Hey guys, I figured this was probably about the best way to make a WIP
thread in the maps forum. Just make sure you don't go rating the map it
is linked to in my profile or anything, seeing as that is just a
workaround.

For those of you who don't get the point of this thread, I'll try and
give a brief explanation. Often I find myself making little rooms or
starts of maps that aren't really going anywhere and I don't know if I
plan to actually use it for a full level. That sometimes puts me off
putting up any media in my profile, as that requires making a new map
profile which is a bit too formal and committing to the level which is
often just a bit of fun. That said, I do sometimes feel like showing
screenshots anyway; as a proof of concept, to gauge feedback, or just
to show off a little :biggrin: This thread is for that purpose. Post any
screenshots in here, of work in whatever engine, that are of work you
feel is too early, too spontaneous, too random, or too conceptual, to
justify a new map profile and thread.

I'll get the ball rolling with a couple of screenshots of a little test
room I built to play around with the HL2 AI. I might be using HL2 as a
base for my honours project on AI so I built this just as something to
play around with the existing system. It's nothing remarkable, just a
fairly generic warehouse room, but I haven't really built anything in
ages so this is the best I got :wink:





I hope this thread encourages people to share what they are working on,
even if it's just something they built in a few hours for fun, without
the pressures associated with posting a new map in their profile. Have
at it guys!

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

Made some changes...





Cmon people, make use of this thread :smile:

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

raawr

nice picies. maybe i should make something C17-ish. i never did. that's a nice spin on c17 though. i like.

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___My Site___ | www.leveldesign.nl

Nice shots. The benches and the bins change the warehouse look to
something more... Someone at mapcore mentioned that the altered shots
now look like they could be part of a subway system. I could see
that, although I couldn't really see where turnstyles or ticket booths
would fit in :smile:

I like the rooms asymmetry, and I really like the warm lights you put near the floor by the shutter.

Nothing livens up a room like having NPCs strolling around -- I like that.

Do you think you'll expand this area? Or will you just work on it until it's "done"?

Well the area at the moment is just something to use as a test area for
the HL2 AI system and my tinkerings with it for my honours project. To
demonstrate my honours project work I'm planning on having one or two
everyday scenes (such as an office, train station, bar, warehouse,
whatever) with NPC's doing their thing. This could evolve into one of
the final scenes, possibly as a subway, possibly as a warehouse, or
maybe it will never get beyond this test area. Who knows :smile:

Glad you guys like it anyway, feels good to get back into hammer I must
say. Belgarion, just have a shot at a concept area to play around with
the theme of C17 if you don't want to commit to a full project...and
post the results here for commenting :wink:

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

<span style="color: white;">Looks fine to me. Except that the benches and litter bins clash with the warehouse setting of course... :razz:

Does this AI stuff has anything to do with your 'background NPC AI' ideas you were talking about a while ago? Since you pointed out most NPC behaviour was fairly simplistic in most games...

I haven't done much mapping recently either, but when a friend of mine bought his own HLDM server I couldn't resist his request to do a map. So I scrounged up some old half-finished maps and put together some style elements using a simple layout I quickly thought up on. In 5 hours I created this:







I haven't finished it completely yet, the gameflow lacks a bit (though overall it's quite fun) so I still want to add a few connections and maybe another combat area, perhaps put in some more time to spice up the looks of it.
So, what do you guys think of this? :smile:
</span>

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

I like the last shot the best. It strikes me as very grand, which
I like. It's almost as if you were mapping for HL2 while trying
to keep things smooth, simple, and elegant.

The lighting seems a little random though... for example the locations of the lights on the rightmost pillar thing.

I think you might be able to add a few more light sources in that indoor picture, just to make it more interesting.

Texturing looks a bit repetitive - fairly large unbroken expanses of
them in places, particularly the horizontal spans in that last shot.
Maybe if you broke it up with some vertical pillars using a different
texture, or some alcoves exposing a different texture? Even if it was
using the same texture, the additional faces pointing in different
directions would at least have different lighting to the current flat
surface, which would break it up visually.

