[WiP] Dessert themed temple

[Regorty]

Ok, I caved in to my need for an artistically outlet to express myself. Since mapping seems to be the only thing I may actually be able to do, and apparently a lot of people said I have 'potential', I decided to stick with it.
I am now working on something random, originally it was just gonna be a temple of the undead in some arid mountain range, but I have since changed the theme to something better! It is still going to be a temple but it will be called "Temple of the Great and Powerful Thothie" (TotGaPT). Now you may ask why I decided to do this? Well really I wanna do whatever I feel like when I map and if I'm not doing what I want to do then I probably just won't bother or just procrastinate forever. I mainly made this thread for feedback on the map and where I should some more detail to spruce up the scenery and make it look less dead. So here are a few picture of what my map looks like.

Front Entrance: (Still working on the cliff)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yj4x7l7y60f9j ... Pic1.png?m

Courtyard: (that little thing coming out of the cliff will have water flowing out of it)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/k8ay71rkqxl1c ... Pic2.png?m

Spawn Point: (There will be monsters at the bottom and in the water)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0jz1kmcctqmwb ... T_Pic5.png

Main Hallway with skylight: (Is that enough light or would you like me to add some torches?)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5f7u96fk03x9z ... T_Pic6.jpg

Place of Worship (Front)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fgggzleji7zhs ... T_Pic7.jpg

Place of Worship (Back)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/oql05en9qh70m ... T_Pic8.jpg

Cave opening: (In the future you will die if you try to go that way)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zeodga8zx6br7 ... T_Pic9.jpg

Map Progress about 50%:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/l2sz427mqd02y ... ylight.bsp

Map Details: (Ok heres what I got so far as some textures to spice up the map a little)
One of the Side rooms: (May do similar to other side room)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/51gq68itbnhbk ... _Pic10.jpg
Final Treasure Room: (I love the blueness of it)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ti1fwyzcz6sxt ... _Pic11.jpg

Update: Please keep in mind I did use premade lights from J-M's prefab factory (meaning you may need the WAD: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=9453 so download that file in the link. I plan on doing an underground section as well, the Worship area will have a mini boss and deep under the temple will have the main boss. I just wanna give you guys something to play with and give better feedback with. So enjoy the BSP, I hope it works.

 

[ceriux]

seems like you're already getting better at brush work. great job! i see some weird texture placement on the rocks. try selecting the face of the brush next to the messed up ones using the texture application tool. then holding alt+right click on the messed up one. sometimes it fixes it. other than that i dont see any thing really bad about your map keep going!

edit: also once your done mapping it out and everything. its bad to have a big box for your skybox. which you may already know.

 

[Thothie]

I've seen the sauce for this, and yeah, he's smart enough not to do that... Actually, he's smart enough that I figure he must have *really* done his researched before he built any of this... Everything's on the grid, nothing's overlapping, everything's nulled proper and religious like... Very visually aesthetic, yet probably not more than ~600 wpoly at any angle... And he made quite a lot of map in a very short period of time (having seen the map in two stages). I've never seen a beginning mapper with this level of talent and know how - and the gods know, I've probably seen more first timer HL1 maps than just about anyone.

I doubt Rickler was this good when he started... And I *know* Crow wasn't.

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

I taught him all of the very basics before he got carried away. I told him about leaks, null textures, mapping on the grid, how vis works, wpoly, etc. before he entered the contest so I didn't have to go back and fix anything. Notice that most of the things he doesn't know how to do yet are the same things I still have trouble with: entity work.

It's pretty much the same case with Phosphorcracker.

 

[Regorty]

I taught him all of the very basics before he got carried away. I told him about leaks, null textures, mapping on the grid, how vis works, wpoly, etc. before he entered the contest so I didn't have to go back and fix anything. Notice that most of the things he doesn't know how to do yet are the same things I still have trouble with: entity work.

It's pretty much the same case with Phosphorcracker.

You are like my Mentor for Hammer. I can still remember those first few days when you were helping me to get hammer to work, what a pain, just soo many problems. Now you told me about the triangles and I am now able to make sexy looking terrain. I am using a larger sized triangles for the ravine, don't wanna make over do the clipnodes in there. Also changed the ravine texture to a cooler grey color since it is in darkness and not being dried out by the sun, lol.

