Hey all looking in this thread!

I have started on a ns map with the temporary name of ns_toffe.
I have decided to show off the progress at this early stage cause i simply
need ideas on what to add/remove. I useally dont have any problem to come
with up cool and innovative stuff in my maps but not atm

Polies are at 700 atm. I have added an mp3 thats looping an wind sound of somekind to get a better feeling to it.

Pictures:








What i know:

• Some minor texture alignments
• A little too dark
• Lack of details
• More light ?
• The sky has to change

If anyone has any ideas about what to add/remove/fix please tell me!
I also need a name for the ms...

its a nice concept for an ms, but it is way too open. also the floor is dull looking.

generally you could spicen up the architecture, for instance those railings dont really fit it.

lighting also needs some work. its too dark.

experiment with different textures

the shoots are WAY to dark

and the ground its bit square, try vertexing it upp a bit to make it more intresting

Wow, it looks just like doom 3!

Yeah, way too dark. Can't even imagine how to suggest improvements, because I can't tell what's going on in those shots at all. If you don't know what you want to do with the lighting yet, just throw some plain old dull light entities in there so it's at least visible.

Wow it's an open roof. That's different, but you have to think of the aliens as well. Give them something to use in terms of wall climbing. Maybe big suspension grating(not too big because you want space to drop thing in commander mode) or gurders

Lighting is a bit dark but that always happens at first go. I suggest having some nice accent lighting around the walls and some painting the floor so you give the player an idea of their surrounding without really giving the room a uniformed bland lighting. I see you have some lights up by the walls, just make them brighter

whatever texture is all over the marine start floor needs to be changed. it doesn't fit in.

I took some new pictures with the light_enviroment at 8 instead of 4 so it should be alot easier to see now.

EDIT:
raqualevangel, thats a snow texture from ayumi that fits with the rock textures...

I made the area to a regular one and added more brightness to the wall lights.

can we see?

Interesting. The ground could use some vertex manipulation to make it look a bit more terrain-like, instead of just flat. And be wary of the fact that outdoors areas in NS maps rarely work. With all the flying and wall climbing going on, running into a skybox a few feet above your head seems counter-intuitive, and makes the limitations of the engine painfully obvious. Not that it can't work sometimes, there is ns_hera's landing pad after all. But that's a very large area, and carefully designed to give you the feeling of being outside. If your skybox is only at the level of the tops of those buildings, it will be an annoyance for players. Of course, if you move it up any more, then you have to put in brushes for the roofs of everything, and deal with a map where players will be running around on top of buildings. Which THEN leads to trouble with level-over-level design, which is a very big no-no for ns maps. Good luck!

Yeah, the biggest problem that I see is that snow never just lands completely flat like that and it makes it look very odd. Have some drifts, particularily up against other objects, like the crate in the fourth shot. Maybe some patches of snow on top of the crates or inside the open one, and a drift of snow going out onto the platform where the resource tower is.

Also, the architecture of the walls seems a bit too flat what with there being no ceiling, the walls become the highlight of the room and they just aren't really interesting enough, in my opinion.

I think the no ceiling thing might just be a good trade off though, as long as there are still a decent amount of objects for the skulks to hide behind. With a second hive up, you could leap into the air for a devastating aerial attack.

Imagine a few marines guarding marine start sees a group of skulks come through the door, some of them leap into the air, the rest bunny hop around on the snow, behind crates and up the walls. They wouldn't stand a chance!




Marines: "Oh god! They're -everywhere-!"

mm and particle snow please.

hehe, make the buildings 3d'ish, then raise the skybox about 10 game feet up, and add a "sky" wall connecting the buildings and the skybox top

I think you could put a cage shell over the area something like this, with glass in between.
.........___
...___ .....\
.//.....\\....|
||.......||

Try to ignore the full stops, for some reason I had to put them in instead of spaces

That way you still have the overall feeling of being in the open, but with the more-conventional smaller fighting arena.

Added news of your map on NS Pexgames