This is excellent. The rock and soil and plant stuff looks excellent, the modelling/brushwork on them is top-notch, and the texture mix and overall color palette of the map is fantastic.

Visually, my only complaints are minor: the stone block textures could have been more convincing, and the "weapon pad" texture really didn't work for me when laid over the greenish ground textures. I would have liked to see dimmer lighting in the caves, too.

As for gameplay, this map might have a few too many of the same "hallways" in between its two distinctive atria. I haven't played it, so I can't comment further. 

the rockwork is phenomenal, excellent work there.

Dimmer lighting in the caves would have certainly been cooler but I think it wouldnt have been a good implementation in a DM map. Plus the current lighting setup is quite nice anyway.

I'd have to agree on the weapon markers not looking right, IMHO they would have looked better if they were more transparent and didnt stand out as much.

I havent played it yet, I'll comment on the gameplay when I get around to it.

Once again, awesome map Sock! 

It's worth taking a look at the *.map file (which I think is included) if you're interested in seeing how it was all made. Really takes 'terrain' based maps to the next level of detail.. *thumbsup* 

There's a lot of skill in this map. The textures are gorgeous, the models are high quality and well placed, everything smacks of skill. So why is it that if I'm out of sight of the temple I don't have a damn clue where I am? Lack of landmarks turns what could have been a highmark for the aging game into an offering which won't see much play. I think Sock got over excited about his one fantastic room and didn't spend as much time on the rest. 

that's the hallway thing i was talking about. Though, he does have two distinctive atria, not just one. 

just tried to play it but reaklised there's no botplay in this map. It's probably due to the complex build of this map but couldnt you use ydnar's bspc2 to get soem botplay out of this map? 

is being worked on but as you say this type of structure isn't friendly to bots at all.

It's worth noting here that this should be looked at as more of a 'demo map', it's been built to help explain alphaMod texture blending and some of the more advanced features of using Q3map2. There's a load of source material on the way, tutorials, source files etc. 

Wow, really amazing screenshots... Very good work ! 

next lan party with Q3 I know what I'm playing. 

Yeah, you're right. There is the area with a sort of a ravine thing going on. It looked good, but it needed to be tied back to the temple. Some cool mesoamerican knick-knacks lying around would have done it.

http://members.aol.com/emdelcamp/altarp1.jpg
http://members.aol.com/cabrakan/bearerb.jpg

Knick-knack is of course the layman's term for what is technically known as statues 'n shit. 

Fucking class work, Sock. I have no idea how it plays so I can't comment on that, but I was kind of disappointed to see r_speeds topping 24,000 in some places. Hardly a problem any more, but there's still something to be said for strong skill with vis/optimization.

I desperately want to see this map with a cloudy sky and white fog. 

really?? because on my POS system it still runs reasonably well compared to other maps that are considered high end. 

This makes a mockery of heightmap-based terrain tools. Far Cry, UT2K4, pfft.

The three-way blending trick is also very neat. I didn't think that could be done in Q3. 

Awesome.

That's all I need to say, this is an excellant map. Layout is awesome, you can hop around to every area and get above opponents very quickly. Visuals are fantastic, and the brushwork is a thing of beauty. I'm going to start crying tears of joy just thinking of how cool this map is. 

i love how there is so much detail... all the little plants and such, and the trees actually look pretty good.
the ambient sounds also go a long way towards making the whole map feel like a real place.

didn't actually play the map, so no comments on gameplay.

it's a very beautiful map. looks like something out of Uru actually! :)
if only the plants could have been animated in some way to make them sway a bit, that would have been awesome. 

looks great.
hope a new version that supports botplay can be released soon. 

Wow alot of comments I did not know existed! Yeah the map is mainly two things, one to see how far the terrain blending could go and a personal mapping project for me.

metlslime: Yeah the brickwork is part digital source and part hand drawn. Could not find a good digital source of brickwork that I liked.

Ironically most people don't like the weapon spawn markers but it was a design choice and I have to stick by it. I wanted something similiar in style to the jump pads and the whole mayan god of rain theme. I created them very early on and they sort of grew on me.

Lunaran: There are indeed several sections of the map which are poorly designed for fps but the map was too far along to change.

The source files are available if you want to have a look.

http://www.planetquake.com/simland/pages/q3maps/pom_source.htm

Thanks everyone for your comments.
Sock 

I'm glad you kept the weapon spawn markers, they're pretty cool. 

After a lot of writing and constant proof reading the Terrain Blending article is finished.

http://www.planetquake.com/simland/pages/articles/terrain1_1.htm

It started life as a small collection of ideas and suggestions, but some how turned into a 7 page monster! The article does contain a lot of technical jargon but hopefully its presented in a nice and easily understandable format.

With all three items finished, (example map/source files/article) hopefully that should be enough information on terrain blending to help most people get started.

Sock 

we need bots!

Seriously, is it even possible to get botplay going on this map (maybe with the new q3map)? 

I think I love you. 

Unfortunately, the way BSPC divides up a map's internal space when creating the AAS is incredibly intolerant of uneven, heavily triangulated geometry, especially floors. This map has plenty of these, and are undeniably vital to its amazing look and feel. I can well imagine that to get a viable AAS, you would have to botclip the map to such a point that the bots would basically be obviously skating around above the floor over about 90% of the map, and would pretty much be able to cheat in some places because of being able to walk where the player couldn't. That's assuming that BSPC would work at all, and in a map this complex there is absolutely no guarantee of that. 

Thanks for the tutorial. 

After a lot of conversations with MrE and Ydnar I did get a bot file working but the clusterf*ckin portals kept on breaking all the time. To compile the map with BSPC it takes a hour and tbh I got fed up waiting around, just to find out that as I fixed one portal another decided to die.

Someone has offered to try and create a BOT file for the map and good luck to them. I wasted a week watching BPSC compile screens and I really dont want to do that again.

Sock 

I grabbed this map just to check out the visuals since I'm not much into DM. I'm very impressed by all aspects of this map and the terrain is amazing. The plant life really adds to the jungle feel and the caves are very cool.

This style of map would be great for SP.