Yeah I agree that it might be a bit harsh right now but on the other hand I like those colors and as said its not just about realism but also about the artistic side. Tho they could have been softer.
I tried to prevent myself from slipping into coloring everything too monotome again, like I sometimes do.
Hudson stuff looks cool.
-UT2004=2.5
-This entire 2.0 and 2.5 is marketing bullshit. Apart from a set of bugfixes and VERY minor additions both versions are utterly identical
The base code of 2.5 does not support normal mapping and such features. Normal mapping has nothing to do with the engine and is a plugin licensees can install, which can also be implemented on the 2.0 version.
You are looking for a game that supports them, not an engine version. UT2004 does not support normal maps. Warpath for example does and comes with UED. The support for it in all Unreal Engine two games is often crappy implemented tho.
Peris I fixed the tree and rock brightness and re uploaded it.
Zacker I had a dark sky first but people were bitching at me that the dark sky didnt fit the brightness of the terrain so I dumped the dark sky. I tried to add more yellow in the sky but didnt work out either.
original three photos
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Sorry, no game or level stuff again 
Ive been trying to get in to matte paiting the past year and its starting to go smoother and smoother every time, Ill get there in a few years
[Blocked Image: http://users.pandora.be/Hourences/castle5.jpg]
Based on three swedish or norwegian holiday photos of a dutch couple (Sasja Ligtenbarg), used with full permission.
Your lighting is very monotome and repetitive. All the lighting everywhere looks identical and exactly the same brightness, color and so on. There is zero variation and thus zero composition resulting in a boring lighting setup. Your lighting is very boring and very basic because you only have one source of light. A single element cannot create composition. Composition is created by looping the viewers eyes lead around a room or area. Let his eyes be attracted to things he see but never lead the path to a dead end.
It doesnt shine because its all very dark and monotome.
Lights are on mean letting the headlights of cars and choppers give off light, Make those big lamps in the camp give off light like they would in real life if it were a dusky setting. Place little candles inside houses and let offices emit another type of light and color.
You have fire in your screenshots but the fire does not appear to influence the environment at all. They do not cast strong orange lighting.
Perhaps the BF engine isnt good at small lights but it just doesnt shine right now lighting wise. The atmosphere is pretty solid.
The atmosphere in some pics is decent but I dont like the sky. It prolly is BF2 content but it looks rather blurry + there are too many different messed up colors in your pics now. A very yellow brown terrain and fog but a bordeaux sky ring and some blue and pink above that. Strange color pallet.
I also think the map needs a lot better lighting. You only have a sunlight right now. It doesnt shine. Its a very dusty rather dark setting and it would really add up if the lights were on everywhere
Good stuff indeed.
I hope the site stays active, ill place a link to it on my new in progress level links page.
Very nice tex altho theme wise it could have been a little more original. Little point in using custom textures if it will make your map still look like the retail maps. But the tex itself are nice
Possible port them to some other games too, games where these kind of textures are more special instead of the standard
Quote from ReNoFair play if that is true for you, but you can't just make a statement like that and assume it applies for us all. Working for a small company, I can say that we are very much dependant on revenue from sales.
I think this is a fair point, but I don't agree with it. I don't pirate games, as though they are fairly expensive, they are still very much within the price bracket that makes them affordable to average people. Photoshop or 3dsmax? I don't think so. $3000 or something around that mark means that these aren't products aimed at enthusiasts, and it is enthusiasts that make mods. Your point that it is through the piracy of these products that our industry is what it is today is completely true, but you can't take that argument and say it also means pirating games is ok - that just isn't a logical step. I'm against pirating games but I don't mind so much when a software developer has their product used by people who were never potential customers anyway.
I havent said that downloading games is fine because they are prolly made or influenced with illegal software. I am just saying that there are a lot of people out there who never download a thing and start crying for an admin when someone mentions the word "warez" while at the same time download and play like 5 mods/games that are made with the warez they object.
Point is, if you really dont like warez you should never download a mod/custom content map.
I am merely pointing out the hypocrism of some + the importance/impact of illegal software on our industry.
Even if you work for a small company you might not see a lot (if any) of the sale money return to you so...The only real benefit good sales have for you as a dev is that the company wont go bankrupt....doesnt sound right to me, it should benefit me as a dev because I made the game.
I as a dev should not have want to have a high number of sales only because I am affraid I might end up without a job. I should have that motivation because I want to earn the money for the all the work I performed.
Edit: To better explain my last point:
Most the times releasing a game can only have two types of effects on a developer.
-The Negative Effect: The company goes broke and you loose your job. This obviously has a negative impact on you as a person.
-The Neutral Effect: Your game does ok/well and you get to keep your job but beside a possible small pay raise nothing changes at all for you personally. Once project is out and you just start working on the next one just like you did on the previous one.
Whats lacking is a positive effect. The money to reward you for making the publisher earn a shitload of money from your creation. Thats not right imo. Thats why I said I cant really be bothered if people buy my game or download it. As long as it becomes succesfull its fine by me. I want people to like what I made, one way or another because I am not getting any positive effects of it anyway.
I used to download a lot but quit doing so since i became lazy, earned enough money and the downloads became too big.
