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 

Oh, and does anyone else feel sock is making a WoW instance? 

lol at the first part of your first comment nonentity. If only...

for me the question is do the giants who built this place happen to use bigger pages because they're comfortable handling bigger books (2x the words per page)...? 

looks better to me too. 

but what i noticed is that the Egyptian Scale and the Soviet Scale are similar, same for of government, i though Egypt more as a Monarchy kinda deal...? 

- 

I want to live in your map.

Also I think the 50% books look fine, it just makes the windows look more grandiose. 

@necros, yeah that is the problem I made everything the same size. I was too excited about having books as props that I did not tweak the relative sizes. Certainly will add smaller books as well.

@Tronyn, wow thanks :)

Large structures always feel awe inspiring to me, which is probably why I love most ancient structures. The same with churches, got to feel the awe of god and he does need a big house, apparently.

I will try and stick to the same scale for all the props so at least they will look consistent next to each other. Need to build some smaller props so scale is more apparent. Time to build some candles and stools with books on them!

@nonentity, yeah I would love to build a wow instance, I so love that game that I could easily live 24/7 playing it. 

A big thing about Quake, for me, is the feeling of foreignness. Inserting comfortable objects, like books, reduces that a LOT for me. If it's on the edge of forever, who is going to be reading books there? It's meant for more important things :-) 

The book is bound in human skin, inked in blood and rips your face off if you open it? 

Yes, yes, I like where this is going... 

"Hasn' anyone bin able ter open their books? Yeh've got to stroke 'em." 

 

If it's on the edge of forever, who is going to be reading books there?

Ever read The Bridge by Iain Banks? (I think I mean The Bridge, it might be another one of his (non-sci-fi) books). The bit with the old man and woman constantly playing board games in some giant castle/tower in the middle of icey nowhere. It's kinda like that.

And some of the later WoW instances, especially in the expansion packs, are masterful pieces of gameplay/level design. I'd be proud to have made one of them. (I love that game so much I had to go through rehab ;) The puzzle element and graphic style are very reminiscent (especially those exterior shots with the eaves).