dm_Island17

Hey, this is my contest map. Its very close to done, but I need some dedicated playtesters for a big final playtest tomorrow. After that I'm doing a final compile and shipping it off to Valve. If you are interested in plyatesting, please let me know. More details to come soon. Also, does anyone know how to turn off normalmapping without changing the materials?

Screenshots:

If you're stuck for playtesters, let me know - but I don't think my UK
bb connection holds up that well on US servers, east coast I manage
about 80-129=0 ping.

Either way its looking nice, what with the open spaces for physics fun
and the 3/4 storey high? vertical play. Not so sure about those rocks
at the beach edge - are they props? and if so, is there any chance of
them being out in the sea.. look kinda odd just plonked there :smile:

Looks pretty good, except the light house looks kind of squared off; try making it a cylinder with more sides to add more detail and less square.

Looks like you have some grass coming out of a stone step in that last
shot, which looks a bit odd to me. I also agree with Gwil's point that
the rock prop looks odd sat there on the beach, especially considering
people seem to have built a little boathouse or something right where
it is blocked by said rock.

Looks like a nice map, though perhaps a little dull in terms of
lighting. Your displacements also look a bit simple, particularly in
the second shot. Best of luck in the contest though, I'd certainly be
up for having a run about and making suggestions though couldn't commit
to an actual organised playtest.

I would really have to see more of the map before I judge. This one is leaning more towards 'empty' than 'simple', though that can be forgiven because of the scope of the map. Take shots of some of the more interesting areas, like that bridge place.

I volunteer to playtest as well.

Ah, if only Valve had made a rock-to-grass texture that actually tiles with another grass texture.

Gonna let me get my hands on this before you finish mazeman?

Light house looks nice dont change it.

I like the island idea. Looks good except that it seems really bright or there is no angled shadows. It seems that the light_env is facing directly down.

I Like the "small island" setting. It makes me want to frag =). You map looks very good on the pics. Maybe you could make the light_environment emitt some more interesting light. Perhaps a darker light and add more light fixtures allover the map. Good job!

an island with a lighthouse was something that i'd been thinking of for a DM map too.

maybe some of the driftwood static props and an old boat or something could help hide some of the bad texture alignments on the beach, as well as offer some cover and somewhere to hide weapons/ammo, in what is a very open area of your map.

Count me in too :smile: If i'm around for your organised playtest i'll gladly help out - and if not, like ReNo said, i'd still be more than willing to have a run around the map for you.

with all these beach maps, someone could make a mint off of some sea weed props..

BTW, beaches have trash on them too. a few pop bottles or plastic bags..

/ 2 cents

You mean far cry? I wanna make maps like that for HL2, but all foliage in HL2 is dead, damn foliage.

That looks nice man.

Can I suggest slightly less fog?
I think that on a small island like that there would be hardly any fog .

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting BioPulse</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>That looks nice man.

Can I suggest slightly less fog?
I think that on a small island like that there would be hardly any fog .

</DIV></DIV>
on the ocean, there is fog with no land in sight..

Hey, I am sending this from my palm pilot at work. I can host the map tonight on my server, The Diner. Maze, e-mail me the linkfor download.Should be around 8pm pacific time.

This looks like a really fun 'open play' level, I'd love to have a run around on the finished version!

Wow, from the palm pilot. Thanks Juim. The next version is taking a lot longer to compile than I expected. I'll email you the map when ite done (should be about another hour or so. So anyways playtest tonight at 8:00, server The Hot Death Diner graciously provided by Juim.

Scratch that - Make it 9:00 PST

No prob. I'll keep checking the e-mail.

Uhm dammit. The compile finished and theres a glaring error - I made a layout change but forgot to update the vis geometry. Playtest called off until I fix it and get another recompile, which probably means tomorrow night. I'll have to ship the map 2nd day air then but thats OK. Sorry all, hope to see you tomorrow then, if thats cool with Juim.

Thats fine. Server will be up tonight anyways with some pretty cool new maps.

dm_morbid

dm_motel (sorry if thats a sore spot but it's a cool map)

dm_depot_b2(You have got to see this map!!!!)

among others.

IP: 24.130.13.45:27016

come on in !.

