After getting advice from other people about using entitys and stuff, I've decided to create my own map, I'm just getting the hang of things about the textures, clipping tools, vertex shaping and stuff.

I've created a simple brainstorm of what the map will be in my final release.

Here is my brainstorm picture of the locations of the map and how i am going to create it.

Map Creation Progress : 4% Complete

to add on top of things, I've constructed the marines spawn point for you to try out

however the map isnt playable but only for viewing, as I understand I need to add textures and stuff befre i proceed to create the corridor access paths, the ready room will be the last thing for me to do as the ready room are easy to create.

post your feedback of what textures should i add and things.

you really should get in the habit of posting screenshots. It's the only way to get feedback in quantity on this forum.

Without looking at anything the only advice I have for you starting out is to not settle. Don't be happy with things being halfway towards what you want, take the extra ten minutes to four hours that it may require to do it right. Also I would suggest not trying to stretch into multiple areas. This gets kind of boring but I think it hones skills faster.

That said if you get bored what's the point? I guess try to balance it out.

You get the ignorant, the lazy, and the busy here. No time to download for me either, SCREENSHOTS PLEASE

why does everyone say more sreenies...

weelll i know

post atleast 1 for us to have a taste its the only way to get some atention

got screenies? here ya go

Pic 1 - Marines Spawn Loading Bay

Pic 2 - Marines Spawn Loading Bay

Pic 3 - Marines Spawn Loading Bay

Pic 4 - Marines Spawn Loading Bay

ns_warehouse project is 2% complete, I'm finalising what I'm going to add as a celing, then ill reshape the textures using the vertex clipping tool.

Post your feedback what you think so far.

Well judging from the picture of the MS, the layout of that doesn't look all that bad, those crates though. gotta go. if u want something for cover there then try adding some computer screens around an island there.

lol I just noticed in pic 3, the res node, u have an alien and a marine tower on the same node, lol. I look forward to watch this map develop.

I'll keep an update of my map, I'm about 60% complete with the 1st room, the Marines Spawn - Loading Bay.

Here I've updated the texture of the wall situated closer to the comm chair with 4 sets of computer mainframes along with 2 pictures of x-ray skeleton screens, scarrryyyy

Pic 1

Pic 2

Pic 3

Pic 4

try and change one of the screens the one that has the skeletons on it i think it would look better with 2 different screens not the same image

I think the skeleton screens seem a bit large.. Mabye make them a little smaller, and replace 1 so it looks different.

I would do that, one problem is that I'm sticking to the basic wad files, as I don't want to use any custom-based wads (that includes the maps bast, eclipse, hera etc.)

So I'll try to find images simular or a bit smaller in size to fit best.

Atm now I'm now getting the 1st exit path from the marines spawn. Currently I'm setting up the North Access Corridor, as I've already getting the texture layouts finalised and as well as the vertex shaping right.

ok now I can show you a bit of a preview that I'm working on the North Access Corridor and the Cargo Bay (possibly renamed to Cargo Foyer later on)

atm my progress so far has been slow, I'd say I'm only 4% complete, without the proper textures, I've only managed to get the vertex shape happening.

Names sound very... Ns_nothing-ish. Like the other guy said, oust the crates and pop in some kind of island computer mainframe or something of the sort, like vertical pipes surrounded by a railing.

Remove the light in the middle and try experimenting with light_spots, lights and textured lights. The lighting at the moment is, sorry to say, but its ugly

Lighting can make or break a map and this overbright light in the middle is just wrong. The architecture is nice though, and with some nice lighting it would look so much better.

Happy mapping and hope to see more screenshots (can't help it I like screenshots )

[edit]
And don't forget adding some nice shadows. This adds to the atmosphere of the map and NS mapping is all about atmosphere.

Before I do try to expeiment with the lighting, for me it's best to provide the textures for each room.

I'm deciding on the final outcome for each room and path for their texture layouts, the pipeline room looks cool though, stay tuned as I haven't yet decided what texture I'll use for the celing. The lights I can deal with that as soon as I'm satisfied with the texture layout.

Pic - North Access Corridor (Lower)

Pic - Marine Spawn Loading Bay with North Access Corridor, not finished yet.

Pic - Resource Node relocated along with the craft boxes. I know requests are there to be removed, that would mean it can degrade the quality of the marines spawn room as I didn't choose to label Loading Bay without some form of presentation.

Pic - Ahhh the Pipeline Room (Pipeline GH257 - possibility of a rename to Pipeline Access West/Central/East)

How you achieve these r_speeds?

Imho, the ceiling texture doesn't really fit to the Rest. And you should work on detailed Brushes.

From here my advice would be to do two things

A) work on your lighting. So far the lights that you have seem to be monocolored and difficult to produce shadows with. Kouji hit it right on the head here. You need to get your lights in order before you start adding any more rooms, as the more you add to a map the more difficult it is to modify the overall theme later.

B) Details. your rooms are bare. They look like sketches at the moment, and although there are good ideas lurking in there, you really need to go back over them and develop it more. Put details in. Things like door trims, support beams, wires, walkways, all that needs to be there. If you plan on really getting into that stuff later I still suggest you do a little bit of it now, just for practice and the off chance that you'll make something that will feature well in a yet-to-be-made part of the map. Also work on your hallways, get something besides two walls, floor, ceiling and some doorways.

My outright suggestion here is to stop adding rooms for the moment. You have given yourself a lot of canvas here already. Go back and add details, tweak the lighting, and keep looking for tutorials. Rooms can average ~500 wpoly (and peak at 800, although that shouldn't happen very often) If you have rooms that aren't even close to that, look for places to improve. Don't settle, keep trying to optimize what you've got so you can add enough to be happy. In that respect keep looking at tutorials, and turn gl_wireframe 1 on every once in a while to make sure your pipes aren't breaking up your wall brushes.

I'm really not trying to discourage you. It's hard to post your work for everyone to rip apart, especially when you're new to it and know that things could look better. You are doing well here.... better than my first attempts for sure. At least you didn't spend two and a half hours trying to figure out how to make a hole for someone to get from one boxy room to another boxy room. Just take your time on making this one, it's not a race after all. Keep at it and keep learning, then you'll do well with this.

Thanks for the advice, you are right there Reese, I've begun experimenting with the lighting issues, so far I've got the North Access Corridor Flickering with an organe colour, along with a revamped Marine Spawn. Now the images and the dorr that was once there have been replaced with 6 sets of computers.

Although it's not bright, I'm working on the marine spawn to look very attractive.

to top things off I don't know what you think about this revamped spawn. If you don't like it please make a staement about it. thanks.

Marines Spawn - Reworked

Closer up pic of comm chair

Updated map for you to try out, post your feedback on it.

Heres a much clearer picture, this time with the lighting effects

Note: the orange light in the North Access Corridor I'm providing a more Raster looking effect.

continued...

I sincerely believe this is the kind of lighting you guys are after, am i right?

I agree on setting up the texture lights, it's definitley the way to go.

Also, don't worry if you're using those lights to generate your flickering lights. You can assign your light to an entity and still set flicker lighting options on it.

As for general comments... the new screenshots look kind of dark, although I think that's the monitor i'm on atm. I'll edit later when I get home and can use a monitor that's properly adjusted.....and not covered in glare.

*Edit*
Ok, now that I can see the screenshots properly, the lighting does look a lot better. My suggestion is to focus on getting texture lights working and putting details into the map. www.snarkpit.com and collective.valve-erc.com are great places to look for tutorials on hl mapping. Have fun with it.

Well, its definetly better then what u started with. The room needs a little bit of detail, like some supports along the sides of the walls and mabye some pipes or something, and change the roof a little bit so its not so flat.

You can add detail to the roof by adding a thin square/ rectangle brush a few units from the ceiling. then if you place a light souce inbetween the ceinling and ceiling panel you can add alot of detail. Very little lag is created by this neat effect.

If you place a trim (like moulding on a wall) around the base of the room around the edge you can add a great deal of depth to a room.

Finnaly that big orange spotlight looked nice, you should consider bringing it back into a darker room. If you add texture lighting on the wall computer screen textures so the room is more evenly lit it would be cool.

That hallway looked sweet. You might want to make support beams tracing the walls and ceiling though to give skulks a bit of cover.

You are doing a great job, just be sure that the map has orignal design, and does not look like other exsisting maps. Keep that look it has consistent throughout the design.

Thanks for the feedback guys, I just want to let you know that the only wad files I'm using are halflife.wad from (valve folder) and ns.wad (nsp folder) and that's all.

Hopefully I can great a wonderful map to play without using custom textures as they take up a lot of space and can cause an incrfease of lag and w_poly count.

I'm certain I could create a wonderful map using only 2 wad files hopefully it could be released as part of the ns official map cycle.

Ok I've begun experimenting the rad lighting technique. A Few fellows have demostrated what you need to do to get the rad lights to work (recommendation is to use a program called Batch Compiler, not only it will create your maps and entities also allows you more control of the rad light technique and more)

Here's a Sample of mine.

Looking pretty sweet dood, keep up the good work. Mabye you could make a few 45 degree angle walls on the MS, to make it look a bit better (not so squarish)

i'm a bit concerned using the ns2 wad as you can see i would like my map to be backwards compatible with v2 and v1

if worst comes to worst then ill consider using the textures from bast, eclipse and hera.

not only that but it is possible to take the textures you used in ns2.wad and extract them for use in a custom wadfile for your map. That way if you have people who play 1.x/2.x you can give them this custom wadfile so they don't have to get ns2.wad to play your map.

Not only that, you can also include the textures you used directly into the .bsp with the -wadinclude <wadname>.wad command for the 1.0/2.0 map version if you insist on backwards compatibillity.

Alot of those lights looked too bright before you changed them, a yellowish light should not make a wall look white where it is the brightest. (Lowering the brightness of the light and increasesing the gamma ramp should look nicer)

RAD is used for both entity lights and texture lights, so there is nothing 'more RAD technique' about texture lights.

UPDATE: Ive now getting the hang of things with texture rendering and filtering I hope this new layout and design would appeal to everyone who would feel interested.

soem more pics