Persian Letters [updated x Final]

Wait, how do I give my map this glow treatment?

It's actually a separate modification. You can give any map the "glow treatment", I guess.

Low-Spec (GeForce 2, GeForce 4 MX, TNT) Glow:
http://collective.valve-erc.com/index.php?go=tron2

High-Spec (GeForce 4 Ti and up) Glow:
http://collective.valve-erc.com/index.php?go=tron1

That's an awful lot of code. :smile:

cool, make those clothes a model and give em some cool wavy animation :smile:

You should try applying the glow a bit more I reckon - it looks cool on the cloth, but how about using it on the windows and things?

damn you cj! now I have competition (and now that reno lost his map! loL~L btw reno start rebuilding it NOW!!~)

I like how it looks but yeah outside is overbright andlacks shadows. Both not very good for a night time setting eh?

Ahem... THANTO!!!

There's a pre-compiled version of the pixel shader support with a massive glow here

It was compiled with the HL dlls, so it has those weapon modles. You have to recompile a specific mods dlls with this Cg code for them to have pixel shader support.

Personally, I think the amount of blur effect is a bit much, a little less with some other effects he talks about here would be cool.

Also, if you don't have these dlls don't expect a 'cool glow' :smile:

Crappy Hammer screenshot. Real update coming later. But for now, um, just pretend that this screenshot is compiled and humor me a bit.

all that detail in a 93k screenshot.. CJ, you are an inspiration.. perhaps you could give classes on proper screenshot file sizes?

/continues droolage

This better play as well as it looks.

Stunned again.

I need to get to working on your textures so I can get you more color in that map. It looks great, awesome atmosphere and all (i'm presuming those far away buildings are unaccessible...) but the map lacks color! Either way you WAY pwned me.

Orph: It's just processed through Photoshop - JPEG quality @ 45, Blur @ .1 or so

Kage: Err, not so sure about that... Going to need to study some DM maps to get a better idea of how to do proper weapon placement. But I'm planning a few gimmicks in the map that should make it a bit... Unique?

Forceflow: Thanks, even though it's a pitiful little Hammer screenshot. :smile:

Ferret: I don't know, not sure if I should have you help with my textures - it'll impact your own entry's quality, don't you think? I think I'll try to improve/mangle the textures some more myself a little more before pestering you about it :smile:

Campaignjunkie said:
Orph: It's just processed through Photoshop - JPEG quality @ 45, Blur @ .1 or so

/me reminds self to add a western accent so my California friend will recognize humor

puts on serious face

i would be honored to playtest/critique this one..

I doubt Ferret is that competitive Cj. :smile:

Thats without a doubt the best hammer screenshot I've ever seen. Owned.

Agreed. Awesome stuff here.

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

Less of a progress update. More of a desperate plea for help. I have
been infected with the dreaded mapper's block. Anyway, in typical
Ferret-style, I'm going to post more Hammer screens. Still haven't compiled.
Yep, I'm that stupid. Anyway, what I'm asking is for any
feedback/suggestions on various areas; obviously moreso with the
less-finished areas. Barney's are for checking scale. Courtyard,
Gardens, and Barracks are the areas I need the most help on. Palace
Hallway, Hallway, and Library are pretty much finished.

Palace Hallway.

http://snarkpit.com/pits/campaignjunkie/vhe10.jpg<a href="http://snarkpit.com/pits/campaignjunkie/vhe10.jpg" target="_blank"></a>

Hallway thing.

http://snarkpit.com/pits/campaignjunkie/vhe09.jpg<a href="http://snarkpit.com/pits/campaignjunkie/vhe09.jpg" target="_blank"></a>

Barracks

http://snarkpit.com/pits/campaignjunkie/vhe08.jpg<a href="http://snarkpit.com/pits/campaignjunkie/vhe08.jpg" target="_blank"></a>

Courtyard

http://snarkpit.com/pits/campaignjunkie/vhe07.jpg<a href="http://snarkpit.com/pits/campaignjunkie/vhe07.jpg" target="_blank"></a>

Baths

http://snarkpit.com/pits/campaignjunkie/vhe06.jpg<a href="http://snarkpit.com/pits/campaignjunkie/vhe06.jpg" target="_blank"></a>

Gardens

http://snarkpit.com/pits/campaignjunkie/vhe05.jpg<a href="http://snarkpit.com/pits/campaignjunkie/vhe05.jpg" target="_blank"></a>

Library





Feedback not only encouraged - it is demanded. :wink:

I'd say compile it because right now it looks really...bright :razz:

But I"ms ure it'll look swell ingame. One thing though is that its really open. That could be bad gameplay wise so make sure you offer close confrontation too so everyone gets to have fun :razz:

btw, can you show me a top down WC view so I get an idea of the scale of things?

