Good work getting to the finish line! I noticed you're becoming quite plumber with all the pipe props, looks good. I run out of patience with those quickly these days. The main hall with the railings/staircases is an impressive view too.

After playing this a fair number of times now I'll say it seems nowhere as big as it used to be, and that's not including the teleports.

I like the lighting a lot, especially the corridor with the big pipe elbows, very cinematic. Actually there is a lot here that reminds me of a ship, so I agree with Aaron about the theme being a degree unclear.

The skill level in the finish here is far above average, it looks beautiful. Keep it up!

+ Cool teleport sequences
+ Interesting design
+ Nice lighting

• Symmetrical design
• Lighting was repetitive
• map was bland
• No ambient sound effects!!!!

After playing this map for 1 minute, it actually reminded me of half-life 1 (not in a bad way) with the portals and all. The map design was pretty interesting in some areas. However, I thought it was pretty bland because the map was so symmetrical and it didn't really have many props. I feel that the location itself dosen't really tell a story (this area is worn out, this area is damaged, this area is mainly used by humans, this area is away from the main area...) which also attributed to the fact that it seemed pretty bland/plain.

The lighting was good, however it was repetitive. Like you would have these awesome blue lights in this one area, but that whole area had the same blue lights.

I couldn't really decide what the theme of what (in real life) the map would have been used for.

And I was really disappointed the map had no ambient sound effects, you could have at least added some quiet faded distorted machine sound effects from "machines" coming behind the walls or something.

However, it was still nice and I can see the effort in there, so I am going to give it a 7/10. Good work Juim.

Congrats on finishing this quite epic project! I love seeing your maps evolve over the beta stages.

Many beautiful spots, albeit a rather wild mix of styles at places. My only other complaint would be my personal scepticism towards total symmetry. It might be what causes the enormous size as well (everything's there twice).

Overall, a very impressive map. Good job!

Meh!, it's finished.

Thanks for all of your suggestions, I now have some more motivated mapping to do shrinking this up for the jr version.

Changelog for final:
Added pipe contraptions in central, connective corridor.
Added more chuckables in lower area.
generally cleaned up, and added a few more decals here and there.
Added ceiling pipes in round hallways off of contraption room.
Smoothed out the lighting in lower areas.

I am starting to get "enumerate App" type errors at the drop of a hat now, so I think I have done all I can do with this in its current configuration.(Note: there are no errors in the compile log at the moment, and the map takes 8 minutes to compile completely). Pics and a download:

http://www.brdstudio.net/ffmember/juim/dm_striker.zip



























Thanks again for your kind help and walkthroughs.

Just some realizations here.
Firstly, I will release a final of dm_striker as is(with the changes I have made from beta 6 in tact) very soon.
Secondly, I have to agree, after several hours of playtesting on the FF servers that the map is a bit convoluted and somewhat confusing to new first time players, and at last I will concede.... it's too big.

So many times I have heard this from players with reguard to stonepark, and waterwerx(My first map in source) and now, this one(although stonepark was basically an architectural killbox, and i still tend to disagree on that one :cool: ). If a player load of 6 can't find each other to reach 50 frags in 10 to 15 minutes or so, it's a big map and people start to drop. dm_hiatus seems to be properly laid out for DM, so it is with that in mind, that I am going to shrink the map. I will re-think the vast confusing layout and re-release sometime soon as dm_striker_jr.There are so many parts that I like, but I need to fuse them into a more coherent layout. This will be my goal. Look for dm_striker final hopefully by tomorrow morning. Look for a new post for dm_striker_jr soon thereafter.

Some images in this post have been automatically down-sized, click on them to view the full sized versions:

Beta 6. This should about do it,as I feel I've done all I can with this one. There will be some playtesting on the [FF] server, (to check for Linux issues), and, unless someone finds a bug, or has a great idea, I'll probably just re-compile it as dm_striker.
Changelog:
Shrunk the oversized textures on the ceilings and floors throughout.
Polished the entity structures for sprites/sounds/lights at the teleporter origins/destinations
changed the crates to chuckables w/destroyability.
func_detailed a great many brushes.(shortened compile by 22 minutes!)
changed tubes to arches in lower teleporters.
Moved ladders around to front in top area.(Sorry YAK, no room for stairs there.).
Added a ****load of chuckables in upstairs office area.(Used to be an empty room)
Added no_draw brush in freight elevator to keep barrels from sinking below surface.
Added electric shock type thingies to insinuate teleport capabilities in freight elevator.
Added an "EXIT" arch in bottom area w/teleport for quick return to midmap.
Moved pipes in "Contraption area" back behind glass w/sign.
Added some ambient sounds.
Changed pipe models to brushed based pipe in toxic hazard area.

This represents almost,(if not all) of the suggestions made by your thoughtful walkthroughs, and thanks have been put in the read-me file. Here's a few pics of the changes.



This is the top view in Hammer. :razz:



http://www.brdstudio.net/ffmember/juim/dm_striker_b61.jpg

As you can see I moved the ladders around to the front. YAK_FIGHTER, I remember you suggested stairs but I just did'nt have the room. Still, they are now more easily accessed and therefor more functional.

The download:

http://www.brdstudio.net/ffmember/juim/dm_striker.zip

as always, thanks for having a look.

Thanks for the valuable insights and the nice walkthrough Riven.

I have already begun to implement many of your suggestions. The pipe contraption thing has been mooved back and I put a glass window in front of it. No explanation for such a thing, but it looks very nice to my eye. Perhaps I'll make it a hinged window with something valuable in there, but we'll see.

