This theme could be a good Speedmap theme.... 

Making a small .wad that I called coffee.wad that was just pure colors of brown. That was it. I took each shade of brown and made it an entire texture. I was going to make a geocomp map out of it, but then I ended up not doing that. 

'only one colour' ? 

... only Brown color 

 

that is progress, the two textures you changed do seem to pop more and have more color, which makes the map feel more alive. However, I would follow through with the rest of the scene, to the extent you are comfortable. For example, the columns, the column trim, the brick walls, and the window trim are still basically all the same color. You could try making the brick texture more pale and bleached out, and/or making the window trim darker. You could also try making the column trim darker and the columns paler too.

Also, you should try turning on anisotropic filtering, that floor is blurry as hell from this angle :) 

Slowly I have been going through all the map textures and replacing them with photo source stuff instead. I knew I needed to find a replacement for the old ID pentagram light and after a lot of pavement wandering I came across this gorgeous wood panel I found on a street door.

Initially I took the central diamond shape and extended it downward slightly into a shallow pyramid of light, but at a distance (floor to ceiling angle) it just looked flat. So here is version 3, the texture outline is stil present with the shape heavily extended outwards to create a better profile and the actual light source is now sitting in a gem socket. (Damn you torchlight!)

http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/moteof1dz3l_1024.jpg

@Metl, oops I totally forgot about anisotroic filtering for screenshots. It makes a big difference for texture compression at low angles so new screenshots should be a lot better. :)

Been busy fine tuning all the portal shader effects in my map and replacing the low res crap stuff I created years ago. Had a nice cloudy day recently which was ideal for some moody portal clouds. Also spent a while playing torchlight and taking note of their portal shader construction. This is an old screenshot angle but has all the new sfx candy present on the portal front, plus some minor cosmetic changes to the underside.

http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/moteof1dz2l_1024.jpg

@Scampie, I can't believe it, you just said Quake 1 (brown palette) looked like shit!?! :P 

gem lights are cool.

in the first screenshot, top right image, you have concentric octagonal rings of wood strips on the ceiling. Might look better if you had eight thin strips of raised wood radiating out along the 8 kinks in the rings. 

http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/moteof1ee2l_1024.jpg
http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/moteof1ee3l_1024.jpg

A slow week for me, still trying to get rid of a flu bug and my head feels like it is full of concrete! Been busy creating props to fill up the corners and floors of my map with. Still got more stuff to make but at least the look of the level is starting to come together.

@metlslime, yeah I will add that to my list of art things to do. The ceiling is really high so you don't really notice the seams but a trim would certainly look better. 

because the frame of reference is vague, but those books look gigantic, like 2 feet tall. :P 

Are great books... 

Umm this is going to be a difficult one because everything else in the map is built Soviet Russia style (giant) so making the books realistic makes them look weird.

Here is an example screenshot with the bookcase and books scaled down by 50% next to the original scale. The scaled down version just looks weird to me, squashed and flat.

http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/moteof1ee5l_1024.jpg

Here is a screenshot of the room:

http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/moteof1ee4l_1024.jpg

I will try some other scale values and see what I can do, be back later. 

Giant books are better. The screenshot with the smaller books reminds me of all those horrible "realistic-looking" games' attempt to have "scale". 

Big books and I cannot lie - eldritch tomes are cool.

But here it's almost the opposite. By having a human-hand sized item in the level it gives the player a reference point in the otherwise distorted dimensions they're looking at.

What I mean is the smaller books give the player perspective on how wierd the restt of the place is.

Probably will need to find a decent balence between real size and good size though. 

Well I tried the bookcases at 2 different sizes and both did not feel right to me. I needed to try this because part of the reasons I post here is I want feedback on my stuff.

Scale 50% - (16 unit high books)
http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/moteof1ee5l_1024.jpg
Scale 75% - (24 unit high books)
http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/moteof1ee6l_1024.jpg
Scale 100% - (32 unit high books)
http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/moteof1ee7l_1024.jpg

I am going to stick with the original scale because everything else in this map is large already and small stuff looks squashed next to it. The overall scale of the map is certainly strange and it will never be HL style real world scaling. Currently the player is 72 units high, most doorways are 192 units tall and corridors are roughly 256 units wide. The scale is certainly funky and beyond repair at this point.

I think the problem with the original screenshots is I went a tad bit crazy with the variable scaling on individual books, so will go back and tweak them down a bit. I blame the antibiotics, they are doing crazy stuff to my brain! :P 

I quite like the big books, it adds style. 

I'd need to see a player standing next to them to really tell you. It's almost impossible to tell from those shots what looks right and what doesn't.

Then again, fuck it, right? It's a hall of giants and they need large books. Done! 

The scale of the map is big, probably three times the scale of real life. Here is a screenshot showing 2 area's of the map from the players POV and then thirdperson with a 256 unit camera range.

http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/moteof1eescale_1024.jpg

Quake player/thirdperson angles have always been strange and making them exact often ends up with alot of pain. Same with 1st/3rd weapon views for fps games. Originally I made the stuff small but hitting small triggers to operate stuff is frustrating so I scaled everything up to help with the gameplay. (puzzle operated architecture) 

Anyone who wants realism needs to play a different game tbh because scale's going to be the least of their problems. 

been checking out your updates of screenshots here for a while - damn nice map, seems like a frankenstein-castle meets e1m2 meets mountaintop temple vibe. Great stuff, atmospheric and good title to go with the style. 

in Soviet Russia books scale you! 

Nobody wants realism, they want consistency. Very different things.

That said, it looks fine. Ship it. :) 

yeah, my comment wasn't about realism, it was about the lack of a point of reference and that huge books look goofy to me.

i'll elaborate: it's not that huge books look goofy, but that all the books are huge. ledgers and such might be large, but having small, normal sized books interspersed with the oversized ones will do two things: 1. let the player know you did the sizes on purpose and 2. underscore the difference in size of the large books by giving something to compare with.
also, i liked that the 50% book cases allowed 2 rows of books instead of just a single row with the 100% model.
more books = more awesome, if you could make a huge towering bookcase that reached to the ceiling, even better. :P 

Personally I want a socialist utopia, ice cream and Kate Beckinsale, but there we go.

On a more helpful note, I like the 50% scale books tbh, although maybe mix it in with some '100%' scale books. Most old books (which'd fit with the theme) are kinda giant anyway (think ancient tomes rather than a paperback novel).
The advantage of the 50% books is that you can make them into two shelves, so you still have the same space filled but with a less strange scale. 75% just looks wrong since the bookcase/shelf doesn't match the space under the window.
Depends on how extreme your poly saving gets tho, obviously two shelves of half size books means twice the polys, but I can't see them using that many if build properly...

Oh, and I think you've gotta work from 1st person view, as already stated, the player models always look so wrongly small compared to the view from the first person camera that you have to build 'soviet scale' (great phrase btw)


Oh, and why do totalitarian regimes always have such good architecture? (retorical, same reason churches are giganto ofc... not that I'm comparing religion to totalitarianism at all ;) 

How dare you steal the useful half of my post while I was typing? ;p