Posts by R_Yell

Nature is odd sometimes, there are lot of contrast in some places, in this case I think it's better having different colors. Mountains are something like dirt/dark rocks, main rocks are some kind of limestone. Env_lighting is a bit saturated I think, but textures aren't. I'll try different light settings.

I could add some bushes outside, as cover. There is no plan to add more buildings, outside fort is just desert and tombs, there are a lot of tombs around the place.

The test we've made are positive respect to gameplay, the weapons and the mod itself helps too. It's a customized HL2DM, using western era weapons , but gameplay is much like DOD at least for this map. Capture points placements is completely different from DOD, bases are inside the fort, and flags are outside (3) and between bases (1 inside the church). And capturing flags means you get more powerful weapons too, because players respawns with basic inventary. That creates some strategical thinking. So the map will be very funny, action is intense with 8 players at least, but could support around 20.

Here are some pics with final rocks:

[Blocked Image: http://images5.pictiger.com/thumbs/09/cb5faf381978374cd73bde2bd1ffaa09.th.jpg] [Blocked Image: http://images5.pictiger.com/thumbs/fe/f49bd4941bf13cc86d92b2ae002888fe.th.jpg]

I'm not sure if outside should have more cover, have no clear idea yet.

Yes, I know, there are some zones that could support more props. The map has around 50 custom props now, but there is no much quantity. I want to place most of the atmosphere inside the church and caves, both zones have a good amount of frame rate.

Some updates:

enviorement lighting position change

[Blocked Image: http://images5.pictiger.com/thumbs/88/5f8e245c64ef9436a9426dd627d01088.th.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://images5.pictiger.com/thumbs/5b/986768421334f9d8c230dc9912bc665b.th.jpg]

3d modeled normal map on cave's ceiling

[Blocked Image: http://images5.pictiger.com/thumbs/49/343d3736fef19d0942fb92538b949249.th.jpg]

Glazed tiles

[Blocked Image: http://images5.pictiger.com/thumbs/d5/83bed4bb0ebcf55adf41d8fec09159d5.th.jpg]

I'm involved in gameplay/performance improvements now, level has very good frame rate over almost all places once I tweaked vvis. Need to finish 3dskybox mountains hand painted texture, and keep polishing some parts, but the level is near to be completed.

Talking about crates, I'm going to show you my guns crate:

[Blocked Image: http://img476.imageshack.us/img476/4071/presidiorc00224xu.th.jpg]

The level will have a lot tombs around the fort, on 3dskybox too, imagine something like the good, the bad and the ugly's end scene. There is a treasure splitted in 4 parts, teams need to control those 4 zones. Gameplay would be like DOD, but there is an innovation, every captured zone gives better weaponry to your team, and these weapons will be lost when the other team takes over that zone. Capture zones near team bases gives the best guns (like an awesome winchester we have ) to opposing team, but just "level 1" weapons to defending team. So I think there will be a lot of focus on strategy: what zones should be taken and defended first, how many people should be assigned on every place, and many more.

Mountains are made with digital elevation models as I said previously (there is a tutorial made by me into the valve´s wiki). The artistic part comes now, I'm trying to paint them to look similar as possible to real south western mountains (in the USA).

Quote

I love this, every map now includes a church/moastry or & cathedral in it.

Catholic mappers maybe?

Churches have been classic in mapping always IMO, but most I've seen are europeans/gothic style, this one not.

Yas, that engraved cross is so freakish that should be added

Meanwhile, some more shots about the church

[Blocked Image: http://img426.imageshack.us/img426/89/presidiorc00086yj.th.jpg][Blocked Image: http://img426.imageshack.us/img426/1452/presidiorc00067xz.th.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://img426.imageshack.us/img426/5785/presidiorc00048tu.th.jpg] [Blocked Image: http://images5.pictiger.com/thumbs/81/97e5dde84ecca646d79f2a36f4693c81.th.jpg]

I started to paint the 3dskybox mountains. The lamps have physics properties. And what do you think about the volumetric lighting? Maybe too much irrealistic? I should add some kind of decal as lighting effect to complete the effect.

Small update here, I'm just adding a dome. Thought what kind of mission would be this one without a dome In fact was in my early plans, but don't wanted to start it until I knew if performance could be enough.

[Blocked Image: http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/7492/presidiorc00131wk.th.jpg][Blocked Image: http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/8868/presidiorc00126eq.th.jpg]

Soon will be added some paintings and other decals, hanging lamps and a prop that don't know the name, it's a big wood prop that is used to be placed just in the rear part behind the altar.

[Blocked Image: http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/3011/sanxavr26mg.th.jpg]

There is a weed texture too greenish, even fluorescent I'd say, but the others are ok to me. This map with some major optimizations will be amazing, now almost the entire map is being rendered at some spots, I'm hitting 30's FPS at those areas (and that's with an high-end gaming machine). About layout, would like to see some z-axis usage.

It was just for fun Whatever color you choose doesn't fit with a spanish mission in the XIX century.

