Very nice thoughts. Residential shouldn't be complicated at all, it's varied but straightforward - not as complex as even swamplight_final, for example. No hidden secrets or anything like that (yet?) :smile:

Anyways, I'm getting a little frustrated with how brushwork is working in this one new interior I'm working on.. plus just all the work to get things done realistically the way I want them (floor of an interior caved into the basement, damaging the wall leading over to another interior.. too hard) and I just had this good idea about knocking down the door into the hall of one apartment and leading over to the other interior that way.

I'll map a lot today (starting now) and if things look like I could get a beta out tomorrow, I'll make a news post (it'll be like 11pm PDT Friday, probably).

excited

---

-- midkay

Damn it. Just damn it.

Get this:

I started compiling the map before I left for work. I came back around 10pm, eager to buildcubemaps, check it out, release it, set up a server, play around happily for a few hours and get a good night's sleep. What could go wrong, right?

For the first time in my mapping history, the map compiled alright (or so I thought) - yet it won't run in-game. "Map extents too large". So I go back and check the compile log - turns out those few "Brush has no visible sides" messages were actually pretty important. Then get this: I use Hammer's problem-checker, use it to "fix" (delete) some overlays without assigned brush faces, and the problem fixes itself.

So I've got three options:

1) Release the few-days old build I had as a backup as an "alpha" since it's missing a lot of new stuff, and pump out the beta tomorrow.
2) Release the compile I'm running right now in about two hours when it's done as the beta.
3) Reschedule for the same time tomorrow night, get another 4 hours of work in tonight and a couple in the morning, recompile and release that day (Saturday).

Now, #1 is hardly an option - I did some absolutely major work on this map today and I want that work to show in the beta. #2 is also kind of iffy because then it's late, nobody can play. #3 sounds the best to me, because I get to finish what I started (link the apartments to the Hotel, create some Hotel interiors) and touch everything up overall.

This'd really piss me off, but there doesn't seem to be an overwhelming interest in a playtest, so.. dm_residential_b1 comes out tomorrow, nice and polished.

---

-- midkay

No. Sunday.

That gives me more time to work and my favorite playtester the ability to be around to host and/or play.

So here's what I'm aiming for. Sunday, August 27, 2006. Beta release ~7:00PM PDT. Beta playtest ~7:30PM PDT.

---

-- midkay

The tree is freakin awesome. Dude I love the tree!!!

The.. tree? Um, thanks.. it's an HL2 model... :biggrin:

---

-- midkay

Guess I made myself look like a total idiot.
I was so fascinated by the trees that I
didnt even take a look at your map. Well
they are actually a bit blocky and plain.
Try to add more details. If you make a big
block with one texture it will have a bad
effect on the atmosphere. i.e. try to make
your own window-prefab and add it to the
houses. Then adjust the texture so it will
fit. ..dude I love the trees <3

(some houses are already pretty good!
hope theyre not prefabs again lol)

Haha, I thought you might be joking. These trees should be all over HL2, etc.. :smile:

Thanks for your thoughts, though - the buildings do need detailing, I just keep putting it off.. (oh, I have an excuse "Detailing after framework"). :biggrin: I really can't afford - performancewise - to give each window its own model, but I can detail the buildings a bit. None of the buildings are models or prefabs in any way, I'm building them entirely out of brushes...

Thanks again. :smile:

---

-- midkay

I havent worked with the HL2 engine yet, but Ive seen a function
where you can add as many polygones as you like and include them
into a single texture making it 1 polygone. So you might be able to
do that with the windows as well. Making them look real through
3d textures. Ah damn Im a total HL2 mapping n00B

Alright! The beta compile of the map has been put up. I did a lot of work on it last night as well, mostly optimization-related. Also cut it down in size a bit, and rebuilt one of the buildings at the end of the map, and extended the apartment building (the one with the crossbow inside it and all the extrusions). There is one notable small visual thing (aside from being able to constantly see the edge of the map) - some cars sticking into a building. :biggrin:

So here's the link, it's also in the map profile:
http://mikachu.ath.cx/midkay/dm_residential_b1.zip

Server details in just a moment....