That's about ten times bigger than I imagined!

Can't think of anything great to add at the moment. Have you considered
market stalls in the courtyard area? Quite cheesy but they fit the
theme well.

Best
f**king
ever

so...many...barneys...choke...

Another thing I"d suggest is put things with your book cases. THey seem really repeptive atm. Maybe just like a tilted rolly ladder thing to break it up? Another texture? Needs more details on the ground for cover ect.

Some overhead screens for Ferret. Tried to kind of paint over to show
how the flow in the map goes, but it kind of just ended up a mess.
shrug

alrighty lol

noice

now I now how it functions.

Garden:

I know they look fairly tacky but a few "{" based plants in the
openings in the garden would be nice - perhaps even hide goodies
amongst them? Or, water - I imagine persian plumbing survived on a 100%
connected basis - wells, ponds, pumps.

Statues, obelisks, monoliths, frieses (that the right word/spelling)
just to enhance the "culture" of it? Maybe even a mock hanging gardens,
that'd be easy enough to make :razz:

This looks all very nice, even in its uncompiled state, but as a deathmatch map it doesn't look too happy. It's way too wide open, especially the courtyard, which will cause the crossbow, gauss, and LJ to be very dominant, and in my experience with HLDM those kind of games usually suck, promoting camping and lameness. It may not be possible at this point, but I would strongly suggest adding additional detail for cover. Perhaps some additional guardrails, rubble, rolled-up carpets, small stalls like A_S said, chairs, benches, cannon, trash/refuse, vegetation, two-wheeled carts, fountains, crates, barrels, pots, bazaar stuff, lamps, uhh... chamber pots? I don't know much that would fit with a middle eastern/persian setting. For the barracks you could have beds, weapon racks, anvils or blacksmith stuff, torture equipment, pots of boiling oil, stacks of wood/kindling, horsey stalls, food and ammo dumps.

Gwil - Yeah, it's kind of supposed to be a mock hanging gardens. Except I
don't know what I'm doing! :smile: ... But Frieses? What are those? :biggrin:

Good point Yak_Fighter. I'd probably have to close a bunch of stuff off
for r_speed reasons anyway. I think I might have gotten too carried
away with the theme. Maybe I just need to play some more HLDM (and get
my ass kicked) to stay grounded in reality? Also, I don't think I'll be
putting in the gauss (even though it would be a travesty in an open map
like this), there's too much decoration and stuff for the player to
jump up to, and it would spoil a lot of the illusion and such. :razz:

a friese (i think thats the spelling, to tell you the truth I havent
bothered to check :razz: ) are like engravings on flat stone... errr, like
those stones the British stole from Athens and refuse to give back!

I guess you'd have to find textures for them though, i'll try and find a picture gov :smile:

http://www.seapyramid.net/articles/images/persia/mithra.jpg

kinda like that, CJ - if you see what I mean. usually depicting folks
doing something historic (attacking people, being led by their God
etc). just poke around and look on Iranian/Iraqi websites or use the
ever wonderful google image tool with a few choice words - tis always
good for inspiration.

BTW the hanging gardens were made of mud bricks I believe, if that
helps develop them. and they didnt hang at all, they just sat :razz:

heres another good one of (i presume) some ruins from the location of Persepolis -

http://www.hory.applet.cz/iran/perseopolis_chram_sm.jpg

Its looking pretty epic, bigger than I expected for some reason. I'd really need to see it compiled to pass judgement, there are lots of awkward parts in the texturing that are obvious in hammer but may be hidden better in game, and together with the lack of lighting, I feel it would be unfair to say anything about it without seeing compiled shots.

Yeah, heheh, got carried away. I'll also work on clearing some texture space for those stone-image things.