 

[Thothie]

Well, I think in this case, the pupil has already surpassed his master. Although, Regorty seems to have the advantage of intuitively sticking to the rule of KISS, rather than demanding every chamber be made of fancy deformed and sculpted terrain - which is just begging for pain. Whether that's out of some innate common sense, or sensible cowardice, I'm not sure.

Phosphorcracker shows promise as well, though he's obviously not quite listening to his teacher as intently - but he's not making any mistakes that I didn't see the legendary Crow making on a regular basis in his early days... And he went through a *lot* of maps before he started learning from them.

Crow did do all his entity work himself though, and he had a lot harder time with it, as there was *zero* documentation at the time, not even an FGD, and the developers of that era really frowned on custom maps, and thus would not help him. For reference, he had to rely on J-M and myself, and we were both shooting in the dark, a great deal of the time, not having any real inside info ourselves.

I figured Regorty had to be learning from someone though - as the mapping tutorial was pretty much rendered illegible, until very recently - and even now, most of the links are still dead.

Notice that most of the things he doesn't know how to do yet are the same things I still have trouble with: entity work.

It's a rare day indeed when you find a human being who is adept at both conceptual and visual tasks. Tis one of the main reasons that game development takes several people working in tandem. Obviously, I lean much more towards the conceptual myself, and have just enough visual to get by.

...and everything I know about mapping, more or less, has come out of fixing other people's mistakes, sadly. No one lets Thothie map.

 

[zeus9860]

...and everything I know about mapping, more or less, has come out of fixing other people's mistakes, sadly. No one lets Thothie map.

Go map yo! There was a contest not long ago, why didn't you get in?

 

[jon50559]

Although, Regorty seems to have the advantage of intuitively sticking to the rule of KISS, rather than demanding every chamber be made of fancy deformed and sculpted terrain - which is just begging for pain.

Mwahahaha

 

[Regorty]

Regorty seems to have the advantage of intuitively sticking to the rule of KISS

What is the rule of KISS anyways?

 

[Red Cell]

Keep It Simple, Stupid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle

 

[linksword916]

How do you make terrain like that?Is it Vertex editing?

 

[ceriux]

link yes. you create pyramids and then form them using the vertex editing tool. it doesnt have to be pyramids but its the best way i could explain it. theres a tutorial somewhere here on the forums i think.

 

[Thothie]

theres a tutorial somewhere here on the forums i think.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=8253 - links are even live.

Go map yo! There was a contest not long ago, why didn't you get in?

As per usual, I've been KIND OF BUSY!

 

[zeus9860]

theres a tutorial somewhere here on the forums i think.

http://www.msremake.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=8253 - links are even live.

Go map yo! There was a contest not long ago, why didn't you get in?

As per usual, I've been KIND OF BUSY!

Making a map would make u even busier, cool uh? At least you would get a game, ah! :roll:

 

[CSS]

Hey man, great start. Some of the larger areas have textures that look skewed- have you tried doing a combination of mountain rocks? Using two similar textures would give it a more realistic look and save you from stretching them out.

 

[Regorty]

Hey man, great start. Some of the larger areas have textures that look skewed- have you tried doing a combination of mountain rocks? Using two similar textures would give it a more realistic look and save you from stretching them out.

A combination of mountain rocks, can I have an example of this so I can better understand what you mean?

 

[Thothie]

I think he's suggesting you make the rock to ground texture transition smoother - either by fancy brush work, or via editing up blended textures.

That's always a bit tricky - Half-Life does not lend itself well to blended texture transitions. It's simple enough to make a texture that is a fade between two, using layers and a 50% eraser tool, for example but arranging the faces so it looks natural is kind of a hit or miss thing, and often it'll look more natural in Hammer than in game.

 

[Regorty]

I think he's suggesting you make the rock to ground texture transition smoother - either by fancy brush work, or via editing up blended textures.

That's always a bit tricky - Half-Life does not lend itself well to blended texture transitions. It's simple enough to make a texture that is a fade between two, using layers and a 50% eraser tool, for example but arranging the faces so it looks natural is kind of a hit or miss thing, and often it'll look more natural in Hammer than in game.

