sorry for that outburst but considering that's q1 and handbuilt terrain u say! it's stunningly erotic. Probably the most amazing q1 outdoor screenie i've ever seen. Keep up the stiffy! 

Kinn and starbuck have the same sorta nick colour, thats why I got them mixed up...

(what? you mean the strange squiggly lines have something to do with it too? Gah...) 

Yes the terrain is all handbuilt. It's actually hollow (i.e. there's an underground cave network), so an "instant terrain" tool like gensurf would have been of little use. Besides, I much prefer the level of control you get with handbuilding terrain vertex-by-vetex. 

vonsp1 is bettar 

Hip2m2 by Levelord is better, but only in the third main area after the second Shambler. Otherwise, Kinn has us all beat. 

everyone's job is to outdo Kinn. 

Levelord is talking at 3DRealms.COM forums. 

BTW I love what Kinn is doing to extend the Quake mapping scene, but there are a number of mappers who are as talented.

I recently played some levels by Than and Kell that blew me away.

I'm just glad to be in the vacinity of some really superb artist.

This Scene Ownz!! 

It seems like Kinn is a refreshing mapper or something. I haven't seen that kinda praise in a long time or ever. 

Nice. If you're going to be using a custom engine though, you might as well do something about q1's ugly water texes. 

i was wondering it it'd work in fitzquake.

technically, it is a custom engine, but it still shares some of the limitations of the original glquake such as the 600 edict limit.

also, upon furthur lookage, i find the third shot decidedly underwhelming when compared to the grandeur of the first and second shot.
i think a bit of something is missing in the third shot to make it consistent with the level of visual quality present in other areas of the map.

good map. ;) 

Well, I got the latest build to load in WinQuake, so it may be cross-engine after all :) although obviously you miss out on Kell's lovely skybox. Edicts shouldn't be a problem, either - I'll just do Bastion-style spawning if they get out of hand.

Necros - appreciate the comments. The third shot is from inside the fortress; the architecture becomes more traditional there. Overall, there's a quite a bit of variety in the architecture, with some nice watery areas, caverns and dungeons to contrast with the epic hugeness of the fortress exterior. 

but the lighting does need a lot of work. 

Shot 3 is a bit less impressive than the others -- it only looks slightly grander than gmsp3! 

Ah, dude. Welcome. I lay down the carpet of red viscera for you. Finally, someone who can outgoth me ;)
Superb handling of the proportions of the fortress exterior; reminds me of Bruegel's Tower Of Babel. A tangential influence maybe?
On the subject of textures: if you are going to use the Q3A gothic wad, please delve as deep as you can. There are some superb gigeresques in there as well as multiple trims and such. The blandness of the same blocks_c texture covering vast acreages of brushwork unrelentingly was my only disappointment with Bastion. Palette conversion is always a limitation, but there must be more you can get out of the wad.
Also, if you're going to have pools of water on a brownish landscape, near brownish buildings under a brownish sky...you should consider having brownish water. That clean blue id water makes for a visual oxymoron, since there's no blue in the sky that it would be reflecting.
That would be the mpterra1 rock tex on your terrain too. Not a bad choice I must say, though palette conversion seems to have messed the saturation about. There are plenty of others available that may be worth trying on your terrain. Many of them on my HDD as it happens :P
Finally: it's very satisfying to see my skyboxes associated with such impressive mappage. Regarding dragonheart specifically - it has hills in it that will be parallaxed behind the actual brushwork hills of the map. this may be your intention, but if you'd like I can always re-render the sky sans terrain. I also have a couple of other 'infernal' skies you won't have since SoK went down, which may be of interest to you.

You are a man after my own heart. On a spike. Over a gatehouse probably. Mmm, mapobjects... 

Great post. I'd never heard of Bruegel's Babel before, but a quick google yielded this pic:

http://images-jp.amazon.com/images/P/3791319418.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Actually, I was influenced more by the LOTR films, specifically Helm's Deep (the valley and the stone road up to the the main gate). Actually, the road undulates quite nicely, a feature not readily apparent from the high vantage point in that shot. The tiered construction of the fortress was a nod to Minas Tirith, whilst the huge beacons were inspired by, well, the beacons. Only just visible on the grassy court above the main entrance, partly obscured by the spiky turret is The Brown Tree of Kinndor >:)

Totally agree with the points you made regarding the textures. I'll definately work on getting some more variation in there. My biggest problem with the Q3 textures are that they aren't the best tiling textures in the world. Take the yellow road texture for example; it's scaled 2x in both axes on the road, and the tiling is still pretty bad; i'll likely replace that. Damn good point with the water as well - that'll be replaced.

The rock texture will stay as it is; in fact I think it looks even better from the ground, and it really blends in nicely with the mountains in the skybox, which I think is perfect as it is :)

Of course, I'd love to see some of your recent skies, but I think I've settled on the sky for this map. 

Cool. Glad to see dragonheart used anyway :)

I'll mail the other skies I mentioned for you to peruse. Might provoke some inspiration.
The Q3 textures do have a lack of tileability ( is that a real word? I'd say 'tessellation' but then I sound pretentious ) which is due to the double scale of the engine. I'd offer my Q3 kothic wad as a substitute, but it's too limited to really add much more variation :/

Of course, I can see the LotR influences now. Odd that Minas Tirith didn't occurr to me because I mucked around with a Q3CTF terrain map using white terraced architecture. Must be all the daemonic redness in your map.

The Brown Tree of Kinndor

Probably a species related to the Black Ash of Kelluria

xi dingir xul kanpa 

only just seen Kinn's screenshots, 1 especially looks amazing.

I think you may be joining the rareified company of glassman, kell, et al. hehe. 

q3 

so what happened to http://pipeline.fov120.com/ ??? 

http://www.fov120.com/

fov120 had a hard drive crash and it is currently in repair 

http://img62.exs.cx/img62/3209/jqsp1-1.jpg

A little something I�ve been working on for a long time and something I will probably continue to work on until the cows come home. 

i hereby give you the title of 'ikbase hero'.
Also, did you noclip into the floor to take that shot? :) 

tall base structures make me swoon, looks good :)
i'll forgive you for using ik over idbase though. 

Although if it were my map, I would be tempted to add more detail. Some of the walls look kind of plain to me.