hey ho. just thought i'd post up some screenies of the episode i'm working on, currently residing under the name of 'Numen'. suffice to say it's a fairly long way off completion yet but if anyone has any feedback in these early stages then i guess it can only help. i have seven main maps planned.. two are pretty much complete, another is about 1/3 done, i have the layout down for two more and the final two are still on the drawing board. i'm hoping to get it done before 2008.. staying optimistic!

http://www2.jameson-h.com/fr/ftp/rj9k/ (new hosting so may be unpredictable) 

interior is arranged with a nice variety of shapes and plenty of details in the design to make it look like a lived in space. Catches the eye and holds it.

Stone work could use a work over though. The base design looks 2007 and the natural stone looks 1997.

I'm looking forward this one. 

especially the outdoor shots! This is Q1SP, right? 

I'm looking forward this one.

While my syntax is 10097 BC. 

overall i like the look of it, the fog, skybox, textures, etc. However, it seems there is not a lot of contrast in the lighting, everything feels very flat-lit. Some darker shadows and pitch-black nooks and crannies, some spotlights and bright-lit things that pop more, and some "bright light coming through a grating and casting cool shadows" type additions would be good. 

If you're using minlight, I'd seriously consider not using it. This is pretty much my opinion on all maps that use minlight. But if you do use it, please keep it very dim, and put most of the burden of lighting on your point lights. 

forgot to mention that lavafall is supergroovy. 

looks great man ;) 

I completely agree with everything that everyone else has already said about those shots: looks cool, but the lighting needs more contrast, and the rocks might need a little spice.

P.S. everything is better with a little (or a lot of)wine. 

Strong sense of shapes, textures and color palette. Love the scalloped walls, square greenish pavement and the big pillars... Bravo! 

aguire: yes it's q1sp.. or will be, i just haven't put any monsters in yet ;D
i can't see any of the layouts working well for dm

metlslime: i too share your disdain for minlight, but have only set it to 15 in those three maps.. which is what i thought was enough to eliminate fulldark without hurting the contrast. i've been toying around with removing it altogether though, so will prob try that & post a few comparison shots at some point. i should mention that the outdoor/skylit areas use increased falloff lights to provide an overall softer 'natural' feel.. but this shouldn't appear inside

headthump: it's actually a bloodfall, but cheers :D also, when you say the stonework needs work, do you mean more detail, better shaping or just different texturing?

rpg: i agree the rocks need work in shot 9, and i intend on giving them a makeover. but the ones in the first two i'm pretty happy with

anyone else: thanks :) 

Fucking hell that looks amazing.

Screw the full episode thing, just release it episodically... 

agree on the lighting comments.

question, some of those shots look inspired by ctf-shadar by el chicoverde. Have you played that at all? 

Wow, looks really nice ! Cool architecture and design layout. texturing is also very well done. And it seems there is a kind of smooth foggy effect on some shots, that is really cool !
Very tasty indeed: keep it up.. and go map :) 

Yeah, looks cool. Quite a large scale - does this hint to excessive horde combat? 

Very interesting ideas. 

I hate dwelling on negative things when everything else about those screen shots work superbly, and I may also be oversensitive to rock formation because I spend a lot of time hiking in mountains and foot hills so this advice can be taken with a little salt.

You are not going to see very many 90 degree vertical angles on the side of cliffs when you are in nature. Erosion tends to smooth things out. So using one long brush for a cliff side is not effective because cliffs are stratified in nature. If we had phong shading for Quake it would be easier to get away with it because the edges can be smoothed out and even warped with just the shading, but given our limitations, it is best to mimic stratification by using several brushes piled on top of one another. 

it's nice reading these comments. thank you all!

nitin: i hadn't, but just googled the author & saw a screenshot of the map & can see how you mean. i'll have to get round to reinstalling UT sometime & have a proper look at it

neg|ke: i enjoy occasional bouts of horde combat but certainly not in excession. i've vowed to stay away from planning the gameplay too vigourously until the bulk of the layouts are completed anyway.. so who knows :p

headthump: no worries man, i'm actually intrigued.. i'll admit they may not be completely realistic but i'm also having trouble picturing your description.. is there any chance you could knock up a small example map & post a screenshot? just something tiny to illustrate the brush piling thing, would appreciate it :) 

I'll put something together this weekend. 

triangular faces are your friends! 

thats reallty awesome, havent seen such coolness in years.
fov is cheated tho haha (wider fov = better looks)

hope to see it 

Triangular faces are not your friends; they are soul-sucking leaches that drain you of joy and mapping spirit. 

on lighting

It looks quite realitic - a bit washed out,
but still with proper sourced lights and shadows (unlike ORL screens that have unconvincing lite, like if he`d used linear falloffs). Reminds me of UT, which is good

minlight is the only way to simulate radiocity, but dont use a high value for it 

I'll put something together this weekend.

any action on this btw? no worries if you have no time or anything, i don't want to seem impatient. it's just i'm working on a particularly rocky section at the moment and got concerned about how to go about it, so have taken a break to work on coding :p 

sorry, man. I decided to use a terrain section of my base map as an example, only I didn't get as far in the construction of the map as I had hoped last weekend.

The map I made for the Winter/Norway pack (the .map file is included) has examples in the first and last areas of how you may use strips to emulate terrain, but it is not quite the technique I use now.