WiP in WiP, post your screenshots!

[xzzy]

Especially with those metal panels everyone loves to slap all over buildings to make them look decrepit, fuck those things.

They look fine on daytime maps but when it's gloomy it refuses to light evenly.

Just look at this:

UGH.

 

[YM]

wtf is going on with the top of that cornwell building?

Also you have a horrible mismatch of styles going on there. Bricks, cinderblocks, concrete, wood, blue metal, red metal, all going on within the same field of view. It's visual yuck.

But anyway, on to the question you asked:
The metal panels light from one side only, because they're a single sheet of polygons and not actual doublesided. So you need to change "Ignore surface normal for computing vertex lighting" to "yes" in the keyvalues. Also, "Disable Self-Shadowing with vertex lighting" might be necessary, but I am less certain about that.

Oh, neither of those will do anything if you're not compiling with vertex lighting. So if you're not doing that, you should be (for at very minimum, your final compiles) If for quick testing you don't use vertex lighting, don't worry about the incorrect shadowing.

Learn you some stuff

 

[Crash]

That last screenshot is an extremely old shot of this map and we've been compiling with proper lighting and shadowing compiling options for quite some time now.

edit: This is our current RC1 release of the same angle as above

 

[YM]

Well that looks a lot more coherent, but it's still quite a jumble of styles. look how close that raggedy wooden fence is to that set of clean, crisp metal steps; or how you have a wooden section coming right out of a breeze block building. And I still question: what the fuck is going on with that building's roof??

 

[xzzy]

I know how lighting on props works, but thanks.

Those particular patch panels just don't light smoothly, I guess I'm not 100% sure the origin isn't buried in a brush but they have a bad habit of either being fully lit or fully dark. There's no real middle ground. Works fine in daylight maps because usually they'll either be in full shadow or full sunlight, but in a night map it sticks out like a sore thumb.

I messed around with it for hours trying all sorts of options and I eventually gave up and demanded Crash and Hey You stop putting the things into the map.

 

[Crash]

You're seeing the transition between Blu's territory and Red's, which is why there's a bit more variety in materials being used.

The map is partially construction themed so there are a lot of ragged half built/ thrown together structures on the map.

 

[xzzy]

To be fair, no one's saying the detailing on stoneyridge is perfect. All of us who worked on it have been trying to delete and smooth out stuff every time we open the vmf. But there is SOME consistency with what's going on.. there is in fact a "story."

I think the map is overall pretty good with the aesthetics, even though there's lots to nitpick. It certainly makes some pretty screenshots.

 

[YM]

That looks bad because your props look nothing like your brushwork. Also that brush has one hell of an overhang.

It'd look a butt-load better if you replaced those props with brushes (possibly displacements) that emulated the raggedness. Then the whole roof would feel damaged, but unified.

 

[Crash]

That is such an out of the way not widely seen spot it's silly to even have this conversation about it.

Your feedback has been noted.

 

[LeSwordfish]

See, this is why I don't like maps having a "story". You end up making things that make sense in context, while most people will never pick up on context and they end up just looking wierd.

(Also, it's not out of the way. We can see it from a control point.)

 

[re1wind]

it's a roof. near a cp. How many people have given feedback on that exact area in-game?

 

[UKCS-Alias]

How many people already do give feedback on such areas ingame? That number reaches close to 0 anyway. Its that we comment on a screenshot here and actualy try to find the issue in more detail.

People ingame give feedback on things blatently in the way, but those 'tiny' things arent something they complain about (as then in some maps the stream of complaints just would be too large). If they do they at most will say 'area looks weird'. Not even giving a slight indication on what exactly is that weird looking thing.

 

[Crash]

Some changes for Glassworks

 

[Ælement]

When Are you gonna make the ground not look like toxic waste?

 

[Beetle]

When Are you gonna make the ground not look like toxic waste?

You don't understand. That IS toxic waste. That's the gimmick.

 

[Freyja]

Well my second detail entry, Keikoku is pretty much finished. I've got the optimisation to the point where it's decent enough too.

 

[re1wind]

It immediately reminded me of pl_upward which hopefully was your intention. Also tone down the bloom a bit, it's quite obvious.

 

[Beetle]

Aly and bridge walkways haha

 

[seth]

I love that spawn Aly. Reminds me a lot of Upward like re1wind said.

 

[Freyja]

It was heavily inspired by upward obviously, done in the upward theme. Of course it's meant to remind you of upward

Aly and bridge walkways haha

I don't understand?