Posts by OrnateBaboon

Some in game videos. Looks very fluid.

Like it so far.

I think it could look better if the map was ruined. Displaced rubble on the floor, broken arches, more foliage, and an overhead section with trees looming over the top. Statues of some kind, wooden beams in places to break things up, fire lamps, and lots of rock.

FMPONE offers some good suggestions as well. Grass down below, with detail props, leaves, and water could all look good. Some unique land marks would help to distinguish one area from the other.

Same here.

"Steam Is Currently Having Trouble Connecting to the Steam Servers" Error - 15/12/06

"There is currently a wide spread power outage in Bellevue/Seattle impacting Steam Server availability. Unfortunately ETA for when the power will be restored is unknown as the power company will only work on restoring it once the storm has eased and the high winds have died down.

Any issues you are experiencing with connecting to Steam are only temporary, as this isn't an end-user issue".

Yay! Will download and provide feedback later. Some other sites worth pimping on:

http://www.forumplanet.com/counterstrik ... p?fid=4965

http://forum.interlopers.net/

http://www.countermap2.com/forum/index.php

And the mapping section in the steam forums.

The more complete parts definitely look good. The buildings look very solid and interesting, and the inside sections have a real world feel. Some of the outside areas feel a touch too open, but this is probably because they lack detail at the moment. Telephone poles and general clutter, more vehicles, bins, bollards, smoke, overhanging walkways, curved geometry and huge chimneys would really add to the look.

In some areas, it might be worth getting rid of the roads, and adding gravel instead. Lots of maps that are built along roads seem to look a bit too airy and flat. Using gravel instead would allow you to bring the buildings closer together, and add a bit of height variation to the lower part of the structures, as well as the bumpiness PhilipK talks of. I would also say that things feel a bit too square. Not the actual buildings themselves, but their orientation in the world. Some angled buildings would really make things feel less hammeresque.

If you are not going to complete the project as it is, then it could worth moving all of the geometry over to a small hostage map. Think of something like cs_compound, where the bulk of the mapping would have been in making the cental building. If you spent a while making a really nice central building, you could then drop all of these buildings into the map afterwards.

It would be a shame to see the work wasted.

Had a blast on it Floating baloons are a nice addition as well. Seems like there are a lot of options to the map. Will keep an eye on custom map servers so that I can play it a bit more and provide proper feedback.

One thing I was wondering though. Might it be better to release a mass beta build, just in case there is an issue in the map that causes it to crash on servers or something like that? I know DOD:S maps go through lots of release candidates, and then beta 1's 2's etc. just to make sure there are no fatal issues.

Would be such a shame if there is a problem that you have missed, and have to make a de_wanda_final build.

I much prefer the destroyed route. So much so, I would say that it should get a bit more of a battering. It will then give you the opportunity to make each half look different, since at the moment, it looks as though one side is more or less a clone of the other.

Possibly smash some of the windows, brick up a couple of the others, and put some bent corrigated iron over another, with wood holding it on. The stairs also look cloned (due to the textures), and they might also benefit from being displaced.

More weathering/declas on the textures, different brick textures on the chimneys, and possibly even the upper portion. Drain pipes and wires could also look good.

If you could make a map with buildings of this quality, you would be on to a winner

Yay! Been looking forward to this. I would like to participate in the testing. Could you PM me the link please.

Great work guys. Will play this tonight. The voice acting really adds a lot to the mod.

I have just added sounds to my map, and am using a similar type of sound set up. The best way to do this is through soundscapes. You can get them to play once just by setting the delay time on them to be so long that you will only hear them once.

Really, I would say that using the ambient generic way to do this is the more difficult way to go, and will not produce as good an effect as soundscapes. With soundscapes you could have one global sound playing (like an ambient wind for example), and eight local sounds (like birds, gusts of wind, waterfall, river sounds etc), and all of their positions would be confined to whatever position you want.

What is the sound being used for? Can it be used as a soundscape, or does it need to be ambient?

Saw a video of the Fallingwater house. Pretty amazing. Just downloaded the CS version. Looks pretty damn good. Really worth viewing this.

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/09/05/moddi ... se-in-hl2/

Loving the progress

Agree with what people have already said as well. I would say that some hip tiles on any of the roofs that can be viewed from above would be a good addition. I think it woud look a lot better if there is something separating the textures (like in the images posted by twiz).

Some other things

-the fountain base would look better if it was more rounded

-some of the trees are overly bright in comparison to the darker ones

-there don't appear to be any tree shadows yet (though I know this is best left until last)

-the tables and chairs feel a bit random at the moment. Is there a cafe nearby? The ones running through the middle of the road might frustrate players during battle

-can see from the images that the bombsites appear to be very close to each other (unless of course one is kind of above the other)

A lighthouse, a windmill, some circular geometry and a telescope that allows you to look out over the sea and off to an easter egg could be pretty nice additions. Can't wait to see where this map goes

Not had a look at it yet, but I sure will. Would be great to make some simple deathmatch maps with.

http://www.rarewitchproject.com/special ... d=geeditor

Any more progress on this? In my opinion, its the best looking custom DOD:S map. Spotlight worthy too. Just wondering if a final is in sight.

I think it would help if you decided on an exact theme for each of the maps, and went to town on adding the thematic elements into them. For example, dm rust (which looks really cool by the way), reminds me of a quarry. A quick search on google images brings up so many quarry images and things that could be turned into props. Diggers, cranes, conveyor belts, rocks, coal, strange machines etc which could all convince the player that they are running around in a quarry.

This is just an example of course, but nailing the theme, and then putting the stuff in that people would expect to see in such a place could really help. If it is a factory for instance, what does the factory make? What would we see in this type of factory?

This is a great optimisation site. All you need to know really. Function detail has the same light properties as world geometry. Basically, if a world brush is not vis blocking or being used to activate a hint brush, turn it into a function detail. That includes whole buildings.

http://www.student.ru.nl/rvanhoorn/opti ... pter=intro

edit - having said that about the light and the function details, this site says this

"There is only a minor bug, which causes light to bounce around a func_detail because the func_detail doesn't break up the world brushes around it (this effect is called lightbleeding, as the light is 'bleeding' around the brushes. Suffice to say that if you didn't understand that, don't worry about it. You will only see it when you make a large brush ( eg wall or floor ) func_detail which blocks light/casts shadows".

I have never experienced it though.

The thunder soundscapes are already there. For an idea of the sound I am thinking of, listen to de_aztec (though imagine things without the chirping crickets). Very atmospheric.

I tried to do rain on a dod map, but couldn't get it to work.

Like it so far

Something that I think could be added to make things look more interesting would be lights. Adding some to the buildings, and on lamp posts would vary things a bit. Recompiling a few of the window models so that they have a light texture would also be a very nice feature.

Some unique building types would be a bonus (barn, farmhouse, church, graveyard, etc) env_smoke coming from the chimneys, some leaves on the ground, telephone poles, wires, some rain and thunder soundscapes might fit as well.

What type of buildings/structures are the capture points? Do you have any pics of these?

Seeing the video of Link fishing is enough to convince me. A good Zelda game always makes me want to buy a system.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3p3xoow3WM