Haven't textured this yet, but I was pretty much bored and decided to recreate the spider bomb from the Crusader games. Not sure when I'll texture it but a shot so far;
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How I missed that is beyond me. Cheers man!
I'm wondering how could I possibly make a PDF using Photoshop have several pages instead of just one?
I think the blue lights in that hallway look really bad, but everything else looks fine to me.
Variety helps, and so does music and drink. I find coffee to be bad when you want to map, since you'll eventually feel quite down and out of it getting bored. Happened to me a lot of the time. But if you add a lot of variety you'll feel inspired and ready to work.
What exactly do I mean though? I don't stick to mapping, when I feel I can't do anything or start anything I don't bother since forcing yourself will not help you at all. Do something else, or walk around a bit, get fresh air, relax or try another day. Drink plenty of water or juice (nothing fizzy) can help a lot since you're energising you're body with to good stuff, and make sure you eat a decent meal. These things help your daily lifes more, so it will work here as well.
Time how long you map and take breaks. Map every hour or so then walk around a bit, refresh the mind or browse the internet a bit. When you run out of inspiration but have the ideas, save and close down the editor, grab some paper and take notes / sketch idea out and leave it next to the computer and do something else.
Variety again, don't just map. Try doing different things. I've been getting involved with mapping, texturing and modelling and improve my skills on each and they're now a state I can do at least something usable and improve from experience. Try out editors for other games, for fun purposes and ideas might inspire you.
Looking at other peoples work might be good or bad depending on who you are though. It may give you ideas and inspiration but it may also make you want to copy or imitate what they do which ends up being something you make being too similar or close as.
Another idea is to have custom content when you get good at new skills (unless you already are) but a good idea that works for me is to make what you need when you need it. No point working on 100 textures, forcing you to use them in the map. Again it depends on who you are to work this way, great for me, bad for others?
Experimenting is also good. Try making maps of a different gameplay style such as deathmatch, co-op or even singleplayer if you're a deathmatch mapper. Try different themes you've never done before or try to improve your styles. Experiment with new ways to use textures or models from the default libraries to get inspiration. Why not try mixing two or three different themes together? Why not try to re-use a gameplay idea and improve on it, or mix it with another style.
One optional idea for fun purposes, practise and inspiration is to find a random user map for a game (Half Life 1?) and make sure it's a newbie or poorly executed map but the idea comes across well and remake it with better design and improve its gameplay in the game you want to map for. Before you know it, you'll have something that doesn't resemble it and work you're way to change it that way.
Just a few ideas that have worked for me, working on weekends helps too, but don't map when you're tired either. Not worth it and you'll get bored of things too quickly.
And I love it. Design looks so clean (even though it's dirty) great texture.
I doubt I'd be getting any new console this time round. Especially the mistake I made to get Gamecube only for the Resident Evil games. I'd rather see what selection of games are available in future and wait for a price drop than spend £200 - £400+ on something I will probably play one or two games for. Nintendo Wii is a nice idea, but at the same time it doesn't interest me in the slightest. The way Sony has gone with the PS3 I'm not interested either. Xbox360 though has my interest, but rather wait for more games. Gears of War is apparantly "great" but I'm not too sure.
Back in the Sega Genesis / Super Nintendo generation, there were a lot of very fun games, and I still play a few of those I missed out on. Compared to some game today, I enjoy them so much more and I'm quite crazy for pixelated and cleaned up graphics in a game. I also played around with a few Sega CD / Master System games back then as well and had loads of fun.
I soon learned about the Playstation from my Granddad, used to stay over his on the weekends and play Resident Evil and other games together, or even his Sega Genesis / 32X / Sega CD. I even got into PC gaming from both my Granddad and Dad. That's where I got into Resident Evil 2, Duke3D and Quake. Again fun times.
Did a lot of gaming on the Playstation and PC, eventually got a N64 and the same story. Much later ofcourse I got consoles such as the PS2 and Xbox. And for a cheap price, the Dreamcast. Graphics were getting a LOT better but only a few games I found were extremely enjoy, others quite good but a few being rather mild. Dreamcast also had a few good games too.
Lets skip some time ahead and go straight to 2004 where UT2004, Doom3 and Half Life 2 were released, which seemed to be the only PC games I really enjoyed, with a few other console games. Later the next year, FEAR and Quake 4 were released (?) and those were also great fun.
2006? Quite a disappointment except from HL2 Episode 1. Got Prey, Oblivion and FEAR:EP for christmas. Played and completed the first two. Prey was good enough, but I enjoy Quake 4 a lot more. Oblivion as some may say was enjoyable but a toned down Morrowind which I got bored of after the main quest. Even trying out the OOO mod didn't help make things better. Haven't played FEAR:EP because I want to save it for a boring weekend since I have high hopes for it... but at the same time doubts.
Am I getting bored of gaming? No. I love gaming, and trying all genres out. But games these days rarely spark my interest. Sure they have pretty graphics and so-so features of gameplay before release... they dont appeal to me as much as older games do now. I've been picking up many older games since they have more gameplay value, I dont fuss over graphics.
This is also a major reason I stick to the Build engine when mapping since its where my favorite game of all time uses and it's a good editor. Though I found Blood better than Duke3D personally, the latter comes 2nd. There's an interesting point as well. In Blood, there was lots of variety, balance, challenging gameplay, each weapon and enemy did something different. You could even set enemies on fire and watch them run around screaming burning up. Some games nowadays have the same type or style of enemy run up to your face shooting you, and you might have a selection of 50 different sub-machine guns that have minor differences ingame! M4 or AK47?!