So, I'm going to do a major overhaul of the map right now (~1 week away from the deadline?! eep) I'm removing
all the weaker areas, cannibalizing parts from them, and going to adapt
it to a new multi-tiered semi-Stalkyard type layout. Going to work on
getting more cover / close-quarters in too. Thanks for all the
feedback, probably would have just kept blindly working on all of this
without it. Going to be a challenge balancing epic/tight feel, but I
can try, right? :smile:

no you can't.. its impossible

Crackerjack: I shall break you, then proceed to ruin your family.

break me! break me!

Updated.

Finally compiled. Woohoo. Lighting indoors is sketchy at best - just
threw torches and such everywhere. Could use suggestions anyway.
r_speeds peak at 1000 in little corner areas, but for the most part the
average is somewhere around 600. :smile:

















(obligatory Tron 2.0 Glow screenshot...)

I'd hit it.

A little texture strangeness in the top of screenshot four, but other
than that It looks awesome. :smile: Might want to add some torches outside
too, it looks a little grey.

pure sexy. I'd say more orange/yellows outside and more blues inside to balance your lighting. Also I'd like to see some of your weapon placements ;P

The first pic looks quite empty and boring compared to rest of the map. Than your windows really need to lose the cross hatching.. HL is rendering them in a way that appears that if its more of a bug then just detail added to the texture. Other than that its looking pretty nice

I second all three of those suggestions - particularly the last as I've never been too fond of your windows :razz: Otherwise this is looking really cool, particularly screenshot 7 (second last one) which just owns.

Agreed. The first shot does not do justice to the rest of the map. The ceiling feels artificial somehow. Why not make it similar to the other hallway shots?

That part is rather undetailed for a reason - high-traffic area
(although it doesn't look like it) and it's connected directly to the
Library portion. But I'll see what I can do anyways, you're all right.

About the windows - if I lose the crosshatching, it looks almost worse (it's more of a "hole in the wall" rather than a window)
Kind of at a loss of how to do this. Most of the windows in PoP had the
grating too, except it looked okay. I'm thinking of maybe getting a
circular-grating, making the glow 512x512, and scaling it down so it
looks sharper or whatever. Basically they need to stay recognizable as
windows and also match PoP's style of windows, so I'll pretty much need
some form of grating. Blargh.

Persian Letters is done.

[size=13](well, kind of)

Had to remove a lot of detail to get this baby to compile properly.
Lighting is very iffy, and I'm not happy with a lot of areas. But I
guess that's the price you pay for putting everything off until the
last minute, right? R_speeds are generally okay, except at certain
corners. Weapon placement is chaotic, I think. I'm not a very
experienced HLDM player to begin with, so I can't really figure out
placement too well. Should have had ReNo do it for me, eh? :smile:

Also made a bunch of cool ambient sounds, but forgot to use some of them. Crap!

I've done a fairly drastic remodel and retexture since the last update.
Not sure if it's better or worse. Though I'd like to think the hours I
slaved away at Photoshop were productive. Anyway, here are some screens:



Atrium redone for better r_speeds and flow. Don't like the lighting too much. I think it's okay considering I did it in 2 hours.



Slightly remodeled Library. Better, more recognizable windows.



Gardens. I think this is one of the more polished areas.



The "Zoo". But I forgot to make a sign for it in the .wad! Oh well. The
doors are interactive, with levers at the top that control whether
they're open or closed. When open, people can pass underneath and
people can run across the top of the gate to get goodies.



Courtyard. Really too dark. The top area is fine, but the bottom area
really needs some torches. Was going for a nice "sieged palace" kind of
look, but I quickly realized I was running out of clipnodes and such.
So, I only did ruined-areas in 2 parts of the map. Oops.



Redone Patio area. Hurrah?



Another shot of the Library. Notice the pages on the
floor. The books are func_breakable, and you can shoot them apart and
have book gibs fly around. Desks and chairs in the Library are also
destructable. I was going to have more destructables throughout the
map... But again, I could barely get the map to compile as is.



The overview for the map. Center atrium is messed up. Oops.

I'm probably going to polish this up later and re-release this at my
convenience. There's so many little errors and stuff plaguing the
map... Damn the 5 hours compiles! :smile:

[/size]

Well, I like the garden. :biggrin: The rest is pretty good but not up to my elevated Campaignjunkie standard, so yeah, good thing you want to spend more time on it.

Huge improvment on the windows, look alot better. But like Hugh said.. I expected more. But you did a real good job with what you have.

prettttyyyyyy

its got my vote :smile:

In a word : stunning.

this looks great ... so many good maps in compo this year ... decisions, decisions ...