A great concept for a map, looking very nice in all the shots.
I am curious though, is the map meant to be playable in any form or is it simply a showcase of your work? It might be nice to compile it into a form whereby it could be a playable HLDM / CSS map, showing off your work to an even wider audience. I am sure it would take relatively little time on top of that which you have already spent.
Any plans on a beta release for testing or simply bug fix purposes?
Sound. Though 3DSM is cool, Maya is my package of choice too.
Very nice looking and something I would very much like to learn how to do. Out of interest, which 3D package do you model in?
Woot! finally announced, the game I am working on at Sony London.
There's a link to watch the movie in the right hand column. You need an account to get the HD version.
If you need a server and playtesters gimme a shout on msn. I'll bang it up on ours and let the lads n lasses know.
Already made some comments over on 'lopers but looking again here it seems to me that the rooftops are looking a bit empty. I realise you will not really see notice this from the ground, but with a map of this quality I would bang in some chimneys, aerials and suchlike, just so as anyone spec'ing will have just as beautiful a view as someone playing.
/2p
Quote from JALIf I could choose from any position, I'd choose Lead Designer. Not because they're management related or because they seem to get most of the fame/fortune. Because, as a Lead Game Designer, you get (full) creative freedom to make your own visions and ideas come true.Like building a house. Lead Designer is the architect and the artists, programmers, sfx people etc. are the construction workers that make it happen.
Perhaps once upon a time, but very rarely nowerdays. Working for independent developers you are generally constrained to the publisher's will since they pay the wages of everyone on the project. It's my experience that a lot of external producers (external to your company - i.e. the publisher's producer) are frustrated designers and very much want to direct and control the content of games they are involved with.
On the other side of the coin, working for a large multinational, the lead designer has many levels of creative control and direction above them. Here level designers (like myself) report to the Lead Environment Designer, who reports to the project's Design Director, who in turn reports to a Creative Direction Group. All these have creative control above and beyond the Lead Designer.
Nowerdays the only way you are going to get the kind of creative control you talk about is (as Freichamp says) to be CEO or I guess, to fund your own dev studio.
Seriously dumb ass name. Will still buy it though.
Haha that's just reminded me of snorting sherbet as a kid, just for the sensation of it frothing up in my nose. Deviency starts young I guess.
Yeah Karachi is a fantastically good fun map to play, all those different routes yet still a reasonably tight, navigable map. That's a map that needs re-making for source if ever there was one.
A seriously disturbing lack of empathy here. It's apparent few of you have ever been to close to a suicide before or have even the slightest inkling of the mind-state of someone considering such. Folks in that position need help not scorn, and generally have a very good reason for what they are contemplating.
I am a little shocked at some of the stuff I am reading here, not the specifics but the implicit underlying values. I didn't think a professional site would be home to bigotry like this.
Not technically taken... but I bought a lump of "opium" during my travels around India about 12 yrs ago. Anyways it turned out to be mud coated in wax. My GF still takes the piss outta me for that one 
I was just thinking the same thing. I was amazed at what had been done with the HL1 engine on first seeing Volare. It's dated waaay quickly though.
Not for any I have ever worked at. That said after commuting into and out of central London & doing a full working day, I find it pretty damn hard to work up the motivation to turn on a PC again at home and work on my own stuff.
Never heard of an employer explicitly refusing to let you do mod work. Maybe I just don't read my contracts carefully enough though. 
The 1.6 map with the lighthouse that I remember was called de_gower by Clay9 and possibly some other folks. Great map.
Edit: Apologies Ginsengavenger, googled it n noticed your name in the credits too.
Likewise with the jumping. I have very high agility/speed/athletics stats and can break the game in a few places. Especially funny are the Oblivion sections. I can jump around most of the gate/lock/key sections and complete a gate to sigel stone in like 10-15 mins no worries.
I do still love Oblivion but I don't think it's really as good as Morrowind was, I mean levitation! where is the damn levitation!
Waa!
My 6th year and third employer in the industry.
Started at an independent for a seriously shite salary, just to get my foot in the door, then worked up from there.
My (unsolicited) advice to anyone wanting to get into games dev, is to simply take whatever you can get to start with. Just get in and start working on games. If you have a talent you'll soon get noticed.
It would be dead funny to have the Seagulls all fall out of the sky when the bomb goes off
Hire your own dev team for 90 days - a Snip at $200K
Sorry to keep bugging mate
Out of interest, are you putting HDR into the map?