Kampy:
Ah, you mean normal mapping.. that's just creating the illusion of having all those polygons while not actually having them. So that doesn't really help, it's just like one texture, it'd look basically the same (flat on an angle, just like bump mapping).

Thanks though.

---

-- midkay

K, a friend is hosting this so don't expect the ping to be great.. or maybe.. if you live in Utah. :smile:

Server: 208.110.158.136
No password..

Will be up in a few minutes. Hope to see anyone there. :smile:

---

-- midkay

I see. Well so much for the texture magic. x(
arent the trees taking a lot of polygones?
like if you remove one of the three trees you
might be able to use the saved polygones on
details? Im just guessing - I have no clue of
the HL2 engine yet.. no yet!! xD

Kampy, those trees will be models. The HL2 engine can handle a lot more
detail in the form of "props", which can be static or
moveable/responsive to the physics engine. If anything, the scene could
probably use a few more props, pieces of rubbish scattered around and
so on.

:smile:

I see. Well so much for the texture magic. x(
arent the trees taking a lot of polygones?
like if you remove one of the three trees you
might be able to use the saved polygones on
details? Im just guessing - I have no clue of
the HL2 engine yet.. no yet!! xD

Source engine is leaps and bounds in compairson when it comes to "abilities". In most situations models are prefered since they are less complex for the engine to deal with. Something else I think I should point out right now, in case you don't already know ... R_Speeds are nonsense now. There's a showbudget command that is much more specific and helpful.

Take a look around on the valve wiki, it'll get you very comfortable with 'source'.

---

Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

I haven't much to say to these last few comments except you're right. :smile: Kind of back on topic for a moment:

The playtest lasted maybe an hour and a half, with several server crashes at random points. :smile: 5 players were present throughout and I had a lot of fun. Finger joined us and gave me his thoughts. The one that really motivated me was that the map was just needlessly large, for two reasons: performance, if I shrink the map I can certainly improve that and get more details; and gameplay.

I've been working on this tonight. I shrunk the parking lot to about half its original size and moved the building with the restaurant/cafe over to match (so now the two front doors of that building are exactly inline with the center of the road leading up the hill. I tossed the alleyway area and am currently trying to come up with a way to cut this area off right along the street, preferably blocking plenty of visibility. So far I've tried (roughly):

• Combine fences (tall metal barriers with shields on top).
• A pileup of three or four combine trains.
• A crashed combine helicopter.
• A crashed, large pickup truck.

None work right. Anybody have any ideas? The annoying thing about this is that you can see down the road from the rooftop of the far-off building and so visibility blocking is important but not exactly necessary.

thinks, frustrated

[edit]

How about this.. the road ENDS right after the destroyed building and splits off in two directions (90-degree angles off the main road the map follows). This allows major visibility blocking (a building right at the end of the road) and an easy way to "end" the map down here (even some simple concrete barriers work).

---

-- midkay

I'm afraid the playtest was about 4 am at my place, I would have joined otherwise. I'll download the map and look at it, though.

Cool, thanks.. it's already undergoing a huge revamp though, keep that in mind. :smile:

---

-- midkay

Alright, I had a quick look and liked what I see. But I'm fully convinced now that the map would benefit from the cuttings you mentioned. Some areas seem to be added only to connect parts of the map and they're too big and prominent for only this purpose. This also includes some indoor corridors.

Except for that my only other complaint is optimization. The fireladders are... pure polygon horrors. Look at them with "mat_wireframe 1" and you'll see almost a solid pink color because there are so many triangles! Make the poles plain rectangles, consider replacing the stairs by ramps (no matter how realistic this would be). Try to recreate the construction with simpler polygons with a masked (transparent) texture rather than building every part with a seperate brush.

The destroyed buildings need some optimization, too. You could cut the polygons by half while keeping the general look and feel. Also put a wall behind every part that's high poly and connected to the middle area. The underground parking lot for example, is always rendered completely. Even if I can hardly make it out and only see the hole in the floor. Turn mat_wireframe on and look at it from the treehouse area. You'll see the whole undergorund part rendered. Put a wall in the underground section between the parking lot and the hole to block it off from the outside more. The building with a hole in the first floor lets vvis see inside from the whole map also. Make sure to block the inside there too!

