Commented 17 years ago2007-07-21 05:59:36 UTC
in vault item: cs_lilhouse_v2Comment #15396
For me, making this map was really an exercise. I needed to practise 2 thing - making darker ambient lighting which still works, and also keeping my brushwork and texturing as neat as possible.
I want to get the lighting even darker, but it's hard to do without ruining the gameplay.
This is great. I really enjoyed it. Almost every part of it impressed me. A synopsis:
+ intro is great
+ Like the font
+ All of the ambient sound is awesome, and really adds to the experience. Very, very good indeed!
+ Impressively surreal. Which I love. Expect the unexpected. I was so very impressed with your obviously very tight entity setup, which led to so many bizarre happenings on my screen.
+ Some areas are really strikingly beautiful.
+ The endless corridor. Please tell me how you did that. Please. Pleeeeeeeeeease!!!!
+ Although there were several points where I was scratching my head for a few minutes, I did not have to resort to noclipping to progress.
+ Difficulty was good. It was easy but felt rewarding nontheless. The hardest balance to achieve. Well done. I died only once, and I really deserved it, let me tell you.
+ / - The architecture is great in several places. Other places are very plain --- but the excellent gameplay and ambience cover this up a lot. I had to go into really picky mode to really notice. The cave near the end is where the blockiness is most obvious.
+ / - Some bits are a bit too black. There are a lot of pitch black doors which would look better if they were lit just a little tiny bit. But, I know how hard this is to do. This is one of the best night-time setups I've ever seen. So well done.
- The nodegraph for the first map wasn't built
- The game didn't end, it just faded out and stayed there. I swung my crowbar at the blackness for about 5 minutes just in case you put something else in. But then I gave up.
- There was one point, just after the first loading point, where I came up against a big invisible wall right across a corridor where I should really have been able to go. That was a bit crap.
This is great work. There is room for improvement, but I am still rating it 5 stars for how it is now.
Commented 17 years ago2007-06-27 17:20:43 UTC
in vault item: fy_alqueda_woodsComment #15236
Definately the best map of yours I've seen so far.
I would suggest changing the angle of the environmental lighting and also making it darker. Add some other lights the the map to compensate for the difference, preferably in the form of texlights. Try and put them in places where they might cast interesting shadows. Don't forget to include a reasonable excuse for the light being there, too.
Also, some outdoor sounds to immerse the player more would not hurt.
Keep at it. You're getting better.
This comment was made on an article that has been deleted.
Commented 17 years ago2007-06-21 16:03:25 UTC
in vault item: fy_klobbmap_endComment #15167
I wasn't trying to be mean. I didn't even swear! I think espen was much harsher than me
klobb, PM me if you ever want any specific help. I'm not bad with entities and I'm getting better with architecture (thanks Kasperg!) and optimization.
Don't stalk me though.
This comment was made on an article that has been deleted.
Commented 17 years ago2007-06-13 03:44:40 UTC
in vault item: aim_criticalpointComment #15097
Hmmm. Not bad!
Lighting needs work. It's not fullbright, but it almost looks like it is. You said the screenshot doesn't reflect the lighting in the map, but ummm....it does.
The occasional bit made me cringe but generally the brushwork is ok.
The complex jagged hole thing in the floor, ewww, at least make it shallower so it seems a bit more realistic - what causes that kind of damage anyway? Look at the damage as it is now and try and imagine what caused it. I think, in it's current form, you would need a pnuematic drill (or similar) lying around nearby, to suggest that someone had been having fun with it on the floor. I think it's a good idea to try and explain why things are the way they are in your maps. It would be easier to explain the damage if you made the whole thing shallower though.
Other bits of your damaged walls and stuff look okay. Just that one in the floor made me go Ewww
The texturing is good, apart from a few little errors (like the overlapping water texture which flickers like crazy).
I like the rain effect, it's nice. You've also made the walls look a lot less boring by adding variety to them. Good job.
The layout- I actually think it's pretty good for an aim map setup. There's cover which looks like it'd be fun to use. I like the way the players can effecively fight both ways across the map if they wish.
If you made the lighting look pretty, and fixed the other few problems, then it'd be worth 4 stars.
Commented 17 years ago2007-06-11 03:49:00 UTC
in vault item: DesertedComment #15086
It does actually compile -- technically it doesn't even give any errors in the compile process and it takes about an hour (on my pc) -- BUT when you play it, you get problems. For example - there are simply too many brushes in the map(!) and bits of the buildings keep disappearing when you look at them from certain angles. The console gives out some error about how it can't draw so much all at once (I can't remember the exact error, but it's got something to do with too much being drawn at once)
Commented 17 years ago2007-06-10 05:31:23 UTC
in vault item: WarzoneComment #15079
I've seen much worse. You could expand this into something decent. It needs a lot of work, but has potential.
