Thanks Reaper. I'll should have the update within 2 days.

i'd say that an alpha is a proof of concept map, and a beta is for finding bugs or other issues.

people release stuff with an _rc tag (release candidate), but that's a term that applies to full games/mods, and not maps. they're really beta's, too.

i've seen a few _r (revision) maps, where a final map has been released before a serious bug is found. i had to do it myself, because the map had a series of explosions that crashed linux servers, and i'd only ever had it tested on a windows one.

then there are the _r2 (revised revision) maps, but i've not had the misfortune of going down that road. not yet, anyway. :smile:

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i eat paint

The RC (release candidate) system always confused me. I can live with the "RC map = BETA map" explanation but I always wondered why some mappers propagate the RC1, RC2, RC3,... naming for unfinished maps. If it's a release "candidate" and you release it, then it's not actually a candidate anymore, isn't it? Especially if the map was released with the author knowing that it's far from final, in which case he never considered the version to be a candidate for the final release.

OK, nevermind, that's hairsplitting. I just prefer alpha and beta for unfinished maps. :heee:

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Why snark works.

I have completed a substantial amount of work sense my last update of the BSP. file. At my last update of the BSP. file I had updated the thread to state the map was 50% complete, but now I only believe it to be so (and that opinion could change in later updates).

Currently the map is playable, but it's still obviously rough.

The general layout is mostly complete. For the size and layout of the map there isn't much room for change.

Lighting for the most part hasn't been attempted. Aside form the central staircase and the tone map controller. While I would like to keep it an hdr map I haven't decided on it for sure. When compiled with hdr I'm running a near steady 30 frames a sec. When compiled in non-hdr I'm running a near steady 60 frames a sec. I may end up ditching hdr for higher frame rates.

Weapon placement was the last thing I did before this release. Thus it's still rough. Suggestions are welcome. With the map being the shape it is there relay isn't any place for the rpg, but because people love it (I assume), it is in there. It is just going to be hard to obtain. Look to the screens below to learn the location.

The basement is still vary bare. If you?re going to comment on it please limit it to theme suggestion and wall spacing (unless you spot some huge error in my thinking).

I have settled on a name for my map. While it my not be vary creative, it sticks, and as far as I know its original to Half Life Death Mach (I googled it and searched it on SP.). The maps name will be dm_Crash. As I don't believe it is possible for me (correct me if I'm wrong) to alter the name of my map thread I would appreciate if a mod or admin could change it for me to "dm_Crash".



Not much change hear.



I've change the look in hear quite a bit with some simple prop changes.


The central staircase. Made some lighting and texture changes in hear which I think had a big impact.



Done a good amount of work in hear. Especially in the elevator.



All most no change in hear.


The vent in the ceiling was in place before I added the hallway. It will be moved soon. The only revolver in the map is in that vent. Toss a nade in to kick it out. (Don't ask, yes it was inspired from that thread about gaining prises through physics.)


Not showing much more than i selected my floor and wall texture. (Sorry it not shown better.)


Not sure on the collar of the light in hear yet, but i do think the vent system was pulled off well.



Two shots of the roof. The corner of the building will be crumbled later to show where the tower fell through the roof. I plan on adding a good amount of detail to the bordering building. Providing that it doesn't performance too much. The rpg is just in front of the left leg of the tower. It took a little practice for evan me to get it down. I will make it easyer to get later. You have have to fire up a nade with the grav gun to knock it down. Have fun.

Please. The more comments, the better. I want to hear all that you have to say.
Thanks guys. :smile:

I have completed a substantial amount of work sense my last update of the BSP. file. At my last update of the BSP. file I had updated the thread to state the map was 50% complete, but now I only believe it to be so (and that opinion could change in later updates).
Currently the map is playable (but I wouldn't recommend it).
The general layout is mostly complete. For the size and layout of the map there isn't much room for change.
Lighting for the most part hasn't been attempted. Aside form the central staircase and the tone map controller. While I would like to keep it an hdr map I haven't decided on it for sure. When compiled with hdr I'm running a near steady 30 frames a sec. When compiled in non-hdr I'm running a near steady 60 frames a sec. I may end up ditching hdr for higher frame rates.
Weapon placement was the last thing I did before this release. Thus it's still rough. Suggestions are welcome. With the map being the shape it is there relay isn't any place for the rpg, but because people love it, (I assume) it is in there. It is just going to be hard to obtain. Look to the screens below to learn the location.
The basement is still vary bare. If you?re going to comment on it please limit it to theme suggestion and wall spacing (unless you spot some huge error in my thinking).
I have settled on a name for my map. While it my not be vary creative, it sticks and as far as I know its original to Half Life Death Mach (I googled it and searched it on SP.). The maps name will be dm_Crash. As I don't believe it is possible for me (correct me if I'm wrong) to alter the name of my map thread I would appreciate if a mod or admin could change it for me to "dm_Crash".

