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CombineX, Thank you for your time and effort. Although it may have seemed so awhile ago, this thread is not dead by along shot. In fact I have the day off so I thought I would post the final Alpha .

http://gamersdiner.com/downloads/dm_stonepark_alpha5.zip

I took into consideration several things you mentioned, plus, tweaked a few more that I have been thinking about. This is the final alpha. Based on some playtesting I suspect I will only have a single beta. Thanks again for your time.

1.) I chopped another 20% or so off of the lower areas. I keep getting complaints about size. I may decide to release a larger teamplay version once I am finished with this.



I have spruced up the lower room quite a bit. May add some more pipes etcetera for the final build



3.) I raised the wall where youhad mentioned.(I was always planning to do something there. I will probably add a light and a back gate to one of the buildings).



4.) I widened many of the upper walkways, to add to playability and maneuverability.

whispers

Just because I have not said anything in a long time, doesn't mean I am not still checkin.

Watch those file sizes Juim. :wink:

ON TOPIC: I just got my PC up and running again. Methinks I'll give this another looksee.... If you want?

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Sure thing Orph, the more the merrier. I had hoped not to release this without several passes through the ringer here.

Right this mo, I am making room for Stalker (I gots 20 gigs of CSI-Miami and a couple dozen gigs of audio books to backup), but I'll give it a looksee in the mornin if thats early enough..

Truth be told, I ain't been watching maps to close of late so I need to loosen up me old critique muscle... This map will be a good'un for it. :smile:

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The best things in life, aren't things.

wow, the hall looks really neat now, also downloading alpha. glad to know it's not dead.(I haven't been here for a while, like reaper sayd.)

Oh, i forgot to say that theres really peculiar (OMFG what a word, it taked time to check that up)and nice theme in the map.

So who is willing to start up a server for this here map?

And Combine, past tense isn't always just adding a 'd'. Past tense of 'to say' is 'said', and past tense of 'to take' is 'took'.
(Just helping out the grammatically challenged.)

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Also change the texture of the dock. Docks are rarely tile. -Facepunch
As I Lay Dying

English is scary, and it's my first (and only) language.

Lots of big improvements Juim, I'll give it a run through later and take some crit screenies :smile:

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o

As with all my critiques, this is nothing more than my personal opinion. In no way is this critique meant to harm or discourage the author. Anything posted here can be ignored without any ill will. My price, if the advice is used is to have my name spelled correctly and included in the readme.txt. I am NOT "The Snarkpit bunch" or any other group of members.

Anywho, as far as this map goes I think it is your best work so far and hope to see it reach fruition.

Also please note that I do not read others opinions so if the topic I discuss is already being addressed, just disregard it as something more than one person noticed.

StonePark Critique.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Thanks Orph for the in depth-ness-ism. :dorky:

I was invited to a playtest of the map last night by the [FF] clan on a locked server. About 14 of them showed up at one point and they went to town on me.

Suggested changes were abounding. Many(in fact most of them) you have given, echoe their suggestions. I have started to make many of the changes as early as this morning before I left for work.

I added more teleporters for connectivity,

a series of staggered pillars down both the left and right tunnels,

I am going to connect the water pools underneath with a tunnel and perhaps another RPG cave.

enlarge the skybox a bit (I am considering a 3-d skybox still)

open up the top of the empty elevator shaft and connect it to the top floor.

I am constantly tweaking the lighting and will take into consideration many of your suggestions indeed.

About the fps. I am seeking guidance from a hint/skip brush expert who might suggest the desired placement of said items for optimization of performance.

The ticket booth was a holdover from when I had a full blown subway station in the early alphas. (just chane the number to 2 or 3 on the download link if you want to see those versions). Anywho, it seemed alright to leave it as I was vested in its presence architectually.

At this point (as you can well attest to) I am dangerously close to performance issues, so all I can do for the most part is optimize, optimize, optimize.