It's obvious that you know how to put entities together, and there's a couple of bits of neat brushwork that hint that you have more ability than the screenshot above shows.
The reflections are completely off everywhere, and you need to sort them out. Cubemaps, man.
The longish corridor outside the starting room, with the mostly locked doors, is too repetitive and having all those combine locks so close together on every door only adds to this repetitive-ness. Subtle variety is the key to making such areas look pleasing. Also, the lighting is way off here. It's ugly -- and where is it even coming from?
You've used too many of the sexy looking combine shields outside, and the fps really suffers when looking at them all in the street. You'd get a better overall result from getting rid of most of them, and use the large amount of resources you're currently spending on them to add a whole shed full of detail brushwork and other entities. There are many effects you can employ which look nice but don't hog your resources like those funky translucent shields tend to.
Also - you're drawing the shields most of the time. Have you noticed how your fps fluctuates wildly when you walk down the staircase? Or even when you turn around on the spot somewhere? Here's why. Observe this screenshot -
(In case you've not seen it before, that's wireframe mode, which is dead useful for testing how the engine is dealing with visibility in your maps)
That screenshot was taken when I was standing inside, halfway down the staircase, looking at the wall. As you can see, the engine thinks that the player can still see outside, even though he definately can't. This is bad, because the engine is still drawing all of the area outside, and everything in it. Often,this won't matter tooooo much, but here you have a crushing amount of complex models being drawn uselessly, and a lot of the time. If you can't fix this with hint brushes (it might be tricky to do so now), try an occluder or two, with triggers to turn them on and off depending on where the player is. I saved a bucketload of fps on a recent map by doing this kind of thing. Just don't leave occluders activated all the time - they suck up resources themselves.
Or just get rid of some of the models, of course
The texturing in general needs work, although there's a couple of bits where it's passable. I can't decide if the walls in the cafe area downstairs were made that way on purpose, or if it was just how it turned out when you made it. Either way, they're the best looking walls in the map. The cafe though, feels VERY empty, and once again the lighting is explained poorly - two bathroom style lights stuck to the ceiling in seemingly random places...hmm. Fix that, and fill up a bit more of the floor space - and put some stuff on the walls. At least some decals! The doorway to outside is rather bland too. Put some trim on it.
Overall, well, in it's current state I wouldn't be anywhere near happy with it if it was my map. But I keep looking at it and seeing that it's not all bad -- there's definately potential here, and I'd like to see you improve it a bit, and hopefully stick some kind of story and gameplay in there.
First thing to do, put a few cubemaps at player-head height down the length of that corridor. After you compile it with the cubemaps present, type 'buildcubemaps' in the console (in-game) and just look at the difference it will make to the corridor.
Commented 17 years ago2007-06-09 13:02:03 UTC
in vault item: aim_sux0rComment #15077
/faints I almost can't believe you said that, Kasperg
It could use more props for cover, and maybe some cables
I agree, cables were something I considered several times, but every time I placed them, I just felt they looked out of place and took them out. I considered setting up power lines everywhere too, but as it's an aim map I thought that I had to consider people's fps as well. Not that anyone's going to play it online, but meh.
I found it tricky to place extra props well without giving one team an advantage over the other. This is something I definately need to practise, and the main reason I left much of the actual playing area clear of props.
And I bet it took less time to make it
6 hours + 2 bottles of wine
The skybox is monumentally screwed up, but I managed to just about fix it. Fly around in noclip though, and you'll see how far off it is.
Commented 17 years ago2007-06-07 11:54:46 UTC
in vault item: WarzoneComment #15066
The pic is from Hammer ....... how unfinished is this exactly? If I can actually play it, then I'll definately take a look. There's not enough HL2 Singleplayer stuff out there.
Commented 17 years ago2007-06-01 07:55:12 UTC
in vault item: aim_oldzoneComment #15028
Yeah, it is preference. But not entirely.
It's a fact that if your PC has the power to run smoothly in a high resolution, then it will be easier to aim than it would be in a lower resolution. There are simply more pixels on the screen for your cursor to point at.
If your PC struggles at high res and you get low fps, the benefit is negated and you would be better off at a lower res where you get more fps.
But yeah, everyone's different, and personal preference (and what you're used to) plays a role. But it's not just preference, there is a scientific element to it as well.
well i think it's 3 stars but i cant vote and i didnt vote and the result is 4 stars im just happy
Yes, I realise that you didn't vote your own map - that's good. I wasn't meaning to have a go at you, sorry if it came across like that. To be fair, all my maps got rated higher than they deserve too, I think.
