Thanks for taking my thoughts on board. I hope you can come up with something you like. And even if you don't, it's always good PS practice, right?

I'll see what I can do about that. I personally like the texture but I agree that compared to a lot of the HL2 stuff (buildings etc) it's a bit too sanitary. :smile: I'll see what I can do about that..

Well, to be more specific, in screen 1 the road when compared to the buliding textures just seems too clean, smooth, and low contrast. Like I said earlier, it seems to give it a less realistic look, almost a cell-shaded feel.

I don't know how to create custom textures, and I applaud your desire to make your own assets, but in this case I just prefer the default street textures.

Hmm.

They are rather clean and I'd half-expected to kind of tweak that around with decals, but I don't really know how it would/will come out.. I could dirty them up a bit in Photoshop, I'll have to give that a try. I think I'd at least end up going with some worn areas where the tires would be... Any other thoughts on them?

Thanks for that and the screen 6 comment. :smile:

I really like Screen 6, along with the more condensed feel of the map. However, I have to be honest and say I prefered the previous street textures. I don't know if it's just that I'm more used to the older ones, or if it's that the new ones seem too clean, and almost cell shaded looking. I dunno, it could just be me.

Alright, time to finally show the layout I've reworked and been tweaking/adjusting lately. It's not exactly finalized but it's really close to what I'm aiming for.

Screen 1, looking down the street from the debris pile at the apartment building's end. You can see the parking lot's totally gone, the new road/sidewalk/pavement textures, and a taller cafe/restaurant building. This shows the more condensed and trimmed, faster-paced layout I'm going for. Considerably less open space (aside from the missing parking lot, the park is quite smaller - maybe 2/3 the size it used to be). This limits sniping but not nearly to the point where it's futile. :smile:

Screen 2, looking down from the top of the hill. Missing parking lot, taller cafe building.. new textures.. yadda yadda yadda.

Screen 3, inside the destroyed building. Not so much new done to this except several suspended-by-rebar debris chunks which you can see in the foreground and also by the sniping spot.

Screen 4. Cafe Baltic and FOTO! :smile: Still gotta redo those crosswalk textures, they're stock HL2 from when I used the cracked-road texture versus the new custom pavementy-one.

Screen 5, view from the sniper tower. Considering removing this and replacing it with like a more man-made makeshift wooden-board sniping spot off the edge of the building or so. Or maybe I'll just have no tower at all.. hmm. Gotta think about this and mess around.

Screen 6. Don't worry, I didn't turn it into a RATS map! :biggrin: This screenshot I crouched in so you could see the lights. I reworked all the lights in this area to be a bit darker and more focused.

Screen 7, just looking out on the map from the corner where buildings meet. Gotta lighten this area... somehow. :smile:

Thanks for having a look, all suggestions and thoughts are appreciated. I'm about to head into the dreaded building-detailing phase, and shaping up a lot of the visual stuff now. Still tweaking the layout and lighting a bit as well. I'd like to have a second beta out soon.. maybe at the end of this week. If not, I'll just go full-steam-ahead for the final version which I'd like to have out within a couple weeks.

Thanks, Baron.

Actually compiles are pretty quick - 20 minutes to fully compile (1 and a half minute vvis, 19-minute-or-so vrad) so full-map compiles are quite reasonable. That happens to be the exact length of a Seinfeld episode and I've got over a hundred to watch whenever, so for example last night I did several compiles with different lighting, watching an episode per compile. It worked out perfectly.

Also thanks for the link, it looks quite useful and I'll read it all now.

I adjusted some lighting in the current "dark" style and recompiled it and I think it's going to be just fine. Although the premise is sunrise which implies dark, as long as the streetlights are bright enough it certainly still qualifies as a bright map.. the style of lighting is simply different. I'm sticking with it for now. I just need to get more ambient lighting or more lighting in some areas that don't have streetlights. I'm workin' on it. :smile:

Also, I'd like to release some screenshots tonight or tomorrow showing off what I've got done before, if plans go accordingly, I do a lot as far as detailing all the buildings.

My suggestion would be to build a small, simple map using your texture set (and sort of the same architectural style) to test the lighting, so you could try several different lighting styles quickly. I think the "sunrise-ish" lighting is too yellow, tbh.

This HL Engine Lighting tutorial by 3D-Mike has some pretty sound advice on lighting.

Hey guys.

I have a small update for you all, not ready to reveal the "new layout" yet (gosh, feels like I'm really hyping it up) :smile: - what I am wanting to talk about is lighting. If this is too long to read, could you please skip to the last paragraph and tell me your thoughts? Thanks.

I've been feeling fine about the map's lighting outdoors, mostly. The only two slight worries I have are (1) darkness in some areas - maybe some people would take a look at the map and say "too dark, I won't play it". (2) performance. This could be a performance hit - all the spotlights and beams... not that big a deal in any case.

Back up for a moment: been working on custom textures the last couple days. Majorly improving the ones I've already done. The roads are now black as in asphalt, the sidewalks are much more realistic now (no more lines running up the middle and stuff). Both have normal maps now as well. I showed a friend one of the textures I'm working on in-game. Then he said the map should be lighter.

This intrigued me for two reasons. One, because he originally suggested darkness. :smile: Two, because I'd kind of wanted to try recompiling the map with bright outdoor lighting like I used to have just to see how it looked. So I did. I copied+pasted a light_env from a very old copy, changed the skybox texture, and compiled to test it (1-and-a-half minute vvis FTW!). When I loaded it up it was like a breath of fresh air.

I've liked the lighting in this map because it's moody and atmospheric. The spotlights against the sky look great IMO. This makes me wonder what it is about the sunlight that appeals to me. My guess is that I've been working on this so long and playing it so much that the lighting has become mundane to me and so even a change for the worse would look better because, well, it's a change.

I have a couple screenshots, from the brighter version and then a previously-unseen bit of lighting - earlier morning and very yellow. I tried to kind of look away from the majorer changes I've done so far so don't inspect these screens too closely :wink: You can see the new textures etc...

Midday lighting, as seen in the extremely early versons of the map. Ignore the end-of-the-world-at-the-end-of-the-road please :wink: Do not, however, ignore the new road texture! :o

Sunrise-ish lighting. Earlier on, more yellow (too yellow probably).. and quite bright.

I don't feel particularly attracted to either of these, but just showing you guys. Anybody have any suggestions? I kind of want to make the map brighter overall, maybe just choose a slightly brighter sky than the current one and give it some more intensity.. or.. I dunno.

Last paragraph, final question: What do you think of the way the map is lit now? Reaper47 has expressed his affinity for it. :smile: I'm interested in other opinions as well as more detailed ones, though. Does it seem too dark? What about the sky? What do you think? I really don't feel like it'd be a nice payoff for the several months of work on this map to have it rejected by most for being too dark. Thanks for any thoughts.

No map-screens yet. Not quite. Still too busy with it. :biggrin: Wanted to show you what I've done with a few of the textures though.

Here are four textures of Valve's. Clockwise from upper left I'm using them as: pavement/concrete, dashed roads, non-dashed roads, and sidewalks. They look nice - I mean, eye pleasing - probably because of the somewhat cartoonish colors (not cartoonish per se, but.. you know.. visual-interest-above-realism videogame approach). I went for a more monotone, realistic approach.. I'd probably prefer the colors but I really like the way the ones I modified came out and love the contrast they make with the buildings.. dullish streets and sidewalks versus green grass and all the colorful buildings. Delicious. :biggrin:

Ingame shot, showing basically nothing, except a building and park are both now aligned to the sidewalk.

Looking forward to putting a lot of custom content into this map - mostly, if not entirely, texturewise.