Hi! Here are a few pics of my map called ns_attila its a hydroelectric power plant. i have a lot to do with the lights, these are just the first pics, ive made. I used veil/eclipse/hera textures, to make it lighter than other maps, and i thought this way people would find it familiar, like this "lightning" effect:(these pics JUST represent the brushwork, i'm going to finish the lightning when i'm ready with all of the rooms)

those blue beams or wtf are scrolling too:



Marine start:

The new shots:(i'm sorry for the brightness, but ensl is more important atm then the lgihting, and it'd be difficult to set everything back)

There is a waterfall out there, but i have to set the alpha of the window and the waterfall too

There is a weldable computer on the right, and if you weld it out, the waterlevel decreases. So you can get into the vent(it already works)




There should be a resnode in the center of the room, maybe i put it into the floor by a few units... i'll fix it:)

i ve just copied one of my forum posts, so the beginning of the topic could seem familiar. I'm going to write something new, but its late in Hungary.... Good Night

simply awesome i really like the layouts of the rooms, not one cube room there - do you have a minimap overview ?

map is good, but it is too bright i would make it a little bit darker some places !

It looks really good. I have a couple observations but IANAM(I am not a mapper). I just like to lerk the mapping forums to see the new maps so feel free to take my observations with a large grain of salt.

In the last pic of the first post the pipes look a little out of place, like they're coming out of and going to nowhere. Maybe you could add some "fasteners" around the base like you have in the 5th picture. Also you might need a different texture on those large pipes since it looks a bit stretched.

I know you said the lighting hasn't been done but I see a potential problem for one room when you replace those white lights you have now. In the third shot in your second post I see yellow, red, and blue/green light sources all near each other.(red warning light, yellow overhead, blue console). Maybe it'll look good when it's all together with the right colors but that area seems a bit muddled.

I like the big "craters" in the ceiling that look like they're missing pipes.

I like the water on the map.

locallyunscene:

You re right about the pipes and the colours.

I think the pipes are okay,(i've seen them from other perspectives too) but a couple of "fasteners" wont make it worse. It had come into my mind too, but i was too lazy to do it, cuz these pipes arent paralell to X or Y (cuz of the layout of the room). It was hard to choose the pipetexture, cuz there is no high resolution pipe textures in ns :S

The colours: you are absolutely right. Maybe the best solution is to change the red lighttextures to greenish to fit better into the ambience.

oh, and those "craters" are just fancy windows on the ceiling:D But i was too lazy(again...) to put light spots below them.(im really proud of them, cuz it was hard to make them by clipping and vertex-manipulation with the lowest number of brushes. And they look great:D)

schkorpio:

I'm going to post a minimap too, but the problem is the same.... lazyness....

Has there been any progress on the map since you posted this ?

I am willing to give this map a try on my public server, it looks really good.

Keep up the work

As you wish frG:) It have given me a lot of strenght to continue my work. i was afraid of that ns2 till be relased before i finish it, but i can see that, its far-far away. I guess i'm going to finish it during the summer holyday.

I know, that you cant see throught the ladder, i've fixed it, but i was lazy to compile another bsp just for two screenshot. Here they are:

Could you tell me, why my rts fall down to the ground from a grate?(its a func_wall, solid, blue-transparency) clip brush doesnt help under the grate... and it sux hard. I cant post new screenshots til i solve this problem(i've completed the second hive, and a cool elevator, and a big room with fency pipes and grates). Ah, and another thing, models are totally dark in some areas on my map, could it be caused by "fast" hlvis?

well, if it is 1 unit inside the brush, down she goes.

put the rts a couple units above the grate, it will drop down onto the surface. make sure a func illusionary isn't interfering.

as for lighting, im having the same problem

Rt's/structures sinking trough floors:
As Archaic already said put if a few grid units above any floor brush you want one. Sinking of Rt's is usually because your func_resource origin is inside the floor brush, Ns will then sink the structure to have it fall onto a floor below your trouble floor brush. If there is no brush underneath as in edge of map, your structure will drop into the void (outside of map).

