ok, hi all.

this is my new map, or rather what ive done of it so far,

the cedus water treatment facility. Basicly water is pumped in from sewers, dams, etc. stripped down to the basic elements (2 parts hydrogen to 1 part oxygon) and the pollution filtered out leaving clean water which is then pumped back out of the facility.

the facility became infested when several unconscious aliens were pulled in with a shipment of polluted water. Thought to be deceased they were pulled from the water tanks only to regenerate before they could be disposed of and attacked the facilities personel.





This is my 1st map and im still learning to do alot of stuff so lets please keep the critisicm constructive or the gorge gets it,

and im trying to get some screenshots for you but im having a bit of trouble, i cant convert them to jpg or they go rlly dark, even as bmp's theyr still a bit darker than what they are in game. so theyr all 2mb and there lies the problem. i cant get the bmp's up,

heres the .bsp file so far if you just wanna have a poke around for yourselves. cedus.rar

but heres the jpg's anyway as crappy as they look, again,a fair bit darker than they actualy are so pls keep that i mind before screaming 'to dark!!'

and sorry about the tops of them, kinda messed up when maken em

same room, different position

room to the right of the hive, thers a break in one of the pipes to the right which u cant see that im going to add some steam/smoke kinda thing to when i get it to work (remember, new to mapping )

same room, but at the bottom of the ramp this time

corridor to the left of the hive, the light under the broken support is flickering but its a ss so you cant tell, and ignore the block at the end, thats just so there aint a huge map leak , work in progress...

same room different spot

Mentar
Nice map to be your first.

What came up my mind was that you should replace the infested metal-texture (which you use as wall texture) with something else. And in my opinion, maps look better if they keep to a certain theme in for example lightning. But if this is your first map, then it's better to just learn the engine before thinking about the looks of the map.

Some screens look too dark.

Make the solids with the "{"-textures 'rendermode: solid' and 'render amount: 255' in order to get the blue fields disappear.

Keep up your good work, since it's definately on the right track if this is your first map!

id think it would be a bit dull if you used the same lighting colors throughout the map?

i havnt varied that much.. theres only red light, orange light and a very small amount of green light in the hive.

Alot of new mappers coming to the community, and of which all are original and good. Although you seem to be one of the 'better' because I think you have grasped how to design for NS. Skills are lacking yes, but with time that will get better, grasping the concept is whats important and you have done it.

Add things such as pipes and variation, carve in to walls to make patters, add spotlights, add trims and even use various textures to make an area look busy. Another neat little trick is using wires and other translucent ("{") textures to boost the asestetics.

Keep going

Some shots look promising, one thing i would say though, is to read up on texture lights.

I don't actually think he's using them, is what I ment. Look at the white lights in the hive shots and again in the last shots, the light comes from the middle, not the entire light.

what are they by default? lol, whatever that is is what they are there.

i prety much just know the basics of lighting.

and hed be right, those white lights are just light entities. the green ones in the hive are just 2 side by side so it looks more like its coming from a rectangle ficture

Do you use Batch Compiler to compile, or just vhe??

yeah i use batch compiler.

you know that long guide to setting up mapping thats floating around here somewhere? if uve read it everything thats in that is what ive got.

I've attatched a screenshot of my RAD parameters as an example.

To advance your lighting understanding I will explain what I've got and why

EXTRA
I have this on because it turns on "9 point sampling". Improving the visual quality, sharpness and tone of light to look alot better.

SPARSE
Allowing a low visibility matrix to be enabled. Takes longer to compile, but you will find you can include more light data in to your map. (I think that simple defination is correct).

SMOOTH
I have set this so that any vertexes that are under 80 degrees in a brush are "smoothed over". For example, it allows a pipe to look more circular.

DIRECT SCALE
I have this set to 1. Direct Scale is default at 2. It is just the amount of layers of light that RAD introduces. As BC says, 1 makes the more realistically lit environment.

FADE
This effects all lighting but is most noticable in texture lights. The higher the value, the shorter the distance the length of light will travel, thus making a shade of light look deeper or darker. The lower the value, the more lighter the value will be and the larger the distance the light will travel.

SCALE
This effects the map as a whole, and is added after DIRECT SCALE. Lower the value, darker the map will appear. Generally I have this the same as DIRECT SCALE because I believe it allows me to create much more atmosphere and accurately.

GAMMA
RAD has its own gamma setting aswell as the NS Entity. I believe 0.1 is brighter than 1.0. Or atleast it seems so whenever I compile. Generally I set this after I've done NS Gamma,DScale and Scale and lighting to try and get a better contrast in my lighting.

SKY
This is how much of the sky's light should be put on any given area. So it affects the strength of the light which will appear on a face, presuming you allow sky in your map. (Not 100% on this definition)

LIGHTS FILE
Link to a .rad or .txt containing the values for texture lights.

IIRC sparce doesn't need to be checked unless, you've excedded your max_patches, it doesn't matter if it is, all it means is that it will take slightly longer when it doesn't need to

tried it with those rad settings, not as dark now, but im experimenting with it a tad, trying to keep the map a bit shadowy.

also gotta figure out how to lower the wpolys in the doorway between the pipe room and the hive room, if you look through it you can get a good 800-1050 wpoly, everywhere else is good though, around 200-500

ok i like darker maps but thats just rediculous on those first screenies. on the other hand the architecture is good, but it looks like you are using light entities to make some of those textures emit light, and that really dont look very good. a little tweaking here and there and it will look better

[Edit]
if you need a lights.rad, i have one that i can put up when i get home
[/Edit]

lol, its much lighter now with the rad settings, and the lights.rad would be great

sigh, my stupidity strikes again,

cant get the ready room to work. go to join a team and it just leaves you in the ready room and totaly munts your walking physics. but if you press tab it says your on that team.

looked at a couple of tutorials to see what im missing and they all say the same thing,

info_gameplay
info_team_start
info_player start
team_hive
team_command
info_mapinfo

and 2 info_join_team

got all that and have em set up, but its stil not working.

i know this is an incredibly simple thing and im probably missing something stupid and small but... anyone? help? lol, whats missing from there

Do you have info_team_start entities set to team one and team two, and within range of a hive and CC location, respectively?

yep

Oh that happened to me with Flint. Make sure your map has a ns_ or co_ prefix heh

start a game, enable cheats, join a team

i knew it would be something stupid i did,

id kept my map named cedus not ns_cedus so it would be at the top of the list and i wouldnt have to keep scrolling down whenver i wanted to test it (starting with c and all..)

thankyou

redid them all with texture lights and added 2 more rooms,


the hive now:

the hallway now,

again, looks alot darker than it rlly is in game, so dont go screamen, to dark! to dark! the hive one to.

the new room at the end of the hall that connects to where i was standing in the pic above.

and a new short corridor thats behind the door in the orangy room with the pipes.


anyway, i hate srceenshots, they just never look the same, you can see it for yourself:

ns_cedus.rar

Texture allignment needs a bit of work, noticeably in 'thehallway' which also provokes my next question. Is there any way to make the infestation supports a bit less like infestation-brick-built brushwork, and a bit more like organic infestation? At the moment they kinda stick out a bit.

do you mean texture wise or theyr shape?

The shape or the texture. By which I mean:

Either change the texture so it fades back into tech/metal texture at the edges.

Or change the brushwork so that it looks a bit more organic and moulds its way back into the original architecture.

litle better?

Yep, better but now it's lost a bit too much infestation! Leave it for now though it looks fine for the moment.