@scampie, you lurker! :)
@necros, ummm I tested the general image brightness on my Ipad to see it was acceptable and I got a good moody image.
@quakis, you have described the atmosphere perfectly! :)

Here are some HD versions, they are 1.4Mb each so be warned. (1450x1080 pixels) These were the original images I used to create the other ones.

http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/potguard4_hd.jpg
http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/potguard4b_hd.jpg 

that's totally going on my wallpaper. :) 

That is really nice ! 

As the others mentionened, lighting changes emphasize atmosphere in a fairy tale sort of way, but be aware that it comes at the cost of reduced "realism" (in the lighting).

It's sad that you could never place prefabs like this in a real q3 map that's supposed to have competetive-good gameplay! :/

Other than that... keep up inspiring me and increasing my urge to map instead of coding, please!

Also, if you have any scenes like this that are a bit more complex than "single box room" (not a criticism), I'd be happy to get a copy, because I'm always on the lookout for nice scenes/models to use with my prototypes (and I have just implemented q3 loading ;-)), just that they have to have a certain kind of complexity. 

@necros, wow cool!
@JPL, thanks :)
@megaman, I wondered what you were doing. I saw a map by you a while back but it never got beyond beta. Most of my current test maps are just to test textures so everything is really staged for certain angles. 

Well, the "after" screenshots looks much better, but it seems that you used anisotropic filtering there while in the "before" there's no aniso (bilinear or trilinear). But I don't understand why you removed some "details" from the map (the damaged floor for example). 

Missing floor tiles are pretty cliche, everybody and my mom does it. It's ok if it isn't the only or main detail in an area though (or if something heavy obviously crashed into the floor).

@Sock: Nice. Is it possible to get the arches smoother looking? They're pretty edgy.

Perhaps kick over one of those chairs. It looks too tidy. Candles and books on the floor? 

@RaverX, most people disliked the floor detail and it needed a lot of work to look better so it was easier to replace with decals instead.

@gb, true the floor damage is cliche but so is crates and barrels. The problem was I made it too obvious, it should of been a small thing, a couple of tiles shifted. I certainly like the idea of more prefabs and damaged versions. Time for a new engine (UDK) which has more toys to play with. 

what about rage when the tools are released? 

Colouring isn't right on some of those textures sock. Especially the roof, those triangular parts might look better in a dark brown. They look a bit sickly at the moment. Maybe the lighting needs to be more yellow-based. 

Don't you want to finish and release your metal map eventually?

What else is there, Orl, Hrim...? 

It comes to my mind that some interesting projects seem now defunct, vanished..dead!
One example?
Where that "Mortisville" mod has gone ?? I looked forward to it ! or that Glassman map ?

So.. why not open a section/thread called M.I.A. ? what do ya think ? 

lunsp2 :)

Also I'm sitting on a rpg-metlslime collaboration codenamed "sm69" which we started as a chainmap like 9-10 years ago. 

Oh wait... 

woah, maybe i'm tripping but i thought sm69 was released already. 

well, the joke was that 69 was a really large number (since speedmap numbers were in the 30s at that time.) And that we were mapping really slow, so it would take until ~69 to actually finish our "speed chain map". Of course now the numbers are up past 150... so there was probably a real sm69, but this was unrelated to it. 

oops :P 

Just rename yours sm666 metlslime, maybe it could be finished by then. 

also has something in the works, does he not?

And considering how SM has slowed down (as much my fault as anyone's I guess?) you have approximately 20 years to get it out by then Metl. 

@negke- The metal map I was making hung like stone around me, hooking off hom's ie. The respons on the beta were reasonable.

It's just the point mapping for weeks gets so usual I needed a break and got lost in Bioshock2.

I installed QRadiant and became so excited by its exakt carving I imported my Quark map into it. When I made some additions I imported it back into Quark, but all my poly's were crunched(!>?). I can't make radiant compile within its programm self.

I still have the intention to finish it, but I first have to outrun my textures. :P 

The start map, which I salvaged from a failed q1sp from 2008 http://dl.dropbox.com/u/33279452/dazbase1.jpg

Now work starts on the actual map that it links to :P 

I remember that one. Instant boneresque! 

looks fucking awesome 

#8107 by negke

I have a lot of maps almost there! But I haven't
had the time to finish anything in quite a while.
But it looks like I will have some spare time over the next months to finish something.
I have the map pack I showed at the QExpo, Then there is one or two metal maps and there are the wery large base map I showed pics of over a year ago.

So yes there are maps coming but don't ask when! 

sounds like an awesome mini-episode!