dm_torrent [FINISHED]

    im from toronto too, by danforth and woodbine.

    I love the map, i love the soft soothing feeling it gives me that makes me want to sleep.

    Aesthetically, I feel this is one of the best custom maps I've seen for source. It's got a very distinct and unique look to it. Like Mazy said, a few areas could use a little distinction in terms of lighting, but I would definitely leave the rest of it as-is.

    The windows outside are way too reflective for a rustic, beaten up place. They would barely reflect any light at all considering they're totally disgusting and filthy I'd swap the window texture for either broken windows or something a lot less shiny. Moreover, I'd actually board up some of your windows or have some broken window models made just to extend the theme somewhat.

    Additionally, it looks as if your fog isn't quite matched up to the skybox colour (nearly, but not quite). This isn't usually an issue unless you can see the total fade going on like in a few of your shots, this shot shows the problem in full effect:

    http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y299/e ... nt0072.jpg

    Finally, I think the env_sun effect you've got is a little too strong considering the rest of the atmosphere. All in all, top job.

    I was hoping I could get away with leaving the sky/fog discrepancy . It's actually worse when you're further back at the right angle, that shot there is almost tolerable (imo). But yeah, I'll look into adding skybox fog to clean up the difference in color.

    I have added/changed the color of some areas. However, it's mostly just been adding more green areas, opposed to the (I think) two I had in the available build. It's just kinda hard finding the right color without throwing off the pallet.

    Also I've increased the lightmap scale on a few of the corners that looked a little bleh. But for the last couple nights I've basically just been cleaning up stuff up with glview, trying to salvage what performance I can.

    I know how annoying it is, at least on my end, to have multiple versions of a map floating around. Maybe it's just a personal preference, but I'd rather not have too many, so my next full compile I'm going to try and wrap this sucker up.

    Here's a shot from one of the updated areas. I know, it's not an incredibly noticable change.

    By the way, thanks for the comments everyone.

    This is a shot of what was simply a narrow hallway, I've widened it a bit and added a nifty gate. You can see what I mean about the green not being all that different, but I'll see what I can mess around with to make it (and the other areas) more distinct.

    [Blocked Image: http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y299/erratic101/dm_torrent0001.jpg]

    I like the boarded up window idea...

    Quote

    Also I've increased the lightmap scale on a few of the corners that looked a little bleh.

    Have you tried using the face smooth panel to get your curves lit a little more evenly

    Oh, and I just noticed this sign is backwards:

    http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y299/e ... nt0076.jpg

    *edit:

    I just had another run around.

    It seems the main framerate problem is primarily caused by detail props (i.e. all the grass you've got assigned to the blend texture). Perhaps you could alleviate this load by setting it to fade out sooner, or use some area portals / occluders or something similar? On my 6800 Ultra, I'm dropping to ~50-70 fps in places, and half of the framerate time is spent on drawing detail props! You can definitely make this run smoother. At worst, you could thin out the density of the detail prop placement. Given the heavy fog, I definitely think you could get away with some optimisation, though.

    The ladders are pretty badly done, but it shouldn't be too hard to fix this I trust (I've not messed around with ladders extensively, so I can't say myself) unless it's a HL2 issue rather than a map issue. Quite a few of the ladders don't work unless I crouch jump onto them -- even the ones that touch the floor.

    There's a lot of stuff to get stuck on currently. I'd work on clipping things off, or making any small pillars/supports into func_illusionaries. This problem is exacerbated by the cramped corridors, so if you don't fix it before release, it will seriously hamper your map's chances of gaining playtime on servers. If there's one thing above all that pisses people off, it's bad clipping. A lot of the CS:S official maps have little edges and tiny pillars that impede movement -- every time I die I swear at the obvious oversights and / or laziness that resulted in many parts being not clipped off properly, and I don't doubt that other people feel the same way.

    Yeah, ladders shouldn't be a problem. I don't really have too much trouble with them, but I've become accustomed to pressing the the 'use' key to cling on to them. But your point still stands. Plus, some of the them just plain didn't have dismount nodes around the tops and bottoms. I was aware of this too...

    Doing a pass right now for possible snag-annoyances. And as for the signs, they reorient themselves after closing the .vmf. Besides, at a quick glance they look like they're in another language anyway, right? Not sure exactly what causes this. I could opt for decals but they tend to piss me off, lacking the flexibility overlay's have.

    Just a note, all the posters, except for maybe one Atlantic poster inside, are facing incorrect directions. But I just havn't payed much attention to them after I couldn't find a quick fix.

    [EDIT] Also, there arn't any sounds in the map. I've added some since however.

    What are you doing with the overlays that causes them to revert to their initial state? I've yet to encounter any problems myself

    I just set the u start / end to 1 and 0 respectively, instead of 0 and 1 (or v start / end, obviously). Perhaps hammer hates you

    Quote from Defrag

    Source is horrible at handling even just moderate amount of detail props like these. Detail prop rendering also takes up 30% in one of my rally maps even though there its just a few simple sprites around the map.

    Brilliant looking map, what I think would be a nice touch is a light touch of rain. The sky looks like its about to open up.

    Its a wonderful map, great job with the displacements.

    Definately a great map, with excellent ambience and style. Reno's comment on the cramped feel is correct, I doubt many of the corridors would be able to fit more than 2 players side by side. However I think if you could garuntee players wouldn't get caught on objects in these narrow areas, it would create a very tense style of gameplay, aided by the washed out and murky environment.

    Well polished, a pretty darned good layout, and excellent ambience definately make this map a keeper .

Participate now!

Don’t have an account yet? Register yourself now and be a part of our community!

Register Yourself Login