After countless failed map attempts, I'm gradually moving in the direction of something I'm happy with. The map's path scheme is very similar to avalanche but with a flat on-the-edge-of-town premise... making it's atmosphere sort of like a mix between sora and harvest.

My main goal is for the map to have character... whether it's through aesthetics, "hot spots", whatever. I'm a slow mapper so who knows what, if anything, will eventually happen.

http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/2923/dodavant0002pb6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/7017/dodavant0000pm5.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/5415/wipdodavant03ir2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img170.imageshack.us/img170/3736/wipdodavant02ll8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/1990/wipdodavant04do3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Obviously still in it's infantile stages, but I'm happy with its progress. :D

Shot #3 looks sexy !!

:)

I like that destroyed wall :cool:

heheh, what ultra said ;) wasn't sure about bringing sex into it, but it sure looks sweet :P

keep er lit mate

I must totally be on to something. The first person I showed it to outside of the boards brought sex into it as well. :D

Lookin pretty sweet so far, the only thing i don't really agree with is the amount of roof overhand u have . . .

I agree. That was the first compile after I made those buildings that are in the first image... I totally thought the same thing.

I have a tech concern in regards to that custom skybox and I might as well ask here rather than create a new thread. As you can see it's all midtones, without any pure black or any pure white. The wiki says there has to be a HDR and an LDR fallback skybox (those screens are LDR, by the way)... and the point of having a 32 bit skybox for HDR is so that information that would typically be lost in overexposed areas around the sun remain white even when the exposure level is low. That totally makes sense, but since I have no information loss due to over or underexposure in my sky I see no reason to have an HDR skybox, but without one, cubemaps are all crazy and it's no good. I just see no reason to have an extra 5-10mb attached to file size for a bunch of unnecessary textures. Any thoughts?

This map just screams a windy background sound, like a storm is about to occur.

Excellent atmosphere, I love the blue tone.

looks very nice!
especially the look you achieved in those last two pics, where the light from outside meets the light from inside the building :)

I love the atmosphere and the skybox overall. But if your still deciding about the hdr or the ldr i would go with hdr for the reason you stated about the cubed feel of the map.

i love these gloomy, stormy maps. its looking very very good.

Originally posted by zman_warmachine
I love the atmosphere and the skybox overall. But if your still deciding about the hdr or the ldr i would go with hdr for the reason you stated about the cubed feel of the map.

I think you misunderstood what I was saying.

Every map should be HDR and LDR compatible. To do this there must be two versions of the 2d skybox (according to the valve wiki) - one for each setting. The issue is that I don't see how my custom skybox follows the logic involved with most other skyboxes (with overexposed brights). Converting my skybox from LDR to HDR feels completely redundant and unnecessary since there would be no information gain.

And to clarify, this is a gloomy map, but not a stormy map. I want it to feel calm and tranquil. :D

wow that map looks orgasmic

I'm bumping my thread because I put a new picture up, but more importantly I am more actively looking for an answer to my past question that never got resolved...

Originally posted by nave
I have a tech concern in regards to that custom skybox and I might as well ask here rather than create a new thread. As you can see it's all midtones, without any pure black or any pure white. The wiki says there has to be a HDR and an LDR fallback skybox (those screens are LDR, by the way)... and the point of having a 32 bit skybox for HDR is so that information that would typically be lost in overexposed areas around the sun remain white even when the exposure level is low... The issue is that I don't see how my custom skybox follows the logic involved with most other skyboxes (with overexposed brights). Converting my skybox from LDR to HDR feels completely redundant and unnecessary since there would be no information gain.


Does anyone have any understanding or insight?

yes it's redundant, you're fine with what you got. you'll get bloom and exposure variances in your custom LDR sky without all the fuss of converting to HDR anyhow. granted they won't be quite as accurate, but a full-blown HDR sky tips the scales at 36 mb.

A 'LDR' sky is only 4 mb. And like you said, it'll have bloom and exposure adjustments in-game just fine, just not as refined as a 36 mb 32-bit version would.

Nave makes maps!?! And apparently pretty damn well! You can certainly count me in on the playtests :p

Goodluck with things.

Haha PONE. ;)

Mmmm... if it comes out to 36mb, definitely out of the question and I'd imagine should be out of the question for any of us. Thanks Jake.

i'm guessing it's the single most reason we haven't seen that beautiful HDR militia sky from CS in a dod custom yet ^_^

Map looks beautiful, Nave!

Btw... in the case that you do happen to make the map HDR-capable, I can help you with turning LDR skies to HDR ones.

(probably poor use of terminology there :P)

The map will still be HDR compatible and the sky will be too (to an extent I guess). Like Jake said, it just won't be as refined.

