Really nice stuff bja. Got a lot of details going on there.
Just noticed the lower part of that brick texture seems to have the normalmap green channel flipped? just looks like its on the lower part as if the tiles are actually going inwards?
Anyhow sweet scene.
Quote from skdrGet it on Steam and I'll buy it
Hmm. Weird. Seems perhaps like you rendered it with a cage.
Goto "options" in your render to texture window and uncheck use cage.
Also try and move your lowpoly plane further back perhaps.
It does look like some ray missing/fckup kinda.
Also I'd recommend you to add some support edges close to the extrudes on those large plate areas if you don't want those too look all that roundish later.
Really awesome game!
I really like pretty much everything about it.
Woo nice going mazzle 
I still don't have a 360 but I'm definitely gonna buy one very soon and this is on my to get list.
Yeah it usually goes really quite quick if you have some nice edge loops to collapse It is very hard sometimes to create good additional LOD steps but its worth some extra time to get that right as it totally ruins a lot of the feel to see bad popping in a game.
I'm not saying it's wrong to use any tools for this but from what I've tried I rather stick to doing it manually as I feel by using a tool I don't only loose control over the how the acual mesh is optimized but also the texture mapping (which you usually want to keep as intact as possible when working with further LOD steps).
At first I thought you were talking about a highpoly that you'd use for baking the normal to a lowpoly that you want to create from the highpoly.
I don't do characters but it appears in many (most?) cases they build the lowpoly from scratch instead or perhaps work up a good lowpoly first then do the high.
Always by hand. Usually I start by making the lowpoly even, pick out what parts I'll need and then start working on a highpoly.
I haven't found the result with a tool for doing this even close to being good enough so far. Of course that may depend on what kind of mesh you're working with. Landscapes for example would work better to optimize with a tool than most other things.
Nice I like the 2nd, 3rd and last one most.
On the last one I would reduce the subtle cracks in the normal map a lot or remove them completely tho as they now kinda remove the metal feel of it.
Can be better to just keep such things in the diffuse and especially in the specular.
That brickwall I really like although there are some stuff you can add very easily to make it even more interesting IMO. Made a very quick and not at all good edit to the pic:
[Blocked Image: http://www.philipk.net/other/brick04rendxb1.jpg]
As you can see you could just try and vary the depth of the bricks, and of course maybe not as much but this is really easy to do in the normal by just adding a layer on top where you've painted out certain bricks with something darker than grey (good to vary the amount between bricks too) and just run the nvidia nm filter then mask those stones out.
Also adding a VERY slight angle to some of them in the normalmap will make it act nicely when in light. Doesn't need much at all but just to give the feel of not total perfection. You can also paint the bricks slightly different in hue and brightness in the diffuse to differ them even more.
But I'm talking very subtle stuff here.
These two things can of course be applied to pretty much any tile kind of design as with your floor tiles there.
Anyhow I like where you've been going with these. Keep up the good work.
Well here's a real HD one at gametrailers that isn't compressed to the max :
Will definitely be interesting to follow the development of this one.
nice review agree on much of it
goodstuff
Just finished Portal too. Awesome
Fkn awesome bobby!
I love the pic with all the stumps. Have to check it out ingame too.
Quote from Jenn0_BingThis is looking better and better. Im liking the first 2 screens, not so sure about the brush lights in the second.
Agreed. I don't know how much stock textures and props you're using but it looks like there's some new stuff in there right?
Nice, that has some good potential. But I agree with what the others said so far. Also the lighting looks quite boring but I suspect that is WIP as well
Looking forward to see more from this one.
Congrats on the release 
Saw some of the map at work. Will be nice to see the final result. This one could become really popular hopefully.
Quote from robert.briscoegot any good pictures of a forest fire watch tower? I could use another landmark.
Perhaps something like:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/201/5006 ... 0646_b.jpg
or:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/128/3765 ... 520a_o.jpg
or even:
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1416/809 ... 11e2_b.jpg
Tho for this map I think a more basic than the last one would be preferable.
