Posts by JamesL

Great work mate, a well deserved spotlight.

Orange hossies on the loading screen, colts with scopes and a 33.6k modem. How I hated the Dutch folks at the time, with their fat DSL connections and sub 50ms ping, while I was sitting around 200ms and getting boned by my ISPs policy of auto disconnecting you every 2 hours.

Gave it a good playtest today, and I am still of my original opinion, that this is a really nice, fast paced 2v2 / 3v3 map.

However I still also think that it really hurts for another entryway into the CT spawn bombsite. I realise that there is a second entry via the underground section, but since this route already leads through a bombsite it's kinda redundant as a path to the CT spawn site, since you would already have had an opportunity to plant the bomb en-route.

I understand how it is when you are tired of working on a map and random folks like myself are saying "you gotta do this one last thing to make it perfect" but I really do believe that adding in this change will take your map from being a "nice" map into being "nice and often played" map, so I really believe you should try it.

Great map either way though mate. Looking forwards to your next outing

Nice one, I'll grab it and bang it up on the clan servers for some testing over the next few days.

I built some of the maps for the online multiplayer part of this title while working as a level designer at Kuju. It was a great fun title to work on and although the game suffers a little from the same 1st person melee combat problems seen in every title in this genre since the beginning of time, I think it handles them better than most have done. I can only speak for the multiplayer aspect though, as I had nothing to do with the single player.

Just a quick comment as it's milestone Friday...

After five years working for two independent developers I was ready to quit the industry. Overworked and underpaid by a thankless set of managers and marketing vampires... I was about to give up the career I had always wanted, burnt out n pissed off...

... then out of the blue I got offered my current job, working for one of, if not the largest console Developers, and it's a different world now.

More perks, encouragement, all the facilities you need and more. I now work less hours but achieve more in the time I spend working, and love making games once again.

So yeah, as other folks in this thread have already said, who you work for is everything, and if you are pissed off and burnt out, rather than just jacking it in, try somewhere else. All Developers are not alike.

It's up on 'lopers in the finished maps section. It's called dod_highlander IIRC.

Aye, probably a good idea. I have found myself snagging on some of the wall 'pillars' and other such detail in a few places, guess I can change them to func_illusionary rather than adding clip around them.

Map is coming on nicely. I like the addition of the flags, it's little custom details like those that really lift a map into being a bit special

Not had that problem myself Hammer that you mention though, it seems to run just fine on my rig.

Quote from Mojo

we played this here at GBX. 6-7 of us versus bots. Man it was a lot of fun, I took some pictures and will put them up later. But the flow and speed of this map is really great. I shall move it to the SLG and toss the link on the front page when I get a chance (or if someone else beats me)

Thanks a lot Mojo, after spending months working on a map it's great to know folks are giving it a run around and enjoying it. If you have any comments or ideas for improvement please post up. I am compiling what is becoming a very long changelist for final.

Quote from Meotwister

Couple of things I noticed were that there were quite a few places (mainly props hanging on walls) you can jump onto where I guess you should clip, unless you wanted that, for example the air conditioner model thing on the wall across from that metal set of stairs. Also you need to clip the inside of that concrete ring model because I fell in there and was trapped, had to noclip out. Yeah and the bombsite in that small room way in the corner took me some time to find and really I think any t who planted there would get his ass owned. That could lead to some problems potentially. You could make the site a bit bigger or move it to the middle of that room maybe?

Yeah all the clips you mention need to be added, especially the concrete ring ones. The bombsite at B has been picked up on by several people so I will definitely expand that out into more of that internal area.

Cheers for the feedback guys.

Quote from JAL

Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction is in my opinion the best expansion pack ever made . I can't tell you many (thousands?) of

hours I spent gathering items and doing mephiruns & diabloruns

*Shivers*

Months and months of my life farming fucking cows and their king. Got my Windforce in the end though so it was all worth it (not).

Thanks again Hessi. I made the shadows 256^2 and followed your suggestion in an earlier post, applying gaussian blur to them. They look a lot better in game now, much more in keeping with the shadows around the rest of the map. I also grabbed and watched all of you tree modelling tutorials this week. Excellent stuff, but I think I need to improve my maya skills a fair bit more before I can get trees as good as the ones you put together so quickly in the videos!

If you have any more suggestions for improving the map in any way please say, it's all very helpful.

Brilliant feedback as ever Che, many thanks. The map is posted up on a dozen forums and I am building a list of issues to be addressed for final. It's getting quite long now as you can probably imagine...

Quote from Bic-B@ll

i hope they release that level aboard a boat that was cut, it looked pretty neat. i couldn't imagine putting so much work into somthing like that and never having it see the light of day.

Welcome to games dev...

Quote from Polaris

Gore didn't invent the net cdxx. He just coined the term "information systems highway" when he tried to get all the schools hooked up to the net. The internet evolved from a U.S. military program known as DARPA.Or were you being sarcastic? I can't seem to be able tell when people do that anymore

I always thought that JANET the joint academic network, was one of the precursors to the net as we know it. Praps that was just over here in the UK though.

Cheers Defrag. I think all your points are valid and I'll add them to my rapidly growing list of "things to be done once the World Cup ends".

Cheers for the link Baboon, I'll check it out. The more people playing it the better. The map is currently playing on our clan server at 217.146.89.34:27016 and I think its being added to the CowsWithGuns.co.uk server at some point today too.

I doubt Valve would tell us even if they were planning a remake. I think it unlikely they will do Vegas though. Vegas was dropped from the official list a long time ago and there has not been a single official mention of it since as far as I know. It's not really like Militia or the other remakes they have done. Those maps were not only popular on servers, but also they were used for matches a fair amount, whereas Vegas was never really a match kinda map.

I tracked Cadaver down to Elixir Studios in London, but they went bust a year or more ago, after "Evil Genius". D'oh.

The thing is I really want to re-make de_vegas, as it was one of my favourite cs maps of all time, but I am loath to do it without the blessing of the maker, Cadaver. Dunno what to do now if I can't get in touch.

What do all you Mapcorians think is the best thing to do?

w00t! beta.

If the link dies it's 'cause I ran outta bandwidth.

Known Issues:

Soundscape & point sound problems.

Not properly optimised.

Sketchy texturing.

Models ain't all that either.

Displacements are a bit blocky.

C&C welcome. I am interested in whether folks think the map is balanced, if there is enough cover, good lines of sight, too sniper dominated etc.

Cheers.

I was wondering if anyone here on Mapcore has contact with Michael "Cadaver" Rosser, creator of de_vegas amongst many other fine maps. His website hasn't had an update in 3 years and his mail bounces.

If anyone can put me in touch that would be handy.

Ta