[img=http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/3126/1hallalpha1lq9.th.jpg]
CURRENTLY ADDING MORE TO POST

I have completed a substantial amount of work sense my last update of the BSP. file. At my last update of the BSP. file I had updated the thread to state the map was 50% complete, but now I only believe it to be so (and that opinion could change in later updates).
Currently the map is playable (but I wouldn't recommend it).
The general layout is mostly complete. For the size and layout of the map there isn't much room for change.
Lighting for the most part hasn't been attempted. Aside form the central staircase and the tone map controller. While I would like to keep it an hdr map I haven't decided on it for sure. When compiled with hdr I'm running a near steady 30 frames a sec. When compiled in non-hdr I'm running a near steady 60 frames a sec. I may end up ditching hdr for higher frame rates.
Weapon placement was the last thing I did before this release. Thus it's still rough. Suggestions are welcome. With the map being the shape it is there relay isn't any place for the rpg, but because people love it, (I assume) it is in there. It is just going to be hard to obtain. Look to the screens below to learn the location.
The basement is still vary bare. If you?re going to comment on it please limit it to theme suggestion and wall spacing (unless you spot some huge error in my thinking).
I have settled on a name for my map. While it my not be vary creative, it sticks and as far as I know its original to Half Life Death Mach (I googled it and searched it on SP.). The maps name will be dm_Crash. As I don't believe it is possible for me (correct me if I'm wrong) to alter the name of my map thread I would appreciate if a mod or admin could change it for me to "dm_Crash".


CURRENTLY ADDING MORE TO POST

I have completed a substantial amount of work sense my last update of the BSP. file. At my last update of the BSP. file I had updated the thread to state the map was 50% complete, but now I only believe it to be so (and that opinion could change in later updates).

Currently the map is playable (but I wouldn't recommend it).

The general layout is mostly complete. For the size and layout of the map there isn't much room for change.

Lighting for the most part hasn't been attempted. Aside form the central staircase and the tone map controller. While I would like to keep it an hdr map I haven't decided on it for sure. When compiled with hdr I'm running a near steady 30 frames a sec. When compiled in non-hdr I'm running a near steady 60 frames a sec. I may end up ditching hdr for higher frame rates.

Weapon placement was the last thing I did before this release. Thus it's still rough. Suggestions are welcome. With the map being the shape it is there relay isn't any place for the rpg, but because people love it, (I assume) it is in there. It is just going to be hard to obtain. Look to the screens below to learn the location.

The basement is still vary bare. If you?re going to comment on it please limit it to theme suggestion and wall spacing (unless you spot some huge error in my thinking).

I have settled on a name for my map. While it my not be vary creative, it sticks, and as far as I know its original to Half Life Death Mach (I googled it and searched it on SP.). The maps name will be dm_Crash. As I don't believe it is possible for me (correct me if I'm wrong) to alter the name of my map thread I would appreciate if a mod or admin could change it for me to "dm_Crash".



Not much change hear.



I've change the look in hear quite a bit with some simple prop changes.


The central staircase. Made some lighting and texture changes in hear which I think had a big impact.



Done a good amount of work in hear. Especially in the elevator.



All most no change in hear.


The vent in the ceiling was in place before I added the hallway. It will be moved soon. The only revolver in the map is in that vent. Toss a nade in to kick it out. (Don't ask, yes it was inspired from that thread about gaining prises through physics.)


Not showing much more than i selected my floor and wall texture. (Sorry it not shown better.)


Not sure on the collar of the light in hear yet, but i do think the vent system was pulled off well.



Two shots of the roof. The corner of the building will be crumbled later to show where the tower fell through the roof. I plan on adding a good amount of detail to the bordering building. Providing that it doesn't performance too much.

Please. The more comments, the better. I want to hear all that you have to say.
Thanks guys. :smile:

Is it possible for me a mod or admin to change the name of my map thread?

Edit your first post and change the "Subject" :wink:

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o

OOO, so it turns out I'm just retarded.
Thanks Snickers

I uped the ambients value and changed the position of the env_light. I've also thought up a hand rail system that i think is good and along with that, the cat walk supports were placed.

Very nice job, RedWood... you've made some excellent progress on this map, it's starting to really take shape and look good now. :smile:

The only thing I want to pop in and say is you should consider doing some adjustment of your lightmap resolution. If you aren't familiar with lightmaps, you can read this page at the Valve wiki for a little explanation. Basically it controls the resolution/quality of the lighting in the level.. all brushes are created by default with a 16-unit lightmap scale - that's 16 grid units per one "unit" of lighting. Lower values mean higher resolution (8 would be 8 grid units per lighting unit, i.e. twice the resolution. Makes sense?)

