[FF map] FF_Flow - beta 2

[BumGravy]

Pics:

Download: http://www.filefactory.com/file/d8369f/

This is a map for FF - http://www.fortress-forever.com

[e-freak]

Img-Tag:

that one is for free

On topic: Map looks solid - the waterfalls are looking good.

[-HP-]

Nice screens, nice waterfal!

[BumGravy]

I realise this I just thought image spam might be bad etiquette -Changed anyway. Thanks for you comment

[e-freak]

I do love picture spamming - and tbh no one 56k is around here any more.

I like the bases interior, very TFc like (in a positive way ofc )

[m8nkey]

The textures look cohesive and I like the architecture of the blue fortress.

Some of the light fixtures in the red pics don't look self illuminating. The red looks very saturated too. I like the shade of blue you used for the blue lighting, maybe use a red with the same amount of saturation?

[BumGravy]

Thanks for your comments. Re: lighting, inside the bases and above ground level I have used pastel shades so the colours are more subtle, the underground area for both bases has a more saturated intense light to contrast with the dark areas. These areas are just connectors to the main base really, and won't see much action, so I've taken a bit of liberty with the colours i think your right about the self lighting on the models, to be honest I havent paid much attention to how all those littlelight models render, but Ill sort it out for the final release.

[Blunkka]

I find outside base geometry a bit odd but I like the way you did that uphill route to the flag.

[Sentura]

may i ask where you found the waterfall? while i havent seen it live, it looks amazing; and i am having the hardest time finding a way of getting such effect in source myself.

[BumGravy]

There are several waterfall in the map (hence the name), they are all made from a scrolling water texture on a displacement surface, and the ones in the pictures in the OP are actually 2 displacements stacked and noisy to give a better 3d effect. The scrolling water texture itself is included in the Fortress Forever mod.

[m8nkey]

Bravo, clever use of displacements.

Your approach to lighting makes sense. Send me some dimensions and base colours and I'll wip up some light textures for you if you like, pretty simple stuff.

[BumGravy]

That's kind of you, you mean to use instead of the FF models? Surely models supercede brushbased lighting?

I need help now with regards to the performance on this map. It seems that on a busy FF server, (that's Fortress-Forever - not to be confused with friendly fire ) FPS drops to single figures in the flagroom. This is partly because of the reflective water, but also I think because of the moving textures on displacements method Im using to get my waterfalls. How easy would it be to convert a displacement to a model, and if I did this would it give a performance boost, bearing in mind I will be using the same moving texture material on the model?

Thanks for your comments.

[m8nkey]

Does FF use Orange Box SDK? If not ep1 doesn't support light emitting models so you still require light entities to give the impression the model is emitting light.

As for models vs textures it really depends on the circumstance. There are several cases where a texture does the job.

Using "$additive" 1 and "$translucent" 1 in conjunction with eachother it's possible to create very nice neon looking signage. The alpha map is used to simulate light falloff. This technique is prevelant and used to good effect in Dystopia mod. It can also be used to create very cheap inset style ceiling light fixtures too.

Texture lighting is also the way to go if you want to create a trim around an entire room that emits light.

I also don't use the lights.rad for texture lighting. I rely on selfillum and the alphamap to denote which areas should appear to be emitting light. I use this method for both models and textures.

Whether you use model or texture lighting, the light emitting areas need to match, or come close to the colour of the light entity. In your bottom pic for example the light is red but the model appears to be emitting a white light.

*edit re:performance issue

You could create the same shape by creating a brush the same size as the dislpacement, breaking it into triangles, then vertex manipulating the triangles to reflect the displacement shape. This would be more expensive than a displacement though. The geometry looks very clean and simple but purhaps it isn't well optimised or you have a leak (sometimes Source makes it through VRAD even though you have a leak, check your compile log for errors). Judging purely by the pics you should be able to afford an expensive material effect in that sort of scene. I'd look at optimising the geometry.

[MJ]

yess support FF

map looking good..

[Ginger Lord]

Looks good, if you can fix the performance issues I'll have to see about getting this known on the dev team forums.