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Man, I remember that thread. That's quite a blast from the past. Modular level design can be a real time saver in more modern engines. That's basically what I'm currently doing in Unreal and Unity. In Goldsource though? Eh, not so much. BSP maps thrive when a designer isn't restricted to a tileset.

The difference in Unreal is that the assets are converted from .map files to meshes, so if you ever need to make any changes to one of the modular pieces, you simply update that mesh and then every instance in the level is replaced in a couple of clicks. In Goldsource, you'd need to painstakingly go back through the whole map and make sure every instance is fixed.

In this map for example, I would say it looks a little too basic. I would fully lean on the modular assets a little more and make them far more detailed, but then add clip brushes to stop the player snagging on them. I would also say that this map suffers in terms of small details as a result and it's hard to distinguish between certain rooms. It all just kinda blurs together and if anything it makes it feel very obviously grid based, where the engine allows for more interesting looking areas using curves, arches, angles and so on.

Also, did you place any info_nodes at all? The enemies seems especially braindead for a map with such simple layouts.

Hi, thanks for your opinion!
The idea of "modules" was born when I accidentally stumbled upon some blog about the game Skyrim. I didn't place info_nodes on the map Was the map brightness well balanced? I probably had the wrong brightness settings in my system. I tweaked the map a bit and edited the file in the download.