Squeebo

Rutherford Manor in Thief: Deadly Shadows is pretty memorable to me, just a really fun level

 

 

 
Or Lord Bafford's Manor, of Thief: The Dark Project
 
Or the opening sequence of Half-life, in the testing chambers
 
Or the opening level in Unreal
 
Or the first few testing chambers of Portal.
 
Apparently I have at thing for first levels! I just love seeing all the mechanics get set up, especially in gradual and organic ways.
 
 
As far as multiplayer levels go, I'd have to say:
CS:
CS_Office
DE_Inferno
 
TF2:
PL_Goldrush
CP_Well
CP_Dustbowl
CTF_Gravel Pit
CP_Steel
 
UT99:
CTF_Facing worlds
DM_Deck16
DM_Morbias
CTF_Coret
CTF_November
DM_Pyramid
 
 
Alright I'll stop; there's a bunch more I could probably think of. I'm really bad at picking a favourite, I love all these maps! This thread is really stirring up some nostalgia.
 
I find a lot of the new maps being released in the Operation map packs in CS:GO very inspiring as well, I love seeing what people here come up with. Cheers!

Hey man, just a few things that occurred to me, tried to illustrate them clear as I could:



 
Great to see you're still working on it, looking forward to next playtest. Keep it up!

Me.. often :/

Somehow my sleeping has completely stabilised itself as I've gotten into my mid-20s. As a teenager and for a while afterwards it was truly awful, I'd often go for 30+ hours and then crash into an epic sleep. So many personal projects to work on, so many online games to play. I didn't enjoy the sleep cycle aspect of it though, I don't like getting up in the middle of the day and I don't like not being able to sleep when I want to.
 
I don't know why I'm totally fine now. I reliably fall asleep at 11–1am and get up at 7–9am. The only things I can really think of:
I don't drink caffeine (That includes Coke!) for a couple of hours before bed
  I tell myself that I must have seven hours of sleep at least, so if I've got to be up at 8am I'll make sure I go to bed no later than 12am so I've got an hour to fall asleep
  I give myself an hour to fall asleep so I can spend time winding my overly active mind down and dealing with any shit I still want to think about
  If something is owning my mind (this goes for any time of day actually) I write a note in my iPhone to think about it properly later so I can move on, or write my thoughts/solution to a work problem/whatever down in full so I feel like I've done all I can

Great post, HP.
 
Regarding assimilating knowledge whilst you sleep, I totally agree with that. I used to play Piano, and if I practiced a lot the night before and couldn't quite play a song 100% correctly with no mistakes, if I just went to sleep.. The next morning, I could play the song perfectly. The human brain is a weird thing!

Yeap, I was thinking about creating a thread like this lately as well, because I came to the realization that although sleeping 5/6 hours a day worked for me for the last 10+ years, it's more and more becoming a habit that is slowly deteriorating my mind and my body. This topic goes hand in hand with being a night owl for me as well, so read up if you're interested.
 
I try to force myself to sleep, but as the extreme night owl that I am, it's one of the battles that I try to fight every night since I can remember. After a lot of research, (I actually spent a long time looking this topic up) I think what I am experiencing relates a lot to the definition of "Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder". Basically, after dinner I feel a boost of energy and I really feel that crave to sit in the computer and do some work / learning.
Big problem is, next day is work/school day and waking up early is where everything goes to shit for people that suffers from this. 
 
In the end, being like this is extremely shitty because there's literally no way around it (I tried, there's some things you can do to make it better tho) so you end up living two lives, you live the life that our society portraits as normal (so called 9 to 5) and you live your night life where you're really in the mood and creating your best work. The result of this? 5 hour sleep nights on average, which you try to compensate with coffee, exercise, (etc) but do it for as long as I've been doing it and it starts to take it's toll on you.
 
It's frustrating and infuriating because it's hard for "normal people" to understand what this shit feels like. You can't just flip a fucking switch and change who you are. Unfortunately for night owls, this is frowned upon by society and night owls are labeled as lazy fucks who tend to sleep in in the morning. Truth and fact is, I probably work more hours than the majority of the so called "early birds", the bright and golden individuals of our society.   I am firmly convinced that I am not biologically "wired" to go to sleep at 11pm like a robot just because society turned off the lights. After dinner, I get this burst of energy and creativity that typically lasts until 2/3am. All of my best work has been created during those hours, this has been going since I was 16 or 17 which coincides with when I had my first computer, which also proves that blue light at night will develop Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome. (And since we deal a lot with colors and art, that flux app is not a solution for me) We will see how long this will last until I have some kind of collapse.    But seriously tho, since I've started to exercise a couple months ago I feel i need more sleep so I've been thinking about REALLY forcing myself to go to sleep early'ish on the days that I exercise, and only do work on the days that I don't. I hate treating my life as a fucking calendar, but for the sake of health this sounds like a good thing to do.   tl:dr zzzZZzzzz