Lets see if I can make her hum alittle softer eh? :biggrin:

Thanks again for the excellent crit Orph!

Stadric said:
And Combine, past tense isn't always just adding a 'd'. Past tense of 'to say' is 'said', and past tense of 'to take' is 'took'.
(Just helping out the grammatically challenged.)

? ill try to remember that in my English test"!

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Step back, citizen!

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting CombineX</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>?

ill try to remember that in my English test"!

</DIV></DIV>

That made me pee a little bit. Good one Combine.
You're quite welcome Juim. Lemme know when/if I can do it again. I liked most of what I saw. Haven't been this excited since your Klingon_dm.

[EDIT] You know I was thinking about that elevator shaft. You could add a broken elevator that stuck mostly on a floor below where you could walk on its roof and climb the ladder.

You could add some depth by doing that as people would be able to see the supposed next floor below.

As for the rest of the map, if you could increase the detail in the bland places that cannot be seen from topside, you would better this map without hazarding more frame rate losses from above. You have distinct areas some detailed, some barren. Having a distinction thats just being empty isn't one I'd care for in a map.

It would help a lot just to have some planters in your areas with benches and phones.

Keep plugging at it. It looks nice so far. Lets make it look fantastic.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

OK I am kind of in a rush to get out the door but I wanted to post the first beta of dm_stonepark. I have made almost all of the changes suggested by Orph, the [FF] clan and others. I feel it's down to some visual tidbits and weapon placement. I am also in the market for some free optimization advice fromany one of you professor types out there :cool: . How to hint such a layout, and maybe a skip brush tut(???).

No screens tonight, I will update them tomorrow. Now the download:

http://gamersdiner.com/downloads/dm_stonepark_b1.zip

Thanks in advance for looking and commenting and stuff :razz: .

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Quote from Nietzsche....God is dead
Quote from God....Nietzsche is dead

Some of the Screen Shots Kinda look like the architucture from the Halo Foreunner levels.

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Aaron's Stuff

/Methinks I'll allow another to do any major critiquing. I'd hate to steal all the glory. :heee:

I do however have a small bit to add.

StonePark_B1 Critique.

My only bit of unavoidable advice Juim. You have one of the biggest machines of anyone I know about online. You might be getting a distorted view of this map. If you have a smaller machine available, try loading this map in it and getting a different perspective on its problems.

I don't mean that in any harsh way. What I am saying is, you might question things, if you knew exactly where to ask them. A smaller PC would help you ask.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Thanks Orph. I can appreciate the reasoning behind the fps issue. Thats why I would love a good helping hand with some optimization. I dont know if you discovered the teleporters placed around the map. The one screen shot you showed of the street actually has one just behind you which teleports you back up to the top of the structure inside the park. Also behind the art pieces outside theres a teleporter to a snipe walkway on top of the buildings, and from there you can teleport beack inside the main structure. I also added the ladder between the water pools.

Even though my rig is nice, its by far not the best ,and the lowest I can seem to get is 60fps anywhere inside the map. I'll focus the final betas on fps issues for lower spec machines. My laptop keeps it in about the 30-35 fps range and that;s a Go6400 graphics card. I will figure it out though I promise.

I like the new teleporters. At least the smokey ones I found. If there are others that look differently, I didn't notice them. I was really just wandering around looking at the frame rates. My machine stuttered a few times when it dropped below 20.

Perhaps I need to look for some other drivers or something cause I saw a lot of high teens. If you are staying above 30fps, I might need to do so.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

I saw this last night, but I haven't played it yet. I will however make a brief tutorial explaining skip brushes today. So just wait a few hours and I'll upload it.

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Also change the texture of the dock. Docks are rarely tile. -Facepunch
As I Lay Dying

i checked out the alpha4 and it looked really good, i'm downloading this now and will check it out after school

Some of the Screen Shots Kinda look like the architucture from the Halo Foreunner levels.

lol, I bet you'd see something Halo-related even in a Rorschach inkblot test. :wink:

I'll check out beta1 this evening. I didn't have any specific complaints for the last alpha already, so don't expect a flood of feedback.

