WIP in WIP, post your level screenshots!

[Schmung]

Lovely work there mate, dunno much about the HL2 engine myself, but I imagine theres some form of memory hit from using a lightmap at that scale. Dare say it's fine if used sparingly. Is this just pracite making a scene or part of a larger level?

[alexroyce]

Lovely work there mate, dunno much about the HL2 engine myself, but I imagine theres some form of memory hit from using a lightmap at that scale. Dare say it's fine if used sparingly. Is this just pracite making a scene or part of a larger level?

Well theres obviously some sort of expense to using low lightmaps, but the impact is very very small unless you purposely make really complex stuff just to see if you can break it. Im still 4x above the minimum quality, though, and ive seen maps with much more complex shadows which ran just fine.

Im coming up with a few small pieces of work to show off in my portfolio, so these things will probably never become maps, but maybe one day ill decide to make something big out of them.

[ReNo]

Yeah the hit isn't too bad really, though I wouldn't suggest using higher res lightmaps all over the place. Use it on the surfaces you need to to get the nice effects (eg the floors and walls you have used them on), but don't waste memory with hi-res lightmaps for surfaces that don't take advantage of them.

[Section_Ei8ht]

nicely done, there, alex! Sweet stuff.

[Zacker]

As long as he knows what he is doing with the lightmaps and are upping the scale a bit on less significant faces, then it should not be a problem. It is however quite dependant on how large a face area your map got.

You will generally not notice a performance hit by lowering the lightmap scale as the result is a higher memory consumption. This kind of performance issues only get bad whenever you got over the limits of your gfx card and it has to use your system memory for storing textures.

And ohh, nice map:)

[SKULLHOZER]

Great work Alex! I love the detail and the lighting.

Some criticism though:

= Gameplay – is this going to turn into a good playable map?

= Scale – some of those crates are unrealistically big.

It’s excellent work for only three days, keep up the great work!

[Flight40]

Great work Alex! I love the detail and the lighting.

Some criticism though:

= Gameplay – is this going to turn into a good playable map?

= Scale – some of those crates are unrealistically big.

It’s excellent work for only three days, keep up the great work!

He's already stated that it is for his portfolio, and most likely won't become a playable map.

[D3ads]

Tis a thing of beauty

[dissonance]

Alex, did you go by any tutorials for that lighting? That's the one thing I've never been able to get right.

If not, can you make one?

Pweeeeease?

[alexroyce]

Nah I didnt use any. Whats so special about the lighting anyhow?

My website is being redone and there will be a tutorial section, so maybe ill write one.

[dissonance]

Nah I didnt use any. Whats so special about the lighting anyhow?

It's so... smooth.

[Tequila]

Blocklights and x4 lightmaps are the stuff of the future. You really can't go wrong with them (unless you go crazy performance-wise, obv.)

[von*ferret]

lightmaps are not the future ;P

[alexroyce]

Nah I didnt use any. Whats so special about the lighting anyhow?

It's so... smooth.

Just turned down the lightmapscale. Its a simple way of adding lots of interesting detail to an otherwise bland area.

[Tequila]

lightmaps are not the future ;P

Alright then, the immediate future. Source engine work.

YOU KNEW WHAT I MEANT.