HL2 doesn't like brush polygons. The prop models don't matter but ideally if you turn mat_wireframe on, you should see a rather simple structure of pink (brush) polygons. You should able to make out every single polygon easily.

Optimization should be your next priority and if you do it smart, I think the layout will also benefit from the simpler structure.

Oh, did I mention I love the lighting? :biggrin:

Thanks for your collection of suggestions and comments, reaper47.

About some areas being too big for their meager purpose: the main thing that comes to mind is the parking garage which is certainly going to be reduced in size or at least prevent the player from going very far into it.

Optimization is absolutely key right now. I've spent countless hours per NIGHT on optimization and trust me, I think you'd be hard pressed to find another map with so many performance-related optimizations. :smile: Quite literally every face that isn't seen is nodrawed, I spent a lot of time on that. Performance should honestly double by the time the final is out, cutting the area down both gameplaywise and "air space" wise (skybox "roof" should be lowered, and edges brought in some more). Thanks for your comment on the scaffolding - I had not looked at that in wireframe at all. I'll go check it out right now, after this.

Yes, polies can and will be cut from the destroyed building if necessary. When I began doing some destruction I did a lot of fine detailing on the crumbling walls/floors etc, and you might be able to tell that as I went on I got more and more coarse with the brushwork. I will go back and tweak some of the earlier work so that it's not so detailed. I've also set up fade scales for static props inside this building and others, because as you mentioned, vvis says you can always see into here, so it's important that whatever is in there is faded out when you're far off and as low-res as possible. Some func_areaportalwindows might be useful in a few places like this as well, and/or occluders. I'll look into these methods soon. I think the parking garage could benefit from an areaportalwindow for sure.

Looking forward to optimizing, shrinking and improving this over the next week or so. Thanks a lot again for all your thoughts. :smile:

---

-- midkay

I'm afraid areaportals don't work in multiplayer (or just occluders?). I'd really look at where you could put in walls or building structures to cut of visibility. The holes in the buildings are a good example for that. Put a wall right behind the hole, make sure it seals off the inside from the high poly parts of the inside completely. It even has to "overlap" a bit so vvis is absolutely sure it can't be seen form the outside which isn't always logical. Like this (replace stairs by debris, ramp, doorway ect):

[pre]
##############

1. 1. #
2. "stairs" #
3. 1. #
4. detail # *hole <---- can't see detail from here
5. 1. #

### ^ ########
| ^
way in |
blocking wall

#=wall
[/pre]

Areaportals don't, but areaportalwindows do (that's like a fade-scale for blocking visibility.. if you're nearby, you can see into e.g. a debris hole; far off, it fades out to a certain texture or something, hiding everything behind it).

I see what you mean with your crude illustration. That's something else to consider if it comes to that, thank you.

---

-- midkay

I wonder why it doubles the line space... That thing was supposed to be clearer, lol

Area Portals do work in multiplayer actually, they just aren't quite so useful as they would be in single player. You can still get a lot of benefit from their use however, as while you won't likely get much benefit from linking them up with doors (in multiplayer doors are rarely used and if they are used, are normally gonna be left open), they have another very useful trait - they clip the rendering of the area on the other side of the portal to what you can see through the portal. So if you are in a house and you can only see out through the front door, there are probably a whole lot of props and polys you can't see off to the sides of the door that are still being rendered due to the way the leafs are split up. Put an area portal in that doorway and only props whose bounding boxes have a direct line of site to the actual player through the area portal will be rendered. The more visual openings between areas the less useful they will be, as you will need to fill all the holes up with area portals and each one you place incurs extra computational costs, but I've found them to be effective in a great deal of places. Easiest way to check whether you are getting benefits is to make two compiles of your map after placing them - one with the area portals vis group turned on, and one with them turned off :smile:

---

[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

ReNo: Ah, interesting.. I'd known that areaportals have to be either on or off for everyone at the same time in multiplayer which rendered them quite useless, but I never fully understood what they did anyways. They're just like occluders, from your description. :smile:

So anyways - I did a lot of work on shrinking the map last night. On the end with the restaurant and destroyed building, the restaurant building is much closer to the corner one with the hallways, as a result of the parking lot being about half its old width. Now there's a turn at the end (the main road turns to the left). I then "fit" the skybox texture down to exactly where it needed to go - just along the buildings and roads, to prevent unnecessary leaves. This should be a major performance improvement because there's much less draw distance. When I do it to the other side as well it should help a lot.

