Everyone who plays with lights, make sure you use an engine with Overbright support like Fitzquake. 

Crossposting from the Mapping Help thread:

I need someone with UnrealED3 (the UT3 version) installed to take a brief look over a map I have been slowly working on for a loooong time now to help me decide whether I should continue slowly building upon it or whether I should just put it out of it's misery.

Download it HERE. 

http://h.imagehost.org/0281/Mirage_1.jpg
http://h.imagehost.org/0576/Mirage_2.jpg
http://h.imagehost.org/0484/Mirage_3.jpg

From the other day, just showing the layout
http://h.imagehost.org/0454/OasisOfWar2.jpg

Much detailing still to be done, but it's coming along quite nicely. It's theme is unique to DoW2, being a mashup of Desert and Jungle enviroments to make a somewhat Tropical Paradise. This will be me entry to the Community Map Creation Contest run by Relic.
http://www.gamereplays.org/dawnofwar2/portals.php?show=page&name=dawn-of-war-2-map-competition 

lol i dont even know what is doW... doW2? roulf

look like a far cry map but with no details! 

Dawn of War 2.

Looks nice scamp, good fusion of themes. When I saw the game screens I was imagining something more beachy tho (compared to the layout shot), I'm aware you need to keep gameplay balanced between sides, but possibly have sea as one of the shared outer edges of the map (ie, top or bottom). Sand/beach in the middle of green hills seems strange...

And good luck with the contest :) 

Oh I fully relieze the strangeness. Originally thought of making the entire map an island, but a problem I would've had to deal with was hiding the edges of the map if you tilted the camera to a low angle. Instead, I decided 'fuck reality' and went full bore with something as unearthly as a landlocked beach. 

But more buildings - stuff without human sized apertures / dimensions. 

look like a far cry map but with no details!
Haha, indeed.

So just make it an island in a crate! Like that toilet map of yours, only 'used' this time.
(Ok, if you must, maybe in a Borg cube then, to comply with the scifi setting...) 

Noone has UnrealED3 (UT3) installed? 

jago what for?

pure crap ~:p

please come back to Quake

enought of wasting your time! 

Sure, when it does 80k tris at 100+ fps on mediocre hardware and comes with a nice assortment of prebuilt meshes. 

I have it installed, and I could run it, but I haven't used it in quite a while and am not really inclined to since I have no plans to map for or play UT3. My condolences. 

the world was pretending UT3 doesn't exist. 

 

All the weapons feel flimsy and the visuals have so much 'cyber-punk' grime and lens flare shoved on top that it's nigh impossible to tell what's going on. 

maybe screenshots for us who don't have ut3? 

Alright then.

Note that the red brick texture obviously isn't final, its something I just use to block out things, there isn't any real lighting, its all in-editor and very very WIP, well you get the point:

http://jago.pp.fi/images/wip/ut3test001.png
http://jago.pp.fi/images/wip/ut3test002.png
http://jago.pp.fi/images/wip/ut3test003.png
http://jago.pp.fi/images/wip/ut3test004.png
http://jago.pp.fi/images/wip/ut3test005.png 

I like the basic structures and things. Looks like some fun fighting areas there. As you said, very WIP but promising! 

i don't think the red brick is that bad, honestly. is there a dirtier version of that texture though? the metal looks pretty grimy but the bricks look pretty new. course, it depends on what look you're going for. full on tech, yeah, you probably want metal walls but if you want industrial, bricks aren't a bad choice.

second and third shots have a nice look to them. i think keeping the amount of symmetry low would be good (but shot 3, for example, should stay symmetrical for contrast)

my only beef is that the map is so full of mesh objects it's hard to see what the underlying brushwork is, but on the other hand, i know that's pretty much how all modern maps are made these days so it's not really a valid complaint. it's just that, for example, shot 1 is basically a square room. the machine mesh objects don't really seem part of the room. 

look nice and i�m pretty sure will look much better with lights!

now make a Quake remake to :p 

just need a dirtier brick texture IMHO. DOesnt have to be red but something like a higher res kingping texture. 

that's exactly what i was thinking about, now you mention it :)
like it's got 50 years of soot and grime built up. 

I love the architecture, particularly the mix in between old school bricks and techno-pillars... I'd really like to see it ingame with the real lighnings now ;) 

@Jago, I like the first screenshot, are those standard mesh objects or something you have created yourself? Sorry not that familiar with UT yet.

@Scampie, Are you going to create any building objects yourself or just terrain and prefabs? 

All the meshes are from stock UT3.

It's actually kind of dictating the way I have to build things. If one is capable of making his own meshes and textures, it's quite easy to just map out the entire raw layout with very few CSG brushes and then just fill out the entire map with custom meshes as you see fit.

However, if you are incapable of making your own meshes and have to rely on the ones available to you, this doesn't quite work. You need to have every room and every corridor filled with at least SOME major mesh detailing pretty much from the start, because they will give you a sense of scale and since you can't make your own, you will at times be building your map around the available meshes instead of building custom meshes to suit your map.