Posts by JorisCeoen

Can I ask you how long you've spend developing this map? Congratulations on making it into the game ?

If you've played Left4Dead2 then obviously this brings back great memories of the Swamp level ? there's no denying that it has inspired the artwork to some extent, but it's even more impressive that you were able to find the right assets to combine with the theme, edit them, and apply them in the map so it elevates the overall feel and detail even more than it did back when L4D2 was released. I personally think this entry has the most impressive detailwork to bring the level alive. The small grass, rocks and blend textures all fit into one complete picture that feels realistic and comfortable. The water foliage in particular is amazing, and I'm surprised at the readability and clarity the map has, given its amount of flora.

However, it's sad that the map suffers heavily from performance. I'm running a 1050ti and I would be able to comfortably play Anubis or Mustang (and many other entries in the top-10) without problems. Even Cache ran a lot better than Swamp, and that map also has a ton of foliage and swaying. It's a huge bummer, because it drops below 50fps in many places. It's important to hold performance in high regards, because while CS:GO does go with hardware improvements over time, it remains a fact that many people run on a budget when playing Counter-Strike and think of performance as one of the most important factors when choosing to queue in MM or play on dedicated servers.

Therefore I think the most crucial working point for this map is to improve the performance. I could literally not even suggest ONE thing to improve the visual quality at this point, so I think you're safe to go all-in to improve the FPS. I'm not sure what exactly FMpone did to improve Cache over time, but one thing he certainly did was limit the amount of foliage props and replace it for blendtextures or something else, to reduce the overall polycount and drawcalls. Or, combine props to reduce drawcalls. Or reduce the amount of shaders that are being used in one space.

The one and only tiny suggestion that I can think of (visually), is that the text on the crocodile warning signs feels out-of-place. I don't think any realistic warning sign would say something like 'if you wanna be food then please go into the water' ? keep it in tie with the realism of the visuals. Also, while inventive and fun to experiment with, I'm just not a fan of the slowing down in the water thing. It's hindering flow (obviously the point, but still), and just makes me not wanna enter the water, ever. It basically seals a part of the map that could otherwise be used for good fun. It also makes no sense that the water in Swamp would slow you down, but not in Canals... I guess it's something to think about.

As it stands now, though, Swamp would be a deserved third place, almost solely due to the performance issues it is currently facing. Still, it holds up entirely on its own in all the other categories, and I don't see Swamp going anywhere else but the top-3.

Congratulations, and good luck crancking up those frames ?!

What can you say, when you have an entry like this... this is just incredible, and a statement to the possibilities of the Source engine even to-date. It feels like Egypt, and the artwork is some of the best in the competition. The amount of work that must have taken this map to completion is insane. I suspect slightly that this map is in development for quite some time, but regardless I think Anubis will end-up being either first or second. The optimization of the map is incredible, and there are no real spots in the map that feel out-of-place.

However, while initially I thought Anubis was uncontestably a first-place winner, running in the map currently clarifies one thing that some other maps are much stronger in (for instance, Mustang): You can't ever really focus. Running around, you feel that it's hard to know exactly where to look for, because there's never a prop or detail that gives an indication where connections or angles are. This is quite a strange bummer for now, because it hinders the flow to some extent. It truly is the one and only thing that I feel needs to be worked on at this very moment. I know that readability is an important factor, and this map probably has the best overall color for that, ever. Period. BUT, it feels like Anubis went so far in trying to cather to that feature that the repeated color removes the ability to read or feel the layout comfortably as it stands now.

In any event, when you've achieved such advanced progress that you are able to work on that particular aspect, I think that says enough about the quality and sheer potential of a map like this.

Congratulations, and best of luck in the finale ?

Since my return from holidays and the top-10 announced, I've finally got the time to run around some of the maps. And, truth be told, when I saw maps like Anubis and Swamp I initially felt like Mustang would fall around third place judging solely from screenshot impressions. However as it stands now I can clearly tell that Mustang is by far the most impressive map in terms of visuals. I think what gives Mustang the edge over all the other maps is just the sheer atmosphere and feeling of actually being there. The colors and fine details in combination with the skybox make it feel like you're up in the mountains, in that cultural town of Nepal.

