Comments

"we will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it."

This sound interesting, to say the least. I'm actually eager to see how this thing plays out.

Hey satchmo, I too bookmarked the White House website, there's just too much stuff there that I have to go back and check out! In case you have not done so yet, I recommend you check out the "Agenda" section, on the "Defense" link, there is some surprising info there which is coming from a supposed liberal democrat administration. Here's a piece of what I just read there:

QUOTE:
"Expand to Meet Military Needs on the Ground: Obama and Biden support plans to increase the size of the Army by 65,000 soldiers and the Marine Corps by 27,000 Marines."

Now, I was always under the impression that that our new President would be hostile towards improving the armed forces, well....I guess I was wrong.

What do you think?.......

Not really. I know the world is full of people whose attention spans are so short that they can't manage to read any more than 20 words before giving up. The whole TL;DR crowd. Their loss, I figure...

I'm a storyteller. I could just post "I'm working on a new level, yippee!" but really, what would be the point?!

That's my starting point as well.

Yeah me too, my rooms:source map will be my first complete source project. And yes good luck to us source noobs! = )

I feel like i'm wasting my time still mapping for goldsource, but it's so much fun, it's so easy, and i'm so familiar with it, i don't think i'll ever quit it completely = )

You don't know how lucky you are, being ABLE to move to source.

Finally.

Geometry: Has nice construction value to it. The windows are of a clean style, and the modern glass wall around the pool makes for a nice touch I've rarely seen in maps. I like that part. It fit well with the map. However, the 'ramp' like glass and floor could be tweaks. I would rather see the glass removed from the natural part, and stairs added to the path along the sides. The room itself is generally blocked out. Thats ok, but it needs more angles, pillared walls or collumns, or other archetectural interest.

Textures: They are fitting. Color choice is ok given they all stay within a cool tone. Can't say I recognize them from anything which is good. (Custom?)There is a decent mix between the defaults and the custom ones. Nothing really clashed against the existing quality. I didn't see a problem with scaling since marble and materials like that can easily get away with a little tiling. The down scaling made things crispy and clearer than the normal settings.

Lighting: Could use some color to accent the fountain and the water. Pools often have little lights around the endge, or perhaps lights around the room itself. The lighting coming through the windows was ok, but it seemed like the only source.

This map would greatly benifit from lighting sprites

Ambience: Its good for what it is. Nothing special or complex, sound in Goldsource is iffy anyhow.

Entities: Friggin awesome how the fountains worked! I can't imagine how they were made.

Overall: Impressive, well made, and nice to look at. Given its for the Rooms competition, gameplay is out of the question. For what it is, its really nice, and knowing how far you can go with the entity work, I wish to see some of the same effort applied into the design of it. Its not hard to find a nice looking room or building and copy some of the features. Its all about time and effort in the end. I would love to see more maps like this in the future!

Sorry for the brick of text, I just like this map. I do get a slight feeling of hastiness from it though. Seems like all of that effort went into those fountains

Hehe, good luck Rim.

HOLYSHITBULLFROGCRAP!!!!!

Good stuff. It takes a bit to get used to the lighting really and just knowing which textures look good together if you use the default ones.

I've been modelling for Source and getting better but UV mapping is pissing me off. I spent a few hours UV mapping a train I made (more like a tram) and I find that the textures are a little stretched even on a 1024 texture. Gah D:

The transparency and participation part sounds great.

You too.

Sweet.
That's my starting point as well.
Good luck

I was as uninterested in the inauguration as your son.

Finished it! Original style of gameplay and I'd like to see more of it. Did anyone use the "Channeler" which points left in 3.6 because for me I just needed the two vortex thingies.

Nice little game, but I don't know why you're saying it's hard. It was really quite easy. The two-colour thing in act 4 looks promising.

Obama is awesome!

That's why in his inauguration speech, he tried very hard to tone down the expectation.

Did you ever tought of, why do I never got comments on my journal?

Pepper is right, whether you believe he will be a good president or not doesn't seem to matter. I've talked to several people, and from what I can tell, they think its important because he's black.

I would hope that he will be a great president, but really, time will tell, as you said satch. People do have huge expectations for him, which concerns me slightly considering his slight lack of experience.

I just hope he has an input that helps the credit troubles over in the UK.

I don't think it's historic because he's black. I think it's historic because I believe Americans just elected one of the greatest presidents in US history.

That is a valid reason, and he is up to quite a heavy task if you'd ask me.

Most other people i spoke see him as a black man instead of a suitable president. It almost seems like people dont give a shit about the his quality's and skills.

We had that in our school library during 3rd period. I wish I had a spare 3rd period today.

Distinguishing things based on appearance is instinctual.

Isn't that how we distinguish between different types of headcrabs or Combines?

But what allows us to rise above that is to look beyond physical appearance.

I don't think it's historic because he's black. I think it's historic because I believe Americans just elected one of the greatest presidents in US history.

