[WIP] Dm_cloudcity (updated 2006-09-05) (Final beta)

    Nice work man,

    yeah I think you should drop the broken road bits, they don't look good anyways.

    And for cover, maybe have some sort of small control centers, like

    the models that are used in HL2.

    Glad to see you are still working on this mate, turning into quite an epic project. Good call on remaking the hover cars - new one looks much better.

    Progress:

    The LAN is over, and we all did have a really good time. I got lots of valuable help from Teddybear and we remade almost all of the custom textures I made . Lots of stuff has been either added, changed or removed since the last update, however i dont feel im ready to post pics just yet.

    Currently im drawing spaceships and commersial ads for the map aswell as struggling with the final (and most difficult) optimizations. Im also playing around with throwable objects and how they change the gameplay.

    Currently they work great and are alot of fun, but the problem is that i will probably have to make my own props before the final launch (wooden boxes doesnt look good in a sci-fi environment) and i know very little of modelling. Hopefully i could get some help with that from another friend.

    Thats all for now. Hopefully I'll be able to give you a big update with lots of new stuff in a couple of weeks.

    Alright, time for a big update on the project.

    Its been a while since i showed any images, but now i think its ready to reveal the almost final version of dm_cloudcity.

    The list of features is too long to state in one go, i think its better to just write some comments below every image.

    Here we go:

    [Blocked Image: http://www.leveldesign.nu/bilder/skit/cloudcity/dm_cloudcity_a970016.jpg]

    Lets start with this "overview". Actually i find it very difficult to make an overview of the map since it is to big both in X and Y -axis but also in Z axis.

    The skyscrapers are so high .

    Anyways. This scene has gone some big changes, however most of them are optimizing stuff, but i wanted to add more color into the map, so I made more commercial ads, aswell as warning signs informing the inhabitants of cloudcity district to stay where they are, or else they get "terminated". This actually has a story behind it, but i will not reveal I just yet.

    Many of my textures in this scene has been remade with help from Teddybear. However its not very noticeable from this angle.

    [Blocked Image: http://www.leveldesign.nu/bilder/skit/cloudcity/dm_cloudcity_a970004.jpg]

    Here you can see the new spaceships of Cloudcity all of the new ships are painted by "hand", or should i say photoshop? . At first i hoped that i could make the ships func_tracktrains and then add normalmaps to them, but it didnt work out very well since the big dreadnaught seemed to overlap ships that actually was closer to the player. In general, the ships behaved very buggy as tracktrains, so i decided to use the more safe "scrolling texture" technique .

    The patient one might also witness a chase between two ships across the sky...

    [Blocked Image: http://www.leveldesign.nu/bilder/skit/cloudcity/dm_cloudcity_a970031.jpg]

    Here is a somewhat changed area. I thought it would be fun if I added graffiti and trash all over the place. The result is quite satisfying i think. New textures in the ceiling aswell..

    [Blocked Image: http://www.leveldesign.nu/bilder/skit/cloudcity/dm_cloudcity_a970006.jpg]

    Heres an image of the warehouse. not much has changed, except for new textures, and of course a soundscape.

    [Blocked Image: http://www.leveldesign.nu/bilder/skit/cloudcity/dm_cloudcity_a970009.jpg]

    In the early days i had a big brown carpet on the floor in this room to give it a feeling of luxury. The place was supposed to be a waiting room for passengers departing from cloudcity. Though I had lots of complaints from people wondering why the hell i had that carpet lying on the floor. When searching for other solutions i found an image of an hotel with a marble floor, and i thought that looked quite good, so i decided to make for this room as well. I also added the city-symbol on the floor as reminder who is in charge. As you can see, it resembles the one the combine use. However mine is more skyscrapish i think .

    [Blocked Image: http://www.leveldesign.nu/bilder/skit/cloudcity/dm_cloudcity_a970007.jpg]

    Heres the elevator shaft. I added red light in the shaft to the left, instead of white to indicate that something has gone badly wrong there. The atmosphere got alot more hostile that way, just the way i wanted it. The newly added soundscape helps out with that quite well. Ive also added automated freight elevators in adjacent shafts.

    [Blocked Image: http://www.leveldesign.nu/bilder/skit/cloudcity/dm_cloudcity_a970040.jpg]

    I couldn't really figure out how to add crates and explosive barrels into cloudcity at first since i didn't know any modeling. However one evening when i did a walk through of the current build with a few friends I got the suggestion to "simply" re-skin the current wooden crates and the barrels. All i had to do was to de-compile the models, make an entry in the .QC file to point at another texture location and then recompile the models under a new name.. Sounds easy right? Well.. It took me at least 6 hours to figure out how to do it. Thanks to tons of bugs and stuff i almost gave up. However the feeling when i finally made it was quite satisfying . The crates might need more polish, but I'm quite happy with the barrels. All tagged with the cloudcity logo.

    [Blocked Image: http://www.leveldesign.nu/bilder/skit/cloudcity/dm_cloudcity_a970012.jpg]

    Heres an in-game image of the construction site that i showed early pic's on about a month ago, or was it two? I found it very hard to make a good overview in one image. The place fells alot better in-game than it does looking at this image.

    [Blocked Image: http://www.leveldesign.nu/bilder/skit/cloudcity/dm_cloudcity_a970048.jpg]

    Heres the Lab again.. Not much has changed except for new textures and a soundscape.

    Other changes/additions:

    Added sound, everywhere.

    It took some time, but i finally managed to add soundscapes in all areas. I had big troubles finding a suitable soundscape for the outdoor area, so I made my own. Its a mix if sounds from Hl2 as well as a mixed recording from a highway in Texas i found on the Internet. The result is quite good i think.

    Added support for team play.

    Ive also added spawn points for team play, however i haven't had the possibility to see how the game play works in this mode, yet.

    Weapon placement completely remade.

    I decided that the old placement of weapons was quite bad, so Ive been tweaking it like mad. Thanks to my "testing-team" Ive managed to make the map alot more balanced, however more testing is required.

    Custom textures remade.

    Almost all of my textures has been remade with help from Teddybear.

    Thats all for now. The map is VERY near its final version, there are a few bugs and glitches left to kill... All i can say is sooon.

    Wow. That looks really awesome, especially the cars etc. in the sky. The only thing I would suggest is new textures, but if you're not good at that then don't worry - it looks cool but the "combine" metal look doesn't work too well with a sky city, in my opinion. Still, awesome work.

    Holy hotness. Not sure about the marble floor (need to see it in action to see what the shader is doing), but the rest looks amazing. This map has come a long way.

    Awesome stuff!

    The first screen is so vibrant and full of life and colour. Loving it.

    Your warehouse could maybe do wwith a bit more colour in some of the textures there - maybe just use some trims or change the colour of the supports to make them stand out more. I too am not sure of the marble. Perhaps a differnt colour or some sort of design on it? Maybe just a box aroun d the cloudcity logo and then some use that blueish trim (which I think could do with being a bit darker) a bit more?

    the first two shots looks really cool! gj

    love the light spots and how the colorful signs blends with the dark surroundings...

    rest of the pics looks kinda empty and plain...they need some more detail, spice up these areas and you got a really cool map!

    When you jump/fall off the edge, you can clearly see the bottom of the level which is a bit of a problem. Not sure how you could fix that, except perhaps fog covering the player's view when they fall down there.

    Progress:

    Ive been solving most of the issues and made a compile with HDR; as I expected the map didn't work very well with HDR because of its "darkness".

    I have concluded not to implement HDR in the final version.

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