The Official Facepunch Mapping WiP Thread v18: Source Engine and Friends
935 replies, posted
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/966475888356463511/7B22FB3739CB5143C39792595049510516A363EB/
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/966475888356462956/A88DAD6009431821A9948941D31E4422F87EEC88/
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/966475888356462709/B03C7759D916FF91DB7F25D6FBC6C2B687D59356/
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/966476435610358427/48887546A6AE334B002F73DD940A61FCFBD19068/
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/966475888349974292/023ED9D9708E68A05E90C69959683395903847A8/
more things by me and havana dog
I agree, I think that would fit your aesthetic better than exposed ducted fans would.
One thing I would change, however, is the lighting. Those downlights at the top of the walls and pillars create a really nice spatial effect, but my eye keeps being pulled away from it by the eye-level lights at the base of the pillars (for no good reason either). I would suggest getting rid of all direct, eye-level lighting in the tunnel except in areas of importance you want to draw attention to (such as that side corridor). As a rule of thumb for dark environments, you should work primarily with ambient, indirect, and/or overhead lighting, only using a few direct lights as deliberate visual accents.
(Unless you want players to hug those pillars, in which case, carry on)
Hello! The work on Episode 17 continues, and I want to see your criticism. Some people argue that the room is unnaturally dark. I need your point of view. Thank you for attention.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/179525/76b1bd22-13a3-469d-8b60-22d5cdc47d0b/ep17_lab020044.png
That's one awesome atmosphere you got going on there, I wouldn't call it unnaturally dark - but if that area is bigger and drags on for a bit with the same style of darkness the player should definitely get some sort of light to guide or hint their path if they don't already have a flashlight
Thanks man. No, this is a small room that is used as a warehouse for various garbage.
Yeah, I see what you mean. The lights in the bottom aren't really important anyways. I only put them there because I remembered some building that had these industrial lights placed near the floor.
Looks fine-ish on my primary monitor, but a little too dark on my secondary monitor.
When dealing with dark scenes, you've unfortunately gotta target badly calibrated monitor and the such. Also I'd think the sunlight coming through would be a bit brighter anyway.
Hello! I'm wanting to get into Quake level design to practice design in general, and I've finally got a compile pipeline ready!
Here's a simple little room I made with texture-based lighting (EricW compile tools) and some faint sky lighting (Ignore the sky itself, I tried to make a custom night sky but the Quake palette isn't being nice to me)
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/143792/b20545dd-f373-4109-8a76-2507a1acbc2e/spasm0001.png
I was wondering what to make though, so I brainstormed some map names to work off of...
The Pit Of Pits
Too Many Traps
Unacceptable Levels Of Distress
Please Stop
Nails and Manicures
Uh Oh
Big White Teddy Bears <3
Are They Ninjas???
The Rising Lava Conspiracy
The Big Fuck-Off Tower
All Hail Taxies
Visleaf Rape Simulator (Lots Of Stairs)
Axes And Noiughts
Another Fucking Slipgate Level
Satans Recreation Room
Ballcrusher (Really Hard)
The Land Of Thick Fog And Distant Shamblers
A Good Water Level? (Probably Not)
The Hall Of 'Grimdark, The Smoldering'
Ferrari Auto Shop
These are funny and everything but I don't know if names are the best way to start a good level. How do you guys make a decent framework for gameplay in a level? Or am I overthinking it too much?
I'd say super fancy names like that aren't important to begin with, I usually just put a rough placeholder low-word-count name of what the general theme of the map is or a joke name until I got a good idea of which direction the level is heading in - sometimes the joke names even stick permanently
The best way I've found to create levels is to think of major elements you want the map to have. Like maybe you want a central elevator. Or perhaps a spiral staircase with the rocket launcher. Then design the level around those and balance as needed.
Thanks for the comparison on different monitors, this is really important.
After reading a couple more comments on this screenshot, I decided to increase the brightness of the picture due to light enity.
https://youtu.be/5IKhsSyewQo
Was working on this a while ago, a TTT map where people have to move through the level as water rises and cooperate to reach a true "safe zone." Been trying to figure out a way to make the underwater look better.
If you want to stick with the texture you're using for water you can tweak the .vtf and modify the below keyvalues.
