn points, especially the top one near the corner of the building and the wall, seem like a death trap. No good weapons nearby, and no cover or immediate choices. Getting spawned in the back corner of a parking lot with only a submachine gun and no nearby building entrances looks like it would be frustrating. Just my thought not having played it.

-Here's how I'd add some routes (done in Paint, sorry):



The idea is just to get more flow around the outside of the map, give people more options when it comes to movement and cover and gives them a chance to escape is they're getting peppered with sniper fire. Just my opinion though :smile: It would be a lot more work for you, and you'd have to use your imagination to make each area, hallway, lobby etc. unique and easily recognizeable. It'll be a challenge sure, but I think it'll be worth it.

Screen 1: Too much debris I think. Especially on the ground further from the stairs. Additionally, the exterior of the building doesn't indicate this level of interior destruction. Either clean up the inside a bit more, or dirty up and destroy the outside to balance it out. Overall a more interesting area than I expected, especially with the bent girders and the prop integration.

Screen 2: Some prop lighting inconsistencies, but I don't know if that can be avoided. Is the ladder the only way up to the sniper spot? If so, I think you should consider adding another route up top, just so the person camping up there has more to worry about.

Screen 3: Flares are a nice lighting choice, but the 2nd floor is too thin. Why not sandwhich 3 types of materials (like tile on top of concrete on top of ceiling material) as a crossection of the ceiling/floor. I think it would look more realistic than 4 units of concrete. Also, this building doesn't really look like a building from the inside. Destruction and rubble is good, but you need to give some indicators that this was a real place, a real building. Retexture the walls and the floor and then destroy them. Ie. place rubble on them, overlays, cut out jagged sections where there was a collapse. If you were to do it over I'd suggest doing a pretty quick build of a real clean building, and then destroy it systematically, adding details etc. Just so you can make sure it feels like a real place before you demolish it. Also, make the 2ndfloor jagged, its way too straight edged along the side with the ladder.

Additionally, where are all the windows that I see from the outside? The building is covered with window textures, but on the inside its just a wall.

I'm sorry if my suggestions all are pretty time-consuming, but if you're up for it I think the result would be worth it. And if nothing else, you'll improve :smile:

Thanks for the layout and for the new screens.

midk said:
Yeah, I suppose :wink: I was going to have it like hanging off the ceiling on a wire, swinging, and maybe sparking, but I was never able to get phys_lengthconstraint to work right. I'll give it another go sometime, or at least remove the light entities.. thanks for pointing it out.

I have to run off to class soonish, so I can't get into the whole reply, but as far as that light goes, you could use one of the broken light props from Nova Prospect where half of the tube is disconnected from the ceiling. You might have to push the prop further into the ceiling to make it fit with the hallway (since its a pretty tall prop) but it would be easier than messing with phys_lengthconstraint (and less resource heavy).

Addicted:

I always compile overnight (and continually less often during the day) considering how long it takes, usually around two hours with HDR lighting. Cubemaps worked today, so I took a few screenshots of the area you wondered about (inside the semidestroyed building) and also made a kind of aerial layout map (went a bit photoshop-crazy on that).

Layout map - 1280x960, ~300kb. I know Orpheus will moan about this, but if I can just have one screenshot to go all-out as far as quality and resolution, let it be this one. :smile: It looked baddish at lower resolutions and quite ugly at lower qualities. http://img477.imageshack.us/img477/1597/residentiallayoutfy0.jpg

Screen 1 of destroyed building; bottom floor. In the corner of the area right next to where you'd walk in from the side: http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/6051/residential1xr2.jpg

Screen 2 of destroyed building; up the stairs seen in the first shot, right next to one of the camping spots. There's an exit as well as a ladder leading up to the second, "new" camp spot: http://img477.imageshack.us/img477/886/residential2qz7.jpg

Screen 3 of destroyed building; up the ladder. You can see both camp spots. There's a crossbow up here: http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/2987/residential3dz8.jpg

Don't worry, you and the guys I played with have kept me busy with plenty to do. :biggrin: The rubble bit is a good idea, in fact I tried it in place of those wooden ramps I used to have at first, but it.. well, to put it mildly, didn't work. :smile:

Orpheus did indeed have some good ones. Breezeways probably won't really work here since these are apartments or similar, not single houses... also, I can't find a fire hydrant model. I could make one in 3dsmax, but I was reading the page describing how to get custom models into Source - looks quite painful. Phone booths are a good idea, I'll add them at some point - mailboxes I have in one building. Dirt lots, right, that comes with the new displacement park, and billboards.. yeah. Somewhere or other. :smile:

Yeah, Valve should really let HL2/DM maps use CS:S and DOD:S content.. all of it should be accessible by all games. :\ I could really use some of that stuff.

And thanks for the compliment. I should take those maps down... :smile: Happy to be on the recieving end of your crits. :smile:

-- Gwil:

Yeah, I suppose :wink: I was going to have it like hanging off the ceiling on a wire, swinging, and maybe sparking, but I was never able to get phys_lengthconstraint to work right. I'll give it another go sometime, or at least remove the light entities.. thanks for pointing it out.

