It has a lot of good points for the developers but for the users I could think of better ways to distribute things...
There is still a very large group of people that do not have an internet connection or broadband, those will miss out on your game and of the people that do have broadband some have traffic limits so they cant even download things like 4 gig games
Id also like to have something in my hands and not somewhere virtual when I pay money for something...
Too many lamps in both pics, too much light and Id place multiple pipes because now that single pipe feels lost and in the middle of nowhere like 
Still a low poly simple floor too
Why ?
Besides going to the other side of the planet
Already got a project but Ill try on maybe
I dont even have a highschool degree so was just wondering how the canadian goverment officials would respond to such visa application even if the application does has a company backing it, I assume and hope its not totaly chanceless but just a lot harder to get a visa like that
Im not interested right now but Im just wondering for later on maybe, how terribly important would a school degree be when you want a work visa for Canada ? Like absolutely imposseble or what ?
Light looks ok to me, its not real white either I think, more like soft blue no ? Blue > white
Is this me or is the left latern casting a shadow on the left wall in the first pic ?
If youre going to have yellow light you cant have white lamps. The latern tex is white while your light is yellow. Lensflares/Coronas inside them would help too with the glowy feel, or some other type of glow effect
Funny how source barely has trees too, in UT everyone uses the same old trees over and over again as well. Thing is, source at least has decent trees, UT hasnt so everyone keeps on re using complete shite trees
Quote from TequilaThe next version of Hammer had better support lighting previews or I will fucking cry.As for UnrealEd, the reason I didn't really get into it was the way you have to give exact values when hollowing out sections to work in. Is there any way to make it so you can drag stuff out ala Hammer, because I don't think I will be able to resist a dabble in Unreal 3 Engine mapping in the future.
Make a standard cube and go in vertex edit mode (top right button toolbar or type in "mode vertexedit" in command box then just drag the sides around in top down or whatever till you what you want
I barely type in numbers anymore
You dont use a lot of bsp anymore anyway
I cant judge texturing because I dont have enough texturing experience with radiant and hammer but never had any probs with ueds tex alignment, it does most things itself already. One thing that is missing is a deadsimple UV unwrap window tho
And ofcourse you have your favorite engine and an engine in which you work really fast or know really well, sure but that doesnt mean its all dependant on prefference. If for example an editor like hammer has no lighting preview its not just a fact of prefference anymore. Its simply a lacking feature and a bad thing for your workflow, objectively saw
Quote from ReNoThe problem is that I don't see much alternative. Any engine or tool that allows you to create many variants of the same image (eg. source offers different lighting models, automatic detail props like grass/plants, shader effects like reflections and refraction, normal maps, etc...), will need some sort of data to specify which options you are going to use. A simple TGA or BMP isn't going to do that itself - your game will need a proprietary format (such as source's VTFs/VMTs), and to create such a format from a standard like TGA will require further data (taken from an associated txt file, for example). The more advanced the capabilities of resources like textures become, the more steps there will be involved in creating them. Yes a GUI frontend would be nice, but there will be essentially the same steps needed regardless.
Ive created hundreds of advanced materials and shaders trough the past few years, I know how they work and what it takes to make materials but theres a difference between doing this the easy and fast way and using prehistoric txts
Ofcourse you will always need things like spec maps and normal maps and whatever else and ofcourse you will always need to be able of configuring those but the difference is in how you configure them, not in what you configure. A txt is not done, that is 1995like and were currently 2005 for crying out loud. Its not just source that does it, afaik doom3 is doing it the same way with txts not ?
You are saying the more advanced the materials become the more steps you need. Ofcourse but that also means that those steps must be done as efficiently as possible to reduce the time you need for the "longer than used to be" method. Basically txts slow you down and are not efficient, especially not when talking about those advanced and complex materials.
What you need is no compiling ! No exporting ! Simple importing ! Visual shader network creation (a la max and maya) ! And realtime updating and previewing !
As far as I understand source compiles a texture pack from the info it finds in a txt and then it gives you this vmt file or whatever ? So what if someone would be working on his level with custom textures and he would say "hey that wall is too saturated, let me adjust the texture" ? Wouldnt he then need to turn off hammer and recompile the entire package and then restart hammer to see a difference ? Because that would be -really- bad for your workflow..
I already had that feeling a few weeks after the game was released. I dont think valve cares tho, if you look to their contest, the rules and the results.., I think they find all the c17 style stuff just fine..
I want to make a hl2 tex pack at the moment but Im seriously put back by the sheer idiocy of needing txts to make game textures..in the year 2005...
The future is in tools and not in other crap, just like other things there is gonna be a point where graphics are already at its maximum (or at least near realism), where all games look great. The only difference at that moment why you would choose engine a and not b would be how easy it is to use
Quote from SteppenwolfThis one is real unreal
Thats not Unreal 3
I was the first few seconds, then I saw the replies 
final gameplay map ? so gameplay based instead of visual based ? If the focus is on gameplay you really need a symmetrical map and symm really means symm. Keeping the basic bsp lay out the same wont do then since even 1 single pillars thats different in the other base will be enough to get people complaining about unequal gameplay
Same goes for bright and dark light, easier to see opponents and only changing lighting colors will be really ugly specially if you are going to do it with red and blue teamcolors or so, worst thing you can ever possibly do
Symm isnt that ugly but anyway, the most neutral + quickest solution (making 2 themes costs twice as much memory and mesh creation work + new style and concept needed) would be to just change textures ?
