The ceiling thing is probably where there are two brushes with a surface at the same place, and the game is randomly (or at least, unpredictably) choosing one or the other to display "in front", while Hammer is showing you a different one "first".
It can also manifest as flickering
z-fighting.
You know, that's what I thought it was, too, at first but, like I said, there is NO other brush in that area with that texture (as in, brush A and B that show up in the screenie are flush with each other and there are no other brushes inside, outside, or around them) that would create this anomaly. Weird, huh? Hopefully I'll fix it sooner or later.
Anyway, NEW SCREENSHOTS! Yay! This time they're not in allbright, too! To boot, I got my friend Vince to run around the map and act as a model to help tell the scale of the map. Thanks, Vince!
With some of the play testing that he and I did, I realized that there are several more spots for wrangled sentry cheesing. Hopefully some well-placed walls will fix that. I also realized that the bottom of the main pit area was quite sparse and could use some props or objects. How do you go about just filling an open space with trucks and cows and such? Any good method?
Next, my friend noticed that it is quite hard to get to the very top bridge as you must go all the way past spawn, through the back sniper area, and up some stairs. Do you think it should or should not be easy to get the high-ground advantage there? If I should make it easier (way with steps or stairs) where should I place it? Right now I'm thinking that if I would make it easier, the stairs would go by sliding doors on either teams' side against the wall and up to the bridge (hard to explain with words, sorry). Any other ideas?
Lastly, I feel like we're almost up to beta so I would like several people to play-test this for additional balancing. Are there any servers or services out there where people would be willing to test out a no-name scrub's map?