Quote

i'm aware, i meant that you should use an alpha channel to make the lines smooth

I added a bit of blur to the alpha channel, as you requested :wink:, that makes the lines a bit smoother

These are the coloured caves, RD:

[Blocked Image: http://img397.imageshack.us/img397/5426/lostvalley01610nd.th.jpg] [Blocked Image: http://img397.imageshack.us/img397/6085/lostvalley01643se.th.jpg]

And here's an improved main door:

[Blocked Image: http://img397.imageshack.us/img397/9118/manbetatest00486gz.th.jpg]

Thx for the tip sa74n, I'll try it.

This is a test with my second system, it's not valid at all because it was a fast vvis compile, but you can see that doesn't perform bad:

[Blocked Image: http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/6464/manbetatest00017cf.th.jpg] [Blocked Image: http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/6945/manbetatest00000kw.th.jpg]

Graphical settings were set on medium, trilineal filtering, and doing server as you know takes away a few FPS.

That system was an amd athlon 2500+ (1,8 GHz), 1GB ram, and radeon 9500 (its GPU bound).

Sorry, I'll make that colored caves for sure, just for you. This was a HDR compile lot of time after the last one, and wanted to see how new rock materials are looking.

Quote

i like how you used three differen textures on the displacement,

there are 2 rock materials (it's one only, but with 2 shades), 6 ground materials, and 3 different overlays. Thats for all the terrain, the rocks just use 3 textures and 3 overlays.

Quote

although why is it all pixelated, use a tga with transparancy so it will look smoother.

it's pixelated because transparency (not opaque as you can see), the resolution is 512x512, not bad for a simple spider web. But the alpha usage makes aliasing, that's a norm.

Quote

a lot of the map is lacking in detail though

Inside of fort there will be some custom props (wood estructures) that will increase realism and detail, but you can't expect much more than that. Outside there will be a few more big rocks for cover, and maybe another wood prop.

The vmf size surpased 10 MB, even counting there are a lot of displacements (not only for terrain), that's a pretty big one I think.

Quote

This looks really awesum, but I can't help to think that this must be really laggy... especially in multiplayer...

absolutely wrong :wink: Brush and props usage is moderate, displacements are made in the lowest resolution possible, I put lot of care doing vvis optimization, LODs for models, fade, etc. And HL2 engine is very scalable, lowering graphic details makes miracles.

Quote

do you have any sites that you used to look at when you started out?

do you mean photo references?

Some shots with new models, general improvements and HDR:

[Blocked Image: http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/3771/manbetatest00340nl.th.jpg][Blocked Image: http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/2041/manbetatest00357gp.th.jpg][Blocked Image: http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/9162/manbetatest00360vc.th.jpg][Blocked Image: http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/6087/manbetatest00372jb.th.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/6546/manbetatest00414xy.th.jpg][Blocked Image: http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/1009/manbetatest00407jo.th.jpg][Blocked Image: http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/3607/manbetatest00399bt.th.jpg][Blocked Image: http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/3078/manbetatest00384cx.th.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/266/manbetatest00446jg.th.jpg][Blocked Image: http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/7964/manbetatest00437ln.th.jpg]

Hope Valve adds HDR to HL2DM soon, because that pics were taken in DOD:S

Quote

what kind of props did you make for your cave?

not modeled, not even decided yet, I tried to add some rocks but can't get proper lighting on them

Quote

put in blue or green flares in the cave, even tho it might not fit the realism of the time, nobody cares when it looks amazing

ok RD, I'm trying to give a realistic look in this map, but I'll make just one compile with that lighting setup, just for fun.

A few more shots of caves, now it's closer final except some props not added yet.

[Blocked Image: http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/5637/lostvalley01500ub.th.jpg] [Blocked Image: http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/3815/lostvalley01515hq.th.jpg][Blocked Image: http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/7756/lostvalley01533jz.th.jpg]

And this one shows two props I made:

[Blocked Image: http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/5278/lostvalley01525oq.th.jpg]

Tried with another normal map, this makes a better job:

[Blocked Image: http://img376.imageshack.us/img376/3584/lostvalley01428se.th.jpg][Blocked Image: http://img376.imageshack.us/img376/2449/lostvalley01430uf.th.jpg]

Think the old one was killing a bit the texture. Used no compression on this one because normal map compresión really sucks (except non standard ATI 3dc).

I'll try to make better cliffs and caves, but is really hard to get enough quality and art required on every zone, because this is no a "village map", "church map", "caves map" or "outdoor map", it's all in one. I'm working on this almost 3 months now, but I'm learning a lot too.

Yes, I'd wish to add more decorative elements there, but also wish to preserve it as a natural cave. It's not a mine, so no rails or wood beams. Mi idea is to model some kind of rock details, and place a few props, like barrels and crates, the best friends of a map Well, need to elaborate that a bit more, but it's a natural cave.

Ah, and I'm modeling a simple cobweb to place it inside some buildings, I'll add a few inside the cave.