The Spire (Gears of War MP)

[Hourences]

So, I finally managed to get back into custom mapping. Picked up GOW and started on a MP map.

-WIP

-Uses lots of GOW assets in combination with my own BSP, and I modeled all the spires and other surrounding stuff to get a unique theme to the otherwise pretty standard retail assets.

-Will post insides later

-Screenshots were taken in the editor viewport

-What you see is just two days work...

All screenshots:

http://www.hourences.com/things/spire1.jpg

http://www.hourences.com/things/spire2.jpg

http://www.hourences.com/things/spire3.jpg

http://www.hourences.com/things/spire4.jpg

http://www.hourences.com/things/spire5.jpg

http://www.hourences.com/things/spire6.jpg

http://www.hourences.com/things/spire7.jpg

[⌐■_■]

thats ACE

[Jenn0_Bing]

Yeah, that's looking awesome.

[Zeta]

whatever you made seems to have blended in well, bravo

[General Vivi]

looks nice man. can't wait to get back from thanksgiving and give it a go

[Fяэ&a]

wow dude youre the best mapper i know that map really looks damn great

[JamesL]

Very pretty indeed. Good work.

[Minos]

Very nice indeed but I wonder why the skybox looks so low-res'ish ? I don't quite like the yellow'ish shadow on the sides either.

[KungFuSquirrel]

Great turnaround time, looking forward to seeing where you take it.

My comments thus far:

Overall I really like the direction you're going. I -love- the central spire with the building on it. However, I really don't think the skybox spires hold up. I think there's a terrific opportunity here to do a more fractured earth sort of thing using the same sort of terrain you've got surrounding the structure. I'm imagining if you pretended that this building had lots more structure in the surrounding area, from walls to statues or even other buildings, and these objects are torn apart on smaller surrounding platforms. I think it'd be a lot more interesting and coherent than the random rock spires right now.

Building itself looks really cool and the exterior layout looks reminiscent of the mansion level in the game, only less dark. The windows stand out a bit, perhaps literally - are they actually floating? I haven't actually seen those meshes in the editor yet (don't have the pc version yet), but I wonder if you might get better results sinking them into the outer walls just a bit.

The interior shot you linked I think is by far the weakest of the bunch in all regards. The props are very nicely used but I don't think the lighting pulls off and the floor texture looks worth scaling down by at least 50%. Also, nothing in this room strikes me as very Gears combat-friendly. This is tough to judge from the screen but it looks like one entrance is where you took the shot and the other on the wall to the left. From the spot of the screenshot, that's a lot of space to cover with no cover, and what cover is there is just the breakable couches.

I think you might get good results out of a couple columns in the middle of the room as well as some pieces of cover closer to each doorway and around the perimeter of the room. Right now I just have a really hard time imagining the Gears combat flow of coming into a room, picking an initial piece of cover, then pressing forward from cover to cover.

[Algor]

Very iconic look to it. Would be great with some rim lighting on the rocks to make them pop and give it even more depth. I seem to remember that being prominent in the GoW cave levels... (maybe not?) I do, however agree with KFS about the lack of a proper lattice work in the cover placement. For two days work though, great progress

[dissonance]

Oh my hell, I'm really reconsidering not picking up GoW.

...but will I be able to run it on linux?

[Hourences]

Yeah theres no cover inside, none of the rooms inside are done yet, and lighting inside isnt really done either yet, theres not even fire in the fireplace.

I wanted to place destroyed stuff in the distance, but hold off as it quickly makes it overly complex, and the exterior already is really complex for something youre only seeing for about 5 seconds before heading in. I could try with some very low poly buildings tho, and see how it looks.

I also cant find a better sky:/

GOW keeps reusing the sky I use, every time with a different color overlay, but yeah, its a bit low res unfortunally:/

If anyone knows a place where I can download 2048 res skybox textures that fit this style..

Ill move the windows deeper into the walls, they dont float, but perhaps they are a bit too much on top.

Ill get to the middle central room today, by far the most difficult area of the level.

[Zacker]

Looks really great Hourences!

[Furyo]

The only other thing that hasn't been mentioned is how the texture on the house facade is tiling. I'm talking of the actual entrance part, on the sides. Looks like the texture is applied horizontally and could be rotated 90°

Obviously the interior isn't done, but there's definitely something awesome to do with these textures

[-HP-]

Awesome work man, you're a great inspiration to us all!