--> Clip brushes will always sink structures

Unlit models:
Since models are lit from the floor light patches it can happen that a model is completely black.

One cause of this is that you have put the origin of the model above water or a null texture brush. what you could do is have a spotlight above the model and shine it down onto the ground so the floor is lit (Rt's will look nice this way anyways)

So in general, always keep an eye on the floor directly beneath a model to see how bright it could look ingame (or what color it will have when colored lights are used)


Looks good, but it's not my kind of lighting. I like the shadow vs light kind of lighting more (personal preferance of course, but I still wanted to mention it )

thanx for the info about clipping, kouji_san.

As well as i had said before these screenshots are taken with my ensl config, there are almost absolutely no shadows, to be able to play for hours without my eyes starts melting. And fo course its easier to see the skulks or rines.

About the lighting: I've checked other forums, and i've found the problem, in my spotlights' properties, the value of "pitch raw yoll" and in "pitch werent the same, so there were 2 different value for pitch, and that caused the problem. now it works. So be careful with lgiht_spot too.

I like what i see so far.... hope you will finish it soon

Well... i have to tell that it's a sad day for this topic:( I was working on decreasing the amount of clipnodes and after 1 WHOLE DAY of hard work i could get just below the limit. So i suck.. it sux... everything suck...

I have to make huge changes to decrease more efficiently but the mood and the whole map'd change. so it's almost easier to make a new map...

Oh and i dont even have a readyroom( i actually had one, but cuz of bugs, i removed it and saved in a file, for later troubleshooting, maybe on a rainy, boring day)... and 1/4 of the map. So this is a Mission impossible...

Anyway i dont give up it totally, i ve fallen in love with pipeworks, water, generators and fancy support walls, so maybe if i make a co_ map, then i dont ahve to give up the details. It's obvious that a co_ map is aprox. third the size of an ns_ so i can use the max amount of clipnodes in much smaller space.

If i make a co_ map:

-It will be built from zero. Of cousre i will use my experience which i ve gained during the creation of ns_attila.
-The style, architecture and texture usage will be the same
-i will use more custom textures. Generally self made infected textures(using the infection texture from ns media pack), and hologram signs(they are cool, and help not to get lost without minimap)
-the name will be co_attila for sure.

The one thing that is absolutely sure, is the Project: ns_attila failed...

Aww you should have kept working New NS maps are always welcome (and thing one is well done, not just another siege map :/ ) Maybe get some help? I'm sure you can find ppl on the forums to help .

Sorry to hear that you canceled it :/

Just out of curiosity, have you tried my suggestion with the maxnodesize command and how much did it reduce the clipnodes?

Yes i've tried it.
It was set to 1024 as usual
First i've tried with 4096:

It reduced the number of nodes in hull 0,2(in hull1 with approx 1500 nodes) but in the critical part(HULL 3) it did almost nothing...

Then i tried 512(i know... but ive given a chance:D). The result was horrible +1000s to every hull.

Last i tried 2048: the effect was the almost same as with 4096, but a few hundreds less in Hull 3...

So it works well, but not in an indoor ns_ map:S

Sorry I haven't been around these forums for awhile, but I think I can help you fix your problem.


First off, the last thing you want to do is cancel the project. Thats just silly.


FIRST THING TO TRY

Now. Get the batch compiler, or hopefully you already have it. Make sure your version has HLFix. Look for the Epsilon value... it should be under the BSP options (been awhile since I've done this though). It should also be a default value of 1, I believe.

The Epsilon value is how 'deep' the compiler will check for errors. '1' is BS. Set it to 0.000000000000000001, or something similarly ridiculous. HLFix will now spew out a gazillion coordinates; you now know where your problematic brushwork lies. Even if you don't see anything upon close inspection, try just re-aligning every vertex to the grid (in all three axes, so in two separate windows), run HLFix again, and see if that problematic brush coordinates disappear. If they do, good. If not, it might be this strange bug I found sometimes where it would be talking about the next brush 'in order', like #3233 when it says #3232.

