Posts by misterbister

I dont think theres a problem achieving that with the source engine. As long as most of it is 3D-sky.

Right.. Time for a small update.

Ive been making textures and remade the 3D-sky a bit during this week, however theese changes are small so i wont bother you with more pics. Ive also done a remake of the elevator shaft to match the detail level of the rest of the map.

Many people has told me about the map being a bit too dark, so i thought it would be wise to make the shaft a bit more bright aswell.

Heres a pic of how it looked like before:

[Blocked Image: http://www.home.no/misterbister/Bilder/dm_cloudcity/dm_cloudcity_a620000.jpg]

Heres a pic of how it looks right now.

[Blocked Image: http://www.home.no/misterbister/Bilder/dm_cloudcity/dm_cloudcity_a630003.jpg]

Ive had complaints about the screenshots being too compressed, so this time i havent compressed them at all! Hopefully you wont kill me for making the load times too long.

Progress:

I just wanted to say that im not dead... yet.

I havent done anywhing to the map since the last week because of shitty school work which me and my group had to present, and it went straight to hell.. Anyways, ill hopefully be alble to give you some updates next week.

Very cool concept. Altough i agree with Reno about some kind of a 3D-sky.

Also, you use the same texture and lighting everywhere. I belive it will be very easy for anyone to get lost on that maze.

Perhaps use different lighting here and there, aswell as adding colourful plants in certain areas?

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t's starting to look really cool now. What I would say is that there's an overuse of spotlights and other flashy effects -- when you cram lots of them into a map it can cheapen the look. A lot of the areas are not very well lit (in terms of visibility, not aesthetics) which can be a problem when actually playing it -- especially in visually 'messy' maps like this (hi tech, lots of wires, lights, consoles, etc). I'd break the look up by using more localised lighting dotted around the place (such as q2dm8 style walkway lights embedded in the ground), or a few bright street lights to illuminate distinct areas. Some distinct lighting / architecture to act as landmarks would probably be a good idea, too.

I really like the balance of the colours you've got going on and the look in general.

The indoor areas need a lot of work, but I'm sure you can improve them just as you've improved the rest of the map compared to the last update Smile

Right, ive removed some of the flashy effects. Ill look into the other stuff.

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Dude, the map looks good but why are you showing stuff with poor jpg quality. Ruins the fun for me Sad

Ok, more quality pics coming up, just for you...

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What currently annoys me the most is the texture with the flying cars. The texture looks like some 128*128 highly compressed texture. It does simply not have the quality to be as big as it is.

It is also very visible that the flying cars are 2d, but that might be different ingame when they move. At least I have seen it done before and it looked ok.

Sorry, im not good enough on Photoshop to make better looking cars. Ive used them from the "dm_neon". Ive been thinking about bumpmapping them to make them look more 3D, but will the bumpmap scroll along with the vehicles?

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Ditto the comment on the flying cars. Maybe use more/larger textures? Or model each car as a plane with a texture and animate that.

Shaping up nicely though. Get some colour variation and logos on those crates and drop in some coloured trims here and there to break things up.

Coming along really well.

I cant make better cars myself.. Thanks for the comment anyways.

Time for a small update.

Ive had lots of great feedback from all over the place, thanks alot for that everyone. This week ive been working on the indoor environments, a good friend made a new texture for the windows on the skyskrapers. The texture is not final, but much better than the one before i think.

[Blocked Image: http://www.home.no/misterbister/Bilder/dm_cloudcity/dm_cloudcity_a590000.jpg]

Heres a pic of the new warehouse. I started with chopping a hole in the floor and continued from there, personally i think it looks pretty cool, however its not done yet. Feedback would be very helpful =).

[Blocked Image: http://www.home.no/misterbister/Bilder/dm_cloudcity/dm_cloudcity_a600002.jpg]

Heres a pic of the new windows. (Yes i know about the texture alinment, im workong in that).

[Blocked Image: http://www.home.no/misterbister/Bilder/dm_cloudcity/dm_cloudcity_a610001.jpg]

Heres a pic of the new lab. The area felt a bit claustophobic, and i didnt have very much space to build on, so I added windows to make it feel less tight.

