CP Upland RC4

For an RC map i'd have hoped the detail would have been honed a little more than it is. The 3dskybox is half empty and the displacement cliffs are blocky as hell. You should pay a little more attention to detail here as currently it feels like you threw in a placeholder 3dsky during early beta testing and forgot to address it at a later stage.

Also as something of a minor gripe but for a map with such tall structures dominating the majority of the playable space, the low sun angle really isn't all that complimentary. Whilst low sun angles can create pleasent moods i really don't feel the same affect here and it creates further lighting problems seen subtly throughout the map. Incidently the same could be said for the interiors in places as well where although reasonably lit at first glance, with the fully lit health/ammo drops found in said offending dark areas they really stick out like a sore thumb.

Perhaps i simply have a keener eye for detail or you might consider this pedantic, but your wood-concrete transitions are rather jarring also. Thick wooden beams meet small brickwork walls, or wooden structures on a randomly exposed concrete foundation. One can argue the RED bases are all mismatched anyway but they still appear to conform to the laws of physics. They should appear to be engineered to some degree rather than just, existing for the sake of existing.

I'm not gonna bother argueing over your choice to throw this into the RC stage but the map has plenty more tweaks necassery to make it feel like one. Such as improving on your 3dskybox, increasing the general ambience in corners and on unlit walls, trims on more of your wooden plank pieces and paint spots, windows and wooden planks on bare wooden walls. More bushes so your terrain feels less barren (we know it's a desert theme but even deserts have some life, especially where there are humans).

Sure, here are around 40 of the most obvious places to address.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10000.jpg

More light here: some suggested sources.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10003.jpg

More light and a window suggestion + light source suggestions.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10009.jpg

Needs more light, here are some suggested sources.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10021.jpg

More light, and some suggested sources.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10001.jpg

For a room that is largely secluded the walls are particularly bare. Exploit the fact that this room is cut off from much of your map by adding in more detail on the walls such as truss beams, cabinets, mops+buckets and/or corrugated iron sheets leaning against the walls.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10002.jpg *** use for ref

This corridor is boring, no 2 ways about it; and since it's an area where players travel more than fight you should include higher than usual levels of detail since players aren't distracted by combat/unseen threats. Include windows, diagonal trusses, ceiling pipes etc.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10004.jpg

reference ***

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10005.jpg

These are all plain walls seen from the gameplay area, i moved back out of the play area a bit to get more walls into one image. You should add more windows around here.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10006.jpg

Add windows and chimneys.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10007.jpg

It's always good to have window positions on the inside as well as the outside.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10008.jpg

Your 3dskybox cliffs are blocky and mostly unrefined. Add more rock props. I've also highlighted the horizon, you should add more rocks in the distance, the horizon feels very abrupt. Having rocks further out allows players to feel in a larger environment as as they move around the closer objects displace more than further ones.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10010.jpg

Reference ***

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10011.jpg

Windows plzkthx!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10012.jpg

Hazard strips don't make much sense outside of an objective or death pit context as they are primarily used as gameplay devices. You should replace this with a basic wooden trim, it's quite confusing otherwise.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10013.jpg

Because this shadow doesn't translate to the 3dskybox your low z-clipping pane is quite obvious around this part of the play area. I wouldn't recommend extending it as it appears to only occur here, but it would be in your best interest to address this in one way or another. It doesn't look like much of a big deal in the screenshot but it's way more intrusive ingame, as you move around.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10014.jpg

These block shadowed walls are kinda boring, particularly since they're the background to a capture point. Add some light source such as flood lights with light beams hitting the CP or a small light illuminating the B sign overlay.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10015.jpg

Needs trims and supports, it looks really odd and unnatural otherwise.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10016.jpg

Windows and chimneys are a good idea. Chimneys break up the chunky horizon formed by a bunch of plain slanted roofs and add a vertical element to the horizon.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10017.jpg

Windows plx. Also, you have a missing texture (under the roof sheet in the centre of the image) as a result of over-zealous skybox culling. Use a displacement to allow the entire face to be rendered through the skybox brush.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10018.jpg

Windows and chimneys plx. Also, there's no reason for these props to have such a low fade distance, the room is well optimised, you can afford to stretch that distance by 128-256 units or how ever much is necassery to allow them to be rendered as the player turns the corner.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10020.jpg

Maybe this is just me as a mapper but these shadows show a clear difference in resolution. You should match these lightmap scales. Also, put a window around where i marked.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10022.jpg

Move the ammo drop away from the wall some so it's easier for players to grab and add some details on the wall behind it. Since the ammo drop will attract a lot of player traffic it makes sense to use detail here.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10023.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10025.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10026.jpg

More details on the walls!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10028.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10029.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10030.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10039.jpg

Trims!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10031.jpg

Inconsistant wall materials. This is just kinda lazy, split those brushes up so you can seperate the top and bottom materials and use a single texture for the interior, it'll be well worth it for the refined result.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10032.jpg

You have a number of shadow issues around the map, this is one of the 2 or 3 most offensive ones. Decreasing the lightmap scale can allow the face to recieve a full luxel of light data and illuminate these truss beams.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10041.jpg

Again but for the steps, make sure the steps recieve a full "dose" of light.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10033.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10034.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10035.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10036.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10040.jpg

Bushes go here!!!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10037.jpg

You could do with more rocks, or a displacement batholith or some such detail here. It's proximity and visibility from the play area kinda warrants it.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10038.jpg

Windows, wall detail...