But basically, each of those problematic brushes takes up something like 10X the clipnodes it should. Fix them and you'll save a LOT.



Second thing to try

Learn up on clipnodes. Its late and I only scanned over this thread, but methinks a lot of people are a bit off on their understanding of clipnodes. Clipnodes are flat, invisible surfaces that block the players movement. If you want to use clipbrushes to lower clipnodes, you have to fill in holes.

If you have an empty room, i.e. 6 flat walls, you should have '6 clip nodes'. Its not actually 6, its some crazy number, but its related to 6. There is a clipnode for every flat wall.

If you took that room and put a floating box in it, you've doubled the clips, since that box has 6 player-touchable sides as well. But that is fine.

If you took the floor of that room and dug a square hole downwards (like a square pool that you can walk around), you've now added a ton of clips. You've probably even subdivided the other ones, I'm not 100% sure. But if you use a playerclip to fill in that hole so that the floor is now flat in terms of how the player walks across it, you've saved a TON of clips.

The pool concept is a bit off, since a player would expect to fall into a pool. Recessed computer panels in the wall are much more common in NS. Clip em off so they're flat.

If you turn something into a func_illusionary, you remove its clips, which is good. If you replace it with the same shaped brushwork but its a clip now, you've done nothing.



Its all about filling in either inaccessible gaps, or choosing to make some parts near unnoticeably flatter for the sake of clipnodes, or even to smooth out player movement along that area.



The Third and Last Thing You Can Really Do

Cut geometry. I checked through at least the beginning of the atilla thread, and you've posted all these screenshots, then said you were 'too lazy' to post an overview. That's bull. Post a layout, and suddenly, we all actually know what your map is all about. I seriously doubt you really truly hit the clipmax. Check ns_machina or even my own ns_nexus. Both of those are above 98% clips, but thats still below 100%. And they're both HUGE and very detailed.

If somehow you *actually are* legitimately over the clipmax, then you have gone ballistic with the layout, and there are dozens of people here, including me, who would gladly photoshop some suggested fixes to your overview. We've all been there, and we've all changed our maps drastically, often a few times over. But that's always an infinitely better outcome than cancelling your project.

Good luck.

-Stix

Thanks for all the help Stix, but ns_attila is over, i've already started the co version, in which i use all the experiences that i gained from the forums and from thecreation of ns_attila.
I use brushwork much wiser then, and i've creater a whole, accurate "blueprint" on a gridded paper. Every 0,5cm^2 square is equal to a 128x128 square in hammer units(maybe inches?).

I know it was a huge mistake to make just a sketch for ns_attila...

But the point is that i will post my blueprint of co_attila (in practice its a page of my math exer.book), when im done with the rough design and everything is okay. It's just about the distances in practice. I have to try it, if the hallways arent too long, or the hive is too far away etc.

I think at the end of august i will be able to post screenshots too. I have great ideas about the architecture^^.

Dude, in no way do you need to sketch it out perfectly beforehand. Forget about exact units and everything; if you're going to do that, just do it directly in Hammer rather than on paper. You can easily lay out just the floors like that, quite quickly, and then be able to run them to get runtimes and an idea of the layout.

Sketches are meant to figure out the high-level layout, and are meant to plan and streamline the build process. Take a look at some of the sketches I made for nexus, here. Those are for specific room, and you can see the level of detail, but you can also see that a lot was changed once it was actually built. But those sketches made me know what I wanted to build; it kept the vision consistent.

I also posted the sketch of the vent system for Nexus, right beside the end result. Again, you can see that a lot of it changed (especially after I tweaked the layout a few times), but the idea and flow remained consistent.



Sure you might be into a CO map now, but NS maps are always more fun, and carry a lot more weight. Just post a top-down textured image from the editor to show us your overview, and get back on the NS version

p.s. if you're going to do semi-useful sketches, not only forget about the specific size ratio but also lose all set ratios altogether. At 128 units = 0.5cm, you'll have a pretty tiny overview map. Consider doing one like that, but then have a bunch for specific rooms or sets of rooms, like in the links I posted.