It would also give you a bit more potential for your light fixtures; at
the moment they strike me as being a bit simple and look awkward since
they are only small objects stuck onto big flat surfaces. If you had
some smaller components to your architecture then you can incorporate
your light fixtures into them somehow (be it part of the base of a
pillar, or shining down into an alcove, or whatever) and they won't
look so out of place. Get some supplementary colours in there too, as
at the moment you seem to be sticking quite rigourously to yellow. I'd
also suggest dropping the overall light level and making the areas
around the lights themselves brighter - most of them don't appear to
have any immediate effect around the fixtures themselves, but just
contribute to the overall brightness. Maybe I'm being over optimistic
with the control HL1's lighting offers though - Source spoils you a bit
with falloff distances and the like :wink:

Another couple of comments as well. The handrail sections in the last
two shots are hugely long - maybe get some more "structurally
significant" brushwork in at uniform intervals? The wallways out there
could benefit from a trim around the edges too (in HL1, everything
benefits from a trim :biggrin: ), and that could probably be worked into the
"structurally significant" handrail portions somehow too :smile:

Anyway, I'll shut up now - all in all I think the base architecture is
nice (last shot seems very grand in particular) but could use some more
subtle elements and improved lighting.

In answer to your question about the purpose of my map - exactly on the
money. My honours project is to investigate, design and implement an AI
system for background characters to demonstrate social intelligence
(ie. not act like total retards), and I've decided to use HL2 to do so.
HL2's background character AI for non-gameplay issues is pretty much
non-existant, in that all they do is randomly choose and "act busy"
node as placed in the map by hammer and play whatever animation it
tells them to, so it's quite a nice blank slate to work from. Pity
there is all the proper game AI stuff in there to clutter things up and
confuse me no end however!

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

This thread will only work for people like me if true thumbnails are used Duncan. Loading a page, even a page full of perfectly optimized screenshots will never do.

/wet blanket.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Build a thumb-a-picture site or script, Orph, and we're all set. Nah, not all, but it would help... :smile:

I wonder if php functions are capable of good .jpg optimizing...

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

One must understand my perspective before judging me harsh.

From my point of view, Snarkpit loads inconsistently. Sometimes it quits totally and I am forced to hit refresh to remind it what it was doing. If an image completes, it loads the next time I visit a thread. Case closed. If Snarkpit fails to continue, the image is incomplete and the image reloads again. If the image is 100k and there are a s**tload of them and they are incomplete, the thread is always loading.

Now, I ask. Is there no solutions other than me crying incessantly or my avoiding threads with numerous images quietly?

I cry often. I never cry without reasons.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

I need some clarification. If I post the imageshack code for thumbnails, does it load the whole image first anyway?

If it does, I'll link to my images. If not, I'll just post thumbs.

I am not exactly sure what you said but, there are a s**tload of thumbnail generators out there that do a wonderful job. Whats the problem uploading two images and using the snarkpit codes to utilize them?

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Basically -- if I post a thumbnail, does it make you cache the whole
image first before it displays the small thumbnail? In other
words, does it actually help to have thumbs?

If the thumbnail is a new picture which is significantly less file size: yes. If you use the snarkpit "optimization", NO, it just resizes the image (as far as I can tell), so you're still loading a 100 KB image (or something like that)

Just saying "make a thumbnail" doesn't mean much if you don't realize that resolution and file size aren't a 1:1 ratio to each other.

Anyway, I'll try posting some stuff in the next few weeks. Have a bit of work to get done first.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Lep coded two examples of posting screenshots.

One is the example Crono says, where it resizes the dimensions to 800x600, but the file size remains the same.

The other is actual code where you post 2 screens, one a full size, and the other a thumbnail size.

You link to the thumb at say 10k, and the thumb links to the full image say 110k.

the code was made specifically for 56k users ages ago, but is seldom used.

[ thumb=thumb.jpg]big.jpg[ /thumb] (remove the spaces.)

The only drawback is having a location to post both images and the actual creating of the images before hand. Other than that, it works great.

---

The best things in life, aren't things.

Ah, thanks Crono and Orpheus, I see now. I'll be sure to use the imageshack thumbnail code if I post anything here.

My point is, people don't use it that way. The only times I've ever seen that used is where people don't make a seperate thumbnail image ... so it just resizes the large ass image to a small resolution.

---

Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Is this alright?



And goodnight by the way :smile:

Addicted to Morphine said:
Is this alright?



And goodnight by the way :smile:

Must be cause the thumb loaded quick, and the image took normal time.

Lots of orange turf you got in that one bud. :heee:

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The best things in life, aren't things.