[email protected]

Progress:

It has been a long time since i updated you with some pics, but now im here again.

Since the last update ive been working mainly on learning photoshop and adding colours to the map. Enough said, heres the images:

[Blocked Image: http://www.home.no/misterbister/Bilder/dm_cloudcity/dm_cloudcity_a580000.jpg]

First off is an overview. Ive lighten it up a bit and added more colour. Here you can also see the clouds ive been working with, however im havinga real hard time adding the same spritebased clouds in the 3D-sky. They just wont show up. Ive tried func_smokevolume aswell, but then i just get an error saying that the material hasnt been precached or something like that.

[Blocked Image: http://www.home.no/misterbister/Bilder/dm_cloudcity/dm_cloudcity_a580001.jpg]

An overview from another angle. The most notable thing is the blue and red screens, however ive also added two big holes on the "bridges".

[Blocked Image: http://www.home.no/misterbister/Bilder/dm_cloudcity/dm_cloudcity_a580002.jpg]

Same scene from another angle (again..). Here you can see some of the spotlights added in the 3D-sky aswell as ads in the 3D-sky. They will be replaced with something more appropriate in due time.

[Blocked Image: http://www.home.no/misterbister/Bilder/dm_cloudcity/dm_cloudcity_a580005.jpg]

Ive added the red area to make this tunnel more interesting. The crate textures is actually made by me aswell.

[Blocked Image: http://www.home.no/misterbister/Bilder/dm_cloudcity/dm_cloudcity_a580008.jpg]

Ive added some textures in here aswell. The crate textures are all made by me. Not the most pretty work you have seen i guess, but they work =P.

[Blocked Image: http://www.home.no/misterbister/Bilder/dm_cloudcity/dm_cloudcity_a580010.jpg]

Ive added the red area aswell. You can actually jump down there and get yourself healed and get armor with suitcharges. The bad thing is that people can easily drop down grenades when you heal up, and since its difficult to get out of that area you will probably get killed trying to get out of there if you are discovered.

[Blocked Image: http://www.home.no/misterbister/Bilder/dm_cloudcity/dm_cloudcity_a580007.jpg]

A pic of the 3D-sky. Ive added the glow to the lights aswell as new textures to the buildings.

[Blocked Image: http://www.home.no/misterbister/Bilder/dm_cloudcity/dm_cloudcity_a580009.jpg]

This area is shaping up pretty well. I dont remember showing a pic of this area until now.

Progress:

Im currently working alot with textures and have given most of the map textures. However some areas, like the warehouse, is almost untouched at present. Im also experimenting with cratetextures that ive made. Perhaps ill keep them, perhaps not. Ive also added lots of small detail, and areas, that will increase the fun-factor. Im also working on the lighting to make it more colourful. Hopefully ill give you some images in about a week.

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Things that might use some improvement:

- spaceships: they look sort of flat (are you using a texture for them?)

- the quality of your screenshots!

Yes im using textures for the spaceships to save precious GPU power.

Ill bring fresh and meaty screenshots when it is worth it.

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Yeah, jpeg artifacts are doing your screens no favours. Bit more variation in the skyscraper texturing would be nice. Too uniform and too 'busy' at present.

Have fewer lights in some and maybe some yellow in there as well.

It's starting to really shape up now. GJ

Im going to make my own texture for the skyskrapers with more detail and variation in colour, aswell as less lights.

Regarding the screenies:

Its all a big dilemma, if i use high resolution, people will complain about them being too big. If I make them small ,people will complain of the poor quality.

Another result from my texture struggles. A crate texture:

[Blocked Image: http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/2917/box6je.jpg]

Militia really looks awesome. However the silos looks too high and too misplaced. Who on earth would like to put those in front of their own house?

As far as i know there is ads in the MMOFPS planetside.

The ads can me changed on-demand and counts how much time each player spends on having the ad in the center of his crosshair for statistics.

However we Swedes are not alowed to see them because of international laws.