So guess what, I compiled it last night and the shrinking of map size as well as the skybox-fitting reduced vvis from.. 1 hour and 30 minutes approximately, to under 20 minutes. Hell yes. :biggrin:

I'll post up a few screens later today or maybe in a day or two if I want to keep working on it. It's very WIP.

---

-- midkay

Yeah, not only was Vvis helped majorly by the size reduction but FPS went up about 10 in visually-intense areas (at the farthest ends of the street, and atop the hill overlooking everything).

I'm not yet ready to post screens, 'cause I need to start extending the environment out (3D skybox time). I'm looking forward to doing the same to the other end of the map as well. Very soon...

---

-- midkay

Could you upload the map to somewhere else please? I'm recieving a 'forbidden' error when I click on the above link.

Working for me. But yeah, I'll try and maybe get it up at Filefront or something.

Quick update: Completely cut down the level to the playable environment, and began extending the environment out with a 3D skybox. Liking the way it looks, just need to add more. Also I hate working with 3D skyboxes because of the scale, it's hard to get textures scaled right and stuff.

---

-- midkay

Haha, so I just spent like 20 minutes writing up an email/description/whatever to email the filefront guys to post it up, submitted it, then went back to filefront. The file was already there and uploaded like yesterday, someone else did it for me I guess :wink:

Here's the URL. updating the one in the profile too
http://halflife2.filefront.com/file/HalfLife_2_DM_Residential_Map;68579

---

-- midkay

Alright.

I haven't written any updates in.. quite a while. I've been doing a lot of work since Beta 1; revising, retweaking, resizing. Just before I take a huge turn with the map I thought I'd show you a few screenshots of how it's looking at the moment (i.e. the last few screenshots where the map is rather recognizable!). :smile:

I've reduced the parking lot by about half, widthwise. This allowed space to move the restaurant/cafe building over quite a bit, and the one next to it as well. The map's farthest end has been capped off as a result, meaning a smaller gameplay area (better IMO, though still not optimal). Vvis has been slowly decreasing in time, I'm now at an 8-minute Vvis and a 25-minute Vrad. This follows several hours of optimization, hintbrushing, and geometry tweaking. The entire cafe building has been rebuilt and retextured from the interiors up. I like the design of it a lot more now. I've also created a rudimentary yet surprisingly sufficient skybox which follows the road along a ways until it turns off to the right, allowing me to cap the player's view with several buildings.

Thus, screens:

Screen 1, a very preliminary version of the direction I'm headed in with the bottom of the destroyed building. More interior, less rubble.
Screen 2, more WIP of how I'm doing the lower sniping spot.. with a chunk of debris held on by rebar. Yeah, it's definitely too "supported". :smile:
Screen 3, redone destruction upstairs.. now including the windows being removed.. I'll do this elsewhere as well.
Screen 4, looking out the upstairs hole.. note the apartment building having been rebuilt and moved over. :smile:
Screen 5, now really note the moved buildings and (a bit) smaller playing area.
Screen 6, halved parking lot..
Screen 7, 3D skybox environment extension.

I'm excited where the map is headed and I don't think the next set of screens will be very much recognizable as Residential, other than maybe the lighting.. yeah, that will give it away. :biggrin: I don't want to give it away but think smaller... :smile:

I'd like to get out a beta2 release or a final within 4 days or so... don't really plan on the final, but a beta is possible.. it will probably be either beta 2 in a few days, or final in around a week.

---

-- midkay

Screen 1: It's "very preliminary" so I won't look too hard at it. I think it'll work better than the massive pile of debris that was there before.
Screen 2: I like the look of that. The minor issue I have is there needs to be rebar sticking out in other parts of that floor so it looks consistant. I know it's still WIP so if that was planned just disregard this. That's a great way to do that spot though, IMHO.
Screen 6: The neatness and angularity(is this even a word?) of that hole in the asphault bothers me, it has since I first saw it. The sides of the hole would most likely be sagging and the edge where stuff broke off would be crumbly. I know there's a finite amount of detail you can have with brushes, so I don't know how you could fix it without a lot of modelling. How were you envisioning that hole was made?