I'm still in the dark on what happened in the "motel" front ...

dm_depot is the best-looking terrible map I've ever seen. It looks really nice from the screens until you get into the game and realize it has zero gameplay potential.

dm_motel is a step up from a killbox, nothing more. It's far from a cool map, unless a big open poorly designed map full of static props that serve as the only detail is cool.

What happened with that whole thing was that Orph suggested he change the sizes of his screenshots. He bitched alot and then everybody defended him against Orph. Then when he releases a beta Orph gives him a fair critique and then he blows up and deletes his map off the forums. He couldn't take the slightest criticism on his map and refused to consider any suggestions from people, and it really shows.

Also, Maze, this map looks really cool. There may not be enough cover for my taste but I'd have to see it ingame before complaining :smile:

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting Juim</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>
dm_motel (sorry if thats a sore spot but it's a cool map)

</DIV></DIV>

a friend, or someone i thought was one, felt the need to defend his choice of map because?... sighs
nevermind... its just not worth it.

I apologize for redirecting the thread. I look forward to hosting Mazes map tonight and I hope I can get off of work ontime. I got off early last night . Lemme know Maze.

http://knd.org.uk/files/dm_island17_beta4.zip

Unfortunately I only had time for a -fast vis. Well on my computer at least it runs faster than dm_lockdown without anyone else playing, so we will see.

Map is up and running at the diner right now (8PM) pacific standard time.

I'll be there. (or be square)

This is a beautiful map. It looks almost picturesque. I get pretty good FPS to boot. The layout is superb, with a good mix of close combat and open freewheeling combat areas. The weapon placement and use of props seemed very good as well.

My only complaints are small unimportant things. The wasteland skybox you're using should never be used in a map, seeing as it has that nice blue line all around the top of it. The env_sun is in the wrong place for the map, so the skybox essentially has two suns. Now obviously if you're going to change the skybox then that's a nonissue, but either move the sun or change the sky. :razz: From the lighthouse the edges of the water do weird stuff, like there's a max viewable distance that's too close, but that may just be my video card. Same with the distance props fade away. I was able to easily throw explosive barrels far enough so that they completely faded away and I couldn't see an explosion. Again, it may be my video card, so whatever.

Now on to some more disturbing things. In one of the buildings while going up the stairs the geometry disappeared and reappeared like it was some sort of compiling error. That's probably because of you having used fast vis instead of full, so no biggie. I can't tell you which building because the map just crashed on me, which is bad news. I shot down like my sixth seagull with the Overwatch Rifle when the game just closed out on me, right as I killed the stupid thing. Just to be safe I'd remove all the respawning birds. I think they're cool and all, but if they are the cause of a map crash their presence is unacceptable. This is an awesome map and I'd hate to see it hindered by map crashes and random weirdness.

Thanks for taking the time to run through the map and comment. The skybox will be changed, the env_sun will be fixed, the max viewable distance will be increased, the prop fading distance will be increased, and the vis error will (hopefully) go away with a full vis and a few hint brushes.

About the seagulls though, I really really really want to keep them in. They sort of add the "this is a real place and things are happening" feel as opposed to some random box of geometry where people shoot each other. And plus getting their paths set up took a lot of work! If they are really crashing the game then I will have to take them out, but I really hope that is not the case. Perhaps if I make them invincible it will do the trick. I would really like some more info about this crashing since anytime a map crashes the game its a serious issue.

Also, for anyone else who wants to comment - Please do so soon. I only have a few things left to do before a final compile, and I'm shipping the map off to Valve tomorrow.

Well, I shot down about six or seven of them in the beginning with various weapons and then went about looking through the map. I finally made my way to the top of the red barn in a very circuitous route and saw one flying a little bit away from me. I missed the first few shots with the overwatch rifle and then right as I tagged it the game froze and crashed to desktop. The bird had begun it's death spiral a split second before it crashed.

I guess to test it you should just shoot down a bunch of birds and see what's going on. One strange thing I noticed was that the dead bodies of the birds never faded away. I shot one right as the map loaded and it was still there after I wandered about for 5 minutes.

EDIT: I got it to crash again after the 8th or 9th bird was killed. I blew the last one up with an RPG >:) Making them invincible will probably stop the crashing.