So about huge filesizes... I was thinking... of course everyone is all into packing bsps because it keeps things organized and simple. But, if us custom mappers maintained our own system of organizing shared custom content, would it be possible for us to abandon bsp packing and allow files that need to be download only they haven't been downloaded yet? For example if two maps used the militia skybox and they both referenced the materials/skybox folder and left it with the default file names, it wouldn't download it a second time would it?

Of course 36mb is huge even for a one time download, but if this idea could function (there definitely could be something that I'm not understanding) then use of custom content would be more enticing.

Definetly pack all stuff into the bsp. Follow the KISS rule. If I download a map and have to manually unpack a zip, I get annoyed and sometimes don't even bother.

:)

In my opinion, if you want a game as customizable as the HL2 engine is, then you know what, stop being a lazy ass and download the map. The crappy maps (not all, but most) are tiny downloads. Anyone who is making a quality map, the filesize is going to be bigger, but guess what, it is more custom. So pack all the stuff in the .bsp, cause for those who really want it (and play on good servers) will wait for the download.

Sorry, I'm just getting sick of people :tnp::tnp::tnp::tnp::tnp:ing about the game and how there haven't been updates, but everyone here is putting out some quality work, but everyone is too lazy to wait.

well if that's infantile... then ill poo myself in the final stage...

Thanks. But I honestly think that it's the sweet atmosphere that makes my halfass brush work look better than it really is. We'll see how the slop plays out. :eek:

By the way, since my lighting is more blue than the sunny-california-ish officials, their grass looked way too blue-grey and washed out. And since I just recently got back from a family trip through europe and saw how lush most the grass was, I photoshopped one together that I feel is a bit more suitable for europe. If anyone's interested I'll post it... it's sort of seen in the top picture.

oooooooooo.....im liking this map. i cant wait to play it.

Yeah, I like this!
And if it will have a similar layout as the Avalanche map it
will be popular, I think many would enjoy a new fresh look.
Great stuff.

Looks great, please continue. :eek:

Originally posted by JakeParlay
i'm guessing it's the single most reason we haven't seen that beautiful HDR militia sky from CS in a dod custom yet ^_^
Haha

map looks real nice, best destroyed walls ive ever seen, definite download :D

Today I downloaded that SkyPaint program they talk about on the valve wiki for making 2d skyboxes with photoshop and photos. It's an awesome program... so I made a one for fun, but I'm torn on which one to use... the cold, wet, blue one or this one:

http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/1460/dodavant0016dl9.jpg

I'll make it public if anyone else wants it.

did you paint that or terragen, etc + paint it ?

:eek: looks really nice man

it would be nice if we could make some nice hdr skys (a pack of a handful of types)....and see if steam could be used to push them to clients.....then maybe map downloads of customs could be smaller.......

I made the sky in terragen, but that ends up just being a skeleton. I used Skypaint (if none of you guys have used that, it's just a program that lets you edit it in photoshop more efficiently... it doesn't have any painting functions) to overlay a bunch of different photos onto it. It was hard to make the different photos be cohesive, but that's what photoshop is for.

Krust, I'm not entirely sure but I think that another turn off with that idea is that actually compiling HDR rad adds a bit to the filesize, regardless of the HDR skybox files.

I am not a mapper so my points are often retarded!! But so far it looks nice.

I like the broken wall...with the tiles on the ground around it. nice attention to detail.

Maps definitely sexy, and if you could post that grass texture, I wouldn't mind using it on my map as well, screens will be up soon.. its a completion of something I started years ago... and by completion I mean complete and total overhaul.

Projects:
Finished: Dod_slav Current: Dod_Babis
dod_slav (http://www.sunlitgames.net/index.php?module=ExDownloads&func=details&fid=272) and dod_slavb2 (http://www.sunlitgames.net/index.php?module=ExDownloads&func=details&fid=273) were very popular in 1.3. Is your completed version for Source? Id like to have a peek at it.

Here's the grass. I made the hue, saturation, and lightness what I see to be more realistic than "the" grass everyone uses. Not only does it match the sprite coloring better, but it has a similar intensity to a few dirts... so with blends you can make parts like half alpha and get a nice greenish brown that can make things look a lot more natural and varied without feeling blotchy. The dirt with the rocks in it works really well for paths and such.

http://nave.inertiatic.com/avantgrass.zip

Thank you kindly, as soon as I get hammer to start working right with this and some models I got last night I'll be good to go. I should have some previews up either tonight or tomorrow night.

and Rosie, thanks for a link to a download on slav and slavb2, I lost the .maps a few months back to a system crash and haven't been able to find them since. I should have a source version of slav out in the next few weeks as well.