You're talking about the map with the lava pit? I was looking forward to this one. Have you considered a collab with another mapper? Some of the greatest maps around were made from scraps. 

It might still happen some day. If this map ends up getting finished though I'll probably release the source map file + wads publicly. I wouldn't mind someone else finishing it, but taking the effort to specifically collaborate isn't really my style of doing things. I'd be more interested in seeing what someone with free license to mess with things hacks out of what I've made. 

This is crucial to finishing a map. I thought this video was pretty good for layout creation ->

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUwcX5Hbdng&list=FLdR9SxCXvkZjZfBdpQEUkyA&index=1

Granted it's CS:GO but as a general principle it works for level design, You can skip to 08:00. The hurdle, I feel, is fleshing out a full layout in the editor and refining it. This is time consuming and at least for me it's not a lot of fun. Your map also looks like crap and it's hard to imagine how this blocky layout is going to look good eventually :P

Here is a video on this process, the making of the CS:GO map de_piranesi. As you can see the designer spends a significant amount of time refining his blocks and playable spaces before adding art!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--FxLX1RhuE

It's not easy but if you can persevere through the layout stages without getting caught up in too much detailing, you stand a good chance of completing a map. 

Interesting, but this would have been more suited to the Mapping Help thread. 

I got caught up in the discussion :) 

Greyboxing is good, but it's a lot easier with small maps for multiplayer than it is for larger singleplayer maps. Maybe if/when I find myself with a better eye for scale it will get easier, but throwing away large parts of a level because while it might have worked "on paper" but didn't in practice is exactly the sort of thing that killed my motivation on that last map.

Also, the "missing texture" texture is ugly as heck. Does anyone know if it's possible to replace it? 

The screenshot looks nice. Dark and dank is how I like my Quake and I can appreciate the shoreline blend you did at the edge of the water. I also think you do well with infusing rock into your brushwork. 

dark and dank 

I made my first serious attempt at the greyboxing method for my Blood level. Started off as an experiment to get a solid layout down and its design stage didn't happen until a start, middle and end had formed.

Several areas changed over time for the better; the library section was originally three separate rooms (bedroom/bathroom/library) before merging the space together and moving some places around.

Working in this way really helped me out and wish I had tried it way sooner. Was easier visualising level flow and could change anything on the fly if it wasn't working out. No time wasted adjusting visuals. Definitely sticking with method this going forward. 

I never give up on maps. A Roman Wilderness of Pain came out ten years after it was started. Lol.

But I know what you mean about layouts, my problem is the opposite though: I sketch out a gigantic layout, and then it takes forever just to finish the architecture, and even then plenty of other mappers have maps at a way higher level of detail than me.

+1 for the collaboration suggestion, that's always a good idea. 

specifically pritchard's screenshot's rocks 

Pritchard: builder of rocks in maps since 2013

http://quadropolis.us/node/3967 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwxYkKdSD855Z2J5NmNJc1J0b28/view?usp=sharing 

The first screen is very dark yes, but the 2nd looks nice with the floor! 

Playing on Darkplaces it is much more darker idk why. On Quakespasm it is much brighter for some reasons. 

why do my dark places look so grey? 

 

was just relativating.
:P
There are many mods on what Quake can handle.
They all have their own atraction.
Telejanos - great metal light shine.
QbizQuake - original dos quake on new engines.

DarkPlaces is developped by LordHavoc I thought and one of the populairest stars for modding.
The name relates to the dark and desolated places quake can be.
By means of what you cannot see won't say it doesn't supposed to be there.

There are a lot of ways to clear your view with the manual of the options.
So your first dark insight might be, that you had the wrong view options. 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/npdmdv3hlkbdyd7/pritchard1-alpha-1.zip

Built for AD 1.42 or whatever. Just throwing out the first 2 minutes of the map to see if i'm heading in a good direction or not.

Some screenies:
http://i.imgur.com/ax4hVg0.png
Don't expect to reach that gun without cheating.
http://i.imgur.com/ZZ2ppnl.png
http://i.imgur.com/LbuW9I3.png

Take the elevator into the dark texture to end the level. 

Small feedback from screenshot (I've not downloaded or played yet). It is a fair bit of work too, so take suggestion with a grain of salt.

Make 3 borders around the edges of the dirt on the tiles, make the outermost one 80% opaque, the innermost 20% and the middle one 50%. That way you'll have a nice gradient of dirt over the tiles that looks more "realistic".

OR

around the edges of the tiles use textures generated by: https://www.quaddicted.com/files/tools/quake_texture_tool_v0_1_0.zip

Otherwise looks awesome! 

A noble idea, I suppose. Unfortunately I'm not sure how to get QTT to behave with my source textures :( one's 128x128 and the other's 64x64, and the result = total mush. Here's what I got out of it, scaled down to 50% size in-editor: http://i.imgur.com/fFU3WtE.png

Never mind that the dirt is facing the wrong way right now; there's so much lost detail in the floor tile texture it's just not possible to use.

I hearby leave the task of figuring it out to whoever wants to make it into the credits for the map.
Here's the source textures. 

That area is so small, why not just playing around with vertices? It must be the artistic choice to create opaque textures, slowly changing to an another texture. 

Or sculpt the individual floor tiles and have them lie on top of the ground in the center (maybe 4 units high), and then some dirt heaps on the sides, slanted faces towards the outer walls. 

give these a whirl, I made them in gimp

You might need to remove the fullbrights if the gimp derped and decided to use them when reducing the colours.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/108695968/pritchard.zip 

Pritchard I get an error of unable to load field.mdl.

:O