sock: each sketch is better than the last. :) i like the way the stairs are pushed back to make that u shape.

quakis: how the heck did you build a 3d shape like that in duke??
speaking of 3d, can you make that terrace a little more varied in heights? maybe have some stairs or something? 

Really good sketch Sock.

I see what Quakis is saying about the missing tiles but I think it's fixable. The texture underneath just needs to have indentations from where the tile used to be and there maybe needs to be some scattered dirt and tile bits around the general area. 

@RickyT23, yeah one of my favorite Quake levels, the knight trap with the secret Quad.

@quakis, @Text_Fish, yeah I was experimenting with cutting the floor but it did not turn out too well. Need to think of another way to break the floor space. Plan B, carpets!

@necros, Thanks, the textures are certainly getting easier to lock together into useful shapes. 

how the heck did you build a 3d shape like that in duke??

Through a fairly new addition added to Eduke32; TROR. Think along the lines of 3D Floors in GZDoom or such. 

ohh ok, that clears it up. :)
i really liked that last map you made, so i'm looking forward to your new one! 

Based on the previous feedback I have re-created the lighting (it was bad), a detail pass (dirt,dust and cobwebs, but not crazy industrial mine complex) and fixed a couple of texture issues on prefabs. I have included before and after images if you are curious on what has changed.

Before:
http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/potguard3.jpg
http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/potguard3b.jpg

After:
http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/potguard4.jpg
http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/potguard4b.jpg

As always if you see something wrong or bothering you, say so, silence is the worst kind of feedback. ;) 

i luv u 

light looks a bit bright maybe? it's hard to tell light levels in screenshots.
but yeah, that's fantastic, dude. :) 

wow nice, big atmosphere boost already. Indoors feels nice a warm while outdoor lighting coming through the windows adds a bit of cool/coldness. I like. 

@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.