You make every map look like a legend! 

http://members.home.nl/gimli/Zerstort.jpg 

in the Ukraine gives me the mapping fever, fifth_elephant.

http://members.home.nl/gimli/schwanz.jpg 

That's some intense detail you have there MadFox with the tiny little arch shapes under the trim! Maybe even a little *too much* detail!

I'd love to see where you go with this though :) 

The pix of the side of the castle in the inspiration thread is tremendous.
The front from the sea makes it an irratic sculpture, though.
Maybe to much detail, but that towers are hard to compare with hust jubes.

Always surprised when an impression sets me up mapping. 

Well, in case anyone was interested in knowing if Cryostasis (6/10) or Star Wars The Force Unleashed (7.5/10) are any good, I reviewed them...

http://www.etherealhell.com/etherealhell/index.php

They were alright. 

@Madfox, is that castle front gate from a photo reference? I like the style but the small towers feel too small for the overall structure. 

Images - 1 2 3 4 5 

Can you tell us what compiler and command line you're using for the lighting? 

Looks tasty for sure.. 

I like the look of it. I really like the muted palette choices, it's very familiar while still seeming also different. Can't wait to play it! 

That third screenshot is amazing. 

is a true wizard.

Need testers? 

love the texture combo in that one. 

The third screen of backsteingotik is my favorite!
The sight attracks to explore the scene in a recitent way. Fine way of tuning the light.

The photoreference is in the inspiration thread #2026. Towers are small indeed. 

@deqer, I use a special light compiler. Parameters - light2.exe -gate 1.0 -soft -softdist 8 -extra4 %1. I always use coloured lighting and try to create as much contrast as possible. I also make sure the main path through an area has the strongest lighting levels.

@onetruepurple, I asked necros/negke to help with testing, don't need anymore at the moment.

Screenshot 3 is my favourite for game play reasons, there are lots of choices and different ledges to jump around. 

Thanks.

By special compiler, I'm guessing it's your own custom-source/compiled Light.exe.

I noticed that bjp's Light.exe has those parameters you used. It's version is 1.43. I will try them.

Colored lighting is good, indeed. People would be surprised just how much an off-white (light yellow) light will do, to a map; as opposed to a plain white light.

I'm still going vanilla approach, so, colored lighting (in my map) might be the last thing I do; if I even do it at all; because I'm making strictly vanilla/1990s-like map. 

I can't wait for this one! :) 

Looks ace, I love how your attention to detail and quality allows for having all that fancy trim and brickwork looking good. 

http://i.minus.com/isaNUTl8mdnyo.jpg 

would bang. Good colour palette, nice lighting, like the sky. 

And angled shapes look better than the horizontal ones to me.

Do players bounce off those nets of webbing?

Random BS idea - particles drifing in the wind? 

Looks interesting, is it for a source engine game? 

5th: it's Q3 :)

Ijed: agreed, there's a bunch of stuff I'dd reconsider If I were to start over. Base geometry was very boxy, still is kinda. I just started with 3 or so textures and inferred everything from that. I'll try to see if I can push the verticalism some more. 

Players don't bounce off the nets but they do avoid getting falling damage. They're more for getting down than up. The pipe structures act like wind tunnels. I've set them up with negative gravity which isn't a 'hard' trigger like a jump pad. You go stand below them and once you jump up you accelerate upwards. You can also drop in from a height and slow down before hitting the floor or going back up. Downside is that only works for vertical axis movement, would be nice to be able to do it in any arbitrary direction. Feels more physically correct (less gamey) than using trigger_push. I'm going to add some particles inward and outward to indicate air flow. There's more pipe structures throughout the map. Prolly add some vents, propellers and stuff along with sound to make it come alive. Reinforcing the theme that the pipes are driven by some kind of pressure cooker in the bowels of the map.