After playing through doom3 i got to appreciate how amazing NS would be on that platform (despite how dissappointed i was by the game). Ive made a few NSish maps now (below pic), im curious to know if many of the HL mappers are trying to develop skills for the more advanced engines as well.

Well, I'm waiting for HL2, since it will use hammer I'm too lazy to learn a new editor

I can't speak for the rest of the ns mappers but I'm personally looking forward to source a lot more. And like Mendasp I don't want to learn a new editor. Us mappers are lazy sometimes

holy... fudgemonkey

Doesn't have anything to do with the bump/normal maps. It's in the color texture and [mostly] the speculars

edit: and I mean no offense, but that map could be used for just about anything scifi. For true NSliness it needs infestation!

I disagree, I think you can still achieve much better lighting results using precomputed lighting now. The only thing that you can't do on source that you could do on the D3 engine are the shadows and I don't think they are all that major.

I also really like the idea of the material system in Source and the prospects of using Source's physics system. I'm sure I'm biased but I think Source is a much better engine all around and much more flexable.

Precompiled lighting still looks and feels more natural than real-time. We just need the eye-candy from source to get the maps to the "next" level.

Oh my. NS with that level of graphics would simply pawn. I would kick out many of the low spec users, but to play ns with that level of graphics im sure would sway some people to upgrade

The only problem I see with the doom3 engine is that the shadows dont look realistic, sure they are rendered in real-time, but the fact remains that they are way to black. And in places where there is a bright spot lighting up a shadow all it does is make the shadow transparant in stead of removing the shadow like it should.

The Half-life2 engine has the same problem with the moveable objects their shadow btw. Or at least from what I've seen in cs:s when using a flashlight.

Overall I personally think the half-life2 engine looks nicer even if it has the softer kind of shadows.

i've been a WC guy for a long time as well.. since HL was released, though i didn't really map back then. But still.. hammer is my baby.
Yet still! I've had the pleasure of learning how to use Gtk-Radiant 1.4.0, and i'm telling you, that's a nice powerful program. It takes a while to learn how to use it proficiently, as any editor does, but it is well worth it.
i'm lazy, but Radiant is something you should be un-lazy for

Anyway, i'm in the HL2 source boat like everyone else. Source wins. ^_^

I agree on that screenie. Everything looks too fake. I personally think the lighting and shadows in the HL engine make things look more real than the D3 engine. Sure, its better quality textures, but if you dont use them right, theres really no point in having them.

I, as well, cant wait for HL2. THe possibilities of the engine will make NS2 godly beyond anything we can imagine. And I just hope that the development stages of NS2 dont take too long after HL2 is released. I want NS2 now

where can I download radiant?

And can it be used to make Hl / NS maps?

you think 1.5.0 sucks too eh? hmmm.. i'd like to know why. ^_^ i also disslike 1.5.0, but i've only tried to use it a few times.. maybe a total of an hour of use. i already miss my mass-select... i love mass select.

1.5.0 took out the functionality that I loved. It made it so you have to do too many things to manipulate geomitry (like VHE, which I hate...) It also has crap D3 support.

I do like some of the new tools in it though, but the are not cool enough to give up the user friendlyness of 1.4.0

I hate DOOMEdit

NS is all about contrast in lighting, as you can see in that pic, there's... what? two different light colors?

Wait until HL2 is out (and we mappers can work with it) and don't judge it just with CS: Source... after all, the community has been able to do impressive things with this engine, we'll see what happens with the 'next' one

There is this small problem call proformance, DOOM 3's multiplayer proformance is really really bad. Source is easier to port to, and simply makes more sense since transfering maps is about a million times easier.

I can hardly imagine the way how NS maps (especially new ones) are light used in Doom 3. NS maps are about orange light mixed with red (Eclipse), or blue mixed with white lights spots (every mapper has its own combination) and this makes NS cool, not ultra shadows and white flickering light everywhere. And think about fact, that everybody will turn of dynamic shadows, because they are useless in multiplayer.

did i miss something? ID said DOMM3 was mod friendly?

/me drools for Hammer Source

The trouble is, without knowing what engine NS2 is going to run on, and whether there will be a HL2 port, you just don't know where you stand. I mean, it's always possible that NS2 will run on the Doom 3 engine, no-one knows for sure, and then if you wanted to map for NS, you'd need to learn new skills.

