Custom Gears of War map - duckncover

Here is a semi-polished beta version of my map. Any comments and critique would be greatly appreciated. I worked for 2 months learning the engine (previous 2k4 experience) and figured I'd dive into KISMET. I've got a lot more finish detail to go to make this a 'shippable' quality map, but I think I got the main gameplay down as well as a little story.

Download the map here, including instructions for installation;

http://%7boption%7d

Here are a few screenshots;

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What would you suggest for the lighting? I can tweak the post-processing volume to tweak the overall color away from brown, adjust the ambient lighting or remove it completely to make dark areas darker, or tweak individual lights and add accent lights to put in a little more variety in the color of lights.

Good feedback so far. I think I'll look at the entire map on the lighting side and add some more meshes and detail over the weekend. I'll hopefully have some screens to post up next week. I know I just posted this up, but has anyone had a chance to play through it?

Quote from KungFuSquirrel

I haven't had a chance to play it but want to toss out a couple quick comments - there's some flashes of potential awesome in here, especially in the second and third shots.I'd say pull back your DOF kernel size a bit; I've found in my fiddling at work and in UT3 that more subtle effects play a bit nicer.

I think a big thing missing is a strong lighting connection between the world and the sky. It looks like you've got a reddish directional light from the right, but look to the left - that's bloomed out like crazy, and there's no illumination at all. UT3 has a lot of maps lit with multiple directional lights; you might consider that here. When I see the front of the whole thing or that third shot with the pillars in front of the bright blue, I want to see that highlighted in the world too.

Thanks for the tips. I've got some really bright directional lights trying to reflect the skybox, but I think I need to tweak my postprocessing (as you mentioned) and crank up the lights. I think my ambient is too bright and its made me go lazy on the lighting. My next steps are more detail meshes/decals, another cover pass, and then final lighting. I'll work on it a bit tonight and this coming week.

I worked today for around 8 hours updating to a new version of the map downloadable here;

http://www.budokhan.net/maps/gears/SP_d ... erbeta.zip

Here are some screens to show the new lighting and modified entrance and side path cover.

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Quote from Hourences

The lamps dont seem to give off enough light considering their intensive glow.You got too much (gray) fog.

You need some more subtle ambient lighting, with a subtle color.

The left of the building outside needs to be bright to fit the sky.

And I dont get how you can keep up with its horrible unstable editor and lack of support:P

The editor used to crash a ton, but at this point it is fairly stable as long as I am not clicking away when an autosave kicks on. Saving often in multiple revisions helps as well.

Thanks for the notes. I'm gradually tweaking the lighting, mesh detail, and BSP textures as I have time to finish out the map. I know the texture set and modular layout is a large part of why areas look very similar. I wanted to grind out the gameplay and cover first before going in and doing the final visual wash. I might try to destroy part of the cathedral in a later version of the map, but getting the crash-prone terrain to work and finding creative ways to use the meshes to get the look I want are the big hurdles. Is there something special you have to do to prevent terrain from permanently corrupting the level? I've tried to use terrain twice now and both times it somehow corrupted my map so I get a crash every time I load. Luckily, I had a recent revision I could go back to.

Btw, Hourences' tutorials are a great resource along with icecreamyou.com. Those two sites alone helped me jumpstart my work in UE3. Having some UE2k4 xp helped a bit too.