A low amount of depths they look fairly similar, but at high depth amounts relief mapping clearly looks better as it actually add more polygons. This also got a rather hard performance hit.
Parallax mapping looks slightly better than normal mapping and with this implentation the performance seems similar.
Yep a large quality SP mod is just very unlikely, as the dead of HL1 NW also shows. You don't just get 20 mappers for a mod. If it you manage to do they will most likely suck and/or loose interest after few months. I might sound pessimistic, but unfortunately I speak from experience...
Valve work with cabals which afaik is pretty much like you described Bluestrike.
PloeP: Your map brings back a lot of good memories about the HL1 days, which I guess is good. Your map is just raw old school mapping regardless of how boring or charming that is:)
Well if it gets similar to Tool, then it can't be all mad:) Cover art looks nice.
Fence on the right in the last pic of your first post doesn't fit in.
The future of the Level Design community:
There are indeed many who smack in lots of highly detailed props while they don't really fit and the architecture around them got no proper detail level. It just looks wrong and won't work.
As a level designer the lack of custom content is frustrating, where are all the texture artists and modellers?
Splitting Level design Rant :
Agreed big time, we see it everywhere and I am not too happy about it either. I consider myself as a good level designer because I am capable of having this overview and being able to do multiple things. When they split up the role I loose my forces, I am a jack of all trades - master of none. That is how I like it and I don't think I would have fun if I was just doing lighting all day long.
That last shot makes like no sense to me:D
Nice, the OICW has been among my favorite weapon models in regard to looks ever since someone asked me if it would fit for SoW some years ago. You have pulled it in good style, how many polygons is that?
You got a wicked way of thinking man:D
I do not agree on their decission, but I guess they got their reasons. The cool thing about Nightwatch is/was how far they were able to push an old engine such as the HL engine. If they move to Source then I am afraid that it has to be really impressive before I think it was a good move.
Imo it says something about lack of proper leadership if they even after so many years of development by the most talented modders still not are able to get a public release done.
See my last post for how it affects performance:)
Two interesting articles from an indie developer:
Steppenwolf is not taking picture of a game dev studio but rather a city archive:)
As long as he knows what he is doing with the lightmaps and are upping the scale a bit on less significant faces, then it should not be a problem. It is however quite dependant on how large a face area your map got.
You will generally not notice a performance hit by lowering the lightmap scale as the result is a higher memory consumption. This kind of performance issues only get bad whenever you got over the limits of your gfx card and it has to use your system memory for storing textures.
And ohh, nice map:)
Sounds like a hardware version of PowerPlay.
Quote from MazyBtw, does any of you have problems with HL2 or CS:S or wutevr in steam, taking ages to shut down, almost feels like its frozen? Seems like theres alot fucked up with Steam atm D:
Yup, one of the many really annoying Source bugs which still are there.