The optimization is also the best out of the three (although Anubis is practically on-par), and the subtle introduction of different colors, details and flora make this entire entry complete and worthy of first place. I love the tree models, and some of the soft edges on the fine woodwork. Very inspiring! Also great remix of some existing Valve-assets (such as the wooden arch of Dust2 CT-spawn for one of the connector gates).

I obviously can't speak for gameplay, since I haven't played with players, but I don't think that will be much of a problem. There are definitly enough options for both teams, and the flow of the map is very good. The only 2 small gripes I might have, are some of the rock formations being tough to read against when they're blending in with the same rocks a few ways up (T-spawn), and that the beautiful flags sway a bit too far back-and-forth to my taste.

Congratulations! Very jealous of this entry's quality ?

Quote from Interfearance

3 hours ago, Interfearance said: too massive in scale for the game.

Perhaps try to go for Danger Zone? Massive scale is perfect for that!

I probably should play/open this once I’m back from holidays, but from all the screenshots it (still) looks like it’s incredibly dark, especially the shadows. It has always given me this ‘clamped’ feeling. A bit like the old Aztec. But, other than that it looks great!

All I would really care for is some feedback on what further progress I could make on the map. Feedback about things I might have missed or that caused the map to miss out (not about things missing in the map, which I obviously know about like nodraw spots and no 3D Skybox). Congratulations to the finalists

Historical comments:

28/09/2019

Spoiler Once more have I made some progress on this map. It's now been a while in beta-state, but will stay so even after the last updates. Daigo is not entirely what I've wanted it to be, and misses a lot of polish and atmosphere that I wish I was able to include in its current state. Since I feel that is not possible I've decided to redesign a large portion of the map. This includes all of the roofing, ground textures, trees and much of the woodwork. The fish, newest basewall rocks and cornerstones are there to stay, but everything else will undergo a completely new design. I will also incorporate more color to the map to make it more alive and thematic. Needless to say, this will take a lot of time, and Daigo might not get an update within the next month or two.

The redesign should also be beneficial for the performance on the map, which I was made aware is currently terrible. I've learned so much over the past month that a lot of the stuff I had made months before, now don't make sense to me anymore. So I'd rather take this drastic decision now, and complete Daigo in a way that works for everyone, including me [Blocked Image: https://twemoji.maxcdn.com/2/72x72/3f.png].

To not end it all so dramatically, I'd love to share some screenshots of how the map looks now, if you hadn't ever seen it yet. Below are some last screenshots of Daigo as it stands now. Download link: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/fi…/?id=1881843696

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[Blocked Image: https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1004811252…BF46AEF9A0E28D/]

I'd like to make a special mention regarding the programs I've been using to design all of the layout and artwork, which are the Wall Worm tools for 3DS Max!

[Blocked Image: https://wallworm.com/media/wallworm_plugins_scripts_200.png]

02/02/2020

Spoiler WORKSHOP LINK: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/fi…/?id=1881843696

I present to you: de_daigo (beta-release) by @JorisCeoen (level design, artwork) and @shawnolson (technical assistance and Wall Worm Model Tools)

Daigo is a competitive 5v5 defusal map, set in Japan featuring a large castle. It is geared towards all kinds of playstyles (short and longrange) and features some verticality on A-Site.

The map is in dire need of multiple new passes, such as overall optimization, clipping, lighting and material-model management, and improved artwork. I'm aware that there will be numerous nodraw gaps throughout the map (and dev-textures), and that there's currently no 3D skybox to give more depth to the map.

The development and design of the layout and artwork is entirely made by me. All technical assistance with the creation of custom content and level design tools was managed and coached by Shawn Olson, creator of the Wall Worm Model Tools. This mean that the entire map was designed from scratch in 3DS Max. Hammer was never, ever used to create anything related to the art- or brushwork. It's all still a heavy-WIP, but the map will be improved over time, with more custom content (that will be better managed versus the mb's in filesize).

Hope you enjoy the project for how it currently stands. Without Shawn, this project would never have come to its current status, which is least to say fully functional and playable. We will update this post in the future as more progress is being made ?