I had a revelation on this topic myself, and ironically the solution is not less sleep, it's more. You sleep during the day for a large part of it, wake up around 4-5 then go back to sleep around 4-5 in the morning. That means you end up waking up around 9AM, what's considered normal for most people. Then you're in the good cycle again. It saved my sanity quite honestly

Been a while since I've worked on a personal project and decided to go with a CS:GO map. Its the complete opposite of what I've been doing at work and figured it would be refreshing change of pace (so far it has!). It is also my first source map that isn't a test gym, so I've got a lot to learn as the map progresses.
 
Location: Hotel/Casino located in a Las Vegas-ish area. Main inspiration is the Aria and will be going with a modern look to the architcture and furnishings.
 
Backstory: Terrorists attempted to pull off a hiest at a casino, but failed and took hostages when the police arrived on the scene.
 
Current Status: Finished the inital block out stage and will be refining the spaces.
 
Additional Notes:
- It takes each team about 12-14 seconds to reach the right and left choke points (favoring the terrorists by 1-2 seconds)
- Center choke point is a one way drop from a vent which takes CT's roughly 30 seconds from spawn to falling into the office area.
- Arrows denote stairs on the overview shot
- All of the glass is breakable and the doors are usable adding more mayhem in the office area
- "Nzuri" is swahili for "beautiful"
- Ceilings will be added in the near future
 

de_rooftops, a map set on the rooftops of an old European city:
 









 
 
 
 

Hello everyone, my name is Carsten and I hail from Canada, I just recently stumbled upon this site and was very inspired by what I saw of the community, was excited to join up.
 
I dabbled in mapmaking a long while ago for CS:S and Unreal Tournament 3, as well as many other games, but have just recently been getting back into it again; I've started making some maps for CS:GO, to be uploaded to the workshop, they are as of yet unreleased but I hope to playtest them with the community soon.
(The first version of one of the CS:GO maps can be found on GameBanana: http://csgo.gamebanana.com/maps/181202 as well as one of my old UT3 maps, if you're curious: http://ut3.gamebanana.com/maps/96936)
 
I've also been trying to get into creating levels and environments for UE4, and basic game design.
 
I hope that I can offer some decent feedback for other peoples works and receive some in return; I look forward to seeing what this creative community produces and I'm happy to be a part of it.
 
Cheers!
 

I wanted to start a thread to try and document the progress of a few of my maps from alpha to completion; hopefully to receive some feedback on which ones show the most potential, what I should focus on, all the things that need to be improved, etc. as I find it all too easy to invest a great deal of time in a map without showing it to anyone only to discover the immense list of problems once people actually start to play it(Or even see it).
So I resolve to post my work here as soon as possible! All my unpolished, underdeveloped, experimental work. Hopefully I'll finish a few maps, eh?
I am fairly new to mapping for CS:GO and appreciate any advice or feedback.
First up, the first map I created for CS:GO, de_midnight, a map I created for the CEVO CS:GO mapping contest 2014, a map I put a great deal of time into and learned a lot from, but still needs a lot of work, this is the point I got it to before entering it in to the contest:
de_midnight
Game Banana
 

 

 


 

cs_villa, a map inspired by the Villa Charlotte Bronte in the Bronx, NYC; started right after I submitted de_midnight to the CEVO contest, a map I need to playtest a lot more before I do more with the visuals:

I wanted to start a thread to try and document the progress of a few of my maps from alpha to completion; hopefully to receive some feedback on which ones show the most potential, what I should focus on, all the things that need to be improved, etc. as I find it all too easy to invest a great deal of time in a map without showing it to anyone only to discover the immense list of problems once people actually start to play it(Or even see it).
So I resolve to post my work here as soon as possible! All my unpolished, underdeveloped, experimental work. Hopefully I'll finish a few maps, eh?
I am fairly new to mapping for CS:GO and appreciate any advice or feedback.
First up, the first map I created for CS:GO, de_midnight, a map I created for the CEVO CS:GO mapping contest 2014, a map I put a great deal of time into and learned a lot from, but still needs a lot of work, this is the point I got it to before entering it in to the contest:
de_midnight
Game Banana
 

 

 


 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppV2EMfbk0w

Just a few things I found somewhat strange, very minor things:
 
It seems strange that this brush doesn't go up into the ceiling to me, why is there a ledge there?

