Comments

I see you've been working on your "boyfriend's" maps.

Well, I've never really been into Source maps, but this one looks really good from the screenshot.

No, I'm just telling you it won't.

I assure you, it won't.

... and compiled and slightly improved by me. I'll be giving this a full review tomorrow, just don't expect anything miraculous. You know how I am.

gb2/b/. If you say yourself that it's pure shit, I'm guessing it probably will be whether you've gone Habbo raiding before or not.

I know you could kill the Garg, I just found it needlessly frustrating, and I didn't find it worth my time after already playing the rest of the fairly lackluster mod.

Alright, first of all, since this is your first map, I believe you should have put it in "unfinished stuff" instead of "completed maps". It strikes me as more of a test map than anything else, and this isn't really what people are looking for when they go through here to download maps.

That's not what matters though. If this is really your first map beyond the simple cube, then you're doing a really really good job. You're definitely getting those entities down, which is obvious from seeing that func_rotating fan, the door with the button, the colored lighting, and the use of the transparent "{" grate texture. Most people get by without using these things for quite a while after they've started mapping. I know I did.

Anyway, you need constructive criticism if you're ever going to improve, not just compliments.

Something you really need to work on is your architecture. Now, I won't stress this too much, since you are a beginner, but this is an area you really need to improve in. You seem competent enough in the basics of it, but you really need to focus on designing something more realistic. This tower thing here, it doesn't have a real-life counterpart, and you can't really tell what it's supposed to be, or what its purpose is. I suppose that's fine for a test map, but if you're looking to move on to better things you'll have to start approaching this in a different manner.

Now, along with architecture, you're going to need to improve your texturing drastically. The ones you've chosen for this map are honestly pretty horrendous. You should never use the same texture you used for the walls on the floor, since not only will it make everything look very redundant, but textures that are made for walls aren't meant to go on floors, and vice versa. Other than that, your choices don't really make any sense. You need to grasp that certain textures are meant for certain places, and while it can be good to improvise, this often times leads to confused looking maps. At least when you begin, you should try and stick to the textures that are meant for what you're trying to do. (Visit http://wadfather.planethalflife.gamespy.com to download other texture packs if you find Half-Life's default textures rather constricting.)

The lighting is something else that got on my nerves. It's good that this wasn't another fullbright catastrophe, but you should always have your light coming from somewhere, instead of just placing light entities everywhere. TWHL has an excellent tutorial on texture lighting. Read that and you'll discover it's much better than what you're using now, since it requires an actual source of the light.

A few other details now (keep in mind that these wouldn't be mere details if this was anything other than a learning map.)

On the door at the bottom of the tower, the button you used was very oversized, and oddly stretched if I remember correctly. Textures should usually never be stretched out of their normal proportions, although they can be evenly upscaled in both directions if you're making large outdoor maps. Anyway, something else you could have done for that button is give it an animated texture. Then, when you pressed the button, the texture would switch to a different one, and the end appearance is quite a bit more appealing than a static texture. It just makes the map feel more alive and interactive.

Another thing I notice that seemed a bit strange was that your ladder used a transparent texture, but you didn't utilize this, so it was just black in the middle. You made the grating on the side of the building transparent, why no this ladder too?

Well, that's all for this time, and I'll give you a rating to offset the horribly unhelpful one that hydeph gave you.

Thanks. I was planning on having the lasers moving around by targeting func_trains on either side of the door, but I couldn't get that to work, so I just settled for the next best thing.

This looks like an example map to me.

It's a generally accepted rule, not something I came up with. I didn't know anybody disagreed. :

You shouldn't ever upload your first map. Ever. Train in private first.

Unfortunately I couldn't find a way to nitpick without being quite specific. :S

Oh... hey, was there supposed to be fog like in the screenshot? Because that didn't work for me, but I'm sure it would have fixed the draw distance problem.

What we?ve got here is another fairly good attempt at a Half-Life mod that in places falls just short of perfection. Now, I?m not going to say that this could have been one of the best mods out there or anything, but it certainly could have been lot better than it was, had the mapper(s) put a bit more effort into conceiving a believable plot, and polishing off the maps. And while I?m not sure of all the fine nuances in the plot, since all the text is in Russian/Latvian, the author?s brief description of it gives me a fairly good idea what I?m doing.

Starting out in what is apparently your apartment, you seem to detect that something is amiss. After getting what is in all likelihood a sinister phone call, you grab an axe that is conveniently lying in the hallway next to some dead bodies, and break your window open to crawl down to ground level. Why there wasn?t an escape ladder, I don?t know, but there?s a bunch of zombies crawling around for no apparent reason, and basic instinct tells you that you should probably hit them with that axe you conveniently picked up.

When you get outside, you immediately notice a glaring flaw with the mapping. For no apparent reason, somebody decided it would be a good idea to set the draw distance obscenely low in this huge environment. This problem persists throughout EVERY SINGLE outdoor map. What were they thinking? Not only that, but there is a definitive edge to this city map, and you can look right over into the skybox.

After nabbing a truck and escaping your whacked out neighborhood, you come to what could have been a quite stunning outdoor map. The ambience here is exceptional, and you?re surrounded on all sides by fairly well made cliffs and boulders, but yet again, the draw distance is set so you can?t see 100 feet in front of you. Damn.

Anyway, after bashing some more zombie heads in, you eventually come to the entrance of a facility built into the rocks. I?m not sure how your player knew it was there, but once inside, you?re basically going around pressing buttons and running through hallways, killing the occasional zombie or Vortigaunt. There?s almost no increase in difficulty throughout the entire mod. Almost.