28/02/2020

Spoiler So, I've decided to tackle this project once more, due to a particular request. I've thus finished an important asset that I have created both as part of the project, but also as an exercise to learn procedural design for both modeling and texturing (to ensure that I can change anything and any part of both the models and textures visually, at any time going backwards or forward, and without destroying the creative hierarchy of the asset). Not only was this an eye-opener because it allows for endless possibilities, but it also allows you to have the precise mathematical information for depth, normal mapping, phongmasking and more importantly -regarding this case- blendmodulate textures.

Below is an example of the new basewall rock texture, and its blendmodulate texture that was created based off the Render-to-Texture procedurally generated model:

Spoiler [Blocked Image: https://files.gamebanana.com/bitpit/daigo_s…enteffect00.gif]

It's hard to explain just how much procedural design changes the way you look at creating pretty much anything, but it makes so much more sense to the point that I don't see myself going back to photoshop or GIMP at almost any step in the creative process any longer. Creating textures from reference images is nice, and you can achieve some nice results, but if you want the power to do just anything you want with no artificially generated information, procedural design is the way to go. Substance Designer and B2M are really great, and you can do awsome stuff with it, but deriving textures from actual geometry that can also procedurally change is one step further that's nothing short of being amazingly perfect.

I also want to stress how much more detail there is to this procedural texture, which is only 1024x1024, compared to the one there is in the current version of Daigo, which is a whopping 2048x2048 and physically generated off a reference image. It's just ridicilous.

The goal with the blendmodulate texture is to allow for a wide variety of blending between the plaster walls and the stone, while also having other blend possibilities between this 'blendline'. This removes the need for a wall made out of a tesselated model, breaks the repetitive pattern of the texture, is cheap, and also saves up huge amounts of mb's in filesize while also being less straining on the eyes. Not to mention, since they are displacements, I can easily change the shape in a fine way to make it look a little more natural as opposed to completely 'flat'.

Once the whole project is over I'd love to go more in-depth in the whole process of achieving all of this entirely in 3DS Max and export it easily with Wall Worm, but for now I'll continue fixing the remaining things in the map and hopefully get a new playable testversion sometime around the 8-10th of May.

02/05/2020

Spoiler Here's a follow-up on the basewall, and some additional corners. Most of the walls are now done. Some of the old ones will remain for now in the next playtest version, as I'm now advancing in my planning and working on the dragon and fishmodels, that I hopefully will have finished in the next two days!

Spoiler [Blocked Image: https://files.gamebanana.com/bitpit/daigo_s…ect00_58e10.gif]

It's a lot cleaner, more natural, better colouring, and the rock models and displacement texture flow seamlessly into one another (You might notice that at the top-right side there's a straight line between the rock and plaster wall, that's just because I forgot to alpha those).

I'll post some new screens when the dragon and fish are done as well [Blocked Image: https://twemoji.maxcdn.com/2/72x72/3f.png]

08/05/2020

Spoiler Tomorrow, I'll upload a brand new version of the map, with many improvements. I won't go into much detail yet, but here's a current W.I.P. for the Fish Statues (called Sachihoko in Japanese):

Spoiler [Blocked Image: https://files.gamebanana.com/bitpit/daigo_s…chihoko0001.png]

18/05/2020

Spoiler Daigo has been updated, (B2_1) and a lot of changes have been made since the last version (B2). I don't feel like it's worth mentioning the changes, because most of them will be irrelevant in the future. I've updated the original post with images of Daigo's current state, but it'll undergo such big changes that it's not really a good reference any longer. I'm going to implement all I learned in the last two months into the redesign of nearly all the artwork in the map.

Should you still wish to download the map: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/fi…/?id=1881843696

04/08/2020

Spoiler As more time has opened up in my scedule recently, I've been able to work on redesigning quite a few important assets of Daigo. I've been working silently on T-spawn for the past month to slowly but surely rework all of the roofwork (for the whole map), as well as a lot of additional woodwork and foliage. All of it is still WIP, but I've reached a point where I can finally start moving forward into the map. A lot of additional details are planned to be added, and some of it already exists, but I'm not adding those until the very end of the whole rework. I've also decided to use the newest prop_detail techniques to design most of the flowers and grass stuff so I can have total control over the variation and placement across the map.

