Mmm well I really want to make this map, I've wanted to make it for a long time, ever since I played rogue spears version of an airliner hostage situation. Also the real point of this map is to bring some more exciting and realistic scenarios to CS, there might be alot of well made maps from valve, but the plots seem to defy logic, quaint European villages? It's like when ghost recon came out, they suddenly changed from fighting middle eastern terrorists, to fighting russians, I guess because of 9/11. They have to be politically correct, but that doesn't mean they also have to hide from the reality of the world.
Although I'm starting to see another reason why valve haven't made a remake of cs_747, because it's just too damn hard making it worthy of source. For a start the plane itself is huge in terms of polys and that's not to mention the 100s of seats and other objects inside (a real 747) and of course the map itself (would have to be huge to fit a 747 in). This is my real problem, finding that fine line between reality and what people can get away with on their computer. I do not want to make a cheesy plane with a 10th the number of seats or windows, all spaced out so you could park a car inbetween them. But if I could get away with what you say Habboi, I could go for some major coolness.
I'd love to just make the whole thing a model, make every window sunk in, with dozens of rows of 3 - 4 - 3 seats, but can the average joe's machine take it?? I doubt mine could :(.
When I first started making the plane I made it in hammer, but the brushes just couldn't be manipulated the way I wanted (unless I wanted a dump truck with square wings). So I started modeling again with xsi and that's when I realised I didn't know jack. You really have to be quite proficient in alot of things if you want to make a good map involving many models, photoshop, xsi (or whichever, xsi SUCKS btw), texturing etc etc. And this map certainly involves alot of models, possibly hundreds lol. According to my calculations, there would have to be at least 25 seperate models, (fitted together later in hammer) just for the outer plane to look how it should. So as you can see the task at hand is difficult, but I intend to finish it, even if it kills me!! lol
Oh and thanks again to all the people that have given me their advice on various bits