I don't care that he's black or white. I just think he's going to make a great leader.

But I guess the real test is time. We'll see what happens in the next twelve months.

Really, it is just another human being elected. People that are thinking this is historic really shows us that prejudice is still very alive in most people, for the very fact that we distinguish people on colour and exterior features instead of what they really stand for. Quite fascinating...

Hehe. He walked on by. I hardly think he even witnessed it

meh got bored at 3:4

He seemed uninterested.

After 3:6 there's one more level, but it's one of those "introduction"-esque levels.

Still, a great game.

3:6 is a bitch, tell you what.

I read about this a while ago, also gave it a try, its pretty nice and the concept is very original! I remember reading that there making a full game off it!

ouch... i feel for you.

Any kind of comments/criticism work for me as long as the one commenting has played your map/mod. People playing the stuff you've worked so hard on is definitely the best reward any mapper/modder could ask for.

And agreed with WorldCrafter on the comment thing. We're pretty much spoiled by the constantly insane level of quality in your maps. Seeing how you're going further and further towards perfection, it's pretty normal for people with expectations too high to get nitpicky.

Anywho, congrats on the feature. :>

I always try to give a good mix of both negatives and positives for the maps I comment on. I do like your maps, but that won't stop me from saying what could be improved. I expect constructive criticism on my part, and I will always give it to the people whose maps I comment on.

Believe me, I've improved a lot from the criticism I've received on my own maps and by reading comments on others' maps as well. However, there is some undue criticism that is just people whining/nitpicking about small things - which is useless to gain any sort insight from. For example, I've had people whine about a brick texture I used on a Source map - simply because that texture was the first on the list and they use it as a base texture instead of the dev textures. Makes me wonder if they use AAATRIGGER as a base texture when mapping for GoldSRC since it shows up by default.

Personally I would prefer critical advice over "LOL THSI MAP IZ AWSUM", because the former will help you to improve for the future, whereas the latter will just inflate your ego to unstable sizes.

HOLYSHITFUCK LOL!

but if you sit there and complain about the minor details of negative points,

Yeah i've noticed in a lot of maps here people are overly negative and petty about even the best maps sometimes, but like strideh said i didn't really notice any comments like that for riverpool. And like you and WCD said, if you constantly put out amazing work, expect the judging to be a litte harder too.

I know i tend to overrate maps a bit, but it fucking kills me when some assholes take a map as good as this and give it 3 stars(which i've seen a lot on this site). especially people downrating maps who don't even map themselves!!...just makes me want to hurt them...

Keep up the good work, you're an inspiration to us all. = )

yeah ive been taking a break from Hammer for several months now heh heh heh

though i love exploring the different FGD files for mods, all the cool models and stuff. yeah

Agree with Strider, and yes, the link doesn't work. I actually want to listen to it, too. Got a mirror?

HOLYJEZUSFUCKCHRIST

HOLYSHITFUCKBULLCRAP

That link doesn't work.

Err, Rimrook...
The majority of the comments where on engine trouble, and there is hardly a bad comment among them. If people couldn't get it to even work to begin with, why did you even expect these comments? Sounds a little bit too much like a plea for attention to me. :/

It is a very nice looking map, but literally coming out and asking for "HOLYSHITFUCK" comments is just.. ugh.

Agreed. It's my turn for greatness anyway. Gimme some love.

I get the feeling TWHL is sort of de-sensitized to your work.
If you want some reassurance: You've churned up many of the best looking maps I've ever seen, and you tend to keep raising the bar with every new "serious" map. You also have a very unique imagination that you are excellent at translating into a model or texture or map, that is very inspiring, but would be hard to pull off for others. You're great, you're fantastic.
But we're used to it, and over time, the Hawthorne effect has hit hard. The vast majority of your work is certainly worthy of "HOLYSHITFUCK", but it's hard to stay surprised every time. It's also probably because TWHL has followed every tiny step you've taken since Castle Rimrook, instead of seeing the giant leap that others would.

If you had a brother who was a great actor, would you be surprised to see how well he did in every new movie? Probably not, but others who are unfamiliar with him might see his movies and be like "HOLYSHITFUCK!", and you could say, "Yeah, he's a damn good actor"

Or maybe I'm just a dick.

/dicksucking

I'd say this is your best looking map to date, bar none. It's hard to single out any single aspect, because the whole thing looks so great. It sounds great too. All the wind and birds made for a very immersive environment.
Though I REALLY liked how the trees swayed in the wind; it made the map feel alive. I don't think I've ever seen another map that did something like that.

The only complaint I have is that you clipped off the waterfall area. I wanted to get closer, but I couldn't, and many tears were shed.

It sounded like a random guess, but JeffMOD got it right.

I beat you to it:

http://twhl.co.za/forums.php?thread=9888

My version is balls compared to yours.
If you can, complete it. Im not going to continue on mine.