ts_dustville release

Hello. It has been a while since I have visited this place. Lots of stuff happened that kept me from mapping. Near the end of 2008, I decided to make one last map for half-life 1 / the specialists mod.

And here it is:

http://www.snarkpit.net/index.php?s=maps&game=1&mod=20&map=3191

Have fun!

I don't have The Specialists Mod so I didn't play it but here are some thoughts from looking at the screenshots:

• Simpsons duff blimp in non Simpsons related environment?
• The water looks a big unsightly, is that just a solid brush? You should have at least increased the scale of the water a bit so it doesn't look so repetitive.
• You could have added water in the skybox so it looks like the water endlessly fades.
• Just in general, the textures look repetitive. I think it would have been good to increase the size of those textures a little bit (would have saved a bit of performance too because ;)).

Anyway, the brush work looks good and it looks like a fun map to play on. Nice work!

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Aaron's Stuff

The bluff blimp idea was more or less 'stolen' from Duke Nukem 3d's stadium level, altough the Duke3D blimp was white and merely said "duf".

For the textures, I had to choose between repetivity or blurryness, and I chose the first. Since this is a hl1 engine map it does not support a 3D skybox, and the water can't be extended outwards since the map has already eaten all clipnodes and faces.

"CrazyPunk" said:
For the textures, I had to choose between repetivity or blurryness, and I chose the first.

Fair enough, that's a trade off that all us level designers come across frequently. Personally, in this case I would rather increase the scale of the textures and have them look a little blurry close up than leave the at correct scale. I really don't like giving away the illusion of the textures not being repetitive. What are the resolution of some of those textures, by the way?

"CrazyPunk" said:
Since this is a hl1 engine map it does not support a 3D skybox, and the water can't be extended outwards since the map has already eaten all clipnodes and faces.

Ah, what I meant was you have water on the skybox texture extending out to the horizon so it looks like the water continues endlessly, if you do it carefully, its difficult to tell the difference between the real water and the water on the skybox texture.

But this defiantly looks like a good map, brush work is good and it looks as though it has a nice layout. I would have made a few custom models and put alot more decals onto the map but I think I've been in the Source engine for too long (colour decals ftw!). I certainly place this map on the better end of the "mapping goodness spectrum" or whatever. I hope is has good sound design (ambient sound), that's really important to me, honestly, it can multiply the experience players have on your map.

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Aaron's Stuff

Most of those textures are 256x256, so there was not a lot of room for many different textures on the outside. Most houses have reasonably unique textures inside which also eats a lot of texture space.

When it comes to modelling, I'm not that good at it and since I am running all of this on linux (the main reason I can't map for source atm) most of the standard modelling tools do not work. So I went with the already available models.

The initial idea was to have a lot more bushes, rocks and other generic landscaping on and around the island but render limits forced me to decrease detailling in a few areas. Too many entities in visible packet list, even after full compiles. The visibility matrix of this map is an utter nightmare for the old compile tools, and I got that error when going in higher levels so a 'few' trade-offs had to be made.

Placing the water on the skybox texture itself is a great idea, which I am definitely going to try.

This map should theoretically work with most deathmatch multiplayer source mods, The Specialists mod v3 is source only so I can't run that (yet) but somebody else already confirmed that it does work. All the models, sounds, sprites have been included in the release package so it's just a matter of unzip-and-run.

When it comes to sound, that's one of the more important aspects of a map for me. Someone can create the most beautifull jungle with mayan temples and insects flying around, but if it's all silent it just does not feel 'alive'. In this map you can hear the ocean rushing when you go near it, there's a church bell ringing, radio's playing, crickets singing and so on.