Glad I could help midk, I appreciate you responding to my points, it's nice to know your time and thoughts get taken on board or at least considered :smile:

I look forward to seeing new shots.

Thanks for the reply, Addicted to Morphine.

Screen 1: You're right. I've discovered that I really suck at texturing/modeling buildings. It's good to get suggestions on these things that I have no eye for. I'll give it a try. :smile:

Screen 2: Definitely. That, for what it's worth, seems to be the result of HDR - in LDR mode, the light looks just fine (surprisingly). The only reason I haven't changed it yet is that I haven't decided on the kind of lighting I want (probably gonna go with flourescent, like in that hallway).

Screen 3: This is the most-used building so it certainly does need more detail. The planks are.. well.. I don't know. :biggrin: Probably going to be deleted, that's what they are...

Screen 4: Cool, thanks. Maybe I'll place another bus stop somewhere...

Screen 5: Right. Another thing I suck at: doorways into buildings. If I make the doorway the correct size for a door or two to fit, it tends to seem too small, at least in Hammer. I'll have to just go for it and see how it looks, I suppose. Doorframes are a good idea.

Screen 6: Thank you. I do like this area. :smile:

Screen 7: Combine walls are indeed cheap and need to go for the most part. Since I don't really have any other immediate, simple ideas for map containment, I placed them about as a rudimentary, basic map sealer - so people at least wouldn't walk up to the edge of the map and look off and think "huh?". I'll probably come up with something. :smile:

Oooh.. a hill/incline. That's an interesting idea. Sounds painful, but very interesting gameplay-wise. I might have to give that a bit of a try. :smile:

That definitely helped - appreciate it a lot, thanks. :smile: gets back to work

Hi midk,

Screen 1: First thing I noticed was that there are a too many windows on each building. Why not cut the number of windows in half and see how it looks?

Screen 2: The light on the left wall is too bright. Try decreasing the intensity of it, and if you really want to give it a 'bright' appearance, use a sprite.

Screen 3: Again, too many windows. What's up with the planks leading to the roof on the right? How'd they get there? What are they?

Screen 4: Bus stop and kiosk look good. The streets need more details like that to bring the city to life.

Screen 5: A hotel entrance should be fancier than that. Why not make the entrance an arch, maybe put in a broken revolving door thats been shattered, or at least some doors blown off the hinges. Also, the texture transition from interior plaster to exterior brick is too sudden, another reason why a doorway or doorframe would help.

Screen 6: The balconies and lights on inside the building (both the ground floor and the 2nd and 3rd floors, make this easily the best looking building in your map. Still an awful lot of windows, but overall this building is much more convincing than the others.

Screen 7: I think you need to reasses how you're going to contain the map. A combine wall works well enough for one, maybe 2 sides... but having all 4 sides boxed in by the same wall makes the level seem fake. I know you said you wanted a better 3D skybox, so when you go back and fix it up, try to think of other ways to seal off the map.

Finally, I think the map is too flat. Why not make one corner of the map (or half of it) higher than the rest of the areas. It'll be more fun to play and give a little bit more visual variety. It shouldn't be too hard, just have to lift the buildings up and angle the roads.

Hope that helped. Good luck with the next update.

Another update.

dm_residential has undergone a major revamp; the biggest changes since I've posted about the map here. Here's a list of as many changes as I can recall (certainly not everything):

• The map is altogether considerably smaller (shaved a lot off one side of the map) - it feels much more like the right size now.
• Several buildings have been joined up as well as a new, large hotel created with a small interior.
• Sidewalks/streets entirely redone for the best possible efficiency and looks. Sidewalks are clearly sidewalks now with appropriate textures, corners are large and round, brushwork is much cleaner and more efficient. The road also now has a bend in it which, IMO, looks really nice.
• Street lights and street signs.
• Decals are being placed for detail. Some are visible in the screenshots.
• New bus stop (along with sign) and enterable kiosk.
• New small store interior (ground level of one of the buildings, a la dm_overwatch).
• More work inside the corner building.
• More props.

Still to-do:

• More props.
• More decals/detail/debris.
• More interior to the corner building.
• More texturing work on a couple buildings.
• More detail on corner building.
• Redo (currently awful) 3D skybox and surrounding environment.

Following tradition, 7 more screens!

Screen 1, view from "corner building"'s roof - new sidewalks, textures and buildings visible: http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/963/residential1xk6.jpg

Screen 2, a sneak peek at one of the corner building's interior hallways: http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/7472/residential2ai8.jpg

Screen 3, view from the tree fort, bend in road visible: http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/2448/residential3bn2.jpg

Screen 4, bus stop in foreground, kiosk farther back to the right: http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/2103/residential4ig7.jpg

Screen 5 shot of new hotel's small interior (lobby): http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/7606/residential5xv1.jpg

Screen 6, a look at the (currently empty-ish) small store interior: http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/4645/residential6yo2.jpg

Screen 7, a look down the road from the combine tower: http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/1610/residential7cl0.jpg

I'm nearly there now. :smile: I'm considering releasing a beta, but what I personally think would be more fun is getting together a beta playtest with a few friends as well as anyone here who might want to join. This is probably a futile effort, but please, leave a post if you're interested at all, and I'd like to see what we can get together.

