WIP in WIP, post your level screenshots!

[That50'sGuy]

Just now, Interfearance said:

I just imported a bunch of textures, but I used textures.com. It feels like cheating. How do you guys make textures from scratch? I would rather do that!

I'm pretty sure a lot of big companies use textures.com for making textures, so you sure as heck ain't cheating 

[Brightness]

56 minutes ago, Interfearance said:

I just imported a bunch of textures, but I used textures.com. It feels like cheating. How do you guys make textures from scratch? I would rather do that!

 

From scratch, it's usually Substance Designer and then Substance Painter, or Quixel.

Edited May 5, 2019 by Brightness

[Interfearance]

@Brightness I just started to learn it as you said that

 

[fewseb]

4 hours ago, Interfearance said:

I just imported a bunch of textures, but I used textures.com. It feels like cheating. How do you guys make textures from scratch? I would rather do that! 

I go outside and find something close to the material im looking for, take a few 4k pictures, bring that into Photoshop, scale it down to 1024x1024, use a basic tile generator plugin, or if that wont work manually go through the texture and make it tilable. Adjust colors and brightness, add detail if needed.

Im assuming thats a pretty outdated method, but if youre a broke cheap-ass like me, thats what you got to do.

 

[Interfearance]

@fewseb 4k don't sound too broke. Anyway I get what you mean, sounds like it's worth a shot if I find a nice texture irl. Also I have a question: How many maps can you bring into hammer. Does it even support height maps? In other words, how much of my substance can I export to hammer using vtfedit.

[fewseb]

3 hours ago, Interfearance said:

@fewseb 4k don't sound too broke. Anyway I get what you mean, sounds like it's worth a shot if I find a nice texture irl. Also I have a question: How many maps can you bring into hammer. Does it even support height maps? In other words, how much of my substance can I export to hammer using vtfedit.

Its like 2012 4k, 4 thousands pixels but not that great of a resolution, its also a triple hand-me down camera so I wouldn't be surprised if some of the picture quality was lost from wear and tear.

[Interfearance]

its aight 1024 is kinda easy to get, 4k just gives u more samples to choose from. Maybe I'll experiment with the substance alchemist beta to make normals and whatnaught.

 

 

[will2k]

On 5/4/2019 at 6:13 PM, Radu said:

Maybe I should post what I've been working on recently, a little Far Cry 5 Arcade level. The objective is to eliminate three targets located in different camps and make your escape through a final wave of enemies.

That ain't Hope County, son!

The visuals remind me of a cross between the African savanna in FC2 and the tropical island in FC3, and certainly don't look like the rugged mountains of Montana. Are those custom assets or stock?

Looking real nice, keep it up.

[Radu]

1 hour ago, will2k said:

That ain't Hope County, son!

The visuals remind me of a cross between the African savanna in FC2 and the tropical island in FC3, and certainly don't look like the rugged mountains of Montana. Are those custom assets or stock?

Looking real nice, keep it up.

The editor is super limited, but the terrain tools are nice. You can't have custom assets, but they brought assets from a bunch of their games like the previous Far Cry games and Assassin's Creed. I'm doing something inspired by Vietnam. Hopefully I will finish it by the end of this week.

[jehy]

I'm working on my first map and think I've stumbled my way into a layout I like. I still have no idea what to do with CT spawn and have yet to add enough cover anywhere but B site.

Anyone willing to offer some thoughts and suggestions on the overall layout at this stage?

On the screenshot I put lines that roughly show where rushing players can make contact.

[VIOLATION]

6 hours ago, jehy said:

I'm working on my first map and think I've stumbled my way into a layout I like. I still have no idea what to do with CT spawn and have yet to add enough cover anywhere but B site.

Anyone willing to offer some thoughts and suggestions on the overall layout at this stage?

On the screenshot I put lines that roughly show where rushing players can make contact.

can't say much without running around but just some stray observations/ideas:

The circled area seems obsolete to me seeing that it doesn't connect to anywhere else and I can't really see it adding anything to gameplay, at least from just the overhead layout. Likewise with A site I'm a bit weary about there just being one entrance to the site with T's having to completely backtrack all the way around a very long path if they fail to push and want to rotate to B.