Nah, since the effect is just a trick using func_reflective_glass attached to a moving water entity the normal distortion you get from being underwater doesn't appear right. I know I can change the blue,
its just adding all the rest.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/134756/6c0c06b7-a640-4e3b-b96a-2c77de0ce63e/hub10012.bmp
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/134756/a4cc4e18-0c59-4f87-8f6b-e78b90594ae2/hub10011.bmp
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/134756/3ecf9513-802d-490f-a129-d96e7b9389f9/hub10013.bmp
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/134756/8d01ecd3-9d3d-43d1-90d3-4a064a373949/hub10008.bmp
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/134756/3cded45b-4b1b-4058-b244-3f03842487b3/hub10009.bmp
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/134756/3ed0782a-da04-4661-abae-3100b7285978/hub10010.bmp
Second art pass
This project is set in an alternate universe where Aperture Science and Black Mesa have reversed roles. Black Mesa loses government support but becomes a highly successful and unethical private science corporation and Aperture Science becomes an underfunded government science branch suffering from its eclectic administration. The Lambda labs exist in a smaller capacity but have not triggered the disaster in Half Life 1 due to BM having more of a focus on more capitalistic research ventures. You play a corporate spy sent to sabotage the Black Mesa facility and steal the research, allowing Aperture Science to unwittingly set the events of the resonance cascade into motion in this universe as well. (With the implication that forces are conspiring to trigger this chain of events in several parallel universes)
This is the main hub area where you access several different sectors with different themes (including the coolant factory). If you know what video game the hub gets its design inspiration from then congratulations.
Those escalators leading to the center platform with what I assume is an elevator tube look a bit weird for being so short and leading to such a small floor, consider checking out how it looks with regular stairs or ramps on that part?
Keep in mind that these maps are semi-humorous, playing up the ridiculousness of some of Half Lifes 1990's level designs that dont really reflect the real world. That and the Black Mesa of this world in a lot more extravagant, and I'm more aiming for visual then realism.
Still, I'll try a few variations and see how it feels, thank you!
Then you have a pretty good excuse for doing stuff like that lol, great to have actual background to that stuff to justify it for the really anal people
https://youtu.be/Gi35EwMw5BU
update video for hivecity/tky2
today on things I'll never finish I revisited an old map and added an elevator because I'm sick and I have nothing better to do.
https://youtu.be/2DQLoK1qhQI
Had too much time on my hands again and we pushed the farmhouse later back in our chapter, which means a good reason to have it situated at sunset, yay! I changed up the lighting and I've been toying with a custom soudscape. While the latter takes shape I still feel like I should change something with that.
https://youtu.be/wPkW8SK9118
https://imgur.com/a/WntNUIf
I really like what you've got going on here. Mind if I ask where you got the sound files from? For the game we're working on I'm considering to add a falling elevator too which is why I'm asking.
I've once made this tool to build a few specialized extrusions and then never released it: A lathe tool
What it could do worked out nice but was limited in some ways.
I'm just revisiting this topic with my level generator program, with the goal of building a library for making many more extrusions of 3-sided and 4-sided polygons possible. They wouldn't be limited to splines or circular paths, but every segment's corner vertices would be placed individually.
In a conventional 3D modeling program, I could just focus on the mesh, and when vertices collapse, remove faces or collapse them to triangles.
With brushes, the story is a little different... so I've worked out a lot of cases I want to distinguish between for each segment of the extrusion, and am now in the process of putting them in. And this is an awful lot of tiresome work.
On top of those cases pictured here, I've identified about 40 more I need to take into account. \o/
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/132786/bfae2068-24e6-458e-973b-fcdd390ba508/image.png
Amazing stuff, how did you go on about working in first person with view bobbing and stuff into Alien Swarm like that? Is it natively built in or did you guys do some coding magic if there even is any source code available from AS to work with?
That I don't know myself actually; I only focus on the maps really. From what I remember some of the code was written by hand by the lead dev, and other scraps were sourced elsewhere.
Your work on this project has been astounding, it's actually inspired me to start my own mod with similar environments! Keep posting more as you progress!!
I stole it from here because I'm terrible
The announcer lady I hammed up with some free online TTS service and added reverb in audacity, and the rest is HL2 soundscapes.