Screen 4 - that light wouldn't be working if there's amount of damage so close it, surely?

Thanks for the full reply :smile: Didn't mind the length at all, it was nice to be able to read your response to my thoughts.

Regarding the tree house: Yeah, from the shot I couldn't tell if there was anything actually up there, but since you put some goodies up there I'm sure people will risk the climb. I'm liking it the more I think about it.

Don't worry too much about rushing out a new compile with some shots, because unless there's a lot of serious changes I'm not going to have as much to contribute in terms of suggestions. In other words, I'm running out of new ideas, so I wouldn't mind if you took a few days in the lab and took this map to the next level. At this point I really wish I could play the map, because I'm tired of talking about the looks, and wish I could give you some feedback on the gameplay / layout. The best I can do is just ask for some sort of overhead layout with the potential routes outlined and maybe even weapon placement if you're so inclined :smile: Hopefully your friends gave you some suggestions though.

You know how in Overwatch half of the central building is destroyed and rubble has spilled out into the street, and you can climb it easily to the 2nd floor? I think that would be a really cool element to recreate on one section of the map. Perhaps an alternate way to enter one of the busier buildings, or just a way to fill up an empty looking/feeling area of the street.

Also, I was rereading the early comments in this thread and Orpheus had some good ideas for some things that would help fill up the map. Here are the original ideas that I haven't seen yet in your map, but would like to:

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>・quoting Orpheus</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>

[*]
<DIV align=left>Breezeways on or connected to the buildings.</DIV>
[*]
<DIV align=left>Fire hydrants.</DIV>
[*]
<DIV align=left>Phone booths.</DIV>
[*]
<DIV align=left>Mail boxes.</DIV>
[*]
<DIV align=left>Dirt lots.</DIV>
[*]
<DIV align=left>Billboards.</DIV>

</LI></DIV></DIV>

I had to look up the term breezeway, since I'd never heard it before: "A roofed, open-sided passageway connecting two structures, such as a house and a garage."

Anyway. It's too bad you can't get CS:S assets in the map, because the assault props would be perfect for this map.

Also, I just wanted to say that your mapping has improved a heckuvalot since I first saw you here at the pit (exploding barrels in a box if I remember correctly :smile: ). Also, thanks for the opportunity to offer some critiques, it feels good to make suggestions, it's been far too long since I last thoroughly responded to anything.

[edit]
Whoa. I've written one hell of an essay as a reply. Forgive me. :smile:
[/edit]

Wow, that's one monster of a post. :biggrin: I really appreciate the detail into which you go on each screenshot. I'll do the same. :smile:

Screen 1: First off - that screen looks great, thanks for it. I'm so bad with buildings... if I have one weak point as far as mapping, I think it's that. :smile: Slowly trying to add details to these. By the way, I took your reduce-the-number-of-windows suggestion on one of the buildings. The brushwork is more complex now since the texture is of two windows, meaning I had to cut out "windows" and "wall" and kind of tile the two together. I think it looks better though. Unfortunately I can't find much of a view of it in any screen but it's just barely visible in screen #6 - the orange colored building behind the yellow one.

Screen 2: Something I've had in mind for a while. I'm just wondering how it will clash with the decal that creates the lack-of-windows there. I should just cut out a section of wall and texture it windowless but instead I used a windowless overlay atop the large windowed brush. I should fix that soon. Also, doors are coming soon - you can see I added some to the hotel (brick building with some detail to it).

Screen 3: Thanks. I spent so long on it, gah. :smile: Not fun to create.. but worth it. It curves up, levels out a bit (not entirely) and starts curving back up a bit. The windows do need to be changed, you're right. The building will probably just be moved up and yeah, I'll give it a concrete foundation like I've done with several of the other buildings on the hill (e.g. the hotel). As for the spacing between sidewalk and building - this should be filled in probably with grass and maybe a few trees, I agree.

Screen 4: The hallway (that works its way up not-quite-the-center of the building) which I haven't really illustrated in any screenshots yet presented a problem with hallways - since the staircase is off-center, hallways down one or two sides of the building can't reach out very far before hitting the edge of the building. I decided as a partial "workaround" I might have the building cut off along that side - destroyed - by the combine walls. Which might go entirely. In which case I'll make the building bigger. Gah. So many options. :smile: It's just not very clear yet that the hallway has been cut off, although it will either be clarified or the concept removed altogether.

Screen 5: This would indeed be a very good place for a crossbow - there's already one placed in the map but it's not very close by and you have to jump out and run around the building to get it, then all the way back up inside. Since the map is already getting big I'm approaching the possibility of having two places that a single weapon spawns for most weapons (e.g. a 357 in the corner building and one in the kiosk - across the map from each other). As for the props - I don't know. :\ Something I've noticed is that while the combine walls/shields cast shadows on the brushes, they don't block light from lighting the player's weapon - so standing anywhere in those combine wall shadows should leave you with a fully sunlit weapon. This may apply to props as well - it would certainly seem so. I'm not sure what to do. Maybe a BLOCK LIGHT brush if it comes down to that. Or maybe that problem will solve itself when the combine walls are replaced with something else. Oh, and traffic lights - yes, traffic lights spawn there. They are, however, removable when damaged, so you can shoot them down and throw them around. :smile: As a side note, I'll probably redo that brushwork. It looks too bold and too... straight, perhaps. I don't really like it.

