What can I do to make my map more interesting

Looks pretty 'interesting' to me, the only thing I would suggest is to sort out the texture scale and alignment on your displacements pronto.

Koei said:

But what about scale? Bigger? Smaller?

Click to expand...

Don't mind, as long as it doesn't look repeated (which it doesn't) or stretched(which it really does)

Had a run on it. Could see why it is hard to align the rocktextures correctly, lots of angles. Although it looks a bit odd, in the heat of battle it would be no problem to me.

Place playerclips on top of the battlements. I got stuck between the roof/wall and the rock. Happened when I pretended to be a sniper and was walking backwards. Had to kill myself.

It is not too empty to me. There is enough going on, every way you look. Probably because of the two wooden sheds. Nice ones.
"Normal" maps may look less empty because there are walls to decorated. But you have rock... So maybe add 1 or 2 non-accessible "holes", pile up some goodies and place a fence in front of it. Or a barred corridor. Might break up the long rock-walls a bit.

Last remark, you might place a middle post into the concrete window (see first screenie in the gallery).

Some of the concrete stairs look a little large to me but overall I thought it looked nice. Some of the first few looked "similar" to some stock map sections so be careful on that. I've seen some maps that are cut and paste jobs and you can tell easily. Also, I love detail as much as the next guy but if your map is too busy, too cut up, not good game flow, all the detail in the world will not matter.

I had a quick fly through your map and can tell that I like your basic architecture and layout. The most obvious things that need improvement are texture alignment and lighting I would say. The best way to align the textures (especially ground and cliffs) is to select all brushes then hit the texture application so all faces become selected. Now you have this little area where it says "Align" with "World" and "Face" within the texture application tool. Make sure you select "World" which should give you nicely aligned (cliff) textures. Might be that you have to retexture all faces after you've aligned them to world. To do so just select one face and apply the texture to every other face with the right mouse button.

For the lighting: make sure to have an env_tonemap_controller in your map and give it the name "tonemap_global" (or anything else). then add an logic_auto to set the tonemap values. it should have the following outputs:

OnMapSpawn, tonemap_global, SetBloomScale, .3
OnMapSpawn, tonemap_global, SetAutoExposureMax, 1.1
OnMapSpawn, tonemap_global, SetAutoExposureMin, .7
...you can play around with those numbers a little. this will give you better looking HDR lights.

I noticed from the console that you have some props with errors. Just select "Not solid" or "Use bounding box" for their collision model in the properties:

SOLID_VPHYSICS static prop with no vphysics model!
(models/props_mining/rock006.mdl)
(models/props_farm/tools_shovel.mdl)
(models/props_farm/tools_fork.mdl)
(models/props_foliage/spikeplant01.mdl)
(models/props_mining/crane002.mdl)
(models/props_lights/lamp002.mdl)
(models/props_lights/lamp002.mdl)
(models/props_mining/crane002.mdl)
(models/props_farm/tools_shovel.mdl)
(models/props_mining/board001_reference.mdl)
(models/props_mining/board001_reference.mdl)

here are some screenshots with quick suggestions to add more detail and improve the looks and atmosphere of your level:

ZIP 1,06 MB