[map] Mayan Depths

This is a a discussion topic for the map "Mayan Depths" by Y2kBen_2000 which can be found here

Map description:

Hey guys, been quite some time since I've been here. This map was one I worked on a while back and posted on a different different mapping archive.

The following is the excerpt that was posted on that site, including a reference to how old this is, since I no longer work at a theater.

[Old Excerpt]

After watching "Indiana Jones IV" at my job one day, I suddenly had the urge to create a temple themed map. This is the result of that urge. In all actuality, it only took a couple days to execute; however, I constantly found myself putting it off elapsing the development time to 1.5 months.

Read me

KotH Mayan Depths (Release version 1)

How to win:
Take control of the center control point, aka "The Hill", and hold it for a total of 6 minutes. The individual teams timers do not reset, allowing for a game to last around a maximum of 12 minutes possible (not including the time it may take for a team to take control of "The Hill" first).
The timer that appears on the hud is for the team that currently controls the point.
---Due to issues with the engine, only one timer can be on the screen at a time, and the timer cannot be removed from the screen on a new round.

Author: Ncyphe (http://www.fpsbanana.com/members/271109)

Description:
This is a Mayan theme map, featuring a medium size indoor arena. Loaded with plenty of pillers to be used as cover, and anti-spawn camping set-up.

Notes:
I'm well aware that the hieroglyphs in this map are actually Egyption; however, with my current time frame, actually finding material files with Mayan hieroglyphs proved to be futile. Since both language sets share the same name, I went ahead and used them for detail purposes.
Also, remember to rate this map at www.fpsbanana.com

**Install:
Just extract the .bsp into "team fortress/tf/maps" directory. All custom map iles and the .txt are merged with the .bsp and will unload upon loading the map into the client.

Credits:
Map design by: Ncyphe
Custom textures credited to: Sock (http://www.simonoc.com/pages/) and his prefab: obtained from the site "The Wadfather"
Textures modified and converted to Source format by: Ncyphe

Enjoy!

Extra:

On a side note, I realize that the materials in this map do not have the best of quality . . . or bump maps; however, I found these from an old HL1 texture site and converted them myself.

Edit: Also, if many of you show interest, I can even turn this map into a fastCTF map as well.

Map screenshots:

The textures look really coarse. Not sure if it's the jpg compression but if it looks like this in game I'd want to sort that out because it's not very sightly. I actually thought at first glance this was the original team fortress running in software mode (might also want to clearly label in the description this is a team fortress 2 map).

The architecture here looks nice but again the coarseness of the textures really detract from the space sort of like having a clean desk in a messy room.

Also the organic terrain around the edges here is quite rough and the texture doesn't look too good either.

As for the normal maps, you can just generate them in vtf edit and add an extra line in the vmt files that point to the normal map.

Some of the textures might also look nice with a subtle reflection to make them look a bit wet or more smooth you can do this by adding an envmap to the vmt file which will give a consistent reflection over the whole texture or you can create an alpha channel for given textures and add "$basealphaenvmapmask" 1 or "$normalmapalphaenvmapmask" 1 (if the texture has a normal map) to the vmt files to say you want to use the alpha channel of the base texture to define reflections which gives you the opportunity to create more organic (better looking) reflections, I suggest the latter.

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Aaron's Stuff

"aaron_da_killa" said:
The textures look really coarse. Not sure if it's the jpg compression but if it looks like this in game I'd want to sort that out because it's not very sightly. I actually thought at first glance this was the original team fortress running in software mode (might also want to clearly label in the description this is a team fortress 2 map).

The architecture here looks nice but again the coarseness of the textures really detract from the space sort of like having a clean desk in a messy room.

Also the organic terrain around the edges here is quite rough and the texture doesn't look too good either.

As for the normal maps, you can just generate them in vtf edit and add an extra line in the vmt files that point to the normal map.

Some of the textures might also look nice with a subtle reflection to make them look a bit wet or more smooth you can do this by adding an envmap to the vmt file which will give a consistent reflection over the whole texture or you can create an alpha channel for given textures and add "$basealphaenvmapmask" 1 or "$normalmapalphaenvmapmask" 1 (if the texture has a normal map) to the vmt files to say you want to use the alpha channel of the base texture to define reflections which gives you the opportunity to create more organic (better looking) reflections, I suggest the latter.

Thank you for the comments. I should mention, though, that I am not a texture artist, and that these textures are actually used from a third party source, designed for the Half-Life 1 engine (note: Made this map before the Egyptian textures became public use). I do want to do another temple map, so I'll keep this all in mind.

And thank you, it's been a while since I've seen some honest, experience criticism on any of my maps.

Sock's textures are amazing in the HL1 engine. It's too bad they don't turn out as well in the HL2 engine ):