Commented 17 years ago2007-05-19 05:45:52 UTC
in vault item: de_barrenComment #14939
So stop trying to pretend that you're some kind of mapping legend. Accept that you need help and/or lots of practise with your mapping, and concentrate on that rather than thinking "OMG These losers don't like my first CS map, they must be n00bs!"
Commented 17 years ago2007-05-19 05:30:55 UTC
in vault item: de_barrenComment #14937
2 days work is not "a lot of effort" -- even if you spent all 48 hours doing it (which I doubt you did)
The last map I completed took me two months. And that was one part of a larger project, which in total took me the best part of 7 months. That's putting effort into a map.
And anyway - maps aren't rated on how hard you tried. They're rated on how good they actually are.
And I hate being mean, but you irritate me. Your maps are terrible, but you mouth off like you're some kind of expert. I predict it will be a looooooooong time before you make anything that is even mildly average.
Commented 17 years ago2007-05-19 04:32:27 UTC
in vault item: DaybreakComment #14936
I could've sworn I already commented more on this, and now it's disappeared. Hmm.
Anyway - nice outdoor area. I built the cubemaps no problem, so I'm not sure what problem you had. I can try to upload it later (I'm at work again right now) - assuming this message doesn't disappear too.....heh
Commented 17 years ago2007-05-17 13:32:50 UTC
in vault item: Core_Xplosion v2Comment #14917
- Very poor brushwork.
- Poor texturing
- Poor lighting
- Small, and not in a good way. Uninteresting layout.
- Laggy. For a map this small, it's really bad. This is mostly because of your inefficient brushwork. You've tried to make nice indentations in the floor, but it's done all wrong. For example, the r_speeds are 900-1200 while looking straight down at just one tile of the floor where you've done this. And you've also just made one pattern, and copied and pasted it several times. This could easily be OK, in a large map, but in such confined spaces its boring to see the same obvious pattern in the floor every 5 seconds.
I really struggled to find anything nice to say about this map - but I always try (these days) to say at least one thing positive about any map.
But all I could come up with, is that this map is slightly better than the very first thing I ever made the first time I ever opened Hammer - which no-one is ever going to see.
Practise. A lot. And do some reading on how to make your brushwork not make the engine cry in horror. There's some tutorials on this site, and also in many other places on the good old intarweb.
Commented 17 years ago2007-05-17 13:03:26 UTC
in vault item: de_C5000merchantComment #14916
Very good.
The most original old-CS map I've seen in awhile. Some great ideas. I especially liked the shuttle and the switches to lock down different areas of the map.
Although this map is quite confusing at first, I'd imagine that once a group gets to know it well, that it would make for a great game indeed.
I didn't have the space skybox texture, so that looked a bit odd because the default Half Life one showed up instead. If the custom skybox was there, it would have been even more awesome. But as it was, I just pretended it was there, based on what your screenshot above shows
The brushwork is fine, not legendary, but pretty interesting in places. The texturing is pretty good too. The r_speeds are a bit high in places but that's not really much of a criticism these days.
I noticed that when you crouch in the shuttle when it is moving, the shuttle stops moving. I thought this could perhaps be both a good or a bad thing while playing for real -- I'm not sure.
It seems a bit odd in places that you can pass right through some of the iron girders around the sides, but I can understand how it would have been hard to make them solid effectively.
It's not perfect - but it's very good. So I give it - 4 stars.
I want to get the lighting even darker, but it's hard to do without ruining the gameplay.
This is great. I really enjoyed it. Almost every part of it impressed me. A synopsis:
+ intro is great
+ Like the font
+ All of the ambient sound is awesome, and really adds to the experience. Very, very good indeed!
+ Impressively surreal. Which I love. Expect the unexpected. I was so very impressed with your obviously very tight entity setup, which led to so many bizarre happenings on my screen.
+ Some areas are really strikingly beautiful.
+ The endless corridor. Please tell me how you did that. Please. Pleeeeeeeeeease!!!!
+ Although there were several points where I was scratching my head for a few minutes, I did not have to resort to noclipping to progress.
+ Difficulty was good. It was easy but felt rewarding nontheless. The hardest balance to achieve. Well done. I died only once, and I really deserved it, let me tell you.
+ / - The architecture is great in several places. Other places are very plain --- but the excellent gameplay and ambience cover this up a lot. I had to go into really picky mode to really notice. The cave near the end is where the blockiness is most obvious.