<html><head><link rel="stylesheet" href="themes/standard.css" type="text/css"></head><body topmargin=2 leftmargin=2>I really feel like doing something, but im just bored...;P

[Edit}

I cant see the text here,
i hope you dont mind me screwing up a little with spelling atm...

anyway, how many minuteshours does it take you to make that map reno??? and morph ?

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.::Dark|Masta::. - One name. One legend.

It's hard to say for me really, as I was building bits here and there
while also playing around with the AI and actbusy system. Hours as
opposed to minutes though, probably a few hours or something mucking
around with the actual structure, lighting, props and textures.

---

[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

I love you...

---

.::Dark|Masta::. - One name. One legend.

LOL, thanks... I think

---

[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

hehe, dont mis-understand me, i love you all here hehe :razz:
Btw reno, or anyone here, i need some tips to make a good singple player map, cuzz im working on one atm

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.::Dark|Masta::. - One name. One legend.

That map was just to check to see if imageshack's thumbnail code worked
out. But that particular map took me 2 or 3 hours to make.
I never finished it, and it's way too orange :smile:

I started it over again at home, but then had to return to school and I
left it behind. If anything, it was really good displacement
practice.

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

<span style="color: white;">I was just playing around with submerged.wad by blaz, it's a really nice, adaptable wad. <br style="font-family: Verdana;">

</span><html><head><link rel="stylesheet" href="themes/standard.css" type="text/css"></head><body topmargin=2 leftmargin=2>

I like the subdued colors of the textures.

The only thing I don't particularly like is the way the curved trim on the ground interacts with the squarish textures of the main path. It might look better if the striaght parts of the curve aligned with the white parts of the floor texture.

Overall, nice use of curves. I like it.

Thinking about adding lighting?

I like the upper part of the room, but like AtM I think the ground could use some work. It just doesn't mesh too well - the elements clash with one another and to be honest, I don't think it works too well together with the rest of the texture selection. With some lighting that could look spiffy though. Thanks for posting too - don't let this thread die people :razz:

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

looks like AvP2. which, to me, is a very very good thing.

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___My Site___ | www.leveldesign.nl

I've been working on the singleplayer AI arena that we've been talking about in the General forum, and this is what I've come up with so far.



Not much to show, I know, but I wanted to post something before I set off for school tomorrow to start the spring semester away from my desktop computer.

I'm also hoping this will encourage others to do the arena challenge.

Blocking out some shapes for my PQL3 entry. HL1 mapping is still fun... Although, I have to admit, it seems excrutiatingly underwhelming after HL2 mapping for a year. No sexy water, no fancy fogging or 3D skybox... Yikes!

Morphine, try using non-generic-crete textures. At the moment it's all very greyish. Be bold and experiment! :smile:

i'm going to start looking into this SP mapping thing too, once i can get my computer to start up properly again. in safe mode atm.

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___My Site___ | www.leveldesign.nl

Yeah, crete textures are pretty terrible aren't they?

I spent a decent amount of time trying to find different textures that
would work, and this is what I came up with. Any thoughts?



Please excuse the lack of lighting.

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting Addicted to Morphine</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>Yeah, crete textures are pretty terrible aren't they?</DIV></DIV>

Crete textures look great unless you:

1) use the wrong crete texture that poorly gives you what you wanted.
2) expect crete to look like something other than crete.

I have always gotten excellent results using crete. Assuming my area is concrete in origin. :biggrin:

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Apparently I'm taking my zombie arena in a different direction, and here's whats on the other side of that wall.



I need to work on the ceiling (I'm thinking of doing something like the ceiling in the garage of cs_office).

Any other comments? Too blocky/simplistic?

Looks quite nice, but as you say the ceiling needs work. Lighting could be better too, as it is currently pretty universal in brightness. I'm sure an area like that (ie. with doors) would have some sort of light fixture/(s) nearby.

CJ: Ewww texture repetition. I know this is HL1 and there is gonna be obvious repetition in such a large scale cliff, but I think you could afford to lose some sharpness in return for scaling it up a bit more. I also think you should sacrifice the grand scale in order to reduce the size of the massively flat expanse and texture repetition, as even with some additional detail I can see it being tough to make such a huge cliff face interesting to look at. Cool looking scenario though, looking forward to seeing more.

