Posts by Michael Greenwood

Quote from jackophant

1 hour ago, jackophant said: Lighting is always important and at this early stage is really not very hard to fix.

Getting the lighting "acceptable" will help you see what you're doing and give some good shadows.

If you can't even accept feedback on light or put the minimal effort in to fix it, it doesn't give much confidence in listening to much more important feedback.

Are you kidding me? "Can't even accept feedback"? Where did you pull that crap from? I agreed that it was something that needed to be fixed (and have fixed it in my dev build) but that it isn't the feedback I am aiming for at the moment. I can't help but feel you're being a dick just to be a dick at this point. I'm done with this community

I was originally going to go for a dark and grimy look like so:

Spoiler [Blocked Image: http://media.moddb.com/images/members/1/170/169690/Underwater_Docking_Bay2.jpg]

(hence the left bombsite looking very similar to this). The problem, as I'm sure many of you can guess, is that dark colors and grimy light make player models super hard to see. Nuke, season, cache etc work so well visually because they are very bright/white/contrasting at player height making enemies easier to see. This throws a bit of a damper into my theme plan and I'm thinking the initial theme could still work (water based research facility) but go for a sleek clean look and give atmosphere with lighting rather than dark textures.

Quote from RealaxFourX

1 minute ago, RealaxFourX said: Mine is default also, the only thing I changed is it's ambient and glowing colour and everything works perfectly. In your level it looks as it would be very cloudy and at evening.

Sorry, I meant that I'm not disagreeing with you, I just don't think it is necessary at this point as I am doing the initial round of layout fine tuning at the moment. Once I have fixed the glaring problems with sightlines, OP spots, etc, then I will start on the styling, lighting etc.

There is a light env in the map (otherwise there wouldn't be any light at all), it is just the default one because it really doesn't matter yet. The skybox also really isn't something one should be committing to within the greybox stage so it is also set to the default.

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In one of my CS GO projects, I am planning on a theme that would make sense to have glass used throughout the map.

I really like the idea of making sections of the map give visibility without making either player vulnerable to bullets. This could be achieved through things like a room above a main section of the map with an unbreakable glass floor, having windows facing into mid/a bombsite with unbreakable glass etc. My main concern is wondering if players would find it frustrating to be able to see the enemy but not able to shoot them without further manoeuvering. Something like giving T's a way to see how many CTs are heading towards one of the sites, but without the long line of sight to be able shoot them. I like making CTs or Ts have to use smokes to prevent the other team getting information (like Dust 2 doors), but without it requiring an involved AWP battle.

Quote from Logic

You can use cl_leveloverview to take better overview screenshots. Just a tip

I am aware, The map does have a radar made with cl_leveloverview, I just couldn't find the source image files to add to the album!

So I have some updates on my map:

Album: http://imgur.com/a/VdxID

Workshop link: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/fi…s/?id=628691587

Overview:

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/B9JprE0.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/5SHxz6p.jpg]

These numbers link to each image in the imgur album. 1 corresponds to the first image after the loading screen image and so forth.

Do you have any new images? I really like the look of this!

The -staticproplighting worked great for the issue I was having. Thanks for the fix!

Quote from Squad

1) You should be aware that trees can have a collision model that is sometimes not accurate to the tree model itself at all (especially some of the older stock models). Other than that, it's not something that should be avoided per se, although it probably depends on the situation. You can check out the collision model in Hammer by clicking on the CM button ([Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/J501858.jpg]).

2) + 3) Can't really comment on them as they're map specific and I didn't playtest your map yet.

4) Always make railing non-solid to bullets (and possibly grenades). It's really frustrating if your shots don't hit the target because of small bits of a railing.

Thanks! I was using the standard palm tree model and it has a really wonky collision model at head height (probably the worse place for it) and would probably frustrate players far more than it adds to the map appearance-wise. Replaced with different props and brushes to encourage better play.

I meant 2/3 as general questions, but at the same time, that doesn't make any sense when I think about it as it is completely a case by case basis kind of thing. I've also done some updates attempting to mitigate these issues.

So I set collisions on the props to no collisions, does that fix the issue, or is there a better way?

I'm also having trouble with my foliage props creating really weird shadows. If there's a quick fix, I'd be happy to hear it, but im going to do some research of my own as well to see what is causing it.

I have a couple conceptual questions that should be easy to answer:

1) Should I avoid the use of trees in mid as cover/props as they are unpredictable for cover, grenades and clipping?

2) T's can smoke both Entrances to mid for CTs without revealing themselves, but also get to mid about 2 seconds after CTs. Would making cover a bit further up into mid that CTs could rush to (like white box on cache) make it so mid control isn't too easy for T's? Is this even a problem?

