Here it is... ns_postpile beta 1.

It was first displayed here (more info/screenys)

Before you download note there will be a beta 2 in a few days to fix some known issues of the map. Future changes will be:

- The map is fairly big and detailed, therefore unless you have a fairly good box i wouldn't advise playing it since some places have just over 1100 wpolys and i havent really optimized the map yet.

- Change the hanger so the roof opens for the comander to drop structures inside the
building. This will initially be frozen open and controlled by a broken switch which
will require welding.

- Add flood lights to a weld point inside Marine start.

- The possibility of adding tunnels along either side of the map for a wuick way for
aliens & jp'ers to bypass the the center of the map and make sugical strikes at the
enemy.

- There are a few spepping stone like blocks in the main/center room that may be removed
for better r_speeds.

Here is the link and some info to download it:
ns_postpile beta 1

Here are some pictures of the main room/hiveroom/marine start:




Constructive feedback welcome.

To start off.. This map looks more like a HLDM map than NS map.. Outside areas in NS maps are very uncommon due to game play reasons. To be honest I would start this map over.. Instead with a different perspective, What i mean by this is that start with a new sheet of paper.. Sketch out some sort of layout of the map.. maybe a couple cool hallways which you should also sketch out on paper.

This should help you with planning and building the map alot. Untill I see this map, with reasonable layout (inside) then I can comment on it.

Hope this helps.

[Not a Flame]
1. The rocks look very unnatural
2. Four Resource Towers in the same place are not good. Not good at all. It leads to serious game-play issues.
3. The buildings are too blocky. Try adopting a distinct architectural style, and applying it all over.
4. The texture alignment on the trim of the doors in the third picture needs to be fixed, or a different texture applied.
[/Not a Flame]

Please note it is not neccesarrly suppose to be a more classic map, more like canyon, 2forts, superseige, etc., only much more balanced. There were some great hallways that looked more like the classic NS however I opted to remove them to reduce lag.

...and yes I did read the map makers guidelines

If ur confident then i suggest to continue to push forward on the map... But go through and revise sections, you feel could get better... Just remember... there is always room for improvment. And this goes for every map. I would to see its progress so i can further help you.

funmap?

For a start, you just hit on my pet peeve. People that don't use the correct directory structure in their zips. It unzips everything to an ns_postpileb1 directory first, meaning i've got to bother to manually put everything where it should be. Please correct this, it is a massive irritation.

The .res file should be in the maps directory along with the .bsp, i believe, as should the ns_postpileb1.txt.

Ok, that's the problems before i load the map, let's take a look at the map itself now.....


First up, this door inside the alien hive room clips into the brush above disgustingly when opened, and even when closed it's still clipping into the brush about 16 units or so. This is the only instance of this i've found.


Here we can see not only the excessively poor rock formations, but also 5000 e_polys. You'll also notice the "50 fps" and "41.4 fps" readings from r_speeds and net_graph, this is, well, unacceptable. This is a 1.5ghz radeon 9600 machine i'm using, i shouldn't be getting such low fps from a map as devoid of detail as this one.


The water in the central room clips into the embankment at the side constantly, this may not be quite so distracting if it wasn't moving, but it is moving.


Is that supposed to be a button?


The minimap is entirely FUBAR, please can you check this kind of thing before releasing. Yes, i know this is a beta, but getting your minimap correct is literally no work whatsoever.


This door, leading to the central area has a gap on the side, it may only be about 8 units, but it's still very noticeable.


The map in general is pretty good on r_speeds but in this area i managed to get 1300 w_polys, this does cause noticeable lag.


The textures you've used on the connecting poles in the central area are stretched to a state of abnoxious ugliness. Can you please take the time to texture, scale and align properly when mapping.



Well, all in all, this map needs a hell of a lot of work. It lacks detail over the entire map, the rooms are way too big, the res is unbalanced, the layout is entirely linear, the texturing is sub-par, the rocks are extremely unnatural, the readyroom is extremely poor and the lighting is forgettable at best. I appreciate that this is a beta and is not the finished product, but you have an excessive amount of work to do to make the map look less amateurish and nice to look at. Personally, i wouldn't have released such an early, buggy and unfinished release, i would have at least gone through to check for such schoolboy errors before even thinking of letting other people see it.

wow esuna.

anything good about the map?

Wow esuna, harsh critique...even if it is for a map that looks and feels like a dozen rusty nails being jabbed into your head.

Overall the map needs a lot more attention than was put into it, but at least the basics are there (well, lighting at least, even though its blindingly bad (pun intended)). You need to learn how to map for things like HLDM or CS first before you can tackle things that require attention to detail. The NS mapping community has high standards.

You do know how to use the texture tool? Because it really just looks like you used that one textures apply button to put textures on everything (Hence the stretched textures on everything...)

it's a good start, take the criticism constructively not personally and you'll go far. Although esuna's review may seem harsh, he did an excellent thing; he provided detailed and specific advice, something that mapper's wishing to improve always need, no matter what their caliber.
good luck and upgrade to carapce if the words get rough to take!

Wow.. uber feedback

esuna... thank you.. you probably helped the most.

... a few notes:

minimap: ran it about 4 times.. the detail in the center kept confusing the engine... so it got blurred in the center everytime. I was aware of this before the release.

texture stretch: during my r_speeds/wpoly testing I did it to get better frame rates... as well as liffing several solid objects off the ground. Yes I am quite capable of using/making/applying textures thanks for asking

elevator buttons: havent deceided on the final texture, ended up using a lite texture in the mean time...

water texture leaks & lag: Conceptually I wanted to have only three large rooms in the begining; since I have tryed several variations, including many different usages of hint brushes & func_wall's I since then have decided to make a much smaller center room, with quite a bit of modifications.

-----
playtesting (about 50 games on the map with my buddies and myself) revealed that the quad node didn't really create an unbalance of power since it was extreemly hard to hold, however the single large door on either side of the main room made it hard late game for small aliens and jp'ers to survive; therefore obvious changes are being made as previously noted.

The good part is I have quite a few changes chalked up to make for the first real overhaul. (beta 1 was more like a rough conceptual draft =).

The bad news is since i work quite a bit, and the changes are pretty extensive... it looks like it might be a few weeks before i am done.

PS: Thankyou to everyone else too that replyed.