Thanks for looking. Any more suggestions, now's the best time. :smile:

Alright, here are some more screens (seven, actually; showing maybe more of the gameplay, I played with two friends last night for a couple hours).

Some changes since the last screens:

• Some work on a couple of the buildings, trying out some different techniques to give the buildings a more realistic look.
• Detachable traffic lights that start out in the right position.
• New ground texture.
• Lots more work inside the corner building - worked on lighting, and a hall with a room at the end. More to come.
• Actual roofs on all of the buildings. Subject to change...

Screen 1, new roofs, more debris: http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/8424/residential11eg.jpg

Screen 2, more debris: http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/5262/residential26bk.jpg

Screen 3, wooden ramp gameplay, potentially to-be-removed (see below): http://img74.imageshack.us/img74/5201/residential38ws.jpg

Screen 4, view from the sniping spot in the destroyed building: http://img74.imageshack.us/img74/7521/residential42ct.jpg

Screen 5, on the roof of the corner building, looking at the staircase leading down: http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/3143/residential57wd.jpg

Screen 6, bloody death :wink: : http://img110.imageshack.us/img110/4540/residential61df.jpg

Screen 7, death again, showing the new slanted roof from another angle: http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/7674/residential72bt.jpg

And changes I've done already from the compile shown in these screenshots:

• Lowered combine tower with rocket launcher, so you can't reach the roof once you jump down to get it.. solves problem with rocket whores camping on roof.
• Rudimentary tree fort in large tree (more or less a flat board cut up a bit with a ladder leading up to it) with crossbow ammo should make for a bit of fun.
• Ladder leading to the corner building's roof. Much quicker, alternate way to access the roof (from inside stairs or wooden ramps). This may result in the removal of the ramps.
• Small other tweaks/changes.

The map's probably around 45-50% by now. Still major to-dos: more interior on corner building, more detail on other buildings, plenty more props, and decals all over the place. Thanks for looking, I'll post another update in the near future.

Orpheus:

• Alright, I've uploaded screens that are a little less than half as large as they were before.
• Hmm, yes, the entire map (which you can only see about.. 1/3 of in screen #1) is basically contained in a square, though the gameplay doesn't feel that way. That will be adjusted later, in any case.
• Yes, the buildings suck. Majorly. Have you seen any good tutorials on this? :smile:
• (traffic light) Oops, how did I miss that...
• That's the only wooden ramp, and to get up on that building... quite subject to change, just the first thing I came up with.
• It is a bright spring/summer day, but unfortunately although I am using skin "1" for that tree there aren't that many leaves.. I suppose I could try adding my own.
• Yes, good idea.

I really like your suggestions, I'll consider them all and use most of them. Thank you. :smile:

G.Ballblue:

Yep, certainly empty. I haven't done any prop placement yet, really - coming soon. Just getting things laid out and how I feel they should be. I do in fact have a green dumpster with garbage piled around it, funny you should suggest it.. I don't think you can see it in any of these screens, it's in an alleyway.

Still of course to-do: tons of decals and overlays. The problem is I've done lots of this twice before on this map and sometime after I've laid them all out I'll get an "Face List Count >= Overlay_bsp_face_count" error and I can't figure out how to resolve it until I just delete most or all of the decals. I'll save those for the end so I only have to do them once.

Thanks for your suggestions, guys.

Main thing I saw with it is that it looks way too empty. HL2 has a huge assortment of props and junk that can (occasionally) be randomly placed. There's still some thinking behind it though, usually.

For instance, some garbage lying up against a building would look nice -- or why not have a dumpster with garbage near that? You've got quite a few possibilities oepn to you.

I looked at screen number 1 and these things I noted:

• Screenshot is 2 times larger in file size than necessary. This precludes looking at screen number 2 through 7.
• The entire region is contained within a rudimentary square. I can see where that will work, if a prison, or restricted area is the goal however. I have no problems with that.
• The buildings look like cardboard cutouts. no building really looks like that. Often.
• The traffic light on the "T" side is facing the wrong lane.
• The wooden ramps? Why? and Why to such scale? You could literally park a car on those.
• The grass says summertime. The tree says Winter. Put some leaves on the tree or kill the grass.
• A similar fence could be employed around the broken car area.

Things you could add:

• Sidewalks.
• Breezeways on or connected to the buildings.
• Fire hydrants.
• Phone booths.
• Bus stop benches.
• Mail boxes.
• Cross walks.
• Dirt lots.
• Playground equipment.
• Billboards.

Good luck with those other 6 screens.