Campaignjunkie

Damn! I live 20 minutes away from Swinging Ape Studios! Would be a great location for me. Assuming, that is, if they would even accept a misfit like me. If only I didn't have all this school to "drag me down"...

I'm sorry Ferret! It's not worth winning the contest if it discourages you from entering others! I think the texture idea is prety cool, but the overall execution is kind of wonky. All the gears look pretty flat, and don't seem to be casting shadows on other gears or reflecting off neighboring gears, etc. I think with some more work, this could be a really awe-inspiring texture though. Would be cool if it was animated.

I agree with Taylor - just put a building there, maybe with a garage door or something. City blocks don't have to be perfect blocks, and I'm sure the players wouldn't notice anyway.

I think it's fair for people wanting to see evidence of a map before deciding to freely spend their time on some textures. If I had any kind of talent, I would probably be asking for the same thing before committing to anything.

Architecture looks nice, but I don't know about your choice of lighting colors. Might want to consider using a Color Scheme Tool to harmonize the various colors going on in your map - I use it all the time myself, since I'm no good with colors. Here's the scheme I used to check your colors. Anyways, it matches everything for you quite nicely and generally serves as a reliable guide for colors, most of the time. Good luck!

Reminds me a lot of the Q3 geocomp maps. Which is a very good thing. Might want to consider using plain textures to emphasize the brushwork. Really want to see how it compiles, though.

Ditto. I need more brown shirts in my wardrobe anyway.

Woot. Transparency aside, the badge looks pretty cool, in addition to boosting my incredible ego. Thanks!

Those look pretty good. I think the teal lab-wall textures are probably too concrete / dirty though to be used in a hi-tech laboratory, especially considering how it is used at the beginning of Half-Life.

I think you'll have to edit the templates directly with Wordpad or whatever. But for the most part they should be in HTML anyway, so it shouldn't be too difficult.

Hey, hey, this thread is supposed to be about ME. But yeah, the Meleetown3d pwns me. Going to definately vote for that one.

I played the E3 demo and was hooked all the way until the test sadly ended. Admittedly, I mostly played the PvP scenarios they had, instead of the quests. One of them was a tournament-style bracket that had various different scenarios, like King of the Hill, Capture the Flag, Team Deathmatch, and Assault/Defend variants. Each tier pitted you against other teams in the bracket and it got progressively more and more challenging. Extremely fun and I was surprised as to how balanced it all was and how well it scaled along with the regular dungeon-exploring mode. It was kind of like a fantasy MMORPG Team Fortress Classic. Really hectic. I also like how they're handling the skill system so that even new or less experienced players have a chance to compete against some of the stronger ones. Definately looking into buying it later, but not too sure about all those expansions yet.

First (or maybe second? third?) post here! Really admire a lot of people's work here. Anyway, entered the same mapping contest as Ferret's dm_fairytales. But of course, I don't stand a chance against him anyway. Persian Letters (bonus points: guess what game this map is inspired from?!) Map Info: http://www.snarkpit.com/maps.php?map=828 Download: http://www.snarkpit.com/maps.php?download=828 (err, open \persia\ and extract the 5-6 folders to \valve\) Notes: Ladder bugs. Clipping bugs. Lighting glitches. Let's just leave it at "lots of bugs". Playtest wasn't too bad, except crossbow was too dominant. Quite big, too - probably at least 10 people are needed to maintain a good pace throughout the map. Not likely that many people are going to be playing this though, heh. Weapon placement and a bunch of rooms were horribly rushed and are mediocre hack-jobs. So far, people have simply told me it has "a lot of potential". Too bad it's finished already.

Umm, Milkshape can render through an external plug-in to Pov-Ray. It works very well, too. I've been using it for months. http://www.wunderboy.org/3d_games/utils/povexport.php

From what I've played, you have to treat the waterfall kind of like a bounce-pad. Have your back to the cliff, walk forward then jump - the momentum should push you over the edge in one piece. Or at least that's how I've been doing it. Doesn't make a difference though, I still get wasted in playtests. Shotgun way too dominant in this map though, IMO.