So I would have to use a program to mix the 2 textures to make them look neater? Hmm I really was just gonna put an invisible wall where cliff meets ground, I don't want playing climbing on my rocks and making a mess of them, so it would be obvious where you could and could not go.

 

[Thothie]

That's probably the safer way to go about it - figuring which cliffs players can and can't slide up and exploit can be tricky, and rough on the clip nodes to fix to boot. Playing with split textures might be worth it for the learning experience, but beyond that, it's not very practical when applied that way... On flat ground paths, however (stone leading to dirt, etc.), it's generally more effective.

...Though even there, if they curve or some such, it tends to come out, meh:

^ Only reason this one comes out at all acceptable in-game, is because it's in the dark (and even then, it's pretty fugly).

 

[MS:C community]

See this picture for a visualization of some good blend textures.

The textures used are (from top to bottom row, left to right floating island, top texture --> blend texture --> bottom texture):

Ground01-DA
Rock03-DA
Rock02-DA

fp-snow
fp-snowrock2
fp-snowrock

snow2
snow_rockedge
snow_rock

BN2_grass2
BN2_gravel2b
BN2_gravel2

mz_degrass
mz_detrans
mz_desand

forgrass
for_grass_blend (horrible JPG compression makes it almost impossible to see what on earth is being blended here but the actual texture is nice)
K_dirt3

ms_grass03
beachsandgrass
beachsand

cloud_mossy
cloud_mossdirt
cloud_rock2

cloud_mossy
cloud_rockmoss
cloud_rock1

These are all in the exceptional allinone_fixed.wad (download link in this post). I'm sure there's more blend textures, but I haven't really looked.

If people want to add to the above list (in the format [material A] [A to B blend] [material B]) then please do!

P.S.: A dessert is something one would eat after a meal and a desert is a dry, hot and sandy environment

 

[Regorty]

P.S.: A dessert is something one would eat after a meal and a desert is a dry, hot and sandy environment

Thank you for noticing that I have terrible grammar and such.. Now I feel bad and can't even change it.

See this picture for a visualization of some good blend textures.

The textures used are (from top to bottom row, left to right floating island, top texture --> blend texture --> bottom texture):

Ground01-DA
Rock03-DA
Rock02-DA

fp-snow
fp-snowrock2
fp-snowrock

snow2
snow_rockedge
snow_rock

BN2_grass2
BN2_gravel2b
BN2_gravel2

mz_degrass
mz_detrans
mz_desand

forgrass
for_grass_blend (horrible JPG compression makes it almost impossible to see what on earth is being blended here but the actual texture is nice)
K_dirt3

ms_grass03
beachsandgrass
beachsand

cloud_mossy
cloud_mossdirt
cloud_rock2

cloud_mossy
cloud_rockmoss
cloud_rock1

These are all in the exceptional allinone_fixed.wad (download link in this post). I'm sure there's more blend textures, but I haven't really looked.

If people want to add to the above list (in the format [material A] [A to B blend] [material B]) then please do!

Now if only I can figure out how to blend the two textures I am using so it would work. I mostly want a blend to the two cliff/rock textures that are used outside and in the caves, since I am planning on having a cave come out of the mountain.

 

[Regorty]

I put up a BSP of my map so you can check it out. Some parts aren't done and a bit bland still. The cliff outside isn't complete yet.

 

[Srgnt Rehab]

I was happy when I read the title, but when I saw the pictures, no ice cream... no cakes... A piece of me died that moment. But suddenly I realized an amazing artistic talent coming from a new fresh mapper and that dead part of me "sprung'd" to life. You are way better than I was when I started (and most likely much better than I am even still, ESPECIALLY for ability to make things quickly).

Please, stick around a while and bring great things our way!

 

[zeus9860]

Please, stick around a while and bring great things our way!

You too bro!

 

[Regorty]

Who wants to do the textures for my map? People keep wanting me to add more textures and I am not visually aesthetic with my textures. So do I have any volunteers? Who ever re-texture my map can call it their own! Of course I still gotta finish alot of the brushwork, lighting, doors, triggers.