Harmony Lost

[Crow]

Harmony Lost
Hey, this is what I've been working on the past couple of weeks. Tis my new series. The first release is planned to have four maps: Underkeep, Tainted Grove, Spider Caves, and Ruins of the Entombed.
You can read the series backround story here .
In this post you'll be able to see how each one is progressing. Pretty cool eh?
Progress Bars:
[Green]- Planning:
Usually when I first decide I have a good map idea, I draw it out on paper. On the back I write up any ideas or notes I have for that map, and draw little pictures when needed. Mostly I just plan the basic structure first, add ideas as they come to me. Any detail and sounds I just do, they don't require planning.
[Red]- Structure:
This is the actual map progress minus detail and music/sound.
[Blue]- Detail:
This is the little stuff I do at the end, or sometimes in the middle when I don't want to forget about it and I don't want to bother writing it down, because little details take very little time to do. This is stuff like barrels, furniture, npc's, music/sounds, foliage, and other random stuff I think might look cool. Also, the background story of the map, which can sometimes be real quick, and can sometimes take a bloody long time because I can't think of anything good.
[Gold]- Overall:
Yea, pretty obvious. This is how the map in it's entirety is progressing.


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Underkeep:
Story: Done
Progress:

Screenies: Pic1
Pic2
Pic3
Pic4
Pic5
Pic6
Pic7
Pic8
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Spider Caves:
Story: Coming later.
Progress:

Screenies: Coming much later.
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Tainted Grove:
Story: Coming soon-ish!
Progress:

Screenies: Coming much later.
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Ruins of the Entombed:
Story: Coming much later.
Progress:

Screenies:
Pic1
Pic2
Pic3
Pic4
Pic5
Pic6

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I'll try and update as often as I can. Atm I have started a little but on the Ruins and have planed the outline of the Grove. I'll probably start on the structure of the Grove soon.
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[Crow]

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Update:

Just as I suspected. No response without screenies. *sigh*
Well then I guess there is only one thing I can do.

*Underkeep Screenshots added
*Fixes all my images (You can see em all now right?)

 

[Gaz]

Sexy, though the barrels look like huge dice, and the chairs are pretty chunky

Love the lighting tho, and that small house is just so cute!

 

[jack hawkins]

I think you have done a nice job crow. I like the way you make it look very much like an MS map

 

[RedLetterDay]

oh nice lanterns, but the wall textures are just... blah.
mapping is very gewd

 

[Zorg045]

Woa, looks great!!!

Lights are good(the glows on there are nice), since the roof and global architect, but your chairs may be...remake

 

[Crow]

Lol. the chairs in the tavern. Forgot bout them, hehe they make me giggle.
Um, i think at the time i was going for stools or something, but a block of wood looked dumb, so i put a back on it, which looked better but... then i got distracted and went on to something else.
Anyways, i'll fix those when i have the patience, sometime in the not so near future. Gaz i think i fixed the box look (of the cavern), at least so its not so blatantly obvious. Thats about as far as im gonna go with that though, because i got so frusturated trying to fix it last time. sorry.
Lets see here...
oh, the red-ish purple wall textures in that one room? heh yea i just wanted something that matched the outside color of the over hangs. That's an easy fix.
The barrels... yea... they'll do, even though they do look rather strange. I spent a bloody long time alligning the textures on em so they looked half decent in that respect.

EDIT: Chairs fixed, wall fixed.

 

[Crow]

Um... yea.
YOU'RE ALL BETA TESTERS W00T HERE:

CLICKY AND DOWNLOADY

Whoops... Forgot you need a certain wad file... and probably some other stuff...
You can get the stuff you'll need {-HERE-}
You'll have to download all that other stuff like those old maps and such.
If you've downloaded that already then you should be fine. Otherwise download those. They are fun anyways and you should try them

 

[Crow]

Well then... no response to the release of the first map. How sad. Oh well. Anyways... my lovely image hosting site has stopped working, so i switched.
_____________________________________________________________
---------------------------------U-p-d-a-t-e---------------------------------------
Ruins screenshots added. yay. Say something for once.

 

[Blaze]

what do each of your "progress bars" signify?

oh and nice maps!

 

[Crow]

a response!

Progress bars are explained in the first post.

