WIP in WIP, post your level screenshots!

Quote from Froyok

Yeah, not very fun. I must close hammer before (or after) launching the game because my viewport become black. Only a restart of hammer work to get my viewport back.

Before you launch the game to test your map, minimize hammer. I had the same problems with the regular source SDK and that's the only thing that's worked aside from restarting the editor.

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If you launch the game first, and then launch Hammer, that won't happen, and you will also have access to steam community (-hijack disables steam community it seems)

I'll have to try that as well, thanks Happy!

Thx for the tips, I will try it !

Short project I am working on for L4D2 (survival map) so I can actually get something finished for that game for once. Really wanted to play with colour correction for this one and make it quite dark with little colour. You can prob still see the line between the skybox and the game world not quite finished with it yet.

Now more lighting and maybe different colour correction in different areas to break it up a bit more I think!

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sarge mat

Wow, it looks beautiful! I really like the colors.

Looking pretty good, Sarge! I like the way you organized the large and small clutter to help provide guidance on where to go (or at least that's how it looks from the screenshots). I would add in a few high contrast lights in appropriate areas to help guide the player more, as right now it's pretty samey and monochromatic. Where does the playable space end on this map? Are you using geometry or invisible walls to block players in?

But theres no colors

I'm a big fan of desaturation but as Buddy said - whole scene is based on variations of classic grey color... Also I don't like that staight line of bushes/trees and house's proportions are a bit out of "classic" vision of the typical house (I mean, something in this house looks not usual).

Quote from voyager

sarge matWow, it looks beautiful! I really like the colors.

Cheers

Quote from Serenius

Looking pretty good, Sarge! I like the way you organized the large and small clutter to help provide guidance on where to go (or at least that's how it looks from the screenshots). I would add in a few high contrast lights in appropriate areas to help guide the player more, as right now it's pretty samey and monochromatic. Where does the playable space end on this map? Are you using geometry or invisible walls to block players in?

Quote from Buddy

But theres no colors

Gona look at what I can do with the moon in terms of light and a guide for the player, also thinking about more than one colour correction to break things up a bit. I am really going for the lack of colour thing but maybe can change it up a bit, though out the map. Might have gone too far towards grey.

Needs more lights for sure, some areas I didn't show really are too dark and there is little contrast. I just want to be careful how I add light, don't really want to add bulbs etc.

I will post up a top down view tomorrow, but the player is blocked in by geometry all the way round.

Quote from seir

I'm a big fan of desaturation but as Buddy said - whole scene is based on variations of classic grey color... Also I don't like that staight line of bushes/trees and house's proportions are a bit out of "classic" vision of the typical house (I mean, something in this house looks not usual).

Yea I will take a look to see what I can do with the bushes, might be a bit over used in general.

A bit too long maybe. Could make the main room a bit smaller so it does not look as stretched.

Anyway thanks for all the comments guys, will spend time with the lights and colours tomorrow to see what interesting things I can get going on.

had a play around with the FlowGraph today in lunch. Its soooooo easy to use . I fucking love it. At first I was confused as to how to create a flowgraph until I realised you actually attach it to one of the objects in it. Once I had that figured bam, patrolling boats (although every time since it first worked it sinks straight away [Blocked Image: https://migrationtest.mapcore.org/public/style_emoticons/default/mapcore_smilies/emot_shakehead.gif] ), helicopters etc.

@ Sarge Mat, I agree you need some color. Maybe one color for contrast. Maybe you could add some red fog/light behind the trees? It would be totally unrealistic but totally awesome. Also looking at on a less than ideal monitor it is very difficult to find the fore/mid/background, in the first two screens it all melts together. so maybe there could be a bit more contrast rather than the same tone in varying hues of gray.

check this out:

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All photos have a bit to dark black spots, human's eye makes it more bright because of color depth - photo camera sensors are blind for such a big black/white gradients.

Cheers guys. I went in and made some selections with the colour correction so now the sky is much stronger along with blue colours. You also get kind of interesting results as you pass your flash light over surfaces. Gona keep working with it and will update soon

The Meat Pack. Coming in Summer 2011. This is Map 2. Map 1 will teach you how to solve Map 2. Map 3 will twist around what Map 2 meant. Originally I wanted to make it about the industrialization of food / food science, but I need some decent props models of raw beef slabs. I think the env_projectedtexture spotlight might be too strong, still figuring out how to use it.

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Looks cool, CJ. How easy is it to do the new lighting?

I have a question on a L4D map I am working on... do I need to tag anything special on weapon/item pickups so the survivor AI know to pick them up, or should they do that automatically? Or is this one of the things I should just adjust the positions of the objects a bit (like raise them up)?

New lighting is okay. I'm still not sure what settings have the largest effect on shadow map quality. Even with "High," sometimes it's really pixely and sometimes it's not. Argh. Optimization also looks like a pain in the ass... you have to manually set "cache this shadow volume" on every prop_static or something?

Also found out that swaying foliage is some weird combination of hacks that I never would've figured out on my own.

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To have swaying vegetation in your map you must have an active env_wind entity and your plant models must be prop_static with the Ignore surface normal for computing vertex lighting set to 'yes' or '1'.

Update on this. Played around with the colour correction settings and added a few lights. The house is also not as long now though its hard to see in those shots.

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Still too dark, broheim. Your map should look dark, not be dark. Up the ambient lighting a bit. Also your bright lights are way too concentrated. They should light up the area around them a lot more.

Done and it has helped those dark areas a lot. Gona get rid of the light on the ship it don't do much for it and looks stupid from some angles. Will also look at the one by the tractor and get a source that spreads out more rather than just up.

Can't you just place point lights to simulate lighting bounces?

Quote from Serenius

Can't you just place point lights to simulate lighting bounces?

^ this!

Remember making games is one huge hackery and trickery. Whatever gets the job done!