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. 

hey ppl.. been away from mapping for quite some time, and well I'm cooking up a port of my Q2DM map - Deep Freeze for Q3A. The level is getting quite an update, better architecture, improved layout, ect...

Here are 2 pics:
http://shadowdane.shackspace.com/shad3dm2_pic1.jpg
http://shadowdane.shackspace.com/shad3dm2_pic2.jpg 

Looks good. I like the trim on the walls, but I'm not crazy about the use of brick texture on the ceiling in shot 2. I can't think of when I've ever seen exposed brick in a building on a ceiling. 

motzerrella,goat,swiss,canned,pepperjack,cream
limburger,american and of course chedder. 

Hi all Quake fans!

In a post before (two weeks ago I think) a guy here (Zwiffle) told that my new map is totally bland and the grayscale colours also sucks.
So, I replaced the lights with a smoother, warmer colour, and put in a few more details.
Check out, tell me everything about them! Good and bad points are all highly appreciated!

Here are the pics:

http://zorius.dionussos.com/images/temp/unholy_beta1.jpg
http://zorius.dionussos.com/images/temp/unholy_beta2.jpg

http://zorius.dionussos.com/images/temp/unholy_beta3.jpg
http://zorius.dionussos.com/images/temp/unholy_beta4.jpg

http://zorius.dionussos.com/images/temp/unholy_beta5.jpg
http://zorius.dionussos.com/images/temp/unholy_beta6.jpg 

Epic gothic map for Quake 2, with Q3 textures ??

Could still need some more ornaments.
Glowing gothic crosses, maps like this one need
tons of glowing gothic crosses :)

Or pentagrams and stuff ...

It still looks a bit empty. 

Let's be honest and blunt.

The textures you've used are completely bland and boring and you've used them as such. The scale is hideously huge for no reason and everything looks empty. Beta4 shot is the best one becuase it shows some detailing and has a somewhat interesting peice to look at.

Sorry, I just don't like the pics at all :( 

yeah...
ditto what scampie said. the thing is, aside from the crosslights, there doesn't appear to be any details whatsoever... definatly needs more texture variety on walls, some trim here and there, maybe some curves, or at least some angles other than 90.
plus, the lighting on the crosslights is just bad... the light appears to be emitted 16 units above the actual source, and the source's texture is dim while the wall is bright. lower the lights so that they are near the source face as a starter. play around with attenuation to get a more realistic falloff.

right now, you've got the barebones -- let's see some meat. :) 

http://img32.exs.cx/img32/2899/jqsp1-2.jpg

This is the same ikbase map I posted am in-game screenshot of about 25 or so posts ago in this thread. 

Radiant is that, that you were able to load the .wad?? 

GTKRadiant 1.5 has had WAD support for a long time now. 

Hi. Thanks your comments Grieve, Scampie and Necros!

Need som more ornaments and detail? Ehh. I can do that maximum with the textures, because the r_speeds already touches 1500..., so I can't really put in more detail.

The scale is not so huge, just the shots shows that, because I used fov 100 to make a better view of the areas.

There ARE curves, though You don't see them on the shots (and remember, it's quake2 and not so much curves are enabled in this engine...), but there aren't really trims and texture blends, I see.
And don't be so clever with those lights! They are texture emitting lights, so don't tell me craps like "emitted 16 units above the actual source", because the engine makes them look lke, but they have a little trick, that's why they look a little weird. So I can't lower them (lower what? Attenuation? Craps. They are naked texture lights!). Maybe they aren't realistic, but they are interested!

Anyway thanks. That's the maximum I can do. I'm not a professional mapper, so this will be the map You will download and play free, or You will skip it! Maybe the next one will be more good...

bye Quake fans 

That's the maximum I can do.

Maybe the next one will be more good...

Well, if the next one might be more good, then obviously this might NOT be the maximum you can do...