ol_downfall (Off Limits map)

Finished my second map for Off Limits, this design was made in collaboration with Forrest Dowling, who initially started this map over a year ago. It's been through a lot of changes but the core gameplay has been the same since it was constructed by Forrest. I picked up this map to finish it and get it ready for the Off Limits RC1 release. Here are some shots of it:

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More shots can be found on my website: http://www.wesleytack.com

Made for http://www.off-limits.be

Hope you like it, and a happy newyear to all ! May it be better than 2006!

- Wesley

Thanks for all the great comments everyone, crits are still welcome. No map is ever really finished as I'm sure you all will agree

Quote from atrocity

Somethings I would look into is turning on a couple of those street lights and give them a nice soft orange glow to compliment the blue overtones you got goin. Then I would work on placing more detail in the streets. Overall the map looks excellent, and is posted in the Finished work, but this is something I might have pushed at.

Thanks for reminding me, I was planning this but it totally slipped my mind (the traffic lights).

Here is a model I made just now to replace the Valve one and an ingame shot:

[Blocked Image: http://users.pandora.be/simon.wt/trafficlight01.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://users.pandora.be/simon.wt/trafficlight.jpg]

About the empty street comment, Off Limits has drivable vehicles, so I left them relatively empty so people wouldn't bump into objects all the time. Also for such a large open area having too many prop cars in the scene will be bad for performance (especially Valve cars, which tend to be a lot of poly's).

Here is a video of the map (before it was optimized, you'll see my computer lag at one point ). Now the map runs fine. I recorded with my photocamera, cause running fraps would have ruined my race

http://users.pandora.be/simon.wt/OffLimits_Lap_One.avi

I'll recompile it again sometime this week with the new traffic lights and other crits that would emerge.

Thanks!

- Wesley

Thanks for all the crits and comments, much appreciated !

FMPONE: We will make the cars destructible at some point, kinda like BF2. This plus some trip mines and Grenade Launchers will make you think twice before using the vehicle

RA7: Thanks! yes it's for http://www.off-limits.be/

RD: This map is for Off Limits, which will have an alien on every surface, to make things a bit more intense some darkness wont hurt. This will give both the alien some advantages as well as the humans. (if you walk in the dark, the alien wont be able to see you very good, as seen in this video demonstration: http://www.off-limits.be/mediarelease/m ... l-xvid.avi ). This is also the same for the alien, it can hide in some dark corner watching the people pass underneath it, if it wanted to).

Steppenwolf: Thanks! You are correct about the corners. But it slipped my mind on this one (I did it with Styx). And changing that now would mean a totally change of the whole level (street would shift, as well as the highway and buildings). So I'm not going to fix that anymore. It's kinda hard to see in the screenshots, but each sharp corner has a triangle that goes to the same height as the street level, this is so when you drive the vehicle over such a corner you wouldn't slip (as previous version proved ).

I did a recompile today with the new traffic lights, here is a shot I took of it:

[Blocked Image: http://www.wesleytack.com/images/downfall/downfall_033.jpg]

- Wesley

Mabufo: I'm sure it would be fine, takes 4 hours on mine (2 hours for each pass, since HDR is 2 passes). And vis takes 1 minute, on Styx it took 5 seconds. Downfall is a bit heavier cause of the large openness of the map.

About the interiors, I've had most crits on those, I'll do some hallway / office prop work this week, small things that will make them look better. I'll post new interior shots when I have them.

Why I left them so bland was mainly because the open areas are very big and open (a lot bigger than any official CSS map, I think the biggest would be Aztec or Nuke, and those are also pretty low on outside details). So with that I have to use a lot of custom props that are low detailed with heavy LOD models and also a good fade in/out distance setting. Occluders helped as well. But it was a lot of work to get it optimized and running smooth (both Styx and Downfall). But for the interior I guess I can add a few more poly's as long as I set the fade distance very short. So thats what I'll do asap

More soon

- Wesley