artpass_cakeman

cakeman

L1: Registered
Jul 18, 2010
14
46
Hey friends, hope you like brown. I've been dabbling in mapping for quite some time now, but I've never released anything. I always fizzled out in the planning stages. You know how it is. Anyways, I figured with this contest I could finally get something done since a lot of the design work was finished for me. Plus, being an official mapping contest and all, I figured I would need to at least try or I'd be killing myself later.

I picked a desert theme (original, I know) for the main reason that the high walls in the original map screamed canyon to me. I didn't know diddly about displacements when I went into this and I know they look pretty not great. The textures are off and I haven't smoothed them out. Also, I really shouldn't of stuck so closely to the original design. Oh well, next time I'll go nuts with it. I still have time to change quite a few things, too.

As you can tell from the screenshots, my buildings are mostly blank slates. I'm not quite sure what I want to do with them yet, but I'll figure something out. The main plan is to have a secret base hidden in a derelict mine system. I haven't had time to work on the inside around CP3 yet.

Any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated.


Edit: Archived original screenshots.

http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/189/artpasscakeman01.jpg
http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/107/artpasscakeman02.jpg
http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/7610/artpasscakeman03.jpg
http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/8065/artpasscakeman04.jpg
http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/2344/artpasscakeman05.jpg
http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/9392/artpasscakeman06.jpg
 
Last edited:

Pie Cake

L1: Registered
Jul 31, 2010
8
4
My only suggestions would be to try to spice up those wooden buildings and to try to tear down some of those huge rock walls and put some panorama behind them.
 

cakeman

L1: Registered
Jul 18, 2010
14
46
Howdy pardners. It's been about a half a month since my last post. The truth is, I don't really have much else to show yet. I've just been texturing and optimizing the best I can. Yesterday I started detailing individual rooms, so I'll give you a look at the first one.

http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/7025/artpasscakeman11.jpg
http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/4087/artpasscakeman12.jpg
http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/6672/artpasscakeman13.jpg
http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/8903/artpasscakeman14.jpg
http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/116/artpasscakeman15.jpg
http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/778/artpasscakeman16.jpg

Here's a little collapsed mine near BLU spawn. It was one of the first things I made, actually.

http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/5863/artpasscakeman17.jpg

I do have plans to remove some of the cliffs like Pie Cake suggested, but I'm going to get everything else mapped out first.
 

lucky

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
May 25, 2009
583
145
I like what you've done with the place, nice crate lift too.
Try using a ground texture with an alpha blend?

Also, I think you should try make B look more interesting by having a mining entrance from the building in to the rock face (fenced or barricaded off).
 

cakeman

L1: Registered
Jul 18, 2010
14
46
I try different cliff and ground textures every now and then but I don't think anything looks better than what I have now. But you're right, since the ground is supposed to be all sandy anyways with the cliffs blending into it, I could probably change that to a different sandy blend texture.

Anyways, more screens.

I was pretty apprehensive about this room when I first saw it. A bunch of staircases just garbed together in such a small area, you know? I think I did alright with it. If you look closely at the railings, you can see how I cheated with them.

http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/9686/artpasscakebase21.jpg
http://img697.imageshack.us/img697/5521/artpasscakebase22.jpg
http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/8127/artpasscakebase23.jpg

This room needs something done to it. I dunno what yet, it just doesn't look right. I was thinking about adding a closed-off side area like in the previous room, but that'd just be another leaf or two to render from the center room. I don't know what I was thinking with those pipes. I guess they were supposed to contain cables and whatnot for the computers.

http://img829.imageshack.us/img829/4074/artpasscakebase24.jpg
http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/6711/artpasscakebase25.jpg
 

cakeman

L1: Registered
Jul 18, 2010
14
46
Heyo, still plugging away. Here's some progress screenshots.

http://img812.imageshack.us/img812/3596/artpasscakeman31.jpg

This hall was weird. Tried a bunch of different stuff and this is what I came up with. A little enclosed hallway inside a cave hole thing. Kinda Black Mesaish, I think.
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/6501/artpasscakeman32.jpg
http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/4050/artpasscakeman33.jpg

If you look across to the respawn doors, you can see something weird going on with the area portal I have set up on the top door. Those things always give me trouble.
http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/4521/artpasscakeman34.jpg
http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/2573/artpasscakeman35.jpg

I got a missile set up in the hole under CP3. You'll have to ignore the fact that it'd totally burn everything inside the base if it launched. I need to learn how to make soundscapes so that I can have that computery beepy sound near the computers and stuff like that.
http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/3854/artpasscakeman36.jpg
http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/463/artpasscakeman37.jpg
http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/2098/artpasscakeman38.jpg

I have no idea why that door is open. It gets stuck like that sometimes. Infact, that whole group of entities right there are a bunch of jerks.
http://img535.imageshack.us/img535/7876/artpasscakeman39.jpg

There's some weird greenish glow on the rock walls here. Gotta figure out how to fix that. I think it's from a light bulb. I tried so many things to decorate the roofs of those buildings but nothing turned out right. Sadly, I think they just look better as is.
http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/97/artpasscakeman310.jpg

I've been playing with the wooding building textures. I'm not sure what sort of scheme I'm going to go with yet. The red reminds me of High Plains Drifter.
http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/4402/artpasscakeman311.jpg
http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/4720/artpasscakeman312.jpg
http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/3020/artpasscakeman313.jpg

My neato skybox panorama as Pie Cake suggested, beyond the second fence. The first I've ever made. I need to figure out how to get it to blend into the real sand better. I tried blocking the player from seeing the seam, but it looked way too cluttered. I got some skybox props out there that you can't see in the screenshot. It's hard to make them look right.
http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/2778/artpasscakeman314.jpg
 

tyler

aa
Sep 11, 2013
5,102
4,621
When you copy and paste notable geometry to make the 3D skybox (as I assume you are doing), take the edges of your map that need to blend after you've displaced them. Match up the 3D skybox bits, displace those, and then delete the reference geometry and shrink it. That should work.