These look wicked
Don't give up, NO WAY;
NS needs a new map.. one that will divert from blackmesa.
Hydro electrixc?
The pipes are cool, but a plant.. for what?
Think like "Mitsubishi". +colt
A little thing that handles big

Well, i've got a lot new ideas about mapping, and i could start it from the beginning if i'd like to continue my ns_ map, but i post the overview of ns_attila with thumbnails:
Red is the most preblematic part of the map(which makes tons of clipnodes), Orange colored areas are problematic too but not so much as red. Green circles are resnodes


1)2)3)
4)5)6)
7)8)9)

10)11)12)
13)14)

Thanks for the overview.

Especially because, from that, I can guarantee you that you're not over clipnodes. Your built sections of map are about the size of a Combat map. If the hive layouts are as I believe them to be, with Marine Start in the bottom middle, you'd probably want to expand the entire map by about 20%, at least. The left siege is too close to MS, I believe, and the runtime between hives looks to be pretty low. It could use more 'middle ground' to the map, even it the current layout was just expanded. I'd suggest about 20-30% vertical expansion, and 15-20% horizontal.

You can definitely save this project. I gotta ask... are you sure you don't have any leaks? You might be making the compiler run the clipnodes for the outer hull of the map as well.

Ensure no leaks, and follow the Epsilon process I mentioned. After that, I'd guesstimate that you'd be around 60-75% clips. If you don't believe me, go try out my Nexus map. The layout is about 4X the size of yours (not from a top-down point of view, but in terms of playable space), with just as much or even more detail. Of course, I used Clips like mad, but not in any way that affects gameplay.

Seriously dude, you're on your way to a decent map. There's a lot of work ahead, but never give up or start compromising.

Well, the only thing is that i'm absolutely sure about(except the MAC_CLIP_NODE error:D) that there is no leak. When i had leak before, i got the same error too, but after filling the leak max_clip_node error was solved. So leak cant be a problem.

About the size and the details. I've figured out something, about the texture usage. Theese eclipse/hera/veil textures are hood for the gameplay, cuz they are bright, and the contrast doesnt hurt your eyes BUT it's harder to detail. There are much more greyish, blackish textures whichi could use but the combination of these two kind are almost impossible(well, i couldnt figure it out before this post.). And i can spare a lot of clipnodes on the textures(like ns_shiva for example). So i have to decide how to continue the textures and style part.

I've started the co_ version too, and i've done before some nice brushwork so i wont let it lose, maybe i can use them in the upgraded ns_attila. But it's sure, i'm not giving up, so i remove the "cancelled" part of the first post.

About the size: you are right. It's a relatively small map. co_umbra is almost as big as ns attila:D so i have to solve that too.

You said it's not neccesary to use my math exer.book for sketches, but it worked well with my co_ map. i'm going to open a topic for that too. So i check my map, which parts could be saved, and which should be modified or deleted. And after that i post what i have figured out.

Anyway thanks for the help and giving back the hope:D

To be quite honest here it's going on 12am and I really can't be bothered to read through everyone else's posts but,

To me the brushwork looks great, reminds me very much of ns_hera in a way.

The only problem i have is that it seems to be over bright in alot of areas, would look great if you could tone them down a little, make them a little darker.

Other than the little nitpick about the lighting, it looks great.

I think the reason you're going over the clipnodes is because your pipes are far too complex and the bent pipe in this image looks mangled and full of invalid brushes.



There are several problems with this map that is preventing it from being compiled and from being visually pleasing. First, the lighting is way too bright, like to the point of making my eyes bleed. It needs to be toned way down and needs contrast between light and dark areas. Second, the texturing on many areas of the map looks really bad. Some things are overly stretched while others (like computer things) are not fit to the face. And like I mentioned above, your pipes are too complex. In one of those images, it looks like you're using a 32 sided cylinder for a pipe which is a big no-no.

You can save this map if you put some effort into it, but it would probably be better to rebuild it from scratch.