Posts by JorisCeoen

  • County

    Pretty amazing, once again... I think the overall atmosphere and theme are great! Perhaps if I were to say one thing, the motel looks like the only area that's most 'slapped together' (so to speak). The overall idea is nice, but it currently looks too clean and misses some fine detail compared to the rest of the map. There's something about those big pillars that should be more worn in my opinion. I really love the quarry, however, probably my favorite part of the map!

    Congratulations on your release, and I don't doubt this will already be included in the next operation ?

  • Freya [Wingman]

    Quote from Rump3L

    On 1/29/2021 at 4:55 PM, Rump3L said: Guess now it's about right time for me to start biting the nail and jump into a new world, that is.. the creation of custom assets from scratch

    "The road may be rough, the journey may be tough and the experience may be bitter, but they are stepping stones to our future thrones." is sorta how I experienced going into the journey of making custom assets. Once you get past all the technical stuff and you can free your mind, your imagination is at that point literally the limit. And it's totally worth it ?

  • Having issues re-compiling my map from 2016. Does VRAD compile differently now?

    In CS:GO you don't want to have -both enabled, as it doesn't use LDR any longer (it automatically compiles with HDR). Basically if all your prop_static's have default settings, they should start lighting properly in the scene 'as is'. The difference since 2016 is that now, props with a normal bumpmap will have correct per-vertex lighting, whereas before it would not and thus end up with big splotches of black faces etc.

    Your scene might benefit from better placed lights. No matter how you turn it, Source still handles lighting a bit odd. Thus if you have a ton of props clustered together and little light to cover it, the ambient shadowing around it might end up looking average.

    TIP: Don't use info_lighting in case you did (used to be a thing in the older days when this new lighting didn't exist). It disables per-vertex lighting, and thus might cause errors with your new compile.

  • WIP in WIP, post your level screenshots!

    It's amazing to see how Valve has lately been using transparant textures as simple gradient overlays into displacements textures etc in CS:GO. Seeing that brick texture at the bottom edge of the brick wall, I'm wondering if it was a new texturing-modeling trick they simply ported to Dust 2's Kabash windows. Great work!

  • Walls, Buildings, General Structures [SOURCE]

    If you will be designing a blockout, it's my belief that it's better to keep everything brushes and func_details with grey dev-textures until you're ready to start developing all art of the map. In this case, you'd be blocking out your greybox and keep finetuning (and even adding little brush-details representing potential props or other stuff for art later on), keep playtesting and adjusting the layout based on feedback.

    Only then once you've got the core of your map solid and ready, start the actual art with today's techniques such as displacements for nice blending and melting everything together in a nice overall theme. Under no circumstances will the older method allow you to add as much detail as any of the more recent maps, at all. It's just not possible, not even with decals (or you would need a particularly exceptional amount of patience, resources and probably adding a ton of additional mb's to your BSP for no reason).

  • (Source) Black props

    Quote from chezpuf

    On 11/23/2020 at 11:21 PM, chezpuf said: I believe you need to add cube maps and render the map with lighting. If you do a fast render, they will be black.

    Cubemaps are never the requirement for anything other than getting specular reflections. Lighting, however, is important to have and unfortunately is required to have on by default (doing a fast VRAD or VVIS will result in black props). You don’t need to have -final on, but you will need -propstaticlighting.

  • WIP in WIP, post your level screenshots!

    Quote from That50

    6 hours ago, That50'sGuy said: Imagine the possibilities with something like this.

    Well I can imagine the additional cost of running that shader compared to the non-essential addition of extra clutter in a map. CS:GO is all about clean reading, this would stand in the way of that purpose. It’s cool alright, but CS:GO’s not the right target.

  • [Wingman] Paro

    So far this map and Extraction were on the wtf-levels of visual completion, so I’m pretty sure these maps will make it to the top-3. Can’t speak for gameplay, as I’ve recently moved and don’t have the PC installed yet, but... good luck! ?

  • de_Victorian

    Quote from ThunderKeil

    13 hours ago, ThunderKeil said: I want to say you're right . . . but at the same time I can't help but feel that a problem that could be solved by allowing players to freely run around the map for 3 minutes needs hardly be a problem at all

    Wouldn't be entirely crazy if Valve implemented something like . . if any player on the server is playing the map for the first time, disable weapons during warmup & let it run through its full duration regardless of how fast all players have connected. Yea they still might not know which corners to peek but at least they'd know where they are.

    You could say players should just play a few rounds on casual once before jumping into a proper match, but - well - I know I don't.

    The only real answer to this argument is that almost all of Valve's maps already make it obvious from the moment you enter the map, how it plays and where you'll encounter enemies. There's no need to just run around the map without weapons, because even in warmup it'll become obvious where you can go and where not. This is what Roald was trying to say from the beginning. The moment a map needs these sort of investments from players aka. being forced to watch without weapons or 'suffer' an -unnecessary- learning curve, it's already too late and no one in his right mind would go through that.

    Valve is most likely very aware of this because:

    1. They have more than enough maps. Adding new maps from the community is purely suplemental (they're not even required to do it, and would they stop one day no one would complain hard enough).
    2. It's been working this way with the right type of community maps for over two decades. There's no reason to change a succesful formula.
    3. Arms Race, Demolition and Dangerzone exist to explore more open-minded maps.

    I like how it looks, and the least to say is that it does look very different from the traditional defusal maps. However, due to the greybox it currently looks like it feels there's little to no player guidance, hence why one would get the feeling of being lost (not knowing where they are and where enemies can come from). In any event, I'm looking forward to future improvements and hopefully you'll be able to turn this into something quite surprising!

  • Daigo (contest version)

    Quote from CommonCrayon

    7 hours ago, CommonCrayon said: Looks Great! Hope you're still working on it and Good Luck!

    Thanks man! Don't worry, I'm working on it on a regular basis, but a few things (including moving to a new place) are currently on the planning, making consistent contributions just a little slower for the moment. I have no fixed ETA, but I'm hoping to finish a first playable test sometime mid-october.

  • [Help] Compile pal fails to connect to steam and build cubemaps/nav file.

    Quote from GenoCide

    16 hours ago, GenoCide said: That is w

    Tried it, didn't work. It is not about compile pal not being able to build cubemap, it is about compile pal failing to launch the game itself. Even -game compile parameter fails to work and gives the same error.

    Well... can't you just manually run the game and open up the map? I always have the console open on launch by default, then just type map de_nameofyourmap and that works just fine. You get used to it very quickly.