Posts by alexroyce

I lost the internet for a week, and during that entire week I managed to get Steam to login to Offline Mode once, and during that time I couldent run anything. HL2, CS:S, HL1, DOD:S, Hammer.. nothing. Every time I tried to run them I got a "This game is not availible in Offline Mode" error. Whats the point of having an Offline Mode when nothing can run with it!? Rediculous.

Then after I tried re-logging into Offline Mode, Steam would crash with some error of being offline..

Needless to say, it was a very unproductive week..

Iceworld

Quote from JynxDaddy

That is so much better, is that the same resolution? The old one was really blurry.

Its actually a smaller resolution (previous was 1024x512, current one is 1024x256), but more of the image is of the bottles and theres less empty space. The old one was incredibly jagged, so this one fixed that. As for the filesize, it dropped by 200kb which is good

The map looks great, mainly because of the ambience you get from the fog and lighting. Unlike Valve's HL2 maps, this looks more than just pathways through a bunch of rectangles which have building textures. It has a much better flow of objects and brushes with few empty areas (from the shots at least).

Not being able to open Hammer while offline has to be one of the stupidest ideas ever.

Best possible bottles i could get:

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Caleb made them this time, and theyre loads better.

Looks great. Reminds me of that cs map, though.

They arent cabinets, though.. But there is already a light facing each rack, so theres enough of it. Im trying to make the bottles look better, so hopefully i can do it.

Quote from Schmung

Can you not have them as non interactive models so it's not testing them for collisions or whatever?Failing that, put them in cabinets or something. Just looks shoddy at the moment.

Non-breakable bottles which are models really dont look right..

Quote from JynxDaddy

Atleast use a higher resolution texture Love the tables. so good.

Its already 1024x512 and ~600kb, so any higher would be ~1mb and thats too big.

Quote from DEAD|DJBourgeoisie

looks great alex, if you wanna keep that texture for the bottles in the cabinet I have a suggestion you might try. Just put some semi transparent glass in the cabinets to make them less noticable if you are worried about performance. Could even add some in cabinet lighting to spice it up. Just play around with it im sure you will figure something out.

Ill try putting glass over the front, but i think itll end up looking worse. As for more lights, i dont think it would be possible to fit it in that small a space..

If i put even half as many model-bottles up on the shelves as in the brush-bottle, then the framerate would drop probably around 20 points. It just really doesnt make much sense, as if a grenade goes off in the area, the physics and the gib models would cause upwards of a 30 fps drop for around 2 seconds.

The chairs and tables are needed (already been cut down), and fade distances have been used to get rid of the distant chairs. It helps FPS, but not much. Ive already removed both brushes and models around the map to increase FPS (was previously averaging around 30 indoors, but now its around 50). Right now i think its around 55, which is almost perfect.

During the playtest i was watching a few people around the bar area and when a grenade went off, fps went down by 10. And that was just ~8 bottles.. Imagine how bad it would be with 30 or more! It might look nice, but after that, itll be a major setback.

The bottles dont look bad at all from medium distance, either. Its a practical solution.

Models for the bottles would kill the framerate. Previously there was ~8 bottles, and they already started to drop it. If the modeller has time, he'll make the bottles into a model which would be a rack of bottles, and pretty low poly.

Its either empty shelves, or 2D bottles for now. 40-50 FPS with an average computer is borderline for decent preformance.

Finally! A bar which looks more like a bar!

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Just took 30 minutes to create the texture through some crafty green-screen screenshots of the actual models

Quote from Lee3dee

map looks awesome! did you model the vehicles? because they look incredibly detailed! If i played CS this is definately a map id download

No, the vehicles were made by Zareh (worked on Crookcounty with him). Hes really good.

Quote from Minotauro

Looks pretty cool, gj on the custom content. Don't really like the basement tho, it needs better lighting.

Yeah, I dont like the basement aswell. Really bland and boring, but thats how the actual place looks, so i cant do much

Just to throw it out there:

Displacements add huge amounts to the .bsp's size.. My guess is each is 400-600kb.

The stripper poles are exactly like in the real place:

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The signature room in the map actually has pictures of refrence photos used during the maps creation, which shows all the stuff people think is wrong (thick poles, glass in the road and more) since i knew people would ask

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Platest shots

Quote from killertomato

Try to add more blue to the light_envoirement and making the lights a bit more intens. Add sprites too.

I dont think he has a skybox in any of those shots, but if he does, brighten the light_env up. I think the map should be brighter as right now its pretty hard to see anything, and especially during the heat of battle youre going to want to be able to see every exit around you pretty clearly.

The colors of the lights are quite good, though. I dont think that needs any changing.

I read a review in a magazine and it doesnt seem very good.. I think Id needs a new franchise.

Theres a glitch in Hammer which screws the "snap to grid" thing with brushes and causes them to float at wierd points on the map. Usually this can be fixed by changing the brush size, then changing it back.

I think the whole problem exists is because some models are made not to line up with the grid so you can place them properly.

Also: Selecting models and brushes, then moving them, is practically gauranteed to make the entire selection float off the grid in a strange way.

Edit: I dont know if this is the problem youre having or not, but hopefully it helped somehow.

The problem with the lighting after cubemaps are built is due to the 9/23 update. Im getting the exact problem and it started right after that update.. I emailed someone at Valve and they said it would be fixed once Lost Coast is released.