The line path I drew is a highlight of just how long and convoluted that path seems to be for a player. The entire pink area with the square hallway (right next to T spawn) doesn't seem to have much of a strong purpose either if they can drop into B from that much shorter route above it. To have a path that dumps you in the middle of the bottom orange path doesn't seem to be a path anyone would take if a team controls enough of mid to be able to take that center pink route in general. Instead having a path similar to the ? one I drew (and maybe avoiding such a long sightline) might make a bit more sense and be more viable. I will say that I think the area of the B site looks pretty interesting though from just seeing the overhead so that's a bit of a plus

Keep working at it though I think there's some interesting ideas you've got going on for only a first map

[RaVaGe]

On 5/1/2019 at 5:52 AM, fewseb said:

Im open to criticism and feedback, ive already looked at different ways of changing the stairs so they might flow better. However, as anybody whos ever posted their map on reddit or the steam workshop would know, there are different kinds of feedback and not all of it is helpful, this is one of those time where it was not helpful. He did not offer any potential solutions or changes, he just said it was wrong/bad and left it at that. Thats about one notch above the kind of feedback you get on the workshop telling an area of a map is shit and you should just delete all of it. 

I also find it humorous that so much time was delegated to an area of my map that is ruffly equivalent to this part of dust2.

Its like saying that areas too messy and it distracts the player, sure it might, but its not that important.

I originally made the stair post because I thought it was a could example of how far an area could go with a single mapping session to make it look better and more believable as well as what game-play affects its might have. I also wanted to share the process of how concrete stairs were made because it was tough to find and Ive seen several instances where mappers just had to guess how. It was a fun fact, that whole post was just supposed to be a minor fun fact about stairs and what I did to improve an area visually.

I also find it funny how his whole point in doing this was to teach me some kind of lesson or put me in my place because of my posts in the Overwatch thread, the first one I made there was pretty mean spirited because I hadnt thought about the fact that people who actually worked on Havana were the ones who posted it, and I was genuinely sorry to have offended those peoples map that they had poured hours into against a tight deadline.

Every other post I made on that thread however was me questioning why they did certain things and why they didnt do others, we disagreed in the end but I accepted they had to work under constraints that most CSGO mappers dont have to deal with.

Meanwhile Mr. Carpenter replied with a simple STFU, called me an amateur and then half-agreed with me but said I was being mean, which was true.

The funny part is while I was rude at first, I contributed what I thought could be different and gave suggestions, they responded and that was the end, he never suggested anything other then to look into detail density, which at a cursory glance on google doesnt bring up much, had nothing to say when I responded then acted like he had just owned me.

So now im going to say, 1. Im sorry for being rude on one post in the Overwatch thread, I didnt think about who would read it and how they would be affected by it. and 2. Im sorry I posted a fun fact about stairs, clearly I didnt know what I was getting my self into when it came to stairs.

Id like it if my next post could be an actual WIP pictures for my map instead having to argue about the proper balance of rebar and stair in a public walkway.

http://www.nodraw.net/2010/08/tf2-density-of-detailing/

http://magnarj.net/article_funclight.html

Two nice articles speaking about player guidance, one is explaining how to work by opposition, declutter instead of adding more, one is explaining a technique about how to emphasize key elements, with lighting, but it could be props/textures/overlays etc.

Source is great for level designers who are starting out, because of its rendering limitations, it's important to alocate the limited amout of elements you have to the right area of your map. In those new engines, it's easy to lose focus and overcomplexify your design, which is going to bring troubles when the players aren't doing what they're meant to.

It's important to understand that adding more details in a map doesn't necessarily means that it's adding any significant value, when you're playing an entertaining game, how many times do you take the time to look at the stair design in a building ? The key is to put the work on the most important part of your map, and simplfiy the rest as much as you can. If the stair is the most important element, then overdetail it, but in your case it is not. The emphasize should be put on where the ennemies are going to come from.

Now it depends of the game, but if you're working on a Valve game, those are the rule for efficient LD.

I'm not going to say what you've got to do, you're the level designer, it's your job not mine, i'm only pointing out a flaw in your design, and that's the only feedback you need as a LD, don't listen to the feedback, listen to the complains instead, i'd rather listen to someone telling me it's shit, than hearing someone who never opened hammer explaining me how to make my map. (Listen to me though).

 

[jehy]

@VIOLATION

I asked in Discord and someone else mentioned the circled area seems obsolete. I'm going to figure out how to properly incorporate that room. The bottom path has some problems that I'll need to address that could make the pink path more useful as a rotation.

Question though: The pink square corridor is an open atrium with a sight line through the middle. Knowing this, do you still think it's too convoluted? The players have pretty clear vision through the area, but have to make lots of different turns. Should I worry about that?

[Interfearance]

9 hours ago, RaVaGe said:

The key is to put the work on the most important part of your map, and simplfiy the rest as much as you can.

[That50'sGuy]

So if you haven't noticed yet, the glass on these lamp posts is now transparent and the insides are visible now.

Perhaps it's not the best photo, but I really can't be bothered to go in-game and get a better one until I've had my morning coffee