dm_lars

Is that dome on the left made out of alien flesh?

This is pretty cool. It's got some errors, but that's to be expected in a BETA. Just don't turn you flashlight on in the tunnels, or you'll be in for some pretty bad "choppy flashlight syndrome".

Yeah.

Stretched textured + low light = horrendous shadows

The textures bite wiener in this release, but this will be addressed in the next version

oh mai gosh! medipack R2-D2. teh pwn!

wow cool, but didnt like the skybox

I know it's supposed to be a really flat, open desert, but I think it would help a lot if you made the ground sloped upward near the edge, and then put clip brushes right before the slope, so you couldn't just look down into the skybox. You wouldn't be able to read the skybox writing though!

Wow, I never thought of that one... Thanks Srry!

Hahaha.. Crazy stuff..
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+ Architecture. Some nice stuff in the underground area, I also liked Lars's house and the R2 medkits. The upper area looks somehow plain. Maybe some extra cliffs/other stuff? There was too much of those controler things (the models all over the map) too. The robots and the ammo disposals had some great detail too.

+Lighting. A bit dull in the upper part, although it fit the theme, imo.

+/- Ambience. Although the robots made some kinda sound, it wasn't enough, imo. Some space-ish ambience or wind sounds would have been great.

+/- Texturing. Some textures were too stretched or badly aligned (the cliff textures horribly stretched in the underground part, the computer textures there), the craters could have been textured in a more interesting way too.

+/- Layout. Not too complex, but a bit strange for HLDM.

+/- Gameplay. The weapon placement was good enough (love the ammo disposals) and the snark traps were also a great touch..
Although it needed something more, can't say, what it is, but it still needed something more. Perhaos another bigger area, some secret areas? Your choice.
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Overall - a very nice and original map. It needs lots of work, but if you make some changes in the layout - it should be a really great map to play..

Thanks for the comments!

Yeah, I agree with everything you're saying, though some problems come with the changes you/I would like to make.

I wanted to add a sarlac pit, more props and some rocks to spice up the terrain uptop, but I'm at my limit of sorts in terms of bruswork.

In order to add any new brushwork, I have to null/funcwall/remove existing brushwork. So pretty much unless I add more models or seriously redesign the layout, It will be really hard to new structures...

Ambients...

I agree 100% All the sounds I have are HL and are to subtley volumed... There is actually a wind ambient, but it's very quiet. I found it overpowering, especially with the other sounds if the voume for it is too high. What I need to really do is untick the "play everywhere" flag and place seperate wind ambients on the upper parts of the map, and turn up the voulume...but that's work

I agree 100% 'bout the textures too. No excuse there...

In regards to the layout, I also wanted to add more than one "entrance" from one area to the other, but ran out of resources like I said. Is there a way to increase how many leafs VIS can handle? Definitely have to look into that...

So If I draw the courage to redesign this and/or figure how to increase the max leafs, I will definitley make most of the brushwork/layout changes.

Custom sounds and textures on the way... I want to add a version of Luke and Leia's theme for the background, as well as "real" sounds for the droids , speeder, etc.

From my PM to Rowley (beware, long post):

Hey rowley,

I've taken a run down the map now. smile -

Well, first of all, it's a nice theme to go with and despite using HL textures, you pulled the theme off nicely. Congrats for that. I really liked the R2D2 health chargers and the nice style of those houses.
Obviously there's the over-stretched texture problem (it's just too much) and the somewhat simple lighting, but hey.

But, let's go directly to what I think is a big problem: the layout. The top is basically a kilbox++ (++ for the cover wink-wink - ;)), the lower part is an extended killbox (extended because there are some doors, all leading to the same half-circular path around the centre). With some more height difference and some better connections, I can see the lower part become something interesting, sort of an arena styled thing. The upper part... despite it's funny gimmicks, doesn't really lead anywhere.
There's another thing and that's the moveability. The narrow corridors hindered movement a lot - you may want to keep that in mind next time.

You already said in the maps comments that you were running out of resources. May I suggest trying some layouts first? Just some bare-bone crete-textured layout levels? It's the approach I've taken for my current HL2DM map dm_mudanchee, and I found the first 2 or 3 layouts to be quite worthless. Only after some playing I found a tight, well-flowing one that I later tweaked after playtests. Right now the map isn't finished yet, but the gameplay already stands and it's easy for me to spread detail across the map evenly and this approach also allows me to see where I can still put in details and where not.
The creation of Detention went actually very similar, although I believe that's more luck than wisdom. The first few attempts resulted in a meagre, all-too-similar looking and hard-to-navigate map. The final outcome, despite some flaws, plays well (looks a bit so-so but hey smile - :)).
So instead of letting your resources run out after detailing the crap out of your map, spend them first on the core gameplay, then use the rest for details (which often should be sufficient to get a nice map if you planned it right).
Your map actually reminds me of Sector Gamma. The fine-looking Chernobyl reactor level I once was working on. It looked fine and detailed and I've put a load of work into it, but in the end I got stuck on an unworkable layout, with way too few connections between the (badly planned) combat area's. A real shame - a proper planning would've saved the map. Luckily the textures served me well for The Playtest. smile -

So basically, I recommend starting fresh with a new layout. This map could then serve as a theme test map, something that gets you in the right style and mood and where you can pick elements from to put into the final map.
This is often an uneasy choice, but believe me - the result will be so much better and you'll be happy you did it.

A little more on layouts: I've learned a drawing method from a German Unreal article that lets you draw the core structure of a map very easily. It's basically drawing each combat area as a circle, and each connection between such area's as a line. Run through some good playing maps and try to make some schedules of them like that. Often, a map has about 2-4 main combat area's, with each area having at least 3 connections to other ones. Most connections only cover small distances, often no more than 2-4 seconds running. Longer connections usually aren't straight, or provide more cover or dodge possibilities.
Then there's the cover - some area's provide great cover against some entrances while being vulnerable to others, some entrances put you out in the open while others allow you to take cover quickly.
There's also height differences and their effect - the lower player should be given some advantage against the natural cover advantage of the higher player.
Also, think about warning signals and traps. In Unreal, the flashing sound of someone picking up a health vial told the experienced player someone was coming up around the corner. A shallow pool of water serves the same purpose. There's also the broadcasting version - when someone gets the RPG the sirens go off, for example.

More of a rant about planning, layouts and gameplay mechanics than about your map, but I think you can benefit from such an approach (and from the stuff I learned from that article wink-wink - ;)). The theme is fine, the layout is weak.

Good luck revamping this one and may the force be with you! wink-wink -
Captain P

Some great constructive criticisms! They're hard to swallow at first, but all of your advice makes perfect sense to me.

I was definitely focusing too much on the theme and gimmicks, than the fundamental, most important part of a map--the layout!

How valuble an unbiased opinion is! No one wants to admit that there masterpiece has any flaws whatsoever... but now I can move forward with new ideas

Thank you Captain P!