Look at the most recent screenshot you posted, yellow light streaming through the windows onto the floor and walls (looking nice by the way... ambient is always important to have. Maybe a little too far on the yellow side? The windows are pretty blue.) You can see on the far wall, though, a "blobbiness" to the edge of the lights/shadows. If you select these faces with the material edit tool (and only these faces, not any that you don't need to bother with) and readjust the lightmap scale to 8 units per luxel or even 4 units per luxel, you'll get a much much finer, sharper edge that will probably look a lot better. You will get a bit of performance hit if you go crazy with this though - keep it within reason. I'd say you should never go lower than 4 anywhere. But any faces that have "harsh" lighting on them - strong light/dark contrasts, etc - will benefit greatly visually with a lower lightmap scale. In the same way, you can gain back a bit of performance by increasing the lightmap scale (that is, a higher value, like 32 units/luxel or 64 units/luxel) on faces with very even lighting - you don't need much lighting quality/resolution on an evenly-lit face. Good examples might be some outdoor architecture that are fully sunlit, etc.

Sorry, didn't mean to write you such an essay. :smile: Lightmap scales are important though.. you should go through and identify some high-contrast faces and bump up the lighting quality on them.

Hope that helps. Keep it up!

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-- midkay

RC is generally "finished unless MAJOR problems are found". I think it is a valid category.

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http://maze5.net

A couple issues I have with the layout of this map:
[*] The roof has only one way to get to it, and it's the long flight of stairs.
[*] The bottom floor feels like a maze, it's pretty easy to get lost down there even though it's not a very big space.
<LI>In my personal opinion, the doors are too narrow. This is mainly personal preference, but I think wider doors make a level feel less constricted.

---

o

Lol midkay, you wrote more on light maps than the wiki did. Thanks though, i already have ideas on were to use this. I had already lowered the values on one of my floors but i didn't know that raising them could increase fps.

Thank you for downloading my map Snickers.
I had planed on adding some sort of rubble based ramp for the second floor, leading to the roof but it had escaped my check list. Thank you for reminding me.

Ya, the bottom floor feels like a maze right now. But i plan on helping that buy adding a few distinctive props, variances in lighting, and a few exit sings. Right now it's still vary bare.

I felt the same way about the doors. I found it difficult moving through them. Soo, I turned all the door frames into brush entities and made them non solid to try to help. And it did help but now that none of the doors are there anymore i gues could widen them. I'll try a few new things.
Thanks guys.

These nicely lit indoor areas and the staircases are very well done. The hole could be cool, too once you get the areas around it done.

I found a few things. First, the general stuff:

• I think a lot of the other parts are very big and empty, still. I'm afraid it'll be close to impossible to connect them with the rest of the map both gameplay-wise and visually. There's too much emptiness. I'd get rid of as many rooms as possible so you can fully concentrate on the ones that are 100% vital and that you have a concrete plan for.

In other words: The basement doesn't have any of the originality of the rest of the map and IMO could be scrapped. I like these little windows but ultimately polishing this part up would take a lot of time and I don't really see it paying off. As basic as it still is, maybe you can replace the maze by something simpler but ultimately more effective. Right now it's just a couple of walls which isn't good.

• Cubemaps aren't saved into the BSP. After running "buildcubemaps" make sure "sv_cheats" is "1" and reload the map. Otherwise the cubemaps won't be saved! You also have to do that for both HDR and non-HDR mode (took me a while to figure that out :wink: )

• The shadows are very dark. You could use more artificial light sources in all the shady strips of darkness that are quite a contrast to the bright sunlight.

Here are a few details that caught my attention:


It should be clearer that (and why) you cannot open this door. I stood there for a while, trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong only to realize it's not meant to open (or I'm just stupid, lol)


This elevator could be cool, but it doesn't work for me.


Ok in the inside (although I'd prefer more transparency), but from the outside these overly bright windows look weird.


The skybox could need more attention. These views are much more prominent than they seem.


That exit sign is making fun of me (should be clearer this is blocked :smile: ).

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Why snark works.

...In other words: The basement doesn't have any of the originality of the rest of the map and IMO could be scrapped. I like these little windows but ultimately polishing this part up would take a lot of time and I don't really see it paying off. As basic as it still is, maybe you can replace the maze by something simpler but ultimately more effective. Right now it's just a couple of walls which isn't good.

I hate you Reaper! Why do you have to tell me things i don't want to hear! All this time and i still can't think of how I'm going to get the basement to match the rest of my map. And, like you said, the amount of work it would take to finish it would be emence (not to mention push my file size past 15 megs). I've been considering this for a while but, It's not even an option anymore, i have to scrap the basement. It shouldn't bother me too much, all most everything i had of my original vision has changed (not to complain). I think I'm going to flood the basement to just above the top of the door frame. That should solve all my problems. Now i just have to think of a clever way to connect all of my original paths to the lower level under water. AARG. It seams that the more work i complete, the more i create for my self.

-The cubemaps- I did not know that. Thanks... and sorry for making you build them yourself.

-The shadows- Agreed, adding lights is a slow process (for me at least)

-The door- With the changes I'll be making I'll probably open them up.

-The blue windows- Agreed. Solved, and gone.

-The elevator- You want more you'll get more.

-The skybox- Is a work in progress

-The exit sine- Agreed

Thank you Snickers and Reaper for taking the time to download and review my work. And of course thank you to everyone who has commented. Your all helping greatly.

Just a quickie. Added a little character.