Kell, firstly thanks for the feedback :D

The 64x128 textures suggestion is a good idea. I was thinking of either editing them and having them have a bevel/shadow along the halfway mark where they cutoff... but was still skeptical of how I was using them halved anyway.

The ramp, which comes down on a few steps ahead and to it's side - I was at first wondering if that whole idea might be annoying too - I'm going to try all stairs like you're suggesting.

One thing you may notice:
http://www.phait-accompli.com/q/pre/walk.jpg

Walkway on left just hangs there and meets w/ the 64x64 riveted texture, doesn't look right of course. That is currently how all walkways are in the rough, but I'm going to add a layer inbetween as you see on the right walkway - just logical and looks better.

I think this layout might have some good potential but I'm still waiting until it's tested. Either way it's gonna top PH8DM1 (pah!). Thanks again for checking! 

Looking promising, the textures need some serious fixing as you know, but it's looking like a good start. Stick with it man. 

Glad to hear, thanks. 

Hey thought I'd show of some shots of a test d3 map I'm playing with. I dunno if anything will come of this, but I'm starting to feel really comfortable with some textures and the editor. General feed back would be appreciated.

http://img189.exs.cx/img189/5594/shot000068ia.jpg
http://img189.exs.cx/img189/2735/shot000070yp.jpg
http://img189.exs.cx/img189/1696/shot000088zh.jpg
http://img189.exs.cx/img189/8590/shot000094vk.jpg
http://img189.exs.cx/img189/4971/shot000100zh.jpg 

1. Any worthwhile D3 maps will need to break free from the constraints of dark-ish, tech-ish corridors that the game itself did plenty well enough.

2. See 1.

3. Looks like the actual build quality is fine though. 

doesn't look very inspiring, but the architecture does the job, quite solid looking map. I agree with Shamblers sentiment about how breaking the boring dark corridor convention would make the map more worthwhile, but it's often a positive experience to follow the norm once, just so you have a solid grounding when you deviate from it.

I say run with this, don't worry about making anything groundbreaking, and then next time start experimenting. Map on! 

do they need to have bump maps and specularity things and all that stuff, or would a texture in d3 look ok with just the diffuse part provided it was high res enough, say like 256x256 or 128x128? 

You can simply choose to have the lights not cast the bumps and specularity textures, but it's not pretty. Much of the textures look like ass (usually) without them. I'd recommend at least 256 if you weren't going to create bumps or specs. 

well the textures without bump/spec maps would stand out like the ugliest of sore thumbs! Thats for sure. 

say all your textures were like that. 

The map would look pretty bad, doom3 lighting doesn't feel so good without the bump and specular. =\ 

i was affraid of that.
i guess i'll have to wait until some nice non d3 style texture sets come around with their own bump mapping and such. 

Just dig deep in the D3 texture set and use your creativity... 

i'm not really a big fan of d3 textures... granted i haven't looked at every single one closeup, from what i remember in the game, none of them really were what i was looking for. 

is to use a displacement vertex painting script on an existing texture set that you do like.

http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=23739

line the texture up neatly on a flat plane, work the shape over until you get the results you are after, and either take a high rez targa shot of it or export the new base model.

I haven't used this methodolgy with D3 but it works well with Irrlicht. 

actually turning of speculiar on some materials makes sense - gives more natural look instead of the usual plastic\metal of d3

btw turn off bump and spec in game prefs (dont have to vid restart) and see

HeadThump: need to fuck with Blender3d ?
necr: u want gothic texes? 

The material support in the 2.3x releases have been great for my texture creation, but the interface is still not the most intuitive in the world.

of course, if I could afford zbrush 2 I would pretty much ditch blender3d. A lot of the import/export scripts are buggy to put it mildly. 

actually turning of speculiar on some materials makes sense - gives more natural look instead of the usual plastic\metal of d3

From a texture artist's perspective, that's a no. Everything has at least a tiny bit of specularity to it, even wood and skin. Fleshy bits and the admittedly rare wood surfaces in doom3 all do have specular maps - the histogram never reaches above 8% for any of them but they are still there. 

still, less specular would help to achieve more realistic look
btw in a game world u could pretty much round off small values since its not near perfect simulation 

http://www.phait-accompli.com/q/ph8dm2/

I was about to beta test this in #tf but that did not happen. I need 2 people if Kell is still able to help, else I'll need 3.

Anyways, in it's prior version it was beta tested between pope, blitz and zwiffle and I got some suggestions and have implemented most. Right now I am thinking of what to do with the main room as it's kinda bare.

If you want to help beta for the revision, you can message me:

AIM: itsphait
Yahoo: phait_accompli
MSN: thecarbonflaw@yahoo.com

Thanks. 

i'll help test. i don't have the first two message services and you aren't on msn.

but yeah. i don't get to play q1dm often, so it would be fun. ^_^ of course, _when_ you plan to do the test would matter... 

I can't test your map now since I don't have access to my PC atm (and won't have for at least another month), but shots 5.jpg and 7.jpg are showing much promise in the layout and style departments. 

In a nice style throughout discussing possibilities and definite improvement/fixing suggestions. I'm going to work on that about a minute from now and then I'll be around throughout the day on and off to test. I get some bad ping though (120-200+) so I dunno... I don't recall having that problem last time I QW'd last year. 

Really fixed up that bare skywindow:

http://www.phait-accompli.com/q/pre/sky1.jpg 

I've just took a look at the screenies, and yeah, it's really promising !! Nice architecture, good use of base-based textures, cool lightning effects, and good open area for DM contest.. Release it now please !!