Xen Cryo - Compo 15

cool

Way to raise your map count, Muzz. I'll download to see if it deserved it.

this was very kewl-I love the style of the map. It would be so awesome if you would extend this into a single player game!

Kind of neat, although that barrel thing you were in near the end had all these strange brush errors on it. Still, it's nice.

I know... i used the Alt+E technique to create that Xen-ish barrel. This will cause some vertex to go off the grid which is what you see ingame...

Great map, awesome terrain, great VM work.
Definately worth a download.

What's the Alt+E technique?

Make a brush, go into vertex manipulation mode, select 2 or more vertices, and hit Alt+E. I don't know the real name for this technique though.

Looks hot from the screenshot, I'll download it and possibly review it later.

Yeah 5 from me.

Awesome map!!

Thanks all!

Maybe ill expand this map...

Mmmaaaybe...

Very nice, and I'm glad I played it again since the compo!

Very neat Xen architecture at the Xen part--sleek, nice brushing and textures. If you revisit this, you might try textlights for the outside area instead of a light_enviroment to achieve nicer, not-so-flat lighting, but it still looks fine. My favourite part of the Xen area is the the big voluminous room where the transport takes place.

The earth end looks superb too--is that predominant wall texture an original HL?! The only letdown for me in this again, nicely stylized area are the barrels, which though had an interesting construction, still looked kinda plain--maybe the texturing? The brush errors srry mentioned didn't bother me at all.

All in all really great, and a well-deserving 1st place, Good Work!

The ALT-E thingie is called scaling muzz ^_^

The Xen landscape was extremely impressive. I liked the 'dried-out swamp' near the beginning where you have to run through the canyon, and come to a depression full of xen_hairs. The first time you jump into a cocoon was also amazing. It looked like the start of a very impressive transportation system, that would definitely not be something you would find on earth. The way you have to enter the cocoon would work very well in a low-gravity environment like Xen...except that you didn't lower the gravity in this map. One other thing I noticed was about the transportation system itself: the room near the end looked too much like a warehouse, and the other cocoons and the crane to carry them only strengthened this impression. In the original Half-Life Xen levels, there are always plenty of alien slaves running around. A good Xen transportation system should be able to carry lots of aliens around. It should also be non-linear. You did a pretty good job on this, with all the hallways branching off of the one your cocoon started in. However, the cocoons can only carry one individual, and you can't really see out of them without jumping. It had too much of a "Residue Processing" feel, where you find yourself stuck in a gigantic mechanism with no ability to control it.