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Screenshots & Betas
This is the place to post screenshots of your upcoming masterpiece and get criticism, or just have people implore you to finish it. You should also use this thread to post beta versions of your maps.

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Less Elevator, More Stairs 
I took the liberty of replacing the first elevator the player encounters with an arrangement of stairs.

Yes, I know, this is less comfortable than simply pushing buttons - but I'm sure Quake Guy won't mind the physical exercise. It also allows for some actual gameplay being put on several different height levels.

Not very polished yet, but an early glimpse:

http://maikmerten.de/base1/randomscreens/stairs1.jpg
http://maikmerten.de/base1/randomscreens/stairs2.jpg 
New Zombie Model 
Slowly Moving Forward With The Artpass 
New screenshot:
https://i.imgur.com/8mUXAhE.jpg

Old for comparison:
https://i.imgur.com/5XmCbcl.jpg

This is going to take a while. 
@Spipper 
Very nice. Loving it. 
 
Spipper is displaying the power of multiple iterations of the same scene. Its an amazing thing watching a space transform like this. Keep it up!

If you havent already, join us in our Discord channel!

https://discord.gg/VxH9Hzu 
@multiple_users 
Spipper: nice!

Chillo: he looks very happy. Knees look a bit knobby for my liking but cool other than that. 
New Skill Selection Map 
Damn! 
That looks really good! 
15426 
Looks pretty snazzy, the soft fog and warm sky/lighting give it a neat look without feeling arid. Is the bright blue water supposed to stand out that much, though? Assuming it's water, I mean. 
#15426 
Looking great! 
OTP, Spud, Mfx 
Thanks!

The blue water is not exactly intended - it just happens to be the one water texture I currently have (I avoid non-free textures in hopes of going stand-alone sometimes in the future).

Whipping up a more muddled water texture shouldn't be a major problem, though. 
SavageX 
 
"Those outdoor shots looks great, and surprisingly similar to Turok:
"
almost, but better :) 
Turok 
Heh, that's indeed a nice visual coincidence - I think I'll try to sneak in a reference to Turok into the map. 
My Approach To Churning Out Terrain Fast 
First: lay out all floors and walls as "quadsoup": http://i.imgur.com/FCD8kXi.png

Second: Start pushing vertices around until things look "organic": http://i.imgur.com/X1u4EUy.png

Overview after approx. three hours of messing in TrenchBroom: http://i.imgur.com/z5Tb1gS.png

The big sky brush marks the +/-4096 limit of unmodified Quake network protocol. I'm expect I'll have to switch to BSP2 before this map is done. 
Brushwork Terrain Tutorials 
Thanks for posting that, SavageX. I've been playing around with natural terrain recently, also mainly using the TB vertex tool, but I haven't settled into a method that works for me yet -- though broadly speaking, I try to do more or less what you have done here. In my experience so far, however, it's tempting to go overboard and end up with an unwieldy mess of overly complex brushwork (something which you seem to have avoided).

Every so often I see people recommending this terrain tutorial by Sock. As I recall, Adib used it when mapping for the Fire & Brimstone jam. The thing is, though, I can't really make much sense of it -- or perhaps I'm missing something?

To me it doesn't really look like a tutorial at all. Instead, it starts with what looks like some sort of historical overview of terrain in brush-based engines in general, and then it moves on to a fairly technical discussion of something called DotProduct2 and some stuff that seems specific to the Quake 3 engine and Radiant. I really have trouble picking out the parts that are relevant/helpful to Quake mapping in a different editor than the Radiant family. Or is there a tutorial buried in there somewhere, and have I just never found the right link to click? 
#15435 
the dotproduct2 stuff is 'just' q3map2 autogenerating per-vertex alpha values based upon the similarity of the vertex normal and some specified unit vector. And then squaring it (hence the '2').
(dot(A,B) == cos(anglebetweenAandB)*length(A)*length(B)), or in other words, given unit vectors, dotproduct gives 1 when they are equal, 0 when perpendicular, and -1 when opposing, so its quite handy when doing geometry stuff. squaring it biases it towards 0 in a non-linear way, so you don't need such vertical cliffs)
combined with a shader that performs alpha blending according to said vertex alphas, this gives different textures appearing based upon how flat that part of the map is meant to be.
manually doing all that stuff would take excessive amounts of effort...

its worth noting that its all q3map2/q3bsp-specific and doesn't apply at all to q1bsp (which completely lacks vertex alpha values... and shaders). 
@former_total_newbie 
Yeah, Sock's tutorial is certainly covering a lot of things that only apply to Quake 3 (or compatible engines).

I cannot claim to be an authoritative source regarding Quake editing - I'm not a veteran mapper and have yet to properly release a single (!) Quake map (apart from the betas in this thread). I try to adhere to following rules:

- Most vertices I only displace on one axis. So if I want to push the rock surface in, I'll grab a vertex and just push that one in exactly according to one axis. I try to make sure my brushes keep quite some volume (no strangely flimsy brushes), which is why I start with 128x128x128 cubes. I can push those around without

- I try to keep all vertices on-grid. I certainly make sure all vertices are on integer positions.

- be gentle on the floor, don't go as crazy on vertex editing as on rock faces. A few hills and ramps usually work fine, but if you go overboard you can run into collision issues, like players getting stuck on random edges (for Quake 2 and 3 the collision system works quite differently and seems to be overall more robust).

I uploaded an example map with sources over at https://maikmerten.de/base1/start-wip.zip - perhaps that's useful for you. However, again, I might do things horribly wrong although they appear to be working fine for me for now ;-) 
Terrain 
I've been using FraQuake to generate fractal geometry for my Xmas Jam map. (cavewalls) You'll need to run it in a 16bit compatible OS. I'm probably going overboard with the number of polys but you can dial it in to your hearts content. It's a multi-step process. Create a map in the application and then copy and paste what you need from the output. (It adds monsters randomly FYI) I use TB2's CSG merge to weld faces together to create borders. Then add _phong 1 to make the lighting pretty. I'm having fun and I think it looks groovy

https://www.dropbox.com/s/plh6rsopnx3c863/fraquake.zip?dl=0

this is the only screenshot I have access to ATM but it illustrates the fractals well https://imgur.com/d2TGj5E 
Savagex 
lots of improvements.
I'd recommend some minor things... for the outdoor area, some upscaled textures set at like a 33 degree angle might prevent textures looking too 'gridlike'...
re indoor base shots, some trim along stair edges etc might be nice. Also, I think you could extend some of the ceilings upwards more dramatically for a nice effect. like the first shot where the pipes jutting out are, if they went up way far into darkness might be nice.
Just off the top of my head. But yeah looks pretty good! 
Spipper 
new intro area looks very cool. Wish you the best of luck with the rehaul - I'm sure it will be tricky but worthwhile as the comments regarding the actual gameplay are almost uniformly positive 
Hopefully The Final Version Of Shifting Planes 
@Drew Thanks!

Finally done with a full artpass. In addition to that, I have also added two new skill levels to the map (easy/hard).
The only thing between this version and a full release is some clipping, some ambient sounds and a bit of testing.

Screens:
https://i.imgur.com/9Gkn9hf.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/xoWi1jM.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/3T0V4jO.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/6NUb9AG.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/N9KIRxx.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/ADa5kj0.jpg

Download:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cdcpdluvjsofme4/movplan_b1.zip?dl=0

(Includes movplan_b1.bsp and .lit. Requires Qouth) 
Fine Screenies! 
Epic style, dark atmosphere! 
Yeah, 
Some cool stuff there for sure. #2 and #4 especially nice. Hope it's a strong theme throughout - looking forward to playing it! 
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