Two things about pirating tho:
-I personally don't care at all if people download the games I worked on since most of the time we as dev's don't see a penny of the sale anyway. And even if we do its not enough to make us rich in any way so... I find it most importantly that people like it and play it a lot than if they pay for it.
-Without pirating the game industry wouldn't be what it is right now. Every single game or mod out there has been created with either warez or at least some influence of warez on it. Every dev pretty much started with a copied photoshop or 3dsmax. By downloading mods you indirectly support software warez. All those people who think so holy of themselves shouldn't download any mod.
Just played through tomb raider legend, good game just a bit short.
Brings back the lara fun altho it feels a lot easier these days but I guess thats because the controls are actually responsive this time
More open and non linear levels would be great for Lara.
Nice screens, looks good and consistent. Better than some games:)
Unrelated to the weapons but a few more small lamps around would live it up more.
-The satisfaction of finishing AND releasing something (if someone actually plays it is less of my concern)
-Building something and making my own thing. Ive always had a problem with following other peoples story. For example there are people who completely love star wars and completely immerse themselves in its story, why would you want to do that when you got the ability to design your own star wars?
-Its new, unlike lots of other creative works such as paintings this form of design and art is brand new and thus very unexplored. Lots of things to explore and lots of possibilities.
-Problemsolving is fun.
-Escape from the real world by making my own world
-I like to see things grow. Half the time I play RTS games just so I can spend a few hours building a huge base.
I once started messing around with the duke nukem ed but didnt got far at all.
It really took off once I got Unreal 1 with UnrealED 1.0
-Often you have light but no lightsources such as lamps
-If there is a lamp the light doesnt seem to be cast by the lamp, you need strong sourcing, highlights around the lamps.
-Cloud texture is a temp texture? Hopefully
-You cant just cut out doors like that, you need to trim of the sides so its not such a harsh edge
-You cant use the same texture for both the wall and the floors
-The level has the cube syndrome, Its very easy to recognize the original cubes you started with and often it feels like a cube with objects in instead of a room and thats always bad. The room with the spacesjets is terrible at that..
-You cant use an egyptian yellow brick texture next to a high tech gray green metal texture in a spaceship. The colors dont match, its illogical and the transition is too harsh.
Its normal to make a lot of mistakes in your first map, it takes most people dozens of levels and a number of years to get anywhere near good.
Thanks a lot for the plug
vivi-> calm down
Each map took a month part time work, so four to five weekends and a couple of evenings. The final tweaks I did after the release took 2.5 days a map.
Work had to go fast since it was a contract job and ofcourse the textures and meshes were delivered to me so that saves some time.
Glad you all like it
I first really didnt had hope for them but after my extra week of polish Im very happy with the result myself as well.
The maps started out pretty bad, also because the textures and meshes DE was suppose to give me were really unfinished for a long period of time. Its very hard to map "blind" by placing unskinned things you have no idea of how they will look at the end or how their skin will look.
Credits to chicoverde (awesome guy btw - Epic, Digital Extremes and now iD) as he helped out later on with the maps by adding terrain and extending my caves. I then took over back from him and touched up the caves with more effects, detail, extra architecture and lighting between the cave and buildings and other improvements.
Might make a custom map for it, but on the other hand perhaps I should wait for UT2007
Warpath was suppose to be Pariah 2 but it went a little bit wrong and ended up as a budget shooter.
This is Unreal Engine 2.5. Same generation as UT2004 but with normal mapping, bloom and some pixel shader effects added. Typically only the rocks and terrains in the game have normal mapping though.
And I didn't had concept art (I almost never use concept art) so most things I designed myself but ofcourse the textures and meshes given to you do influence your concept a lot.
Last year I made a bunch of multiplay levels for the fps Warpath and since the game has been released recently I can now finally show the stuff.
I did all the gameplay, floorplan, design etc and creating the architecture, lighting, texturing etc. Most environment textures and meshes were provided by the Digital Extremes Art team.
Credit especially to Jean 'Chicoverde' Rochefort for a lot of the mesh and texture work + help with various of bits like the caves
CTF DECAY :
http://www.gamedesign.be/Hourences/work ... /decay.htm
DM THIN ICE :
http://www.gamedesign.be/Hourences/work ... hinice.htm
Small selection of the pics found in above links:
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[Blocked Image: http://www.gamedesign.be/Hourences/workpics/thinice/thinice14.jpg]
[Blocked Image: http://www.gamedesign.be/Hourences/workpics/decay/decay4.jpg]
[Blocked Image: http://www.gamedesign.be/Hourences/workpics/decay/decay9.jpg]
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NOTE: These level images do not represent the levels found in the game. They do however represent my work. I gave both levels an extra week of polish and fixing after the game got released because I was unhappy with the retail's level state.
Original concept and looks, lighting could be better sourced though.
I also think that a concept like this would do great with some cool shaders and materials
I thought crysis was going to be a vista exclusive game? One of the reasons to get people to upgrade, no ?
Crysis looks real cool and those speculated specs would surely be cool but if it requires vista Ill skip the game.
Im going to boycott vista as well. I dont want to be forced to things, loose a lot of valuable pc power to complete crap, be spied on and gain nothing in terms of productivity.
