also the light_enviroment can be placed anywhere on the map independed from the actual sun position. even the env_sun can be placed anywhere. its only the angles that matter, the position of the entity is irrelevant as long as they are within map borders
That looks about the same as in the editor before. Have you actually compiled this with lighting? Also, duh.
Just to remind everyone, he is completely remaking this map, he isn't using the de-compiled version that was given to him to better optimize it and hopefully make it look better. So give him some time to get it looking good, this is in pre-beta stages
See the thing about that is, a lot of people are really big fans of the map in its current form. I personally don't think it needs any change.
It's not getting any gameplay changes, just visual changes. If i'm not mistaken, the original map was designed for the HL1 engine and i did a few changes to make it playable for the OB empires. Keef has taken it and will be rebuilding it just as it is, granted maybe he will not put in that one little bump in the ground that was there before but he's really good at what he does, so give him some room, you'll like what he does with it. He remade Dustorm and it seems that everyone is enjoying it.
eh? well w/e anyway i havn't compiled that one with lighting yet, that was a texture I had literally just finished tiling in photoshop and took a screen for you guys, heres a screen I had taken at the same time but didnt post. I just took it for shandy's sake so I could get his opinion. This is showing the contrast between new and old. Edit, oh actually this is the same rock texture different new dirt.
i like it, reminds me on mayamas orange maps of doom i miss mayamas flames in the gren vs rofleman threads btw :cry:
One texture for the riverbeds, another for the shore lines, another for the dusty dry road areas, another for the sheer rock walls, different ones for the north versus the south.... Whee paintbrushing textures! That's one thing that I'd really like to see more in Empires. More fine detail to make the map feel more fleshed out instead of editor made stuff. Of course, put too much and the tanks get all clogged up by that one rock you stuck over there.....
All you have is blend textures, which only allows 2 textures to be blended with eachother. If you want more your only chance is to work with rings of blending textures: A+B: B+C: C+D: D+E ... etc. The problem with this is that you can only put one of those texture on a surface which means you'll need more surfaces. When making a map i constantly reach 1 limit after another, and the max amount of displacements surfaces is very easily reached. The only other thing you can do to spice things up is add overlays, but for example the roadtracks in Bush already reached the limit of overlays that can be used, and i have not used overlays anywhere else in that map. So that limit also prevents you from adding terrain details. I've only finished about 15% of emp_ovaries, but i've already reached limits like the max amount of detail props, too many visclusters, and the light detail limit that also plagues emp_bush. There's not much that can be done about it. The possibility to blend 3 or more textures on one surface would be so awesome. And i mean fucking awesome
Yeah see you don't have that problem with making maps for unreal. It is annoying how many limits the source engine has, VERY ANNOYING.
Hm. Some other people have mentioned using decals could help. It's not just the # of textures though, but also fleshing out with slopes or non-clipping vegetation. Too many maps are just... flat. I've only done HL1 mapping, and yet even with its crappy geometry stuff we have some really cool, full maps. See NS1 maps. If we're running out of resources, I again postulate we should do 2x scaling. That would give us 4x the map area to work with. The people at Dear Esther are doing some wicked stuff with the Source Engine in terms of making maps look natural and realistic. I'm not sure how, but it looks really, really awesome. http://www.moddb.com/mods/dear-esther
Thats... incredible. I can kinda see how its done however, I could probably replicate similar displacements. However, it would be impossible to make it look decent with the current selection of textures and props empires has, and I wouldn't be up to the task of making some new ones from scratch.
Everything i see there is very possible on its own, i just don't understand how they are not reaching any limit. On some of those screens it's obvious that it's a pretty big map as well. I'm curieus. I'm gonna download that mod to see in hammer how they did some of these things. Don't tell anyone. Edit: Those screens seem to be from the next version to be released. Version 1.1 has pretty awefull maps. Well, let's wait some longer. Also: if the enhanced maps only got improved but stayed the same in size as the ones in 1.1, the visible area is like 1/5 to 1/10 of an empires map.
I think the problem with Empires is that the maps are pushing the limits of the Source engine. Pretty much every mapping/optimization tutorial I've read for Hammer talks about not having large, open maps because they eat fps. Either you try to optimize by making it as bland as possible or you throw in a ton of fps destroying props/decals.