From the pictures, the displacement work looks nice. But it looks like it'll need a 3D skybox badly. Also, not nearly enough cover in places or visblocking. Add me on steamfriends @ trickster9012 and I'll organise a playtest for you.
I don't have a CLUE how to do skyboxes... *Takes mental note to learn tomorrow* Yea I was thinking that about the cover... but I honestly could not be f**ked doin' it at 2.30am... In fact, what the hell am I still doin' replying? ZzZzZzZzZzZzZz...
displacement work looks great +1, it'll be easy for you to learn 3d skybox making. Huge open spaces like that don't work out very well in emp, maybe a little city, hills (moors like maybe). add me too, get you into the mapping community with peeps like keef, shandy, metal smith, etc....
Exactly what Trickster said. Eventhough i learned today why everyone hates the guy, apparantly he can still be right ... pansy 3D skyboxes: http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/3d_skybox Details + infantry cover would be ... necessary. See what fits the map: rocks, wrecks, trees (not much cover really), holes/bumps, ... The flat terrain does seem kinda big. Even vehicles don't require such a big area, so imo it might be better to have a few big flat areas instead of a single huuuge one. Just a thought. I've only looked at the screenshots btw. I'm lazy.
Yea, yea, I'm awake now and I'll finish the skybox an' shit now... I'll post the -new- minimap & download file in a few hours (1-2?). I'll remove the old link since it's gonna' be obsolete very shortly... PS: If peeps could add me instead that would be great, I've never added anyone before (dunno how to >.>).
ARGH! How can there not be a SINGLE skybox tutorial out there showing how to make it like 'Duststorm'? (Rivers / hills continue into the skybox)... //rage I really do hate asking others for help, but if someone could direct me to... somewhere, I would love you for ever and ever and ever and ever.
Sorry it didn't help. What I mean is like... you see my rivers going off into the side of the map? I need to continue those. In addiction to that I also have some hills I need to continue into the skybox. emp_dustorm did it perfectly and I would like to try and copy that method >.< //rage skybox. It's only for looks I'll just leave it for later.
Not sure if it was in that tutorial, but... Add more displacements on the outer edge of your map's edge displacements. Design them to satisfaction, then cut and paste them into the skybox. Scale them down to skybox size. (Control-M, 0.0625) Continue making displacements from there, making sure not to alter the vertices that used to be touching your map's displacements.
Pretty much. The 3D Skybox is really just like a miniature version of your map with extra displacements/brushes/props added in. You can add anything in it and it shows up 16x larger on the outskirts of your map. The key is to make sure the displacements on the edge of your map are the same distance (divided by 16) from the camera in your skybox.
Yes that is how the standard 3D skybox works. If you follow the instructions on the link i gave on page 1 correctly everything should work out as you want it to be. Just don't forget to divide the lightmapscale for the textures in the skybox by 16 as well or you'll notice that the colors won't match.
if you want to add me on steam friends [lodw]keef I can help you with your mapping in general, shandy an I run an unofficial "mappers hotline" on vent, we can get you on and help you on any number of things. I'd say seamless 3dskybox's is my specialty as well from what people seem to come to me for alot :p . you just go to your steam 'community' tab and do a search on [lodw]keef, it will show a list (will be only 1 on it) click it and then do 'add friend' on the right hand side. Your going to have to do this since your forum name doesnt add as your steam name so I dont know exactly how you expect people to add you.
Well my steam name IS my forum name, and in game name (in-case anyone has seen me >.>) Yea I've completed my skybox now, all that's left is to NOT make my sky pitch black and somehow work out why my skybox is a good 100 units below my map...
Probably because of the position of your sky_camera entity. It controls where your skybox is related to the real map. Again, it's all in that link.
Presumably you build your map around the middle of the grid, where the blue lines are. If so, then this will get you started on making a 3d skybox: 1: Disable all point entities by unchecking the visgroup called point entities. (don't forget to turn them back on later, before you compile.) 2: Now add an entity called sky_camera exactly on the point on your grid where all the blue grid lines meet ( the exact middle ), this should now be the only point entity in your map 3: Select all of your map now, hold shift, drag it down by a lot, then without deselecting the whole thing, right click on it and hit transform. Go to scale, type .0625 in the x, y, and z fields. Hit enter. You should now have a copy of the brushwork + displacements in your map that is 16 times smaller. 4: Make the skybox brushes bigger, to encompass more area around the miniature map. Then just add more displacements around your tiny map and sew it together. Make sure the new displacements go off into the distance a little bit, as they will be magnified 16xby the sky_camera. 5: Now, just delete the miniature brushes and displacements from the original map so all you have left is your real map and the miniature surroundings with the sky_camera. Delete the sky_camera in your large map, too, and change the settings on the other sky_camera to have a skybox scale of 16. The miniatures are now your 3D skybox. Note: you must make the skybox borders in the miniature skybox larger than just the miniaturized version of your real skybox border. If the real skybox border is more than 16x the size of the miniature one, you get a nasty Hall of Mirrors graphical glitch. Also, place the miniature skybox somewhere far far away from the real one either far underneath or far above the real. You can get a graphical glitch if the sky_camera is near enough to see your real map in the background, and it will look silly if the player can see a miniature map in the distance. Generally you need fog in your map to keep them from seeing each other. Try this out, it is basically how i go about making skyboxes. Might be too rough an explanation or too much of a wall of text, just trying to help :cute: Anyway I think this is the type of map that could be fun for 10-20 people and I would like to play a decent game on it.
Thanks for the help peeps, I pretty much got the method down-pat now. And thank you ALOT Varbles, that was a perfect explanation~
actually you shouldnt be able to see the 3d skybox from your map regardless of how close it is to your map, as long as you have them separate to where their visleafs wont see each other you will be fine. Alot of people think they have a problem when they can see shit because of 3dskybox but its normally during testing and the problem generally lies in the fact they didnt compile with vis so all visleafs can see each other, IE skybox can see regular map.
