Quote from rellikpd on May 14, 2008, 12:22 am

FIRST: nice map. but its all been said before

Quote from Aldéz on May 14, 2008, 9:14 am

It was easier this time, but I didn't finish the map. I don't understand [spoiler]how to bring the cubes to the buttons. No more cubes were spawned[/spoiler]. The lighting is bad, is there a leak somewhere?

Quote from bizob on May 14, 2008, 10:47 pm

Ald?z wrote:

It was easier this time, but I didn't finish the map. I don't understand [spoiler]how to bring the cubes to the buttons. No more cubes were spawned[/spoiler]. The lighting is bad, is there a leak somewhere?

I checked for leaks in my original of the bmz I uploaded and do not see any indications of leaks. I can tell as soon as the elevator doors open if theres a leak. You know how those recessed cool textures go away if you have a leak, I'm sure. I know I've seen it a lot in the process of making this map:) BTW I know I didn't get the recessed lighting right and I learned it doesn't work well with metal textures.

What about the lighting did you find bad?

As for the lighting in general, I'm pretty new to mapping and don't know a whole lot just yet. Lighting is one thing I really need to read up more. I really just kind of experimented with lighting on this map and settled for what looked ok, to me at least. There's a lot of shadows that you'd expect to see that I couldn't figure out how to make happen. I'm also not too comfortable with cubemaps so I only used then for the water.

Quote from taco on May 14, 2008, 11:18 pm

bizob wrote:

I'm also not too comfortable with cubemaps so I only used then for the water.

Every reflective surface in a map will use the closest cubemap for reference on what to reflect, so if you only have a couple cubemaps, things that are far away in areas that are lit differently will have very screwed up looking reflections on them.

Quote from Ralen on May 15, 2008, 1:40 am

Nice map, although I have a feeling I probably wouldn't have known what to do if not for the title.

A couple of minor issues I saw: 1) is that in some places when there is a portal placed on the floor, the grid lines of the floor paneling are visible across the portal's opening. 2) is that walking down the stairways seems kind of jerky. I don't know anything about mapping, but I think there should be a way to smooth it out some.

Quote from Aldéz on May 15, 2008, 7:14 am

bizob wrote:

[...]
What about the lighting did you find bad?
[...]

It seems that vrad hasn't done any light bouncing. The ceilings are black. Will post a screenshots when I get home.

EDIT:
It doesn't seem to be a leak. Anyway, this is what I was refering to:

Quote from bizob on May 15, 2008, 3:35 pm

Ald?z wrote:

It seems that vrad hasn't done any light bouncing. The ceilings are black. Will post a screenshots when I get home.

Ahh, I see what you're talking about now. Like I said, I experimented some with lighting but not much. I tried using spot lights but couldn't get the effect I wanted. I tried using cube maps on those ceilings but they looked terrible and I wanted them to have a "matt" finish (ie. not shiny). I even added my own "bounce back" lights but then the shadows got all fubar. I wanted this map to have some dark areas and everything else looked too bright so I settled for what I had. I have a lot to learn about lighting.
If it is vrad, does anyone know what I can do to correct this?

taco wrote:

Every reflective surface in a map will use the closest cubemap for reference on what to reflect, so if you only have a couple cubemaps, things that are far away in areas that are lit differently will have very screwed up looking reflections on them.

When I added cubemaps with that in mind it seemed like i needed quite a bit of them and my map file size more than doubled. I don't really understand how the reflections work. It seemed like cubemaps from one room affected walls and ceilings (which I wanted not to be reflective) from another room and I wan't sure how to control them. So i opted to keep it simple and just tied the cube maps to the water textures.

Ralen wrote:

1) is that in some places when there is a portal placed on the floor, the grid lines of the floor paneling are visible across the portal's opening

Could post a screenshot of what you mean? Is it happening where the [spoiler]stairs collapse[/spoiler]?

Ralen wrote:

2) is that walking down the stairways seems kind of jerky. I don't know anything about mapping, but I think there should be a way to smooth it out some

I actually wanted there to be some bouncing when the player walked down stairs. I originally had an invisble "ramp" over the stairs but then it didn't feel like you walking down stairs. When I placed the steps closer to each other it mellowed out the bounce but looked bad. I probably should have some math on these. I do plan on using the stairs again so next time I'll do better. I know... "some bounce would be fine but this is a bit too much" and now that I think about it, I have an idea or two that may mellow out the bounce and still make the player feel like they're walking down stairs.

Thanks again to everyone for the kind words and very constructive criticism. It was a great learning experience. I had fun making this map; I hope you have some fun playing it.

Quote from rellikpd on May 15, 2008, 4:00 pm

i think the stairs are fine. they didn't seem too goofy to me.
and the part they are talking about where you can see lines through the portal is if you place a portal on the ground over the area where [spoiler]the stairs have colapsed[/spoiler] you can see lines in the spaces that would make up the edges of the stairs... i cared not to complain about this, cuz it seems like an engine problem, and i knew what was causing it.... but not how to fix it. so i couldn't complain

Quote from taco on May 15, 2008, 4:17 pm

You can fix the steps by playing a 1-unit tall brush covered in nodraw above the surface that is formed when the stairs are closed.

This is the method valve uses in chamber 14; however, it's not the greatest solution - you can go into chamber 14 and place a floating portal underneath the stairs on the nodraw "floor".