ETA: 2 weeks Cliff displacements: 100% done (a LOT of work) Cliff texturing: 50% done (quite a lot of work still) Ground displacements: 35% done (very little work) Ground texturing: 0% done (very little work) Texture/material creation: ~95% done Lighting: ~95% done I took two screenshots in the one area that is almost completely finished. Only the ground needs further texturing:
I like the sense of scale. Those trees giving us the full Marilyn Monroe, I guess it's a very specific angle, but let's make a mental note to fix that if I ever go back to them. Which I've been sort of wanting to do for a while. See if I can find a model reason for the weird lighting.
darkdefile? You serious silk? Thats a magnet for shitty jokes of which i came up with 5 already. Looking good though.
emp_fuckreality :D Can't really suggest a name without a proper minimap. that being said, i think I have one or there is one posted.
Oh i don't mind that What i do find annoying is that someone liked my name so much, that he/she used it as the title of a book about ... iraq or iran or some other country in that region. Something about the brits being massacred in some past war. This probably means the map will favor NF It still starts with a "D", good enough for me. I'll be writing down the idea of emp_echelon today as well. I don't think there will ever be an "F" map though, unless someone really annoys me by then
Could also be the vrad parameters. Thing is, most of the light in this map is ambient light. There's very little direct sunlight. Probably over 70% of the cliff surface is lit by light rays bouncing off of areas with sunlight. The tree leaves however don't seem to be able to bounce of light. I even tested it with a light under the leaves shining upwards, but it was still pitch black everywhere. Only direct sunlight seems to be able to light up foliage. In chain this was less obvious because the trees were at the same level. You'd see the top (lit) parts equally much as the bottom (dark) parts. In this map however there's trees a lot higher than the player, and he'll barely see any lit areas. Unless fixable by vrad parameters or model materials, this might be a general engine thing. Edit: vrad parameters used where: -final -StaticPropPolys -TextureShadows -StaticPropLighting
It could be. I remember the discussion when you were making chain. But it just looks to me like the smoothing groups are borked somehow. It's not impossible I've managed to weld some verts or something. I'll mess about with it at some point.
I'll compile it a few times with these options on and off, and post the comparisons. This'll take a while, but i'm curious as well You wouldn't believe the amount of time i spent adjusting displacements for this map https://dl.dropbox.com/u/234836/mapping/emp_darkdefile/disps.jpg Somewhere around 85% of ALL displacements vertices in the entire map have been manually adjusted in x, y and often z again and again and again untill i had a shape that would stand out while not stretching the texture anywhere. I didn't mind stretching so much on the horizontal plateau's though since you never see those, except as a commander.
Straight from VDC: -TextureShadows (New with Source 2007) Generates lightmap shadows from $translucent surfaces of models (NOT brushes) that are specified in a lights file and being used with prop_static. Usually requires -StaticPropPolys to have any effect. -StaticPropPolys (New with Source 2007) Perform shadow tests of prop_statics at polygon precision. Default is to use collision meshes.
ETA: 5-6 days What should the amount of tickets be? It's a relatively small map, but not tiny. Probably ideal for 18 to 26 players Map size compared to canyon: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/234836/mapping/small_comm_map/size.gif Also how much res income from refineries? Arid, bush and chain all have 12 res/sec, but because of changes to the res multiplier and weaker vehicles 14 res/sec for arid and bush and 16 res/sec for chain would be better. Those maps though are meant for at least 30+ players and will allways benefit from the res multiplier you get with 20+ players. This smaller map often won't have this multiplier.
I am going to say 150 tickets, I would'nt know anything on resource rates, but 150 seems like a good number to go with.
high-ish res would be nice. res flow is the second worse thing in small games (first being sabotage, maybe not so much now that its nerfed)