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

Thanks for the feedback. I haven't done anything with lighting
yet (just threw in 3 regular light entities to give it enough light for
a screenshot) and hopefully I can make the lighting interesting enough
to make up for the flat walls (the other side of the room is really
naked right now, I may have to add some subtle pillarwork to it).
It definitely won't be that bright in the end, because this is a zombie
arena after all :smile:

Edit:
Here's an updated shot of the area. Did some ceiling work.
I still need to add lighting (just a single light entity in there now).

Edit: I
realized I should probably just make my own map thread for this map
instead of just flooding this WIP thread. Sorry guys.

:biggrin:




This is a little room I did to prove to myself that my displacements don't always have to look like crap, and to figure out what I'm going to do with the ground on de_vestige. Also, in the process of looking at VMT properties I found out about detail.vbsp. The ground is made of three different custom materials using preexisting textures, and two custom detail.vbsp thingies.

---

o

I've been meaning to get these shots up for a week or so, and have
finally found the time. It's a small dod source map I've been working
on for a month now on and off, and is about 30-40% complete (I probably
should get it up in my profile).

It's set in a small crossroads village/farm area on D-Day morning, with
5-6 buildings, a bridge and stream, fields and hedgerow. The layout is
more of a triangle shape, with the aim of reducing the amount of path
based play by placing the capture points across a wider area in the
middle. Hopefully encouraging more teamplay.

It stills needs optimizing, I got a bit carried away at one point, this
is a cut back version. I haven't much time to work on it at the moment,
what with working, commuting 4 hrs a day, and my single player project.
Hopefully I'll find some free time soon to add more. Enjoy.

(Oh, and the water currently in use isn't the final one, I'm still
trying to find one, though I'm leaning towards a nice clear look)

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Ham and Jam Contributor
http://www.hamandjam.org

'Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!'

Looks good. Although the building on the left on the second shot
looks too tall compared to how wide it is. If you were to just
widen the bigger part of the house by 1 window width I think it would
look much more realistic.

Love the atmosphere in those shots mate. It really captures the early morning daybreak vibe in my opinion. I'm also impressed with the wide open feel you have going, without making the level seem empty. Great job so far, keep it up.

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

I almost forgot to say good job with your displacements, I especially like how they look along the road.

Looks amazing, has that Brothers in arms "breaking the box" layout.

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-[Better to be Honest than Kind]-

The only thing that really sticks out for me (other than it looks amazing my friend) is the walls on the canal area. They are either:

1) to thick or,
2) the edges are to rounded for the thickness you have.

It seems to me that the edges would have some sharper planes than you currently have, assuming the damage is or has occurred in a battle. A bit of debris wouldn't hurt unless you have a resident cleanup crew in that burg.

Very nice.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

He said D day landings morning- the damage at such a destination would be minimal at this point. The houses would be trashed and filled with soldiers stuff and porno mags etc.

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-[Better to be Honest than Kind]-

Myrk- said:
He said D day landings morning- the damage at such a destination would be minimal at this point. .

You know what? I wasn't born then. Contrary to popular belief and all.

However, that portion of the world was hardly bombed free. In fact, the morning of D-Day was a barrage from hell if I recall my history. BUT lets assume that the damage is minimal, this map shows some damage and its my opinion that its to rounded. It needs to be more jagged. Sorry I wasn't more clear.

My bad.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Nah, these villages wouldn't have been bombed. The most famous inland
attack at St Maire Eglise (amongst others) was a paratroop drop - most of them would have been.

The bombings were limited to big cities (pre D-Day) and on the buildup
itself the focus would have been on the coastal defences. Inland areas
would have been relatively unscathed - relative to the dispersion of
German defence divisions which were further up the coast (towards
Zeebrugge) as this is where Hitler believed the invasion would come,
and that the Normandy landings were a diversion.

Makes sense. No reason to bust up a village that you'll need to rebuild once you've won.

However, did it mention where this map was theoretically located in this thread and I missed it?

Still, hypothetical or not, the screenshots show some limited damage. Whatever caused it would, or might have been explosive in nature since the wall is a foot thick. I was a demolition specialist in the army. Walls never break smoothly. Even if its not explosive but concussive such as a vehicle ramming it. (IE a bulldozer)

None the less, it was merely an observation. I really liked what I saw overall.

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The best things in life, aren't things.