+ / - Some bits are a bit too black. There are a lot of pitch black doors which would look better if they were lit just a little tiny bit. But, I know how hard this is to do. This is one of the best night-time setups I've ever seen. So well done.
- The nodegraph for the first map wasn't built
- The game didn't end, it just faded out and stayed there. I swung my crowbar at the blackness for about 5 minutes just in case you put something else in. But then I gave up.
- There was one point, just after the first loading point, where I came up against a big invisible wall right across a corridor where I should really have been able to go. That was a bit crap.
This is great work. There is room for improvement, but I am still rating it 5 stars for how it is now.
MORE!
no
Will play when I get home....
I would suggest changing the angle of the environmental lighting and also making it darker. Add some other lights the the map to compensate for the difference, preferably in the form of texlights. Try and put them in places where they might cast interesting shadows. Don't forget to include a reasonable excuse for the light being there, too.
Also, some outdoor sounds to immerse the player more would not hurt.
Keep at it. You're getting better.
(That's in 6 hours from now)
Thanks!
Nice to see something really original!
klobb, PM me if you ever want any specific help. I'm not bad with entities and I'm getting better with architecture (thanks Kasperg!) and optimization.
Don't stalk me though.
I don't have CZ so I can't have a look.
The screenshot looks ... well ... awful. Please tell me that's not the best looking part of the map.
Lighting needs work. It's not fullbright, but it almost looks like it is. You said the screenshot doesn't reflect the lighting in the map, but ummm....it does.
The occasional bit made me cringe but generally the brushwork is ok.
The complex jagged hole thing in the floor, ewww, at least make it shallower so it seems a bit more realistic - what causes that kind of damage anyway? Look at the damage as it is now and try and imagine what caused it. I think, in it's current form, you would need a pnuematic drill (or similar) lying around nearby, to suggest that someone had been having fun with it on the floor. I think it's a good idea to try and explain why things are the way they are in your maps. It would be easier to explain the damage if you made the whole thing shallower though.
Other bits of your damaged walls and stuff look okay. Just that one in the floor made me go Ewww
The texturing is good, apart from a few little errors (like the overlapping water texture which flickers like crazy).
I like the rain effect, it's nice. You've also made the walls look a lot less boring by adding variety to them. Good job.
The layout- I actually think it's pretty good for an aim map setup. There's cover which looks like it'd be fun to use. I like the way the players can effecively fight both ways across the map if they wish.
If you made the lighting look pretty, and fixed the other few problems, then it'd be worth 4 stars.
As it is now, it only gets 3.
mcmitcho is quite obviously a model for society.
It's obvious that you know how to put entities together, and there's a couple of bits of neat brushwork that hint that you have more ability than the screenshot above shows.
The reflections are completely off everywhere, and you need to sort them out. Cubemaps, man.
The longish corridor outside the starting room, with the mostly locked doors, is too repetitive and having all those combine locks so close together on every door only adds to this repetitive-ness. Subtle variety is the key to making such areas look pleasing. Also, the lighting is way off here. It's ugly -- and where is it even coming from?
You've used too many of the sexy looking combine shields outside, and the fps really suffers when looking at them all in the street. You'd get a better overall result from getting rid of most of them, and use the large amount of resources you're currently spending on them to add a whole shed full of detail brushwork and other entities. There are many effects you can employ which look nice but don't hog your resources like those funky translucent shields tend to.
Also - you're drawing the shields most of the time. Have you noticed how your fps fluctuates wildly when you walk down the staircase? Or even when you turn around on the spot somewhere? Here's why. Observe this screenshot -
http://img34.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=65860_warzone0000_122_711lo.jpg
(In case you've not seen it before, that's wireframe mode, which is dead useful for testing how the engine is dealing with visibility in your maps)
That screenshot was taken when I was standing inside, halfway down the staircase, looking at the wall. As you can see, the engine thinks that the player can still see outside, even though he definately can't. This is bad, because the engine is still drawing all of the area outside, and everything in it. Often,this won't matter tooooo much, but here you have a crushing amount of complex models being drawn uselessly, and a lot of the time. If you can't fix this with hint brushes (it might be tricky to do so now), try an occluder or two, with triggers to turn them on and off depending on where the player is. I saved a bucketload of fps on a recent map by doing this kind of thing. Just don't leave occluders activated all the time - they suck up resources themselves.
Or just get rid of some of the models, of course
The texturing in general needs work, although there's a couple of bits where it's passable. I can't decide if the walls in the cafe area downstairs were made that way on purpose, or if it was just how it turned out when you made it. Either way, they're the best looking walls in the map. The cafe though, feels VERY empty, and once again the lighting is explained poorly - two bathroom style lights stuck to the ceiling in seemingly random places...hmm. Fix that, and fill up a bit more of the floor space - and put some stuff on the walls. At least some decals! The doorway to outside is rather bland too. Put some trim on it.