 

[Thothie]

I've been waiting for you to fix the 38mb wad file issue.

I don't have crow2.wad, but you need to start compiling with the -nowadtextures switch, so we, well, don't need wads.
_________________
"I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position." - Mark Twain
Saint Thoth

 

[Blaze]

oops im sorry i did not notice that cuz i was excited to see the maps that or i was just high of air

 

[Crow]

Me and J-M have tried to get the nowadtextures thing to work, but never could.

 

[Kuroneko]

nowadtextures is silly unless you use no default textures.

 

[Crow]

Yea =\

I really don't have alot of custom textures in this map.

 

[Thothie]

nowadtextures is silly unless you use no default textures.

Despite your supposed lack of custom textures, your map requires a 38MB wad AND additional custom wads on top of just to run. Which is far, far (far) sillier than using nowadtextures. Although maybe Lord K missed that point.

In any case, the map is un-distributable as custom content via server that way, so unless the issue is resolved, the map will never see the light of day.

Get the MAP file or the RMF, combined with all the non-MS/Valve wads it uses, up on the public site at thothie.com and I'll see if I can fix it, otherwise, I fear the project is doomed.
_________________
"I'm not into politics, I'm into survival." – Schwarzenegger, The Running Man
Saint Thoth

 

[Crow]

Alrighty

EDIT: uploaded crow2.wad and rain.wad

Let me know if you need anything else

 

[Saint_Thoth]

Alright, I'll look into it... I have a feeling I know what the issue is, and it might be a slight pain to fix - I'll try to do the painful part if that's the case.

BTW - This IS Thothie/Saint Thoth... Just seems my account has gone dead for some reason... Inactive, or some such. I don't *think* I was deleted though... Been awhile since I've done anything to piss off the devs. (I know, I know, I'll try harder)
_________________
"Flying is easy, Just throw yourself at the ground and miss!"
Thothie

 

[Thothie]

My... Dear... God... Another 30MB wad file

So ya got 70MB of wad (larger than the entire MS install, btw) and ya got 'hardly any' custom textures here, eh?

hehe... Downloading... Have something for ya by Saturday eve.

EDIT: Nvm, you didn't include the map source (RMF/MAP), so I canna do nottin... Although...

If there is a way to extract a list of textures used from a map I might be able to simply ripent the map, make a new wad file with ONLY the textures the map uses, and redirect the map's Wad worldspawn list to the new wad. (Thus eliminating the 70MBs of wads). In that case I wouldn't need the source, but I know of no such utility off hand.

If I had the source, and I have to do what I did the last time I fixed this issue, I'd have to gather the textures it might use in one wad file and recompile it with -nowadtextures as you've overstepped the number or size of wad files you can use with the feature or there is otherwise an unexpected texture type in one of them.

Looking at the map itself: although I'm a tad frustrated that this is yet another "shopping villa" map, I must say its the most beautiful one I've ever seen. It is very FPS unfriendly here and there though - still far better than your older maps. I'll have to see the source to figure out why, but at first glance I see a lot of superfluous stuff and such that could be merged without altering the aesthetics.
_________________
"Time and space are modes by which we think, and not conditions in which we live." -Albert Einstein
Saint Thoth

 

[Xeropace]

Testing Underkeep now, will Edit this post with how it goes.


Err where is crow2.wad >_> i can't find it anywhere.

Edit: Found it with my 1337 web page surfing skills...well not really it was pretty obvious.

 

[Crow]

Lolz. these new maps should not need crow.wad just crow2.wad, so its not worse than the old ones, just not better

*uploading source*

btw, did you find the secret puzzle?

EDIT: ahem... cant connect to your server atm, so ill have to check it when i get back from work. l8er

 

[Xeropace]

I was looking hard for a puzzle, because I knew you would have one in there somewhere I didn't find it though...

Very nice looking map, seems to run fine of my computer, downloading the .wad is no biggy to me. But it seems to be to some of you...I like the little healers hut and the entrance to the bar. One question..Why is it in a big cave and no skybox...to be honest it looks ugly.

 

[Crow]

Read the story. It took a whole like 10 mins XD


*underkeep.rmf uploaded*

 

[Lanethan]

And you're not on the team because...?