Ok this was a stupid idea (from a technical point of view), but it was something I thought would be cool (in my headTM) so I decided to try it out. I wanted to have the Guardian portal show where you are going, so I created a special model of the outside of the castle and then pointed the portal at it. After a lot of work trying to make it look good and match it all up to the insides of the building I finally got it working.

OMG it is freakin awesome, the screenshots do the whole effect no justice. As you walk up to the portal it fades into view, a closeup of the outside of the castle and then the camera pans outwards as you get closer to the portal. You can slightly turn the camera left and right by moving left and right and get the whole depth thing of the model. Plus the electric shader effect on the transformer in the first room you can see working correctly through the front window. Need to add some more moving fog/mist layers around the bottom and across the front and it should be complete.

Walking up towards the portal as it fades into view
http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/moteof1el1.jpg

The final view when you are next to the portal
http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/moteof1el2.jpg 

A framerate killer for sure, but who cares when it looks that cool.

Sock, I'm perpetually in awe of your mapping skills. 

In the days of 3 Ghz dualcores and i5/i7 CPUs? I don't think so. 

Here is a an update to the close up of the portal. I have added some dirt and a glass bubble effect to the outer edge of the portal window.

http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/moteof1el3.jpg

The frame rate drops from 125 to 80 on my laptop when I have the portal in full screen view (1600x1200 res) on a 2Ghz IBM laptop. The outside model is only 3K polys and the room has no combat or AI. It is certainly much better visually than a static screenshot for the portal background and it does look awesome when in motion. 

Reminds me of Serious Sam.

Looking forward to the map. 

great idea and go for it, its not a playable dm map anyway right, so framerate drop in sp puzzle mode is not a big deal. 

Well that is a noticeable fps drop, but my point was that it doesn't matter if the map is not-action oriented. Actually I misunderstood about it being just a model, and not the whole map seen from the outside.

Jago, not everybody has uber-computers, especially people who play 9-13 year old games. 

It is very unlikely my map will work on hardware that is 5+ yrs old. Even if the screen resolution is lowered, all of the textures have been doubled in size and this will strain most old video cards with slowdowns as the textures are swapped in and out of video memory.

There is no bot/dm style gameplay just exloring and button mashing puzzles which should help a little bit with frame rate issues. Most of the rooms are 20k polys with plenty of multi-layer shaders around and a couple of areas even spike as high as 30K polys. This map was designed to have lots of detail with stuff to look at and explore.

The people who could run this map (have good enough hardware) are no longer play Q3 (moved on to better things) and the people left playing Q3 have old machines so this map is really in a dead zone. Coupled with the fact that the 'gameplay' is puzzle based, I fully understand that this map will only played by me and 3 other people (the beta testers). 

I just need to upgrade one of these days... 

I'll play it. 

So 4 then . . .

Even if it's only played by a handful of people the thought and time you've put into it makes you a better mapper - it's not wasted.

Otherwise nobody here would bother. 

And counting. I re-installed Q3 to have a take at that map :) 

I'm definitely reinstalling Quake 3 for this map. It just looks absolutely awesome. :) 

The people who could run this map (have good enough hardware) are no longer play Q3 (moved on to better things) and the people left playing Q3 have old machines so this map is really in a dead zone.

Bullshit. :)

I'm actually toying with the idea of starting a new Q3 map (came up with an odd idea for a very different tourney map layout), and I certainly play newer games.

Q3 is one of those games people will keep playing and/or return to for quite a while yet... 

I'd reinstall Q3 just to play the map as well. 

heck I'll even review it for Quaddicted if Spirit's down for it, or for somewhere else if not. It looks awesome. Plus I still have Q3 though I haven't played since forever. 

was this: http://www.celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=3&start=3764&end=3765 ever finished? 

Probably not tbh. Method is working on Rage over at iD these days, doubt he has much in the way of spare time/energy for level design outside of work. 

Well I am certainly looking forward to hearing what people think of this map. I have a ton of stuff to talk about on this map, so the web pages should be full of plenty of development details.

I am nearly finished with the last bits and pieces, just got to do a final detail pass on certain areas and sprinkle some small rock around the place.

http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/moteof1em1.jpg
http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/moteof1em2.jpg 

Really nice ! 

I have a ton of stuff to talk about on this map, so the web pages should be full of plenty of development details.

I'm personally looking forward to seeing that. :D 

it's a shame. those three shots really had a fully developed style that could have been carried on for a full map.

also, sock, if you don't know i want to play edge of forever yet, i don't know what to tell you. ;) 

is there any interest to beta test a d3sp minimod?
i only ask because it plays a lot more like quake than d3 but there probably aren't a lot who have d3 installed. 

...I'd be up for it. I was planning on reinstalling D3... Drop me a line if you want. 

Sure.