Overall, well, in it's current state I wouldn't be anywhere near happy with it if it was my map. But I keep looking at it and seeing that it's not all bad -- there's definately potential here, and I'd like to see you improve it a bit, and hopefully stick some kind of story and gameplay in there.
First thing to do, put a few cubemaps at player-head height down the length of that corridor. After you compile it with the cubemaps present, type 'buildcubemaps' in the console (in-game) and just look at the difference it will make to the corridor.
Good singleplayer maps are far too rare.
So keep working on it!
I found it tricky to place extra props well without giving one team an advantage over the other. This is something I definately need to practise, and the main reason I left much of the actual playing area clear of props.6 hours + 2 bottles of wine
The skybox is monumentally screwed up, but I managed to just about fix it. Fly around in noclip though, and you'll see how far off it is.
It's a fact that if your PC has the power to run smoothly in a high resolution, then it will be easier to aim than it would be in a lower resolution. There are simply more pixels on the screen for your cursor to point at.
If your PC struggles at high res and you get low fps, the benefit is negated and you would be better off at a lower res where you get more fps.
But yeah, everyone's different, and personal preference (and what you're used to) plays a role. But it's not just preference, there is a scientific element to it as well.Yes, I realise that you didn't vote your own map - that's good.
So, carry on.
And, in the big picture, I suck. I have so much to learn, that I feel dizzy just comprehending the learning schedule.
The more you know -- the more you know you don't know.
You can't hold back inspiration though
It's nowhere near being worth 4 stars.
Will have a look later.
Penguinboy is right
Higher res makes aiming easier --- because you literally have more pixels to aim at.
However, it is massively better than anything else I've seen you post so far. And you said that you made this a year ago? What's going on there then?
I think I'll give this map three stars. It might actually be fun to play, and doesn't even look too bad.
That said, it could still be a LOT better.
You'll get a lot further that way, believe me.
The last map I completed took me two months. And that was one part of a larger project, which in total took me the best part of 7 months. That's putting effort into a map.
And anyway - maps aren't rated on how hard you tried. They're rated on how good they actually are.
And I hate being mean, but you irritate me. Your maps are terrible, but you mouth off like you're some kind of expert. I predict it will be a looooooooong time before you make anything that is even mildly average.
Anyway - nice outdoor area. I built the cubemaps no problem, so I'm not sure what problem you had. I can try to upload it later (I'm at work again right now) - assuming this message doesn't disappear too.....heh
Arf.
When I get home from work (in 6 hours time) I will definately have a look.
Veeery nice.
- Poor texturing
- Poor lighting
- Small, and not in a good way. Uninteresting layout.
- Laggy. For a map this small, it's really bad. This is mostly because of your inefficient brushwork. You've tried to make nice indentations in the floor, but it's done all wrong. For example, the r_speeds are 900-1200 while looking straight down at just one tile of the floor where you've done this. And you've also just made one pattern, and copied and pasted it several times. This could easily be OK, in a large map, but in such confined spaces its boring to see the same obvious pattern in the floor every 5 seconds.
I really struggled to find anything nice to say about this map - but I always try (these days) to say at least one thing positive about any map.
But all I could come up with, is that this map is slightly better than the very first thing I ever made the first time I ever opened Hammer -
which no-one is ever going to see.
Practise. A lot. And do some reading on how to make your brushwork not make the engine cry in horror. There's some tutorials on this site, and also in many other places on the good old intarweb.
The most original old-CS map I've seen in awhile. Some great ideas. I especially liked the shuttle and the switches to lock down different areas of the map.
Although this map is quite confusing at first, I'd imagine that once a group gets to know it well, that it would make for a great game indeed.
I didn't have the space skybox texture, so that looked a bit odd because the default Half Life one showed up instead. If the custom skybox was there, it would have been even more awesome. But as it was, I just pretended it was there, based on what your screenshot above shows
The brushwork is fine, not legendary, but pretty interesting in places. The texturing is pretty good too. The r_speeds are a bit high in places but that's not really much of a criticism these days.
I noticed that when you crouch in the shuttle when it is moving, the shuttle stops moving. I thought this could perhaps be both a good or a bad thing while playing for real -- I'm not sure.
It seems a bit odd in places that you can pass right through some of the iron girders around the sides, but I can understand how it would have been hard to make them solid effectively.
It's not perfect - but it's very good. So I give it - 4 stars.
Anyway, moose has emailed me the real wads now anyway so it should work fine for me later on.