And do stuff with areas you cant reach so they wont influence gameplay, those you can make different. Stuff outside windows, ceilings, stuff below a grate in the floor etc
Unreal 3 doesnt even excist, how can the pic or "teh graphics" look like it then ?
Nice photo, cool street too
Its how most MMORPGs work, and how for example morrowind was made. The world is split in to cells most likely which can be editted seperatly yet realtime. map<>level
There are multiple ways to pull that off, for killzone and shellshock both action games with standard standalone maps we had a layer system. Everything was a layer, vegitation, buildings, gameplay objects etc. so you could have 1 guy edit the vegi layer while someone else is editting the buildings, then you save all and in game its all assembled in to 1 big thing then
Has its positive and negative points
Meshes are pretty cool
Nice theme choice
Dunno if you still gonna work on it but :
The statue is too white and the contrast between the statue and the environment is too harsh, the harmony is lost
The lighting in general in the room is not so goodas you already know, it has too much black which make it all look harsh and not balanced and there should be more color and more lightsourcing, for example if you look at the second picture the wall right next to a torch is equally bright as a wall or ceiling 2 meter further where there is no torch, not possible. You need stronger highlights, which will also improve your lighting composition and make your eyes move around better, guidiance by highlighting
The meshes might also need more tesselations for better lighting
Some of the UT2 textures might also not fit because of their different color and style but thats hard to say since its all rather dark
And the mesh ring thing that is around the statue comes across rather old school bsp like rather than mesh
My level has a lot of meshes but also a lot of bsp because its indoor and fairly straight on while your level is mesh only and thats correct, your level isnt suited for bsp
The stuff is optimized mainly by volume anti portals (occluders, make them as large as possible, not touchable, no more than a dozen a map prefferably) and bsp zoning. You can only zone indoor areas and only when you use bsp so since you dont have both you are going to have rely solely on volume anti portals
Smeshes are faster than BSP, both renderwise as memory wise
retail mape examples
ctf-magma, outdoor and mesh only
dm-rrajigar indoor zoned but still mesh only
In magma there is a giant zoneportal in the middle of the map I believe, I wouldnt do that in yours, no giant zoneportals please
I think you dont have that many meshes yet tho, so you prolly dont have to worry yet. fyi this map has 1200 meshes, 600 brushes, 30 000 meshpoly in view avg, 75 000 max at some spots, 14 zones, 12 anti portals and 500 lights. You are prolly way below that so dont worry yet
And be sure to compress your custom textures to dds
Yeah I see now, must have forgotten to fix those htm's, will fix in the comming time
Working on a completely new version of the site anyway, this one is utterly old
Lee -> follow links above the pics
Marcos -> when did you visitted my site and when and on what page you got that ? That php worm was suppose to been fixed since last month and its working fine for me
Map might get delayed a little
Getting a friend skin my spitfire and trying some experimental max based animation on them
thanks for the comments
this lighting is my trademark since 2001 or so and one the things im best known for so its absolutely out of the question it is going to go
its not that bizzy for ut, it could be far worse (eg dm nirvana), the lights provide a light composition, they are far from placed randomly
ut needs lots of lightsources because else the simple lightmapping and vertex lighting wil make it look crap and empty
For the past few months Ive been working on my new UT2004 map, DM-Redkin. Its somewhere around my 35th quality UT map. Its slightly based on DM-Rankin, also by me and some other things like ONP (big mod UT1 mod)
Its a medium sized DM map set in an industrial building built high in to the walls of a Nali canyon. Hot outside, relatively cool inside. 3.5 room based map. one to two floors high and entirely indoor but you can see the giant canyon outside.
I aim to make a dynamic living atmospheric world. I have more than 40 movers such as moving pumps, conveyors with crates, windows moving in the wind, dripping water stuff, sparkles crap, waterfalls and I am currently trying of adding a couple of spitfires outside, trying to shoot eachother down and shattering the windows of the level while doing so
The outside area is just for deco but it is larger than ONS terrain maps.
Next to that I also plan to have real solid gameplay, I tried to squish in everything I know and also plan to write a tutorial on that gameplay after Ive finished the map
98 percent of the map is selfmade, meaning except for the Van model and texture, the rock texture and a couple of crates everything, all textures, meshes, brushes etc were self made in Photoshop and 3DsMax.
Its 95 percent done, release likely next week and is currently in beta test phase
Other stuff on http://www.planetunreal.com/phalanx
HQ Pics :
http://www.gamedesign.be/Hourences/workpics/red/red.htm
WorkInProgres Pics :
http://www.gamedesign.be/Hourences/work ... redwip.htm
(sorry for long load times, I hate to ruin my pics with too much compression )
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