secret count does 

secrets under lifts matter 

 

! 

IMHO coloured lighting is too saturated. Otherwise looks great. 

The following secrets should be outlawed:
- shooting the copper grate
- shooting that red window
- secrets under lifts

All they do is encourage you to check every grate, every red window, and every lift, which is just an unfun waste of time.

I really appreciated whichever dm*rmx map of than's it was where the first copper grate you shoot says "these are never a secret so now you don't have to bother." (or did it just say that in the readme?) 

well, secrets are supposed to be signified by something abnormal, so if it's a red window or copper grate with a flickering light or something, maybe... 

To be honest I think you should just put secrets wherever the hell you please. They're hidden easter eggs.

If your secret doesn't have a clue then it should be a trope IMO.

The only no-no with secrets is that they should never be required to complete a map. 

well yes, obviously anyone can do anything they want forever. I can't literally outlaw a secret area.

But I realized as I'd play a map I'd get on a lift, trigger it, get off, look under it, go "nope, nothing under this one" then have to wait for the lift to hit the top and return. It's not a fun behavior to encourage, and the trouble is, even if I make a map without secrets under the lifts everyone will check them all anyway because they've been trained to. 

Blame id then... they're the ones hiding the secrets under lifts, stairs and other shit.

Master has trained us well! 

even if I make a map without secrets under the lifts everyone will check them all anyway because they've been trained to.

Not after Sock's been very resistant to doing that. 

I like limited use of 'secret under the lift'. In my opinion, secrets are best when they reward the player for looking/moving through your environment in a different way than you as the designer would normally expect. Secrets being under a lift can fit this.

I think doing under the lift secrets best is when you expect the player to fall off the lift by accident or that they can be able to see under it from above if they turn around. Having to 'step on and step off quickly' to simply get lucky that there is a secret under this particular lift is a poor secret design because it's not based on player observing your map from a new angle, it's just based on them knowing that other designers hide secrets under lifts. 

obligatory SECRETS thread link 

1000 Cuts 

I've touched up the lighting a bit. I wanted to make the scene less purple in tone, but also for the window textures themselves to glow a bit more.

New light
Yesterday's shot
The blue lights are less saturated, and the red is slightly less saturated, and is brighter but more localized to the windows. I think this works better and tones down the purple.

Here's the lightmap
Generally the red is pretty contained. And you can see that the texture is where much of the blue comes from with the other lights.

and here's a little bonus no colored lights
Obviously a bit too bright since the lights are pure white with the color information removed, but these does feel a bit Sin City black and white and red. Not going to pursue this for the map proper, but at least it has a neat look if you happen to not play with the .lit. 

that's awesome sock :D 

Vondur and otp really liked the no colored lights shot... So I am trying a comprimise where the blue lights are now white, and I keep the red lights.

no blue

Think there is some value here, might need to adjust the brightness of the lights down a little, but just sticking with the natural color of the textures generally seems to be fine, and keeping with red accent lights. 

thank god for mappers that are patient enough to do proper lighting (unlike me). a couple comments:
-architecture, obviously, looks amazing
-spotlights coming up from the ground seem to suit ikblue especially well, so that's great
-yet in this final shot, the light near the spotlights on the floor seems too bright (not sure if this is because it's white, but it might be).

if I don't get an in-game shot ready this week, I'll at least post another editor shot. tick tock... 

I think it works better with blue and glowing red. 

looks best, at least from that shot. As for which colored light shot I like best, I prefer the shot labeled 'new light' to both the old shot and the 'no blue' labelled shot. 

what he said.

Having said that, I really like the way things are looking, Scampie. The shot with coloured light is great too, although I think the shot without coloured lights has slightly nicer levels - maybe just because I can see more detail? Perhaps in game I would offer a different opinion. 

Both skacky and nitin are correct. You should go for all colored, and grognards like me can then simply delete the .lit. 

...three hours of work this arvo and now my mapping computer won't boot. Let's hope the guys in ICT can help tomorrow, 

Had an awesome under lift secret - it was a teleporter you could hear when the lift brought you down. 

it combined an under-the-lift secret with a quad-after-you've-killed-all-the-monsters secret

I was waiting for someone to bring that up.