tw_hotsand

UberMann

So, time to post some more progress, this time I did a little more than just add another banner.

First up, the pirate spawn was changed to better fit into the environment:


Spawns also have their team's banner in front of exits now, to make it impossible to see if someone is going to get out of their spawn. I hope to reduce people camping the spawns of others. Another important thing to note, the people inside the spawn can look outside their spawn, to spot potential dangers and perhaps take a different exit that is safer. To prevent, let's say archers from camping spawn and sniping people and to prevent respawned-instant-keg-lighting that skirmishers like to do, I put a no_attack zone inside each spawns.
However the people inside their spawn have nothing to fear as kegs can't be thrown in, jumping up into the spawn area shouldn't be possible without some trick and parrots die if they enter spawn areas.


The high-ground received redone displacements, too. And some minor details were added/changed:


And here we have the current knight team's spawn:


Also noteworthy, the entrance to the underground has been started (there is nothing down there yet, though):


The layout is still subject to change and I still need to think of what to do for the viking spawn. It needs to be something distinguishable from the other teams' spawns, yet still needs to be viking-like.

Unknown

The cave entrance looks nice.

KOKORONOKAWARI

Looks nice but also looks more archer heaven than the current version =x

UberMann

Yeah it is pretty much an archer heaven right now, but then again, it is still very unfinished. I intend to add a lot more stuff to the low ground and especially the underground areas, which hopefully limit the archer's strength a bit. (For the record, I don't intend to make the archer useless or too weak, but on open maps, the archer simply has a clear advantage, which I have to eliminate to make things fair.)

Lt.Hargrove

I propose to make Viking spawn partly wooden.

UberMann

An update, there is now a viking spawn!


There is now lava, too!


And some broken fortifications instead of just some wooden barricades.

schatzmeister

I actually don't like the lava that much on your map... but keep up the good work

Unknown

I like the lava.

Lt.Hargrove

Make it sandstorm-esque falling sands that slow you down and deal damage. That would be much more original than the lava, but it also means "I have to do special displacements".

UberMann

An update, I guess. The surface is pretty much done, all that's left is to tone down the HDR severly and add a 3D skybox (If I can be bothered to try and get a working 3D skybox in, which is always a huge unpleasantry.)
There still is nothing new to be found underground, guess that's next. Eventually.

Hei

ow my eyes

Lucas

Looks like a bigger and slightly brighter version of arena. I like it.

ZinuX

Big improvement, keep up the good work

DMX

Welldone. It's looking great, tone it a bit down yeah. I liked the former atmosphere more though. The brush work and displacements are looking excellent.

UberMann

The map is now a Territory map. I hope this will make potential spawncamping less likely.
Also there's less HDR now. I am not even sure if it's even still there. I'll have to play around with some numbers and find a good in-between.
I have included a sort-of layout screenshot, as well. The map is rather small as such, but I plan to add the underground still, which will extend the playable area by a bit.

Hei

Okay, these screenshots look much better/less blinding

Peepeewilson

Looks awesome

Crazytalk

Cool. Can't wait to play it!

Tschoppo

looks pretty indeed
shadows look harsh at some points, whats you sunspreadangle ? (in light_environment)

Colonel

Well done. Hopefully, this makes te_ popular once again!

DMX

Disable the shadows from those rock models and see if it looks any prettier

UberMann

New compile, fixed some improper displacements, HDR still not working and have discovered just how terrible the Source Engine is at doing lighting. How so? Overlays/Decals on displacements turn to solid BLACK instead of being lit correctly.
I also started using a blendmodulate, looks somewhat better than before.
Oh and the underground is semi-done. Just need to tweak the lighting, get some fancy effects in there (if they don't break again, as they usually do) and am considering this pretty much done. Ah wait... there still is no 3D skybox. Bah, I'll do that at some other time. Perhaps.

Now, before I go on with posting the screenshots, I wish to ask you, what suggestions you still have, if you see any problematic spots (potential exploiting) and if there would be anyone willing to help in testing the map. It is quite difficult finding all bugs and potential exploits on my own and the bots aren't particularly helpful, the way they simply occupy a potential player's husk, doing nothing with it.

Ninja-ORC

Sweet fridgeing map brotha, hope it gets some good rotation

Miggog

Did you do a final compile? Try doing it like instructed in this informative vid and see if it fixes the shadows. http://www.tophattwaffle.com/?p=2058

This maps looks so impressive. The cool stalagmite cave down under came as delightful suprise! But yep more hdr now, only little less than in the first new pics. It makes the map look hot, which is nice.

About the layout.. Are there only 3 entrances to underground ? I might suggest adding a few more. Perhaps some kind of pits where you can only drop down but can't get up. It might spice up the gameplay alot.
Also I see the map is like a square where in each corner there are the team spawns, which leaves one corner where there is nothing. Maybe that place could be some kind of supply heaven? - just to make the map more interesting gameplay vise and to encourage people to move more around the map.

Keep it up.

UberMann

I just tried a normal HDR compile for now, which causes vrad to poop itself and crash during the HDR calculation. I don't think a final compile would manage to avoid the problem (if there even is one) so I will look into what I can do to get a normal HDR compile working first.

And yeah, the layout is pretty square, simple and the map itself somewhat small sized overall so people are less likely to get lost.
There are actually four entrances to the underground. I think they work out alright, adding more would make it too cluttered again, I think. (And there's also the issue of how my displacement layout is currently done... if I were to add more entrances now, I'd have to redo pretty much the entire underground and a lot of surface area. Which is a pain, because displacements tend to twist and shape themselves into tormented spike pillows. Sometimes.)

Oh and the fourth entrance is actually a sort of pit which can only be jumped down, but should be fairly hard to get back out of. There are two food pickups around this pit-like entrance, so I guess that also counts as "some kind of supply heaven".

Now what's left, is to get HDR working (or not) and implement some neat little icons for the two territories.
And maybe a 3D sykbox.

schatzmeister

It would be cool if you could make the lava in the underground area emit light by itself. Right now, it looks like you used some light entities.

ZinuX

schatzmeister wrote:

It would be cool if you could make the lava in the underground area emit light by itself. Right now, it looks like you used some light entities.

For that I'd say you should put more light entities above it (in between the other light entities ofc), and increase the light radius more.

UberMann

ZinuX wrote:

For that I'd say you should put more light entities above it (in between the other light entities ofc), and increase the light radius more.

I have resorted to using light_spot for this by now. If I can finally manage to get HDR compiling, it should look just fine.
The underground has some glowy stuff floating about now as well, to make the ceiling less boring.
I am also currently doing quite a bit of optimization work, I hope to fix a few problems in one go this way.


Alright I got this sorted out. I have managed to get HDR running again and can give you some new screenshots. All that remains now is a 3D skybox and perhaps some more optimization, if that's even possible for an outdoor map.
I still am unsure how it'll play though, it'd be great if someone could help testing it. Oh, and I'd like to ask, do you know any reliable filesharing services/websites? I know of Rapidshare, but I'd like to avoid using that, if possible.

And here are the two new screenies:

Lt.Hargrove

Use mediafire's free account. However, it doesn't store your files forever, so reuploading will be needed in the future.

LordTrilobite

As far as I can tell, mediafire does store it forever. Or at least long enough. I've had several files on there for years now, and haven't had to reupload them.