WiP in WiP, post your screenshots!

[wareya]

 

[Fruity Snacks]

That rock formation* looks randomly out of place.

EDIT*

 

[YM]

Round edges + blend top grass with wall texture + add prop rocks = looks right again

 

[wareya]

That rock formation* looks randomly out of place.

EDIT*

Just call it a spire

And for context:

 

[Fruity Snacks]

Still feels weird, and the cliffs in the lower image are really boxish.

 

[YM]

Grass doesn't grow underneath overhangs.

 

[wareya]

No, but it does grow right up to the edge:

...and video game grass sucks awfully hard in comparison, so just about every cartoony game in the world has grass drooping on the edges in order to vaguely emulate the same vertical depth.

http://assets2.ignimgs.com/2005/09/08/neopets-the-darkest-faerie-20050908003621638-1241460.jpg
Even Final Fantasy 10 does it, to a certain extent:
http://images.pushsquare.com/screenshots/56981/large.jpg
http://images.pushsquare.com/screenshots/56987/large.jpg
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/a/img844/9683/ffx11.png

Anyway, my spire with better background cliffs and with detail sprites:

(ignore the direct-only lighting for now)

 

[Dragonisser]

its only one half ^^

 

[xzzy]

Anyway, my spire with better background cliffs and with detail sprites:

(ignore the direct-only lighting for now)

It looks significantly better with the "dangling" grass over the edge.

My only suggestion would be to pull the base of the displacements out a bit, I know vertical walls are a thing that happens in the real world but I think it looks better in TF2 if there's more of a slope at the bottom.. you get a better transition with the ground displacements.

This does mess with navigability though so keep in mind you might have to make things bigger to avoid messing with player travel too much.

 

[UKCS-Alias]

In the meantime 1000 units outside of the playable area:

A rotated building woo!

 

[wareya]

I don't even bother making sure stuff outside of the play area is on-grid anymore.

 

[xzzy]

Make your rotated buildings in an instance and you don't have to worry about it.

Best part is you won't give Hammer a chance to "fix" off grid vertices when it saves the vmf.

 

[UKCS-Alias]

Make your rotated buildings in an instance and you don't have to worry about it.

Its nice to know the trick (i think i did read about it before though), but it was just a personal 'i want to try this' thing.

 

[Crash]

Glassworks:

 

[Dragonisser]

Glassworks:

Look nice, but the second picture is not working

 

[Crash]

Must've been Steam acting up at the time? Working fine here.

 

[Woozlez]

Since no one commented on the new screenshots of MVM_Underground, I thought I'd post them here:

 

[radarhead]

Glassworks:

Ramp in the second screenshot still looks too solid.

 

[TyeZenneth]

It would look better as two iron girders with a bit of sheet metal laying on top.

 

[xzzy]

In the interests of simplicity, cutting the thickness in half and adding some trim along the edges would probably be sufficient. Caution tape might work but may be too noisy, maybe just one of the i-beam textures would be fine.

Adding lumps just gives more things to bonk your head on underneath the platform, which may be important because there's a health kit down there so it's going to see a lot of traffic.

Switching from the displacements to the fence is a huge improvement though, it makes the whole area feel more open without actually changing the play space. Plus it gives you more terrain to go nuts with detailing. :O