Likewise I have clipped the breaker panel across the way.

The pipe tunnels.........

I am considering getting rid of those and lessening the amount of teleporters in the map. If I keep them I will devise a way(perhaps with clipping) to keep the player centered. In answer to the next part (and adding to Redwoods last comment), I am adding sprites,sound and lights at each teleport destination, color corresponding to the origin sprites. I will tie them into the trigger multiples at the origins so they cannot be tripped by passers by. That should help a bit.

The crates in the lower room are an obstacle actually. The re-supply crate is the only other place to get RPG rounds, and I wanted to make the getter vulnerable to attack if they chose to go in and get them. You think brush based crates would look better than the models? As for the ones between the pillars, I will give them chuckability, solving that issue.

Overstretched textures. In most cases I only try to stretch textures to fit a particular brush.(i.e so I have a proper fit with trim and all from floor to ceiling on a wall brush).Or of course, to prevent tiling. The brick textures just seem too small to my eyes and I usually like those increased to .45 x .45. If there is an areas you feel are lessened visually to a degree, please feel free to point them out though, as I am open to using another texture, or re-sizing them if it can be done.

I will also spend a morning or two at the back end of this no-drawing unnecessary surfaces.

To Redwood:

I added a trigger hurt inside the combine ball spawner, but I would really like to have the player dissolve effect . I just don't know exactly how to do it. Some pointers in that area would be great!.

Thanks to both of you for your great ideas and walkthroughs. You'll get a heads up in the read-me fer-sure! :razz:

Riven's post reminded me.
You have a lot of telaporters, witch is fine, but remembering ware they take you is difficult. Especially when your running from someone. They are collar coded, i think it be convenient it at the point of exit there was a collar matching glow (or some other indicator). People at first would be thinking "wtf is that" but after they find out what they are they would start remembering the exit point and use them more effectively for travel.

Well, I've been wanting to put my two cents in for this map for a while, but I have just been waiting for the right opportunity: Here, we go!

-Well let me start by saying this map is great! It is very well constructed and it looks darn sexy! I'll admit that I'm not totally sure of the local for the place, or why certain things are the way they are, but whatever the setting may be, it serves up some good 'ol deathmatch fun! (My guess is that it's some kind of industrial gas processing plant with teleporter technology?).

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana">Now I know you're a fan of the teleporters, which is fine by me, but something that I wish you would implement in this map (different from your other maps) is that you play a sound that can be heard world-wide when a player jumps into any teleporter. I wasn't expecting to be teleported upon entering the elevator, and for a couple of seconds I thought my HL2DM glitched-up on me. Perhaps you should stay consistent and add your glowing sprites in there and in the other few places where a player can teleport; it just makes sense imo. A player could only get angry at the level designer when running away and hiding from a cooked grenade only to be teleported unintentionally into a bigger firefight without the awareness of what just happened and getting killed over it! </SPAN>

Some good things about your map that I liked:
[list]
[*] Weapon placement is plentiful and so is the health and shield dumps. A+ in my book!
[*] The vertical gameplay is awesome, and the "shoot-through" grating allows lower-ground players to get the upper hand when desperate.
[*] Nice to see some useful player clipping where needed along railings and model appendages.
[*] Lighting seems sufficient; not totally awe inspiring, but it keeps the place interesting.[/list]


Now some things that I think could be improved (with screen shots!!):



^Here we have some clipping issues. Where I?ve placed the red boxes in the pic are the areas I think you should include some sneaky clip brushes that ramp over those valve wheels and the electrical switches to the left. I kept getting hung up there. Also, (like RedWood already pointed out) perhaps add some glass behind those valve wheels in order to keep players from wasting their time to see if anything is back there.



^I think for the pipe tunnels you have here, you may want to add some nice clipping brushes that slowly guide players towards the center of the pipes, because I found that maneuvering to the left or right while in the pipe automatically puts you in crouch mode; that can get very irritating when running away from someone. You may want to make the invisible clip brushes like wall ramps instead of being flush with the edge of the pipes like I have mistakenly shown in my pic.



^I tried to break the crates that are in the way here, but found that they are unbreakable. I think you could save people time by replacing those prop crates with some brush-based static ones applied with that obvious crate texture. This would let players know that they can't get past these crates, and could stop wasting their time trying to pick em up!

Beyond that, the most noticeable thing to me not mentioned here, are the overstretched textures! Why on earth would you purposefully overstretch wonderful textures in an engine that supports high res textures! I mean, I can understand about saving resources and whatnot, but it really detracts from the map in certain areas imo. I think you should reconsider...

One other thing about "nodrawing" unseen textures: It's not necessarily about run speeds. Yes, enough textures applied with nodraw will make a difference, but what makes more of a difference is the size of the map. If you did nodraw every surface that couldn't be seen, you could be saving your map 1 or 2 Megabytes! >imo, that's worth the trouble.

All-in-all, this is a really sturdy map that's already good enough for server rotation. My above comments are merely nit-picky things and I wouldn't worry about them if you don't get the chance. Take them for what they're worth. I can't wait to see this map finalized! Awesome job so far!

No problem, I don't mind criting good work.

About #3
Your right, with good vis construction it shouldn't mater. But then again some people are still running 1.67 Ghz cpus ( :sad: ) with decreped gfx cards. It could make the difference for a lot of people. Then again it difference might be so minimal... i don't know.

About #8:
I agree that you should keep people out. It's just that i spent 45 seconds trying to get in there because i thought i might be able to. Maybe close the gaps with more pipes or add a grate.

Glad to be of help.