Anyone know any? VERC is not updated that often, although the tuts seem ok if I ever need them. How about review sites? Are there any half decent HL2/CSS/HL2DM custom maps aside from the ones we already know about (overflow, the contest winners, metastasis etc.) I am mainly interested in map visuals, since I the HL2 gameplay seems to have gotten a little bit stale :( 

Seems SP is down, I need to bitchslap godaddy, should be able to get the site back up sometime this week. Sorry if this causes you guys any problems :( 

Seems it's just the domain that isn't pointing towards the servers anymore (as I could access my site for a while after it happened cause my dns wasn't updated yet). Domaine wasn't paid for maybe? I'm pretty sure you can still access the sites with the right ip. 

Snarkpit. That's pretty much it. There are really no good custom CS:S maps.

http://ascendancy.us.to/dmoriginal/index.html is a pretty good site for quality HL2DM maps 

There are nice levels there ! Thanks for the link. 

I'll check out the link, cheers for that. 

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~fischmt/ascendancy/dmoriginal/ss/dm_carousel-1.jpg
Ugly how it's so angular at places.
I haven't played hl2, but what I've seen in video, some places like the railroad tracks were very angular / pointy / faceted / youknow. Is there really no easy way around this? q1 tech leftover? Lazy mappins? 

Missing out two obvious levels IMHO. 

This is what bugs me the most about Source, all the arches etc are usually choppy brushes unless a model is used(seldom), the engine doesn't have patches. 

which is the other one that is missing?

HL2 looks decent because it has good art, but the engine isn't really anything special. There are a few nice effects, like the water, and the lighting is nice, but most of the detail is contained in props. If you take out the props in Hammer (hide them) you can see a shell which is no more complex than a HL1 map - possibly less so.

I was looking at parts of Highway 17 earlier, and if you stop to look at the actual brush geometry, it's shit. There is so little detail used. Thankfully, this is masked fairly well by the textures, lighting and abundance of props.

I will try and make a HL2 dm map, but I don't know whether I will enjoy doing it because of the reliance on props for details. 

Unfortunately (?), you better get used to mapping like that, because that's definately the direction mapping has been taking in the past couple of years. Take a look at UT2004, most maps have like 50-100 brushes TOTAL with all the rest being meshes. 

soon, mappers will be nothing but boxmap makers! :o 

is it up yet? :o

:P

shit, no. uh ... let me write myself ten emails at home. I just went through a drive reformat so I'm still catching up :) 

soon, mappers will be nothing but boxmap makers! :o

Either that or they'll have to make all their stuff in Max in the first place ^_~ 

http://www.stupid.com/stat/NLST.html 

Necros, I don't appear to have lun3dm3tex.zip anymore. I could pile a bunch of stuff in a new zip for you but I dunno if I want to introduce two different files to the internet.

Headthump/Hrimfaxi/Hooever said they had it: could you send me a list of what files are in the zip? 

I had most of your stuff on my old machine, but it's gone the way of all things. Perhaps,
www.planethalflife.com/wadfather would have the textures? 

atm i'm using the textures right out of lun3dm3 to test out some stuff. i didn't know it would be such a problem or i wouldn't have asked until i was sure. i'll get in touch with (vorelord? i'm too lazy to search back o.o) later if it works out.
cheers, and thanks anyway :) 

That show was a certifiable example of how the "more is more" concept works. I might have had enough if it had lasted about 2 hours longer. 

I can split it in 2, and upload it to 2 different sites, both of which only allow me 10MB. I will Email you with the url's, once done. Wont be for another 2 hrs from the time of this post though. It will be everything from the original zip, unaltered. 

It's certainly a far cry from making stuff in max, that's for sure. Modelling in a proper 3d package is teh awesome - but I don't like having to make bits in a 3dpackage like max, then import as props into a stupid boxroom level.

The problem with making levels in a proper 3d package is texturing... it takes a huge amount of time when you have a hundred thousand polys or more that require individual texture alignment. You can do boxmapping etc. but a lot of detail comes through proper application of correctly fitting textures, rather than a generic tileable metal texture or something.

Then again... look at the texturing on some of HL2s props... You really don't notice shit texturing in game with good lighting masking it.

The tools at the previous company I worked for had a pretty awesome set of texturing tools though, so I did all the texturing in Max. Making the textures was the biggest pain in the arse though, since we level guys would get given 2-4 weeks to texture a level (make 30-40 high res textures AND apply them... yeah, right - and you expect it to look good?) and the character guys would get a week to make ONE texture for their fucking characters. How do the producers get these fucking figures?

Ugh, and I hate those games where the map editor is basically a terrain modeller that makes up and down wobbly hills, with no overhangs or anything, and then you just put props in. That's shit if you ask me. I really hope that is not the way things go. 

I did all the texturing in our in-house tools, and all the modelling in max. 

"I did all the texturing in our in-house tools, and all the modelling in wax." 

as a mapper, you were expected to make your own textures? :S is this a common practice among companies for mapping? 

Ah, fuckit, I'll just zip a bunch of stuff up for you. You want photoshop files too or just the tgas?