birds eye layout http://www.mediafire.com/conv/0afac108f986454f4d6b79576fc2a5ca43dbed7cb1dc8e524b4ea1f9865f61906g.jpg
main atrium http://www.mediafire.com/conv/5deef9410e838333748ae48fb7e8414bca7eea659d2c7c059d40a89414ccc9d86g.jpg
mega http://www.mediafire.com/conv/f93561c9748fb66318aa56c92680df2ccd2655ffab3affcaf97870308b656a766g.jpg
ra http://www.mediafire.com/conv/8a7a965ccfe03e66525db4b511e162ea7f60213b6de1126c9b87df17d0d192166g.jpg
ya http://www.mediafire.com/conv/b66a41592a313402d71b1e77bae441a2b40106c581fe7b67b773d40755d389d36g.jpg

download exilea2r1.bsp http://www.mediafire.com/file/lr4z4ool532zsq8/exilea2r1.bsp

I know this is a singleplayer mostly level design board but I've always been posting my multiplayer maps here anyway as I know some of you have dabbled in multiplayer maps before. It's a competitive 1on1/2on2 tourney level layout that's in alpha stages with just developer textures (an idea stolen from golden_boy) sorry eyecandy hunters.

I've gotten some feedback that the mega room is a bit boring and also that the ya-rocketlauncher to mega path connectivity needs to be changed. I'm a bit stumped at what to do for that, any ideas? I'm open to any ideas to make the connectivity more interesting/exciting. I'm also not afraid to completely rework rooms to make the map better as a whole since i have no work at all put into the textures or details. Cheers. 

Can't say I've ever drawn up a layout in orange textures before detailing the level properly. Maybe that's why I rarely finish my levels. The one thing that strikes me as not great is having the mega-health and rocket launcher in close proximity. One of the things I always hated about DM6 when I played league games was the rocket launcher / red armour room. Seemed like an obvious place to turtle (and it usually was).
Only advice I can part with is that you should never have 2 powerful items together unless it's in a high-risk area (lava jump red armour and megahealth area in DM2, hardly anyone turtles here because the quad is in a different place) 

My 2 cents: Get it on a server ASAP for live testing. Also try to make the different entrances/exits look clearly different (size, shape of doorways, special textures or lighting) so it's easy to "get" the map.

Provide 1 or 2 more cover/ambush possibilities? It's very open. 

Cool that you're testing it with bare textures etc, but I suggest you put a different colour on the ceiling/floor. The Valve system was orange for walls and gray for floors iirc, which makes geometry stand out very well.

Also agree on not placing powerful items next to each other. 

I was intrigued by the orange textures that valve used... I tried to emulate them a little better. I've painted myself into a corner with my level so I'm going to flesh out the layout in orange first (in addition to my grid paper drawings).

http://25.media.tumblr.com/9867c768459a284b2f6f3ceba2e72982/tumblr_mikryv2oEs1rrpymyo1_250.png

http://25.media.tumblr.com/74903748e7dc77eecc7eac9d0032bc17/tumblr_mikryv2oEs1rrpymyo2_250.png

In case those links don't work, direct link to my tumblr post -
http://fifthelephant.tumblr.com/post/43645609379/orange-texture-maps-for-quake 

http://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/whiteroom.html 

 

It is possible to stuck beneath the staircase near the YA 

I'm having a lot of trouble getting vertices to line up properly in the BSP procedure. In the editor it's fine but in-game it's screwed up... any ideas??

Before
http://s14.postimage.org/gwnamj4u9/Image1.jpg

After
http://s11.postimage.org/72k9jf3rn/Quake0000.jpg 

I'm having a lot of trouble getting vertices to line up properly in the BSP procedure. In the editor it's fine but in-game it's screwed up... any ideas??

Before
http://s14.postimage.org/gwnamj4u9/Image1.jpg

After
http://s11.postimage.org/72k9jf3rn/Quake0000.jpg 

Have you tried just deleting that brush and remaking it? 

I have, but I think it may be the vertices that are the problem or the way I split the faces possibly. 

To answer your question, yes I have tried deleting and remaking the brushes. 

so it always compiles wrong even when making it from scratch? what if you change the shape, is it still incorrect? 

Yeah I changed the vertices a bit and got a compile that worked. I still don't understand why the others didn't work, I thought splitting the face of the cube into triangles would have avoided any weird geometry problems.
I really wanted to get a lot more done today but instead I've spent the last few hours dealing with crashes and bsp errors. And I thought UED was stressful! 

it's hard to tell from that image exactly what is being done but i tried recreating it and when i move one of the verts out of line so it appears the same as your x/z & x/y views, it looks different to how yours does in the y/z view (i don't get clean 'X' cuts) which makes me think you cut the brush up differently

i have a 'vertex block' prefab saved which i made manually using six 3-sided spike brushes. not sure if that's how you did it? i can normally bend it any way i want though; it churns out compiler warnings if it's on too small a scale but generally works ok in-game 

The face at the back has been cut opposite to the face at the front (which when you see an X shape in the 2d view). Basically I split the faces of a cube to get a mesh to manipulate, I thought this would save me lots of time rather than making a bunch of triangle brushes. 

Using your idea RJ I have found making a bunch of triangular/pyramid brushes seems to work without BSP faults. Though there is a huge amount more work involved than my split-face method. Choosing between more work and more "error solving" is horrible, probably going to go with more work and not go crazy with the outdoor part like I wanted to. 

@FifthElephant, you are fighting the editor and trying to make it do something that it was not designed for. WC is old, designed long before people did tri-souping or terrain meshes. Valve got over these limitations by having displacement functions and lots of models.

You can easily do terrain or triangle meshes but with other editors. I have been work with GTK editors for years and have written plenty of tutorials. Have a look, maybe you should try a different editor? There are also plenty of tutorials for switch over to something different.

Terrain Tutorials
GTK Tutorial for Q1 

I have tried to wrap my brain around GTK Radient but I suppose I went for WC because of the Q-Adapter, and convenience is a big plus. I'll have to take another look. 

Using your idea RJ I have found making a bunch of triangular/pyramid brushes seems to work without BSP faults. Though there is a huge amount more work involved than my split-face method. Choosing between more work and more "error solving" is horrible, probably going to go with more work and not go crazy with the outdoor part like I wanted to.

you only need to do it the once. save it as a prefab and insert it at any time using the block tool; the brushes will be grouped automatically 

Gave up on trisouping for the same problems. I suspect its a problem with the compiler as well, getting muddled data from WC.

I was even getting problems with the 3-face pyramid cube method Rj mentions so started doing terrain in a different way.

It is much more work as well. 

http://postimage.org/gallery/2epxkb52/f346782f/ 

Mouldy Old Knight

I like the idea of a dual wielding knight with curved swords. The Quake Palette has lots of green/yellow and I wondered what it would look like stained on armour to show age. 

I prefer that flat sword to the runic one.

Two swords suggests (to me) that instead of having a ranged attack he'd be able to deflect player attacks - the non-hitscan ones at least...

Maybe give him a fiend style leap as well? He looks more agile than a carapace armoured DK.

Bad hair day? :)