I've also noticed there are some places that look like they've have been shelled or bombed, but most of the area is untouched. This is a matter of thematic continuity and immersion, picking a theme and taking it as far as it will go. I don't want to tell you how to develop the theme of your map, but I think it would be neat to have it at the edge of an area that got heavily bombed, and have one side of the 3D skybox look something like this, while the other side has buildings with little or no damage. I really like how this map is shaping up in any case.

EDIT:

think smaller

Turn it into a RATS map!!! :razz:

---

o

Thanks for your breakdown, Baron.

Screen 1 and 2: Right, extremely WIP.. I've been actually trying to lower detail in some areas for performance reasons, so I want to get performance all straightened out and stuff before I decide how detailed I can get with all that stuff.
Screen 6: Right, it's pretty.. hmm.. "regular". I don't really have any thoughts as to how this was made (in contrast to most of the other damage in the map) - but take this as a hint, you probably won't see it in the next batch of screens. :wink:

I really love that shot from EP1, Valve did a great job on it. I'm so incredibly performance-worried right now, I mean it's not particularly bad but it's like I'm aware of every little polygon I add. I'm really starting to think that maybe there's like "one thing" that's killing the performance on this map that I'm overlooking. I mean, it's not a very large map... not particularly detailed... I've truly optimized the crap out of it.. I feel like there's just gotta be something I'll stumble on in a few days and go "damnit, of COURSE". Though I can't think what that could possibly be.

Back to the theme ideas.. yeah, I'd really like to take this farther.. I have some cool ideas I'd like to implement (purely visual and thematic) like for example I've wanted to have this headcrab canister plowed (like at full speed) straight into the corner of the building with all the extrusions on the edges for over a month now.. I imagine these huge chunks of wall and debris littering the ground, a huge column of smoke unfurling out of the top, rebar and plaster sticking out all over... but see above about performance. I just can't deal with adding much detail right now until I feel "in the green" about that. It's much better than in the beta but something's still killing it and I'm out to find out what it is.

Anyways, thanks a lot for your thoughts, once I do a big size-reduction I think I should be greenlit for more detail and theme...

---

-- midkay

About the first screen; I understand it's prelimenary, but I have to get this out there. Crumble the staircase more. It looks odd the way the walls around it have broken, but the stairs themselves remain perfect. Take large chunks out of the side, and then make smaller bits missing, and possible clip over them.

It just looks wrong right now...

Thanks, er.. French? Toast? Neither seem to suit you alone... so... siiiigh.

Thanks, French Toast. :smile:

I'll do that for sure... I designed this when the rubble was all here and it definitely looks weird right now. I'll probably just redo it from scratch now that the theme in this area has changed.

---

-- midkay

Yeah, I figured you'ld get to it all :biggrin:

Also, Frenchy, FT, Toast, they all work :smile:

Haha. I choose "Frenchy".

On topic: Over the past hour and a half I completely transformed this map in my eyes. I absolutely cannot wait to playtest a build (probably tomorrow) and show you guys what I'm up to. :smile: I think this will really improve gameplay and performance at the same time...

---

-- midkay

This part in screen 2 is a great little detail. Perfectly fits the destroyed building while it's rather unique (at least I don't recall seeing it in any other map yet which is a good sign).
It's still a hole between one of the most detailed indoor section and the large, central outdoor area. It could be a huge performance problem. Maybe some very carefully planned hint-brushing could help but be aware that this hole could add a lot to to performance problems in the map.
Also, because people are starting the realism arguments... the building has many, many windows on the outside...... Window "overlays" should do the job for the inside.