3) One site looks to be noticeably easier to take than the other assuming full builds (but also likely to be easier to retake) - How much should this be avoided? The other site has more rushing opportunities available and ways of holding closer angles.

4) Should metal railings (like the ones on inferno balcony) be set to not block bullets? Or be really easy to penetrate? I like metal railings for the visibility (and theme) but I don't like the unpredictability of the clipping.

In a general sense, I should mention I completely agree with you. In this case, I'm just saying that this was my first project larger than a room with hammer and was an undertaking I was vastly under-prepared to make work. I don't plan on making this a habit and think my new map has a really good base to build on, but if it would allay the fears that I am wasting anyone's time, I could split the projects and do the fixes on the old map to both learn from my mistakes and see if it could become something more!

That doesn't seem a very fair criticism to me. I greatly (greatly) appreciate that the community playtested a map I built (and I apologize for the fact that it didn't turn out so great), but I would hope that I am not committing some egregious faux pas by deciding that there wasn't enough positives to a project to not want to take all that I've learned from the feedback and try again. I have spent far more time sketching, planning and tweaking the initial routes, timings and angles and routes. I don't feel I threw out any feedback that was given and did my best to avoid the issues that existed in the new map. It just doesn't make sense to me that asking for a playtest (which again, I appreciate the time that people put in very much!) has now committed me to that map despite its major flaws and that I have no attachment to it.

I see your point with regards to documentation. I considered it less of a big deal as I already had my old WIP thread from before it was playtested, but it makes no sense to have people reply to a thread than change the content in the OP. I will make sure to do that in the future.

Lighting has been fixed. My values were really similar to inferno already but my angle and pitch were really off, so I think the darkness was caused by the light going pretty much horizontally over the map. I was trying to take a shortcut quickly plugging in my own values, but as you can see, didn't work out great.

Quote from jackophant

Firstly can I suggest you stop editing OP by replacing what is there, just stick it in a spoiler so you can have good documentation of your map development.

Secondly, please update your lighting. It's a ridiculous strain to see anything, let alone trying to play it.

I'm keeping with the same theme but that's about it. I have recreated 95% of the map from scratch. It made sense to not spam and make a new thread, but it also didn't make much sense in this case to keep anything.

As for the lighting, yeah, it's pretty crap. I think I have my dull ambient blue color overpowering the main yellowish light_env (and also have it using a really bad angle, it was making the leaf/bush props have awful shadows). I'll fix that tonight and re-upload better images. Other than that, I have it nodrawed, generally optimized and just need to make some minor fixes to the skybox around B site and the entrances to mid. Is there anything obviously glaring layout issues that would need to be fixed before trying it out with real players? I'll put up the workshop link tonight. The only main concern I have currently is the trees in mid - they may have weird hit boxes? Pillars are a possibility. The inspiration was: http://www.hotelboutiquecasapestagua.com/img/slide/ligh…me-hotel/01.jpg

The engagement point at B is also a little bit onto the start of the site area, which gives the CTs only 1-1.5 seconds to set up around the site before T's come rushing in. My main thought is just increase the distance from T spawn by 2 seconds which should fix all the issues around that site.

Overview and new images added to OP

So I redid the map keeping only the small little area of T spawn. So far, the map feels far more like an actual CS GO map and has some really interesting dynamic play, even just against bots. I updated the OP with the description of the map and my crappy handpainted layout. I'll be posting the full overview and pics later tonight. With bot_show battlefront, the engagement points are in mid slightly towards T side (as CTs peek first), between the two horizontal barriers on the way to A site (my goal was an interesting peek, grenade bounce, peel to mid etc. strategy there) and just at the entrance to B site (may change it to something more similar to the cache engage in a main where CTs get another second or 2 head start).

I have a conceptual idea of how my themeing is going to go (see OP.) by my general question would be: In a south american town with spanish colonial style architecture, what would be the generic 'box'. Cache has crates and shipping crates. Dust has pallets and boxes, Inferno has trucks, cars, boxes, carts... What would make the most sense for making small, medium and large rectangular-ish shaped barriers to sight and bullets? Small could just use the drug pallets, generic crates whatever, the larger sizes are more what I am at a loss for.

Ignoring the performance issues, I would think that the 'standard' use of negative space is necessary for a few reasons. Smokes have their strategic strength because of the ability to block off specific paths, which wouldn't really be possible in a more open area. As well, the relative strength of scoped weapons at range make it so that these weapons have too much strength and way too many long angles that other weapons wouldn't be able to compete.

Why wouldn't you want to use the workshop?

As an aside, how do you get textures from L4D to use with CSGO? There are a lot of the models from the mall level Id really like to use. Was the escalator a model or brushwork?