If games get cheaper and better because of the ads, and they dont cover the whole screen or destroy the gameplay experience, then bring em on!

Ads dont fit into every game though.

Right, time for an update.

Ive been mainly working on texturing, but also optimizing and some gameplay elements.

Ive got hold of Dm_neons textures and got permission from IZaNaGI to use them.

Since they have a pretty special theme ill use them sparsly to avoid making my map looking like his.

Ive added some stuff that clearly gave the map a whole new look. ive also made one texture that fitted in the map, and im very proud of that after just a few weels of training in photoshop =).

[Blocked Image: http://www.home.no/misterbister/Bilder/dm_cloudcity/dm_cloudcity_a510000.jpg]

In this image you can clearly see that windows has been added to the skyskrapers. Spaceships has been added which is a scrolling texture, a very cheap and cool looking solution. An Ad (Bistercola) has replaced Breen however it will probably be replaced or enhanced. Lots of textures has been added to this seen, however its pretty hard to detect.

[Blocked Image: http://www.home.no/misterbister/Bilder/dm_cloudcity/dm_cloudcity_a510002.jpg]

Same scene from another view. It looks much more detailed thanks to the textures.

[Blocked Image: http://www.home.no/misterbister/Bilder/dm_cloudcity/dm_cloudcity_a510003.jpg]

A view of some skyscrapers, you can clearly see the spaceships here aswell.

[Blocked Image: http://www.home.no/misterbister/Bilder/dm_cloudcity/dm_cloudcity_a520007.jpg]

An overview of the main battle area. Windows has been added to the building in the background, and as more detailed decals. You can see them if you look closely. Ads has been added by those found in Dm_neon. However ill probably change those aswell. Starwars stuff just doesnt fit..

[Blocked Image: http://www.home.no/misterbister/Bilder/dm_cloudcity/dm_cloudcity_a520009.jpg]

The warehouse part has been enhanced with more detail (the "elevators" with crates on them). Ive added a floor texture and other textures here and there. Ive decided to make the crate textures myself, but I havent started doing them just yet.

[Blocked Image: http://www.home.no/misterbister/Bilder/dm_cloudcity/dm_cloudcity_a520012.jpg]

Inside the lab. More textures has been added, but no geometry. Ive got some ideas that im planning to ad, but that will come later on.

So, what do you guys think?

Feedback is appreciated, as always.

I read the "bens small bible of realistic multiplayer design" the other day and it really blowed me away.

Im currently looking at the map from a whole new perspective gameplay-wise, and its really exciting.

I also found out that it lacks lots of gameplay tweaks that I havent thought of before. Solutions to these issues has bombarded me today, and ive got lots of new great ideas. Im currently playing around with them.

It feels a bit funny too.

You have been a leveldesigner for about five years and you "think" you know it all, and then something like this shows up just totally turns everything upside down.

I have to email the author and thank him. Its a must read, doesnt matter if youre a hardcore mapper or not.

It can be found here:

http://www.crymod.com/uploads/tutorials ... Design.pdf

Im currently struggling with the textures aswell. Ive done lots of progress, but its a loong road. Im getting help from a friend who is very talented though. Hopefully, some of the textures in the final version will be by myself =).

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it cant be yours nExus

Why?

real cool stuff, I would love to know how you do such textures, from the beginning to the end...

Wow, thats heavy stuff!

Congrats.

Quote from Schmung

Well, shall we create a topic for those interested in forming groupd with the intent of submitting something to the pack so that we can find partners, or are we going to have someone assigning us into groups based on our skills and preferences?

Well... If everybody who where interested signed up first, and then someone assigned people on the list into groups. That would be the best i think..

The thing that I like most is like the lighting but... Where are the people?

Quote from Skjalg

Thats what I want to

Putting people together with people they dont know will also be binding for the community so people dont end up in different cliques... This way we can get to know eachother better

Yup, and in my case, who barely knows anyone of you gets to know lots of people.

Quote from Defrag

It looks a little ambiguous -- like a cross between metal and concrete.

Well... I tried to make it look like metal but i dont know how to do that properly..