This is what I noticed need the most
attention (past having the map visually
end and the prop distance thing)


This
edge it too high to walk over. Also, the grass texture is misaligned
across the entire
edge.


fell
through the map when I
spawned


Awesome.


Weird
portal "error" in this house. All the door ways and such
had brushes over them but were passable. Maybe you did this on
purpose ... I have no idea.
Also, the Magnum is right next to a
spawn point. Lucky for that person
...


Another
example


The
ground above seemed to dig a bit into the floor.


Only
polish parts of your floor,
eh?


This
needs some dust or something. There's wood debris
everywhere.


Pretty,
mis aligned, but
pretty.


"fix
me"

Oh, also, hl2 crashed when I exited from your map.
However, I got a "Virtual Function Call" which means
there's nothing YOU could have done to cause it. There may be a bug
with one of the pointers in the code for the entities or something.
(Something they're SUPPOSE to massively test for :rolleyes: )

The
connectivity is good. I like the size of the map. And needless to say
it looks beautiful in most areas. I just think it REALLY needs some
outer "decor" to give a sense of a world, not just an
area.

Anyway, good luck, hope this helps.

Crono I dont know how this is, but you seem to be seeing all of my areaportalswindows brushes even though they are not supposed to be shown until you are a fair distance away. I do not know how this is, and no one else has reported this happening, but perhaps a fast vis has something to do with it.

Wow. A 14+ hour vis just turned into a 1 hour vis. All I did was move in each side of the skybox inward about 1/3 the distance to the center. Heck, beforehand I even had hint brushes correctly placed blocking off all the unused space. Apparently vvis has a personal vendetta against large areas, even when they are big square blocks of empty space.

I too can see your areaportal windows- you're meant to texture them with nodraw or toolsareaportal, really, and set them to start open. I think your water should either extend out more (good for VIS!) or a fade distance is needed, I don't like being able to see the edges from the lighthouse :razz: No other complaints though (although I can imagine people might pine for a buggy to drive around!)

They are func_areaportalwindows and the stuff you see is not the areaportal itself but rather the func_brush's that are supposed to be rendered only when you are X distance away from the func_areaportal.

Final Version -
http://users.seascape.uk.net/~mazemaster/dm_island17.zip

Thanks to everyone who helped with beta testing, advice, etc, and a big thanks to Juim for hosting the playtest.

Went to the Bellevue post office and dropped it off today - the guy there exclaimed "hey this is right here" and he went and put the map in the Valve P.O. box as I waited.

*cough*makeanewsposthere*cough*

I would, but I need someone with DX9 to take some screenshots. Also apparently there is a bug in the 3d skybox that looks kinda bad when you look out at the sea from high up in the map on DX8/9. I didnt notice before i submitted since im on DX7 where water is opaque. But its too late to change that... :/

I really like it...one thing is that from the top of the lighthouse you can see the big square of land all the way around it.

This map plays well, looks great, one of the best hl2dm maps yet, and thats not just my opinion, the server packs for this map and players are loving it, great job

I don't think the brightness is a bad thing. It makes it look very much like a Pacific Island.

Looks Great , very good map
submit it here also if u like http://csm2.net/

My friends and I have found a possible bug where the 'underwater' sound you hear when you fall in the sea continues after respawn, until you disconnect and rejoin. Don't know if this is specific to the map or it's a HL2 problem.

Otherwise, we're enjoying it. Probably the best user-made map I've played yet.

I have played this map more than any other user made HL2 map thus far. My only complaint, if you die in the water, you retain the water noise till you quit.

If anyone knows how to circumvent this annoying thing, please post it.

thanx.

Does 'stopsound' work? I remember it back in CS 1.6 ... Not sure if it's in Source, but it couldn't hurt to give it a try.

Stopsound is a cheat in HL2DM, since it kills all ambient sounds and makes it easier to hear enemies.

However, since there are so many sound bugs, it was a mistake to take it out.

The trick I hear is to go back in the water and when you come out again the bug is gone. Also, its not just sound, the HEV energy also acts as if you are underwater with this bug.

I don't think that the sound goes away when you go underwater and get out. However, your suit will charge up again.