I'm working hard on getting all the assets procedurally placed, so that I can also change things later on in the development of the map (such as balanced coloring and thematic material). Below is an rough example of the T-spawn rework:

Spoiler [Blocked Image: https://files.gamebanana.com/bitpit/de_daigo_b2_20012.jpg]

25/08/2020

Spoiler I've made some more progress with rock gardens and a staircase. These will eventually replace some larger areas alongside the building walls and sloped surfaces to add a whole lot more natural setting to the map. They won't be at the main keeps or central square to keep it more authentic to the original reference, but since everything around it is completely artificial, I'd figured it would be nice to implement the typical Japanese gardenesque style around the castle. Below are some images (still WIP)!

Spoiler [Blocked Image: https://files.gamebanana.com/bitpit/de_daig…enrocks0001.jpg]

[Blocked Image: https://files.gamebanana.com/bitpit/de_daig…enrocks0002.jpg]

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I knew it ? nice work guys, I really like the theme!

Quote from AK Addict

29 minutes ago, AK Addict said: Thank You for your comment! It's finally appeared on the workshop with almost 1 hour delay and despite the error massage!)) I guess it's just the website problem.. looks like workshop is busy today!)

Usually when you have that error, it's due to Steam's workshop itself. Just like they need time for their bots to scan/review your submission, it can take a bit of time before it's definitly live.

Congratulations on winning the contest! ? Oh, wait...

Quote from JonyDrake

11 minutes ago, JonyDrake said: Just letting you know that we're not dead and we will finish the map. When the deadline hits some rooms will most likely not be at the state we would like them to be, but we will have something decent in our hands. We will update the workshop page tomorrow!

I'm just in the same situation ? I'll have to make amends, but it'll be done I guess!

This is looking incredible! Great job guys ?

Quote from DMU222

On 11/22/2019 at 1:53 AM, DMU222 said: Any one else see the enemy AI interaction? This zombie walks over to a physics barrel and knocks it towards the player

I hope you realise zombies in Half-Life 2 already do this?

This is looking pretty cool. Great job guys ?

Quote from Lizard

7 hours ago, Lizard said: The idea is to have very short distance between Start Fade and Fade. The biggest cost is where the prop is in "fading" state so ideally you want to clamp it to short distances if possible.

Ah, I see. So the actual only cost is when you're entering the fading zone? That's interesting. In that case, I might just use Ringel's suggestion (below) to get rid of that particular cost ? thanks for all the great answers people!

Quote from Ringel

10 hours ago, Ringel said: You only have to set the "End Fade Dist/Pixels" to achieve that. You can leave the "Start Dist/Pixels" at -1.

Quote from mr.P

6 minutes ago, mr.P said: A wip from inside hangar B

Cool! Are the walls and ceiling still part of the placeholder model (if it is a placeholder at all)?

Quote from That50

1 hour ago, That50'sGuy said: If I recall correctly, the fading-out part does incur a small CPU cost, but the benefits of having the models no longer rendered far outweighs this small issue.

If you're still worried about it though, you can set the start fade and end fade settings to the same thing so they instantly disappear instead. However, this is quite jarring if the fade-out is visible (The advantage of having it fade is that if you have to have it fade in the player's view, then it's less noticeable). So be careful with this idea.

Hey, excellent response! Thanks for the suggestions should I need to fade, it'll probably be the instant ones for props that are just around a corner that I can't cut off in visleafs.

Hey everyone,

Very small and weird question, but I haven't seen it being asked anywhere or find something about it: With prop_static, you can specify fade distances. You specify a range for when it's supposed to be visible, and when it'll start to fade to nothing. I always wondered if this incurs a CPU cost of some sorts, as opposed to not specifying it all. If it does, I'd rather try to find a way to avoid using this at all. In the level that I'm working on right now, I could theoretically avoid doing it all, but for some models I could specify fade distances to avoid having to cut up more visleafs. I just wondered if it was worth it trying to not have to specify fade distances at all (with my current idea that doing so results in more CPU processing).

Any thoughts?

Quote from daniel00266

1 hour ago, daniel00266 said: Hey guys I think I won’t be able to finish my map in time because of school

You're like the 5th guy in a week time that throws in the towel ? seems like the exam period is taking some hits left and right. The map looked very promising! Hopefully you'll release the full version in the near future. Good luck with those exams?!