mazemaster

*lurker chimes in* I learned modeling on Max, and have used Maya a bit, but my personal favorite right now is Blender for lowpoly and ZBrush for highpoly. At first I moved to Blender because of cost (it is free and open source), but now that I have mastered the interface I actually prefer Blender in its own right. Even though Blender lacks several of the advanced features of Max and Maya, the interface and workflow for modeling and UV is so good that I can modify everything by hand at a low level much faster in Blender than I can click through the menus, choose the feature, set all the parameters, and apply modifiers and tinker with settings in Max/Maya. There are a lot of little hacks/tricks that you pick up about movement of the viewport, how to select things, setting up efficient groupings of verticies, faces, edges, etc that make modeling in Blender really really fast. If you ever watch the professional Korean Starcraft players with their fast micro and the screen jumping all over the place and hotkeying to switch between all their units, thats what it feels like modeling in Blender once you have learned the UI. With one hand on the keyboard controlling all the settings, that leaves your mouse hand free to only do necessary spatial tasks like moving verticies, rotating the viewport, etc instead of clicking through menus. Of course ZBrush just plain kicks ass, so theres really no need to explain that choice. Best highpoly organic modeling program ive ever used, it's like sculpting clay. EDIT: beware though, with Blender the learning curve is steep. I had to read and work through many tutorials before I could even do basic tasks in it (even though I already knew how to model in other programs). Also memorizing the hotkeys is a must if you want to get anything done.

What ever happened to this map? The snow version looks kick-ass. Awesome style. Add a few displacements around and it would own.

Poly since you don't have to mircomanage the triangles when you cut a face.

IMO, the spirit of the competition was to make maps in-keeping with the Half-Life 2 theme. Thats why Valve restricted competition maps to all-stock textures, etc. Since this is a competition map you can't really hold it against the mapper for doing a HL2-themed map.

Hey wait up on that mirror for a day, ok? Long story, ill explain later... [edit] Nevermind that. Mirroring is great. Thanks.

Wow! Very creative. If only you could specify directional gravity fields so that you could walk upside down and sideways along the paths. That would solve the connectivity issues too since you could just curve the dead ends around vertically to higher platforms. Heck, create some sort of mobius-type surface and you could be running around underneath a platform someone is on the other side of.

Final Version - http://users.seascape.uk.net/~mazemaste ... land17.zip Thanks to everyone who helped with beta testing, advice, etc, and a big thanks to Juim for hosting the playtest. Went to the Bellevue post office and dropped it off today - the guy there exclaimed "hey this is right here" and he went and put the package in the Valve P.O. box as I waited.

After trying it I've found that I can't get it to work for more than one physics object. Oh well.

Venemous, you are a god for making that tutorial. Ive been trying to get respawning to work for the longest time.

Got 'em.

Wow, awesome. I've fixed about half of those things instantly after looking at the photos and will fix the rest soon. Thanks!

http://knd.org.uk/files/dm_island17_beta4.zip Unfortunately I only had time for a -fast vis. Well on my computer at least it runs faster than dm_lockdown without anyone else playing, so we will see..

I live like 20 mins drive from their offices. And I'm willing to ship the package next-day-air or second-day air if it comes to that. Heh, a bit of an advantage over all yall overseas folks. But then again, I didn't get started until after christmas so maybe it evens out.

Uhm dammit. The compile finished and theres a glaring error - I made a layout change but forgot to update the vis geometry. Playtest called off until I fix it and get another recompile, which probably means tomorrow night. I'll have to ship the map 2nd day air then but thats OK.

Sorry, bumping the playtest time back 1 hour. New time 9:00.