 
This lamp is clearly floating, but I'm sure you knew that. The brush with the security door on it could perhaps have some trim on top as well:

 
Thought this door might benefit from being on a diagonal wall, as it would be easier to spot, making players more aware of the two paths in this room, and adding some variety in geometry:

 
Had a lot of fun in the map this last playtest, it's shaping up quite nicely! Cheers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppV2EMfbk0w

Some small updates.
 
Replaced the hay stack with a Safari jeep prop.
 

 
Custom fish
 

I decided to take this thread super serial and really try to track down my biggest inspirations.
 
Ins_Almaden by Erratic. Was a big big inspiration for me during my Insurgency days. I never saw such a cool vista, it's still incredibly badass, I mean, just look at it. For me it was always the most visually impressive map in the mod.
 

ND_Russia by Briscoe + others (and the Japan level screenshots by Sa7an) If you worked on Nuclear Dawn you were probably awesome and brilliant. 
 

The Dust2 of Day of Defeat, Avalanche by Fingers. Tied with Dust2 for best overall multiplayer goldsource map of all time, IMO
 

CS_Bikini by 3D Mike. Legendary mapper's best work? Maybeeee
 

Call of Duty 1 MP, Pavlov's House. Holy PHUCK this was fun. CoD1's MP was rock solid. Amazing.
 
De_Dust by Johnston...Dust1 you say?! Yep, primarily because playing this angle with an AWP in pubs was about as much fun as you can have with computer games circa early 2000s.
 
also, if i re-made a map (Veil, Cache, Season), it pretty much goes without saying I liked the map a ton and learned a ton from it

Hi,
 
My name is Jan Glembotzki.
For the last 10 years I've been working as a film composer, and I have provided music for documentaries, feature films, musicals and organizations/companies such as Sony, PETA, and The National Geographic.
 
On www.songsfromthelostland.com I do offer a constantly growing collection of free music meant to be used in your non-commercial projects.
 
Being a veteran roleplayer, I always wanted to provide music for a computer game. www.songsfromthelostland.com is meant to give an impression of my skills, and in case you like what you hear: Hire me and get some first class music tailored to your needs.
 
Feedback is very much appreciated.
 
Best regards
Jan

Something i've been working on over the last couple months as a personal side project. My original plan was to create the scene based on this concept from Seneca Menard:
http://i.imgur.com/3raJP4f.jpg
After doing the blockout and first couple mockup props it felt a bit too crammed and claustrophobic to me so i redesigned it to be more vertical. Eventualy i drifted away from the original concept more and more, adding my own designs and getting inspired by other peoples work also.
 
Materials are about 50-50 unique vs. tiling. I would have done a few things differently in that regard had i checked out the workflow in Alien: Isolation and PogoP's scifi bunk room earlier.
 
Texturing was done around 90% with Quixel Suite. Mostly just  tweaked default materials. Nothing too fancy.
 
https://vimeo.com/117130801
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

L4D No Mercy Campaign... it felt great to run through in the first days of L4D. Eventually, everyone began to corner camp and abuse of things such as meleeing the door in the Gas station level, elevator bug smoker tongue, tank blocking elevator, and the narrow ladder chokepoints. The campaign is a blast to play on expert though. I love the atmosphere! It is far from perfect but I had so many epic moments that it is one of the most memorable set of maps for me.
 

Even those textures look noisey. For now, I would work with completely solid colors, and then add very subtle noise to them later on. The reason I say that is that less is really more, because CS:GO's lighting engine is very beautiful with minimalist styles, and also because players will very much appreciate the solidity of the surfaces. Adding more noise is easy, working with a reduced level of noise is difficult and will ultimately produce a more pleasing end result (TF2 kind of look, but more realistic). If you really reduce the amount of noise on textures you will see how you will need to be more careful about which details you do use, because they will become very strong and important, and more impressive visually.
 
This may sound like a crazy suggestion, but in my experience this is the better art style for CS:GO, and I already think it would improve your work a lot on this map. Mirage is a good example of how to use solid color effectively, Season also does it but it won't be as helpful to you since it's scientific/futuristic.
 
tl;dr: as long as you get the correct color tone, it's very easy to add almost transparent levels of dirt and detail for realism. So just use solid colors for now.
 



 
yes you will need to go back and re-imagine some of your buildings, but you will be doing so in order to pursue a more effective + visually pleasing style.

Yeah I did, its the nic I've been using in games/twitch for the last 5 years, just not on mapcore, so I figured it was time to change it. Sorry for the confusion. 
 
Also this is hilarious!
 

In CS:GO, after you have generated a nav for your level, check out the cvar bot_show_battlefront - This will show areas in red where rushing players will initially meet.

Really looking forward to seeing this shape up, love the idea and references, layout's looking good. Would love to help playtest this!