This is where things get a little strange. You enter a teleporter in the facility, and appear to have been sent to Xen, but according to the author you are actually an entirely different person now. You do the standard annoying Xen jumping puzzles, and end up getting hit on the head with a stray rock (lolwut?) and captured by aliens. This is where things get REALLY strange. Apparently, you?re now inside an alien coliseum, and you?ve just finished praying in front of an alter (LOLWUT?!?) when you?re sent out to battle a bunch of aliens in an extremely difficult match. You?d better be playing on easy, or you?ll have no chance at this. After a wave of Vortigaunts attack you from all directions, a Gargantua is thrown in the ring. I never got passed this part, but your tolerance will be tested here. Not only is it seemingly impossible to kill this thing with the weapons you?re given, but the arena has a bunch of rubble that?s been poorly clipped, and you end up getting stuck on invisible walls and little brushes while trying desperately to escape.

What?s so sad is that the mapping here is actually quite good in places, but then they had to go and botch up the gameplay. My recommendation would be to avoid this, as I had little to no fun playing it.

I personally just change the pitch to something around 60, and then set the directional compass at a random angle. Can't go wrong with that, since it produces short shadows from everything.

No offense, but there are a million and one other example maps for this, and TWHL even has its own tutorial covering the subject.

Looks kinda good. This might be an improvement. I'll take a look at it when I get to a computer that runs Half-Life decently (or at all.)

TEACHES* ... You aren't a hillbilly.

Oh lawd, you rated your own map. That's low, Ghetto, real low.

Hahaha, you're using a picture from the default single player Half-Life 2 for a Counter-Strike 1.6 map.

mcmitcho, stop being a homophobe.

Super-stretched and software mode. Stretching textures is fine if it's for the sake of keeping r_speeds down in large outdoor areas.

It could be 800x600.

Contrary to what you may have been told by some people on the internets, caps lock is actually cruise control for lose.

That explains all the FY maps and all that other totally realistic stuff.

Anyway, looks cool. I might download it sometime.

How were my comments and ratings any less acceptable than Ghetto's were about my map, eh? I don't see you deleting his spamratings. :

He's just spamrating. I doubt if anything actually happened to his computer, or he even downloaded the map.

Those bastards at Valve never told me of this new "lol_" gametype. I'm going to send Gabe an angry email.

This is almost exactly like my car chase map for Hostage Situation, although it resembles the second level from Soldier of Fortune even more closely. Check that out, if you need some ideas.

Yes, that's one of the default Xen skyboxes. I congratulate you for not making me add six more TGAs to my gfx/env folder.

Somereason IS A WORD. As are bc, op, and w.

It has to do with the entity you used to place the model, not the model itself. It's certainly fixable.

Very very nice, but a bit cramped. It couldn't really be played with more than 4 people at once. It wasn't too different from your usual style, but that's alright with me.

The only thing I could think of that you could fix would be the ambient sounds. They're only coming from one point on the map, and it's horribly obvious with my 5.1 surround speakers.

I'm not going to bother pointing out what you did right here, since you did everything else as well as you normally do. I think my compliments would just seem redundant.

Is that all? Haha...

Your BSP is corrupt or something. It doesn't show up as a BSP file when I look at it in Explorer, it won't show in my maps list, and I can't launch it manually. I downloaded it again just to make sure, but I think it's somehow screwed up... :

Loved it, for the most part. Those scrolling textures were really nice touches, and I felt the lazarz were quite well done, although they did clash a bit with the rest of the hall. However, it was very repetitive, and used the same architecture all around. This architecture was quite well made though, so I suppose it deserves the four stars I gave it before.

Win.

IMMA CHARGIN' MA LAZER

(download and actual review to come soon)

Actually, you have to have the German install to get the Robots. Turning on the content lock only gets rid of blood, and keeps friendlies from dying (they just sit down and start moping.)

He was merely commenting on the irony of the statement.

Anyhow, I browsed through the map for a couple minutes in BSP Viewer, and I normally do, and it appeared to be very well made in parts, although lacking in others.

It was certainly an interesting map. You had a little house with grass around it, which then led into a large futuristic type area. I found that this large courtyard had pretty good brushwork in it, and you actually managed to keep the r_speeds fairly low for such a big area. However, the rest of the map was pretty... whacked. it had no theme, and there were all kinds of crazy things laying around. There were repetitive boxy tunnels, a prison room with WAY too much porn in it, and some other odd stuff.

Well, at least your choice of textures was good.

Yes splatzone, he's always an idiot.

Hunter is no spammer, and his maps aren't blocky (at least, not his recent ones.) Therefore, you're wrong. Good day, sir.

He was obviously trying to be funny. He failed.

It's probably got a virus or a Goatse picture in the zip. In any case, it deserves one star just for existing.

A surprise? I'm scared.

Pretty nice. Texturing was inconsistent, and you used way too many themes, but the brushwork was usually well made. You stretched some of the textures way too much in some areas, and sometimes for no apparent reason. Lighting was usually quite varied and interesting. Good job, but it needs more continuity.

You get better at it.

It's mostly about using custom textures for everything, which those original maps did. It really makes everything "fit" when all your content is tailored for your needs alone.

Can't rate it on its playability, but I did open it in BSP Viewer, and it looked HUGE. In a bad way. Like you could be wandering around the repetitive areas looking for the last person to kill for about ten minutes. It really needs to be scaled down, there's no reason it should be this big.

If it's one of your first maps though, it's pretty good. No blatant errors that I saw in my short view of it, and you used a lot of interesting angled walls. Also, I liked how you used background scenery as seen in the screenshot, although it would have been nice if this technique had been applied to more areas.