ff_silo

[mervaka]

Donny: HA! the hoff man pwns yuo! (yes im rather wasted, just got back from the pub)

Epothon: ye the roof aint textures properly in the slightest, and im looking for a semi-circular truss to mount lights on.

thanks again guys for the feedback :D

[o_t00l]

i think it'd help gameplay if you widened the ramps and maybe even opened up the rr some. right now it reminds me of the original shutdown and it gives me shudders.

[o_elvis2049]

cool tiletextures

[mervaka]

ok ive got a test .bsp to distribute to playtesters, what else do i need to pack with it? custom textures? or are those in the bsp

[o_sh4x]

Originally Posted by Mervaka

ok ive got a test .bsp to distribute to playtesters, what else do i need to pack with it? custom textures? or are those in the bsp

You'd need the game to playtest your map, nah? Otherwise it's just running around looking at beautiful textures.

[mervaka]

well im gonna get peeps to look around for anything ive missed, and their thoughts. then its a quick hl2dm game to test DMing

[mervaka]

ooookay now really, i need a few more peeps to take a look around for me, give some in-depth feedback

any takers?

[o_d3pth charge]

Well from what I can see, you really need to fix the tunnel ceilings. You can see the lines and it makes the ceilings look tiled... no offense but it doesnt look good and severely takes away from the rest of your map/the beauty of source. Before you do anything else, fix those ceilings so you cant see the separation lines.

[mervaka]

which tunnel?



this one?


i was gonna ask people for feedback on the map layout and scale more than anything though. texturing and lighting are far from finished

[o_darknight]

I'll help if you want.

[o_vertical]

I'll help as well if you still need. Shouldn't be hard to find me ;D

*points to contact buttons below*

[o_imbrifer]

Mervaka - The #fortressforever mirc channel is always open, and at least a couple people are at their PC's - so I'm sure if you went in there any time you could get a few takers.

And sure, I'll help. I might not give you the most fluffy response, but it'll all be constructive :)

[mervaka]

cool cheers guys

[mervaka]

more screenshots :D

ive started work on the surface now, as much as i love making snow, i think im starting to hit the displacement limit :(

the top down shot i took for the shape of the battlements so far:


the top of the square spiral:


looking out the main doorway, leading to the square spiral:


the main doorway and enclosed part of the battlements:


the open curved battlements:


looking out from the lift:



again, i'd love to hear some good in depth feedback :x both artistic and relating to the technical problems im getting with displacements if anyone knows:


there will eventually be either a brick wall extension there, or a rock face, so eliminating the displacements there isnt an option :(

get posting guys :D

[o_drtom]

outside looks very funky!

spiral looks interesting, im not sure if it would encourage spam or open it a bit more for offy, its hard to tell.

the top down shot makes the base look a little small and basic, looks more like a 5v5 map? but its kinda hard to tell so far!

i hope fd is quite a distance from a spawn or any key areas or it looks too easy to defend

however these are all guesses and it looks intruiging!

edit: went abck to page1, aha its this map! in which case it certainly looks interesting ! didnt realise most of ma will be underground :P i wanna see how it all links together!!!

[mervaka]

cheers for the prompt feedback :D

Originally Posted by drtom

spiral looks interesting, im not sure if it would encourage spam or open it a bit more for offy, its hard to tell.

this spiral's in similar proportion to the 2fort spiral, except a LOT longer. it has 4 doorways, and is the main way in, although not the only way ofc :)

Originally Posted by drtom

the top down shot makes the base look a little small and basic, looks more like a 5v5 map? but its kinda hard to tell so far!

that shot's taken from outside the skybox at a distance, so its certainly not small ;) its bigger than the xo2 yard, i'll find some way of showing the scale another time.

Originally Posted by drtom

i hope fd is quite a distance from a spawn or any key areas or it looks too easy to defend

ya, i made the fd quite a chokepoint for D, but i wanna see how it plays before i change it.
EDIT: i may well have made it too hard actually :o ah well i'll still see how it plays. also i forgot to mention theres a tertiary respawn point on the open part of the battlements that starts off inactive until an engineer fixes it, but an enemy demoman can disable it again etc. again, i still wanna see how it plays before i remove it if it comes to it.

Originally Posted by drtom

went abck to page1, aha its this map! in which case it certainly looks interesting ! didnt realise most of ma will be underground :P i wanna see how it all links together!!!

i'll PROPERLY this time organise a gather or something to playtest this map when its nearer to completion for people to have a wander round and see for themselves any errors i missed and any further comments etc.

again, thanks :D

[mervaka]

ok just a few more screenies :D

added a fair few windows to the FD hallway:






yes i know the vent's floating above the snow, ive fixed that :)

and heres that wierd lighting problem im getting with the snow:


again, keep the comments rolling in pwlease :x

[o_ginger lord]

Outside lighting is nowhere near matching the skybox, it throws it off completely, the problem texture looks like its normal map is off. Did you make it or is it stock?

If its stock, try reloading the map and seeing if that gets rid of it. I had a problem like that when I got my new GFX card on my old PC, I had black lines every 512 units on all displacements, I reloaded the map and it was fine. Went away after that.

[mervaka]

odd :S i used the eyedropper tool in PS for the skybox colours. i picked the light colour from the sunny bit and the ambient from the opposite side, a dark bluey colour, as recommended at 3dmike.com

ive gotta admit its the first time ive paid any real attention to sky colour, so i might need a bit of a helping hand on this one :/



and regarding the snow: i'm using a custom made vmt to blend two existing vtfs together:

"WorldVertexTransition"
{
	"$basetexture" "nature/snowfloor002a"
	"$basetexture2" "nature/dirtfloor005c"
	"%tooltexture" "nature/snowfloor002a"
        "$basetexturetransform" "center .5 .5 scale 1 1 rotate 0  translate 0 0"
        "$basetexturetransform2" "center .5 .5 scale 4 4 rotate 0 translate 0 0"
	"%keywords" "snow"
}

so do i need to make a normal map? cos i dont think there was one to start with :/



thanks anyway, i'll continue to look into these issues

[o_ginger lord]

Odd, if it doesn't have a normal map then its not that, did you try reloading the map?

For the sky, what skyname is it? sky_day01_08?

Try this, and then tweak it around:

Pitch Yaw Roll: 0 102 0
Pitch: -45
Brightness: 249 199 106 600
Ambient: 102 97 126 400

Its probably a bit too saturated, so you may want to lower the tone of the colours after you try it for the first time.