Maybe I can give you a simple tip for hinting, but I'm afraid it's mainly the very open layout + the water which causes the slowdown. Get rid of the water or use simple cubemap shaders and you'll get a 40% speed increase easily. But it will also look bad.

I'll have a look.

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Why snark works.

I think I may get rid of the water. It's more important to me to have a playable map than to have a few small pools of water. I'll make them empty tanks or fill them in with displacement earth and flowers or something.

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Quote from Nietzsche....God is dead
Quote from God....Nietzsche is dead

you've got some missing polygons on your cylinder here

Juim, I think you could fill the pools with a simple cubemap-reflecting water-shader. The fog could stay and doesn't do much in terms of performance ect. No need to get rid of them completely. If you need help on writing a custom, low-cost shader, that's a matter of 5 minutes. I can help you out with it.

Otherwise, this map is a pure joy. I love seeing feedback turning a good map into something awesome which is clearly the case here. The subtle changes in this version are very powerful.

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Why snark works.

Hey Reaper, thanks tons for the compliment. I have experimented with cheaper water textures and lo and behold the framerates have gone up almost 80% in the widest view. From 60-ish to 100plus!. Very cool. I also got rid of the central tunnel, as Orph pointed out it was quite long and seemed redundant. So I plugged it. Also gone is the ticket booth. Just removed all the glass and door brushes, the structure is still basically there. I also raised the skybox so you cant throw objects into the ceiling anymore, (except gravnades which fly a great distance).

This weekend I am going to work on soundscapes for the map. I am still throwing around the 3d skybox idea, but I just may let that go until the next map. Look for what I hope will be the final beta this weekend.

Here it is the final beta. I am most interested in performance numbers on this one. My previous post explains most of the changes. I am getting fps in the low hundreds in the widest views, and usually much higher. I added a few more touches. The only thing that will change between this and the final will be some minor window dressing and maybe some weapon/ammo tweaking, or of course any errors I may have missed.

the download:

http://gamersdiner.com/downloads/dm_stonepark_b2.zip

I will also be running a dedicated server today and tomorrow for playtesting if anyone is interested. I'll post the IP in a few.

server IP is 76.169.13.17:27015

It is running now.

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Quote from Nietzsche....God is dead
Quote from God....Nietzsche is dead

sighs

You spelled my name wrong in the readme.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Sorry Orf :rolleyes: . I intended to put a more detailed thank you in the final text file. You will be appropriately acknowledged for you excellent contribution and time spent.

PS servers up as I mentioned .

(whispers)

76.169.13.17:27015

Sorry but I am in a really bad mood presently. Even in spite of my good fortune in getting my new place.

My f**king ex daughter-in-law.

I just took it out on you.

Ignore me, for a while...

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Understood,completely. PM me about loser relations. We could write a book together I'm sure.

Now about that map.........

I think this map needs other eyes than mine for the last bits and bobs. Right now, it needs peeps with an eye for optimization and its practical uses.

Not that I'm bailing out on you but in all fairness, my HL2 skills are sorely behind the pack.

The fact that this map has come so far is a testament to your willingness to alter your view, in favor of what needs to be.

I will try to load the new version just to get some FPS information for you since you have already optimized since I saw it last.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

A marked increase in frame rates. Good job Juim.

My only thing: Put a vent in the place of the steam sprite I posted. The steam is coming through the wall without any passage.

Stonepark_b2

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The best things in life, aren't things.

dm_stonepark has been completed. I will update screenies later on in the profile. new download is:

http://gamersdiner.com/downloads/dm_stonepark.zip

Thanks to all of you for helping me to finish it.

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Quote from Nietzsche....God is dead
Quote from God....Nietzsche is dead

I really enjoyed seeing this map develop from "promising" to "awesome" over the last couple of weeks. I'll try a little review sometime. Great map!