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10042.jpg

Again with the 3dskybox, the proximity and visibility from the play area warrants a slightly greater level of detail. Brushes smaller than 32 units don't convert well to 1/16th but you should add some roof details, maybe a concrete foundation as marked, etc.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10043.jpg

These faces wont be rendered from the play area anyway so culling them only saves neglibable light data and a little compile time, but why i point this one out is that it's visible to any play that falls or gets pushed off the edge at the blue marked areas. I'd suggest texturing these faces.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1429764/upland/cp_upland_rc10044.jpg

Chimneys, pipes etc.

Whilst you might counter-argue about potential negative effects by over densitisation (if that's even a word) of detail it's still important to utilise at least the windows and chimneys to greater affect as it improves the translation of the environment to reality in the players imagination. I'd also recommend the bushes, and well i'd recommend all the detail i've pointed out; the trims will have no particular negative affect on performance and i'd recommend the "junk" detail at "last" since it's the finalé, but of course junk props take a back seat in terms of priority against peformance. I believe you can get away with it though if you utilise sufficient horizontal hint brushes. The layout is well optimised keeping each CP location seperate.

Presumably it's related to where the origin of that model is. I have no idea where it's located but you will. Make sure it's not inside of another prop, or the floor, or above any light sources (models seem to light better from direct light rather than bounced light). Hopefully placing the origin within the zone of light cast from a light spot will rectify your problem, i'd suggest that you don't convert an entire rooms worth of truss beams into a single model as that will cause lighting problems, 2fort converts only 1 wall face worth of truss beams at a time so the light direction is accurate.

isnt it possible to just use -staticproplighting and let vertices themselves figure out their lighting direction, also not needing to worry about light origin?

Sorry for sitting on these, they are from RC1 but I forgot to do anything with them. There it is anyway, sorry!

Short draw distance to the point where it could influence gameplay (cover on the ledge above the D sign disappears as well as a good chunk of the map).



Some clipping in this area makes you able to stand in mid-air.


I should be able to jump here, but doing so will get you killed by an invisible wall. Just as odd from the other side of course.


This whole bridge has a subpar feeling. Cables hanging even through the thin brige itself, with wheels on it, while the is slowly descending makes no sense. It's completely quiet, unlike the slow Steel-style door we encounter later which make an incredible racket for what feels like a too long time. It sounds like concrete when you walk on it instead of wood. It's very inviting to jump on to this thing from the point to get in faster, but doing so may, or may not, kill you for no apparent reason other than being buggy. I wouldn't miss it if it was replaced completely by something simpler.
EDIT: Standing on it while it's moving can also freeze it instead of killing the player.


I can't remember why I had a screenshot of this... I think it made no sound either, or if it did, one that didn't feel powerful enough. The slowly opening door sound would probably make more sense here than for the slowly opening door.
EDIT: You also randomly fall over dead when standing on it while it's moving!


This is clever, but no matter how I try I can't stop seeing a door on a floor and it just feels wrong, like I'm in some upside down house. There doesn't need to be anything there at all.


This area feels weird, I think it's the combined bricks and concrete. Could the lower stairs be wider?


Thanks!

goddamn honeybuns, you're great at making amazingly polished and nice looking maps. I'll have to play this one too so i can fawn even more

at one point, i checked respawntimes and saw red having 11 sec and blue 8 sec, which is rather high. i think the respawntimes contributed to the feeling that the map is too big or whatever was the premature switch reason.

Such a good map, and I am not biased in any way shape or form.

The new bridge at A looks great and so does the skybox!

Since you're keeping the clipping at A, can you at least cover it up with some chicken wire so that the drop to your death doesn't come as a surprise? Invisible walls are terrible.


Perhaps add something to cover up the big sightline between C and D? Not that the sightline itself is a problem, but if it's not going to be drawn, why keep it in plain sight?


Could the stairs on the backside of E fully connect, or there being some clipping? Trying to walk around E you're almost certain to get snagged in there.


I don't understand the point of the new rails at E. Because of the nonexistent distance between them and the stairs around E, walking on the stairs has become floating in the air and you will still walk right off the platform since the rails can't catch you. It's awkward and not helpful at all.

Could the stairs on the backside of E fully connect, or there being some clipping? Trying to walk around E you're almost certain to get snagged in there.

Click to expand...

Actually it's a really good place to hide as a spy. It's not really gamebreaking so I don't see any reasons for it to be "fixed". I also have some demos of 9v9 colony mixes laying on my hard drive so If you can find them useful just add me in steam.

I didn't connect them because it didn't make sense to me to have stairs there. In hindsight I probably should've put elevator machinery or something there. Oh well!

Since no one else has said it yet I like your prop detailing and the structure of some of your buildings.