[edit]As regards CS:Source, i agree totally, it's a waste of the source engine, and if that's all CS is gonna bring to the table, then it won't be long before it loses it's status as the biggest online game.[/edit]

Its not very hard to port mapping skills, i managed to produce that room in the doom3 editor after about 8 hours of tutorials and test maps. But im a unique case probably because ive mapped on around half a dozen platforms now, going as far back as duke nukem 3d and doom2. So ive probably got more experience with learning new engines than most. I would imagine most of you guys have only mapped for hammer/wc and possibly one other engine.

You should give the doom3 editor a shot if youve bought the game already and feel ripped off. Its by far the most mapper friendly editor ive seen. You can preview maps precisely, all the changes occur in real-time in the 3d view. You can dynamically pre-render the lighting, sounds, animations, everything right in the editor, it means you compile far less frequently. AND!!!! it compiles faster than anything ive seen. That room i showed you compiles in around half a second. From inside the editor, you can compile and load the map in around 4 seconds from start to finish. Compared to the HL equivalent which is like 3-4 minutes of loading screens and compiling progress percentages.

Also playing with the dynamic lights and the bump-mapping is surprisingly fun, i spent awhile just moving lights around my map and watchingly with glee how all the surfaces reacted to the light, ive never seen anything like it.

HL2 is probably still a better platform for NS2 (if it exists?) because of all the mod tools, the multiplayer options and the more broad design ability. But graphically the doom3 engine was made perfectly for NS2. The biggest problem with the doom3 engine is its difficulty in rendering large open areas (with brushes especially.) All those areas need to be modelled. But since NS was designed for claustrophobic small spaces this wouldnt present a problem. Overall HL2 still wins even though it loses outright to graphics, and this is from the guy who needs to clean his pants every time he renders the lights in his map.

yeah, I think the doom3 engine is actually more suited to NS than is the HL2 engine. NS won't use the full potential of Source because there are no drastically open areas, vehicles aren't used, etc. Doom3 is able to put a lot more detail in small areas because it's designed to render small areas.

I played with DoomEdit for five seconds then I was like... OK, screw it and haven't messed with it since. I hope NS2 is for HL2 and not some other engine, it's taken me years to become fluent in VHE lol.

~ DarkATi

Personally my first NS2 map will be a big room with nothing else than 6 walls. Woot woot!

hl loses on graphics? hmm not sure about that since if I compare the stresstest map with anything I've seen in the entire singleplayer game from doom3 it looks better and also performs very well.

But the actual true potential of these two engines will be shown once the mod comunity really gets in gear on development. And since that hasnt happened yet I'm not sure. I do hope that the unrealistic looking shadows in doom3 will be fixed though

I actually dont mind learning a new engine, its always interesting to go where no mappers have gone before *weak startrek wannabe quote, I know*

Haha, that actually is pretty good.

d3 editor is freakin easy. Dont be lazy and learn the editor! I think ns2 is suitable for d3 engine then hl2.. IMO

although I am partially guilty of it myself, one thing I hate is when people are always "lol hl2 >>>>>> d3 its so obvious duh" when HL2 hasn't even COME OUT yet.

you're basing this on shakycam videos from E3 where the bluriness of the camera makes the image on the screen look different... unless you played the leaked HL2, in which case you probably arent morally qualified to offer any opinion anyway.

in the end, the two engines are probably identical or interchangable with each other when it comes to rendering what NS will demand. NS doesn't look anything like its original game's (HL) engine, so why should it look identical to either Doom3 or HL2, which are both much more customizable than HL? You could make doom3 look like HL2, and you could make HL2 look like doom3, just with different textures and models. There are some fine details that exist there but when it comes down to it, there will be no noticeable difference.

hoho juarez.
(I didnt really have anything compelling to say about the leaked alpha, so I stuck that in. still though, don't you only get to see a single town or something? and the E3 videos I saw didn't show the interior architectural complexity that doom3 has.)

Want to know something? I think NS2 the way you guys want it to be will never happen. By that i mean a free and downloadable mod with amazing new features and gubbins on a seperate engine will not happen and if it does it'll not be for a LONG time.

We can't even get regular updates on HL1 let alone remaking all content for a seperate engine, think of how long that would take. The only way i think we willl ever see a free NS mod on a seperate engine is if the HL > HL2 port is very easy and even then it'd just be regular NS but on a different engine, i doubt we'd see inclusion of vehicles or new lifeform etc etc.

NS2 will happen as a commerical product in a few years time when we've all moved on and forgotten about it.

We're not discussing that, just the engine that it's best for NS.

Anyways, you can't make D3 look like HL2, because real-time lighting doesn't look as good (and natural) as the precompiled one, it's a fact, I don't need HL2 to prove it.