I guess I'm bored of new games, unless more than ten spark my interest for a certain console, I won't be buying any of the next generation consoles. Oh but it seems "graphics soon won't get any more realistic!" - yeah, until we get realistic animation, physics, lip sync, unrepeatitive texture and everything else that can still obviously improve, it'll be a while until the main focus is on gameplay again rather than money... I mean graphics... Oh I'm glad I got that off my chest.
Quote from JeanPaulI am curious. Can I see what the editor for that map looks like?
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Main hall in beta stages. Tweaked some things, new chandelier. Still other areas left to do though.
You guys are too good, but I've been unmotivated since I'm not much a multiplayer mapper myself. Can't come up with anything (except the theme)
I'm currently trying to collect every single Blood 1 map possible out there around the net, however a lot of them have been lost due to sites going down etc. It didn't seem to have a large mapping community at the time. Although it does still very quietly lives. These include both Singleplayer and Bloodbath maps, even if they may not even be worth playing at all. I feel the need to find them all and host them over on my site so that they can be archived. My request for you guys is that, if you know of any old websites or maps - please post as soon as you can. Maps for Duke3D, Shadow Warrior and Redneck Rampage are easier to find, mostly due to their names. Just guess the types of pages you get when searching "blood maps" in search engines. I will appreciate and credit you if you find anything, but to prevent me getting the same sites I already have the following downloaded. (filenames.zip) It may be possible different maps exist with similar filenames too... I'll add new ones (in red) when I recieve/find them. Hope anyone of you guys can help.
On second thoughts, I'm not too worried about Bloodbath maps much, since I'll collect what I find and put into one zip anyway. It's mostly Singleplayer I worry about.
Singleplayer
2bornot
3worlds
8maps
Ahoy
Alone
Alpha
Ambush
Arctic
Ashes
ass1
Ass3
Atlantis
avalanche
b1_gods
B2
barn
batman
battle
battles
bayou
bem1
bem2
blood_chronicals_vol1
blood_lost_episodes
bloodadd
bludtown
bookshop
brainded
btp
burger
carnage_v11
castle
circe
dcitadel
epiphany
example
eyes
fortress
fulldaniel
grosse
hauntedhotel
hostile
inherit
intime
lab
lagoon
lave
loi
mountain
night
nwplay3
outlet
ravloft1
ravloft2
ravloft3
stop666
technew2
temple
theatre
titanic
toddemo
vacancy
If you can't stick to the rules and make something interesting with the default textures, you fail >P There's still loads of things you can do with the half life assets.
Damn you guys are fast. I started a map yesterday and continued with it at school as well. I think I could have a good theme going if a develop it a little more - screens... when I compile the map in several years time?
Got two exams next week, so if I feel motivated I might give it a go. I've wanted to try and do a HL mapping contest - probably a quick way to get response to improve maybe?
Either way I am interested.
Good read, some interesting stuff there. A little like me though, so many ideas for maps and mods to work on and then end up dying out of failure/interest. I'm missing quite a lot of stuff myself of old projects. Didn't do anything for Duke then? Either way, somethings there were quite inspiring.
I'll be quite brief with some of my old stuff and post what I've got. These are all dead stuff anyway; Lots of images, though very small.
Deathtrap TC - Duke3D. Versions 1 to 8
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Destroyer Episode - Half Life. Early project.
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Nightshade - Duke3D. Version 1 and 2
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Misc - Mixed
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Page with all my releases - Still working on the Dead projects section, and there's quite a few still to add.
Since I've completed 90% of the main hall wall textures, here's a few more shots showing it off. Ofcourse there's still a ceiling, carpet and wooden floor texture to work on and then lighting, other details such as paintings etc. I won't be showing that off when I've done it to keep something a surprise (hopefully it'll be like that throughout the map) I would like to say that I have planned a new enemy for this map. Some of you may remember the new alien from Atomic edition that was introduced in the fourth episode. My idea is a recode of that (and edited graphics) to be a little slower, won't jump and quite zombie like. Ofcourse I'll balance it out to be a bit of a challenge for the player still.
Click here for a texture comparison shot of the Main Hall
Main Hall Re-Textured Screenshots
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Something I did out of boredom for HL2... (I rarely compile) Which is quite fun to work on, might continue and go for a small map. Though, I wonder if the map would ever run smooth if I keep doing brushwork like that everywhere? Nothing is planned as I originally wanted to practising texturing to see if I can make anything interesting with default HL2 stuff. However, it lacks some good wood and I found a few other textures in CSS that also worked nicely. If it ever did turn out to be a small SP map, I'd probably take the textures from CS at least. Oh but again, nothing is planned.
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That location would be perfect for a horror style (silent hill?) singleplayer map. Yes, during the day would make it even more unique. Going through those interiors with decent, yet dark lighting and make it as scary as possible with sunlight shining through windows here and there.
Could be split into two parts even. The first being an introduction of driving there with a team who investigates ghosts or however you'd like to approach it. Do some light objectives before going in - load the second map. The interior, where everything I described above happens and ofcourse you've got to find the cause. Map wouldn't need any action, and the physics can make some interesting scares.
Just speculating on a possible idea since this building is really designed well and could have something made out of it gameplay wise. Good stuff otherwise.
The ports have increased the limits which is very useful. When using the editor, the old limits are shown at the bottom as normal but once you go over them the numbers change;
Sectors - 4096
Walls - 16384
Sprites - 16384
Unfortunately, that's as high as they will go probably to keep things stable. But it's still a good size to work with to add more detail or make longer maps.