Screen 6: Thanks @ the hill. The destroyed sections of wall look alright but I'm not very happy with them yet - they're displacements and sometimes don't seam together too well. Rubble's a good idea. A foundation will come soon as noted above. :smile:

Screen 7: The building up top = the "hotel". The only building that isn't more or less a box, I think. :biggrin: The windows on the left side are.. yeah. Dense. I'll work on that.

Screen 8: Funny thing - the ladder leading up to it was extremely fux0red in the version we tested. It's always been a bit weird, but I must have done something to really screw it up recently. I'm trying a fix for the next compile. I did however see several players give several attempts at getting up there, and a couple times a player managed to get on the ladder just right and make it up to the top. It was pretty cool, from the "new camp spot" I watched, zoomed in, as someone camping up in the treehouse was ambushed from someone else who climbed up behind them and crowbarred them to death. :smile: Your question would seem to imply that it may not be a very important part of gameplay, and I agree there is potential for that; when the ladder's working again I'll have to see if the treehouse is used when it's actually accessible or if it's ignored mostly. I have health vials and crossbow ammo up there.

Screen 9: Right. Ooops. Forgot to select something when moving the building upwards. :smile: Nice find, I never even noticed. :smile:

Screen 10: You're right, I missed that. In an earlier screenshot in this thread - here [ http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/7606/residential5xv1.jpg ] - there was a bit more distance between window and lobby ceiling. I "fixed" that and as a result it looks wrong. Removing windows from that floor altogether sounds like the correct solution indeed.

Screen 11: Thanks, the hole serves its purpose indeed :wink: Performance I could go on about for a while. Map performance even from a far corner seeing everything the map has to offer has been surprisingly good for me for quite a long time. I've been spending a lot of time using nodraw everywhere possible, keeping brushes as aligned/efficient as possible, etc, and it's paid off. In the latest build with the hill, however, performance has taken a noticeable turn for the worse. From the roof of the corner building looking across the park and other buildings on my 7900GT maxed out at 1280x960 everything's been alright - 35 fps probably, no major drops or stutters. But in the latest build from the same viewpoint it may be as low as 20 fps. I'll have to see what I can do to optimize this as much as possible.

Screen 12: Addicted -2 usefulness ;D

Screen 13: Right, I have a slide and some monkey bars.. not much. :smile: Some more stuff like a sandbox or merry-go-round would be welcome here. I used the alpha blending for dirt around the trees, but not yet around the slide/bars. Good idea.

Screen 14: Hm, you're right, I didn't really provide any screens of the inside. Next time, I promise. :biggrin: I'll recompile overnight and maybe snap a few screens in there and post them here tomorrow (e.g. 12 hours from now).

Combine walls: I have some ideas (taking a few hints from e.g. Overwatch) like piles of rubble, cars, fences, combine shields like you'd see in the HL2 plaza with the forcefields, forcefields by themselves, etc.. but nothing that would satisfy the basically entire open area along the parking lot or at the top of the hill. I might need to use the combine walls there, but I'm not too sure. Maybe I can come up with something. This is still brewing in the back of my head. :smile:

Map performance was noted above, it's gone down since the hill but I'll see what I can do...

I do have several soundscapes.. as well as a basic quiet noise always in the background (ambience) there are some outdoorlike soundscapes a la overwatch as well as one for in the blown-out building (some quiet intermittent groaning metal) and indoors (dunno how to describe it.. just.. indoorsish quiet kind of noises). :smile:

Dirtying up - certainly. I've gone around on a decal spree once a while ago and it definitely helped. A few more of those should be good, then I'll need a bit more debris/trash around.. it's getting there. :smile: Some broken bottles/cartons/bags on the street, but I need more.

I have been looking at especially the HL2 plaza for some reference. I have looked at the source .vmf to see how they achieved some things but I certainly haven't and won't copy anything from there. Nice to see how they managed some things though. Recessed doorways, brick foundations, rooftop windows.. lots of interesting stuff to see there. Also been looking at some other maps like dm_overwatch and some user maps as well.

So things are coming along. On a side note, although I feel that the hours I spent on the hill last night are some of the most painful and tedious I've spent since I started, I don't feel inclined to raise the map's finished %. I haven't gone backwards, not at all, but I don't feel I've really gone forwards. I still see plenty more things to do; the hill was unplanned, but it's really nice to have. I keep seeing new things to do, etc.. I'll leave it as-is for now (the percent) but things are coming along more than ever. :smile:

So thank you, Addicted, for this extremely detailed screenshot breakdown of your thoughts - I really appreciate it. I'll reread and re-reread them again, they all sound very helpful toward progressing the map. :biggrin: Gah, this reply seems extremely long by now. I must have spent around 45 minutes on it.. hmm. :smile: Tiring. Bed for me now.. night. :smile: