Its Official, I hate you now. =) LOL, man that rockstars! Great work so far. I can hardly wait to run around in it and see of the goodness it has to offer.

Still plugging away here. Trying to bring some color and a bit more diversity to this area.

Lookin good! I'll give it a go later but one things that strikes me is the map is very "diffuse" in both lighting and texture choice. See if you can sharpen up some of those shadows and perhaps even use more spotlight entities with nice crisp cones instead of the light entities or wide spotlights. With the texture choices, you using alot of bare textures, look at the first shot, the concrete floor, some of those walls, the tunnel thing and the first shot isn't the worst offender of overuse of bare textures cough 3rd last cough 6th last cough 4th cough 6th etc. Your missing out on alot of detail and depth in your level by using these textures!

B...U...M...P
OK, so in order to save web hosting space I replaced all of the map posts previous pics with the current ones(beta 7), so,please disreguard all comments which accompany them.
Now on to business. Beta 7 will most likely be the last beta barring any grand errors. It's a frilly affair with the FF clan stamp all over it. Players seem to have fun with it though. There's custom textures, a custom sound secret, secret teleporters, and an RPG killer secret which Reapers dm_balcony inspired. (It's an "homage" Reap!).I added Haymakers speed ladders where I could. The longer ladders, due to their vertical nature just would'nt work well, so I left them as regular ladders. Special thanks to Haymaker, btw, who took time to run around the map with me on several occasions, pointing out countless little(and big) things to do/fix. Now I know I have'nt really inspired anyone with this map, but I could really use fresh eyes for the final release. It is rather a fun map if I do say so myself,(and I do!).Linkage:
http://www.brdstudio.net/ffmember/juim/dm_ff_stinger_b7.zip
And for those of you just joining us here's the screenies all in one post.: This is one of the main courtyards. I call it the "Pluck-n-Chuck" cause theres melon trees a growin thar! Same courtyard, reverse view. You have to hit the jump pad just right. goofy little teleporter I snuck in. A view from down below. The glass tubey thingy. Another angle from down below. This is the other main area above. Got some Z-axis goin on here. the reverse on that area. NoClip, top down view. Another view from below. I got rid of all the glass fanciness. Took a heavy toll on performance. the founders room(secret sound byte in here). My version of Reapers RPG killer. (Shoot the rotating FF sign from anywhere to remove rocketeer from roof!) Just a sexy view to show part of the 3d skybox.
So I have a few things to do, but mostly I need feedback/critz/comments, etc. As always thanks for having a look.

Excellent progress in the screens Juim! 3D box makes a big diff there. Nice contrast to the orange below. Be careful with the ambient light levels, dim maps = frustrated players for the most part. Couple big bright spots from up high would work well too.

Regarding my fog comment, originally I was envisioning something super basic like a single displacement in your 3d sky, so what I said doesnt apply really, cause you won't have a visible horizon. Besides that I was gonna say try a few numbers in the fog controller for your main play area, it'll take awhile but I think you'll come up with something you like. Check out Lockdown, it's set up so you don't really notice it, but it's there alright. Also Valar did a nice blend on Milieu too.

These maps don't have a 3d skybox, so after you're happy with an interior fog, you can set 3d sky fog options in the sky_camera properties, to achieve a blend that isn't too overdone. I did this on that contest map you joined me on, fire it up and watch the fog fades between world and 3dbox, I think I got pretty close there.

About the rendercolor, it's only available on non-static props, so set that one to _dyn override and you'll be able to subtly change the color of the prop. An env_lightglow with the color set to the light would be good too.

I'm having major windows issues but PM me a link to a vmf and I'll try to check it out!

Thank you for the walkthrough Hay, and your comments as well Aaron. Couple of things. First, I am currently working on the 3d skybox: As you can see it's starting to take shape. I am also taking into consideration your comments Aaron, about the coloring. I have changed skyboxes and re-done the light_env colors to facilitate a more eveningy kinda look: This will also mean lighting the upper decks(as you can see I have already started this process.
Hay, I have a couple of questions about your comments.
1: Could you please be more specific about the skybox/fog thing?
and,
/2: I am using prop_statics for those fixtures you referred to and I am not familiar with the rendercolor process. Alittle help there as well.

/I would love to send someone the map for optimizing, as I can never seem to wrap my head around hints/area_portals. I have tried them in several places where I see the engine drawing way too much of the map, but they seem to have no effect or very little at most.

Not bad. The layout is pretty cool, it certainly offers the opportunity for many interesting scenarios to come up in gameplay.

I still think there is too much concrete and orange, I'm not sure what your feelings are towards all the concrete and orange lighting but I think that there is too much of it, I certainly think that the map would benefit from a bit of contrast (more than what you have). And some of those interior spaces like I said before where a bit too dark for a multiplayer game where it is likely that players will have no flash light.

I agree with what haymaker says about the light stand, it feels in the way and seems like a bad design choice to me and infact I think that whole couch/lamp thing you got going there is pretty pointless at the moment (we are yet to see what your going to do with it) and detracts from that space.

OT I put those
lines in there attempting to get "preview" to work, they did for that but now it looks way diff, as does all the formatting...I would say preview needs some work?

Congrats on getting to this playable state! Cool to see a map so emphasised on curvature. Some quick impressions

[URL=http://s546.photobucket.com/albums/hh409/bc_haymaker/?action=view&current=dm_ff_stinger_b50003.jpg][IMG]http://i546.photobucket.com/albums/hh409/bc_haymaker/th_dm_ff_stinger_b50003.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

^ There's a few of these 1-unit lips that will become major frustrations when facing down ar2 fire or something. Clipses!

[URL=http://s546.photobucket.com/albums/hh409/bc_haymaker/?action=view&current=dm_ff_stinger_b50004.jpg][IMG]http://i546.photobucket.com/albums/hh409/bc_haymaker/th_dm_ff_stinger_b50004.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

^ A simple displacement in a 3d skybox here could fade out to sky colour fog, would add about 2 fps load probably

[URL=http://s546.photobucket.com/albums/hh409/bc_haymaker/?action=view&current=dm_ff_stinger_b50000.jpg][IMG]http://i546.photobucket.com/albums/hh409/bc_haymaker/th_dm_ff_stinger_b50000.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

^ Managed to get stuck here between the rail and the ceiling

[URL=http://s546.photobucket.com/albums/hh409/bc_haymaker/?action=view&current=dm_ff_stinger_b50001.jpg][IMG]http://i546.photobucket.com/albums/hh409/bc_haymaker/th_dm_ff_stinger_b50001.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

^ Match the light fixture to the light glow, try setting "rendercolor" to the light colour. Here I'll mention the use of sprites/ point_spots/ fog, I know there are not present in your quest for performance but I think you could afford some judicious use. That is when you figure out what's hitting the average in this corner.

[URL=http://s546.photobucket.com/albums/hh409/bc_haymaker/?action=view&current=dm_ff_stinger_b50005.jpg][IMG]http://i546.photobucket.com/albums/hh409/bc_haymaker/th_dm_ff_stinger_b50005.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

You may have to fool around with areaportals or something, this is passable but way below the rest of the map.

[URL=http://s546.photobucket.com/albums/hh409/bc_haymaker/?action=view&current=dm_ff_stinger_b50002.jpg][IMG]http://i546.photobucket.com/albums/hh409/bc_haymaker/th_dm_ff_stinger_b50002.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

^ The lampstand seems totally incongruent with the rest of the modus-operandi in that it's static, makes no "logical" sense. Plus it gets in the way. You may be able to change that light to a single dynamic light that dies when the lampstand gets picked up, the frames are good right there and if you keep the dynamic lightmaps to a small cone it wouldn't hurt too much.

I can't comment on the weap placement or spwanpoints, except slams in this map are a power item, I would make them much harder to get, especially with teleports around.

Coming along very nicely!

OK beta 5 tested very well on the FF clan linux server. No crashes, and decent performance.I need some feedback now, as I am doing some minor architecture tweaks, haymakers speed ladders(where I can, a couple of them are too long I think), and a 3d skybox(already working on b6). So here's a download:
http://www.brdstudio.net/ffmember/juim/dm_ff_stinger_b5.zip
Any and all feedback would be appreciated.