I really like your base.

Your areaportal issue is probably a leak. Just load the pointfile, assuming you don't have other leaks. It'll show you areaportal ones too.
 

cakeman

L1: Registered
Jul 18, 2010
14
46
Actually, now that I look at it, the area portal thing is probably the prop's fade distance being too short. I don't know why it rendered what was behind the area portal, though. Kinda makes me wonder if the portal's actually working. I'll need to take a good look at that. My main problem with the area portals is they're just about impossible to get to line up with the model that's being used as the doors, so from certain angles I can see a line of unrenderedness, which is actually the area portal itself peeking out from the prop cover. I really need to fix that.

About the skybox, when I first gave it a shot, I tried to create the displacement in the 'real' map and then attempted to shrink it down to 1/16th for the skymap. I think that's what you told me to try. It worked fine, looked great. Then I loaded my map up in Hammer and it gave me an error and deleted my skybox displacements. I figured it was because the displacements were too small. Is there a way around that?

I don't think it really matters that much though because from the angle you see it from, it looks like there could of been a little slope. The main issue about it not matching up is the shadows from the cliffs and buildings.
 

cakeman

L1: Registered
Jul 18, 2010
14
46
Getting pretty close to the end now. It's been a long road. Even got a couple of hats in the process from all the testing. I'm pretty worn out on it, but I somehow managed to make it actually look like a desert. Here's a couple screenshots. This is probably the last update I'll post, not counting replies to feedback.

BLU Spawn:
http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/4765/artpass42.jpg
http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/4209/artpass43.jpg
http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/3218/artpass41.jpg
http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/3159/artpass44.jpg
http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/1277/artpass45.jpg
http://img801.imageshack.us/img801/7593/artpass46.jpg
http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/8799/artpass47.jpg
http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/1323/artpass48.jpg

Control Point 1:
http://img831.imageshack.us/img831/6293/artpass49.jpg
http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/8113/artpass410.jpg
http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/6302/artpass411.jpg
http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/19/artpass412.jpg
http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/4945/artpass413.jpg
http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/6572/artpass414.jpg
http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/7963/artpass415.jpg

Control Point 2:
http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/1351/artpass416.jpg
http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/4857/artpass417.jpg
http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/4770/artpass418.jpg
http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/8241/artpass419.jpg
http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/1285/artpass420.jpg
http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/5239/artpass421.jpg
http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/1685/artpass422.jpg
http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/9845/artpass423.jpg
http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/8829/artpass424.jpg
http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/5827/artpass425.jpg

Control Point 3:
http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/8599/artpass426.jpg
http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/4982/artpass427.jpg
http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/6595/artpass428.jpg
http://img831.imageshack.us/img831/8689/artpass429.jpg
http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/9250/artpass430.jpg
http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/7660/artpass431.jpg
http://img806.imageshack.us/img806/4576/artpass432.jpg
http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/5153/artpass433.jpg
http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/8837/artpass434.jpg
http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/4657/artpass435.jpg
http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/1402/artpass436.jpg

Red Spawn:
http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/9056/artpass437.jpg
http://img295.imageshack.us/img295/5071/artpass438.jpg
http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/7429/artpass439.jpg


See you next mission.
 
Last edited:
Sep 1, 2009
573
323
. This is probably the last update I'll post, not counting

That is a couple.... I call that alot. Looks good though. You have some tough compatition to beat.
 

Uncle Frank

L1: Registered
Sep 9, 2010
2
1
There are alot of features I like about this map and looks like you spent alot of time thinking about each room.

A point of concern to the actual gameplay side is your removal of the slope from Red's side into the upfront building infront of Control A.

artpasscakemanrc30000.jpg


It means that for classes with a single jump, there is only 1 entrance - which is on Blu's side- making it substantially more difficult for Red to hold that building.

Apart from that, good job
 

IrishTaxIDriver

L6: Sharp Member
Sep 27, 2008
271
149

I assume those cutouts on the roof are an easter egg of some sorts? I can guarantee they will never be seen regularly and honestly could just be cut without anyone noticing. If you want to leave them there, how about a roof access hatch or a door on the taller part? Also I agree with Uncle Frank, taking those stairs out impacts defense pretty negatively.

I like your map! It looks pretty good for someone who is pretty negative about themselves. Don't be negative! You'll never get anywhere being negative!
 

cakeman

L1: Registered
Jul 18, 2010
14
46
Oh crud buckets. The stairs were not a conscious omission but rather something I plainly forgot while rebuilding the original brushes. I would of never noticed if you hadn't pointed it out. Thanks.

The cutouts are there solely because you can see on that roof from my one and only spectator camera when you join the map. That picture was taken from it. And yeah, I'm not too sure about having a spectator camera right on BLU spawn, but I researched a couple of official maps and it's not all that bad compared to those.

Edit: Stair fix ahoy. Who doesn't love corrugated metal? Surely corrugation is the best thing you could do to anything.

http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/4618/artpasscakeman0007.jpg

Edit Edit: I spent today going through and fixing any issues I found. And making that staircase. I feel I've got a pretty good version now, so I submitted it. I updated the thread's download link.
 
Last edited: