Journals

Working on a very gothic inspired build with some really nice looking real life reference images. I'm of course taking liberties here an there, but I think it's definitely gonna be a show of what I can actually do as far as making architecture, and it's helping me get a little more comfortable with just adding more complex decorative geometry. I'm really just trying to see how much I can push the engine with the scope of the build and the complexity of the architecture. Stay tuned, I'm currently about 1/4th the way done and I started about 6-7 hours ago, so it's gonna take significantly longer than most my maps.

**UPDATE 1**

This is by far going to be my biggest map. I don't even have the two side towers on the cathedral finished and haven't even started on the main cathedral part yet and it's 2800 brushes and the BSP is 2.63mb. This is likely not gonna be a map that's going to be played on and just strictly a show of what I can do, so I'm gonna just really focus in on detail rather than function in gameplay or any other real purpose...basically I won't be adding stuff I'd normally do to make the deathmatch experience more fluid and fun. I really love how the map is looking so far, and I might even experiment with more texturing stuff, though honestly the cathedrals I'm looking at don't have much variation in that department so maybe I'll just stick to what I know and not deviate too much cause it already looks fine.

I finally found a way to make something like cushions in HLDM. In quake live there's a tool texture for it, and I was a little disappointed to see it wasn't in Half-Life (maybe it was only added in later id tech iterations or maybe it was just never added to Half-Life). BUT I found a way to make the gravity trigger act as a cushion. I know this probably isn't new, however it's new for me and it makes it easier for me to do some of the ideas I have without effecting the actual gameplay too heavily. Maybe there's a better way to do it, but I tried looking it up and I got a whole lot of not related stuff, so this is what I had came up with. if anyone wants details just ask, but I won't bother saying it here cause I don't know if it's already info everyone knows and I'm just rehashing it.

While trying to finish jump arena, I decided to try and add a secret to the map, but in doing this I went down a rabbit hole of experimentation and learning how to manipulate the tools given to me from the gold source engine. There's a lot more stuff I can do with gold source entities rather than the idtech 3 quake live ones, and I kinda got, and still am, sidetracked from actually finishing jump arena. I know there's probably a lot more I could do if I learned how to code for the game, but I really just don't feel like learning all that right now, so I'm just kinda seeing what I can do with the tools given. I'm thinking about how I could use this, or maybe halflife 2 with the more advanced source, in some kind of multimedia project, but I need to think of a smart way to incorporate all the elements so it doesn't just feel like a virtual museum with music.

My main goal of this project is to help get people a little more interested in making fun, fluid, and interestingly designed deathmatch maps, for all different deathmatch games. I have found myself really loving the old deathmatch/arena style of gameplay, But I don't have many people to play with so I have mainly focused on duel maps, though I do have a few bigger Quake maps that I never finished.

You may notice in a lot of my maps I only really like to focus on architecture, and not a lot of the texturing or the fancy wall geometry, because honestly, for me that stuff doesn't fit with what I'm doing and has been a massive waste of time when I've tried to implement it. I just like to keep things simple and make sure it's fun and fluid to play on.