The buildings in the back of the parking lot (screen 6) still look too flat compared to the others. They're dominating a large, open space and should provide a little more eyecandy. The brush-based fireladder to the left could easily make 20-30% of the FPS, so if you're still searching for performance tweaks try replacing some of the brushes by texures or models or consider moving the whole construction to the back of the building, hiding it well from vis. The engine doesn't really care about how big a polygon is. So many small ones at one place can be bad.

reaper47:

Thanks for the comments about screen 2. I'll figure something out for the windows, maybe I'll end up having to go the direction you took with resident - brick-filled windows.. :smile:

About the scaffolding in screen 6- I already rebuilt it completely using four-sided posts instead of 8-sided ones... looks much better in wireframe now. It's not in the same place anymore - hint hint - so that combined with the rebuild should mean it's not really a problem anymore.

---

-- midkay

But every stair, for example, adds three polygons which makes a few hundered. Plus the polygons of the posts, probably splitting up each other to even more (yea, even func_details do that, they're like normal brushes)...

That is a huge polygon salad in one place that is added to the already pretty big and detailed surroundings.

Polygon salad, haha. Hahaha.. that's the best phrase I've heard in like... well.. several days. :biggrin:

Hmm.. that is correct, the stairs are the "problem" with the scaffolding. The mess of pink lines has been mostly eliminated around the posts, but the stairs are still a slight problem.. dunno what to do with them. The scaffolding is no longer in plain sight anyways, shouldn't be drawn most of the time.

---

-- midkay

I don't want to act like I've totally.. you know.. improved the map by so much percent, but.. man. I haven't played on the latest "design" yet but I can't wait. The latest iteration feels so much more "deathmatchy" and so much less "visual demonstration of a wide-open residential neighborhood". This is absolutely the feel I love and I'm so glad that I achieved it. It just feels perfect for a game of deathmatch. The feeling I get running around this build...

I've also began working on custom textures. Thus far I've created my own (well, modified the existing heavily) textures for sidewalks and corners, streets (dashed-line and non), and the general "pavement" that isn't a sidewalk nor a street (all around the map, surrounding buildings and the park etc). The originals just felt too videogamelike, I certainly decided that after making my own. They were nice to look at, but just.. unrealistic.. for example the general pavement texture I used was gray and it had these little flecks of blue in it.. it's like.. what? And the sidewalks were too littered with trash and too shiny. The roads were a bit too cracked yet stony... I love the more monotone, realistic feel of these custom textures.. that's monotone in a good way.

Not quite ready yet to post some screens, just an update to say that I'm really excited about this level now.. :smile:

---

-- midkay

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.

---

-- midkay

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.

---

-- midkay

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.

---

o

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.

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-- midkay

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.

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-- midkay

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.

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:

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-- midkay

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.

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..

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-- midkay

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?

Definitely. :biggrin: Appreciate the suggestions.

Something I forgot to do on my initial post of screenshots tonight, a basic todo list:

• More custom/tweaked textures.
• Do the skybox (deleted the last attempt as soon as I reshaped the map).
• Some layout tweaks (condense things a bit more if at all possible).
• Interior de-boringness-pass. I've got mixed feelings about the corner building's interior, it's rather a maze of hallways and corridors and a bunch of closed doors - basically an excuse to have an interior way to get up to the roof. Although this is definitely the longest-standing building and overall "feature" of the map so far I'm getting closer and closer to deleting it ENTIRELY, and rebuilding it up from scratch with a completely different design (split roof with different height levels, more building detail all-round, different interior design if at all). Dunno exactly what to do here, but I'm thinking about it..
• Optimization.. is.. almost entirely done. Map runs quite well now - nearly as good as e.g. Overwatch - and compiles as fast as I could ever possibly hope to ask for (20 minutes total, non-hdr). Some tweaks, but.. we'll see.
• Some work on the destroyed building, with more broken interior walls to give more of an impression that this was a residential building with rooms..
• A new interior for the hotel that connects to the apartment buildings with the extrusions. This links three different interior rooms together with at least two ways out of each.. I like the idea.

That's just a quick list.. I'll update it if I think of anything else. :smile: Thoughts on these thoughts are welcome as well!

Also, I haven't mentioned this before, but I'm strongly considering releasing the full VMF along with all the textures I've created for this map in the end - regardless of how/if I've used them. It's likely. :smile:

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-- midkay