The Official Interlopers "Map Pimpage Thread"

[shadowmancer471]

Been making a forest scene
Ironically not for the planetphillip competiton

[CrazyMan]

Nice,not bad.I could learn alot from you.

[Mr. Happy]

You should make it for the PP competition anyway.

Since bloviation became a "real" map (more on that in a soon to be made thread) I picked up balloonimap and made it koth_capitulation_a0. So this is my new "lets make a map without tons of testing but hopefully still ok" map:

[HoliestCows]

Hey guys, remember me the guy who made Aberration, Well I want to improve my mapping, anything you guys can pin point?

[joe_rogers_11155]

@holiestcows: go take a look at the reviews for your mod on moddb for guidance and suggestions. the next project you work on needs to address some of the problems brought up in Aberration's reviews. Here is the short list off the top of my head...

1. It looks like most people enjoyed the brushwork and level of detail was pretty solid. but there are considerable issues with the gameplay.
2. Institute autosaves into your level progressions so players don't have to start at the very beginning of a level.
3. DONT copy-paste scenes and entity setups from Nightmare House 2 ever again.
4. Try to come up with a reason for a particular location. For example, the transitions from indoor buildings into antlion caves and back to indoor buildings was jarring and pointless.
5. Design with the intent to maximize a particular location. All of your hallways had no character and nothing was particularly memorable...EXCEPT for the large arena-style room, where plenty of time was spent navigating and fighting. Try to build more areas like that, because they add character to a map/mod.
6. I could go on, but those and the mod's reviews are a good starting point.

Keep up the good work. You should try something outdoors in nature next.

[Daz]

Well,i have a trainstation map,its far from finished.Got some pics here.If you have any suggestions,feel free to reply.

Note:In the first picture you see a combine food supplier.I made that food supplier a health charger,I just placed the health charger underneath the model and it worked.

As mentioned previously, work on your texture choices here. Very, very rarely do you want to use the same texture for both the floor and walls in the same room, it looks very unnatural.

Try raising the ceilings another 128-256 units, or perhaps even more. Generally indoor spaces have a lot of extra head room, this space also gives you room to add interesting details that won't get in the players way. The low ceilings in your shots look very cramped and ugly.

The lighting is very uniform and flat. Raising the ceilings will help with this somewhat, but as Joe mentioned try using light_spot instead of light for the light fixtures to give a more directed and realistic look to the lamps.

The long hallway needs something to break up the long walls, it is very dull right now. Typically a hallway this long in somewhere like a train station will have various T-junctions and waiting areas for passengers. Perhaps a second corridor running parallel would work nicely here also.

It looks like you are trying to add a lot of detail to your level as you build it, with little pre-planning. be very wary of mapping in this way as it can lead to a lot of wasted time and effort when you have to change large parts of the map because a gameplay element isn't working. It may seem dull but boxing out the playable space first using the orange "dev" textures will help immensely in the long run.

[shadowmancer471]

I personally think visually you have the mapping spot on, lighting is pretty solid
Some tweaks in gameplay and scenes could be good

My main issue was that the npc's would charge towards the player a lot of the time without using alternate routes to flank the player
Secondly I'm sure you can refer to my rant on pacing I gave you for my feedback on the scenes and story

[Paulmega]

This is my current map, not sure if a name yet. Planning is going to be a 'snowy factory', KOTH.
Sorry about no proper screens yet, only just started.

[MayheM]

@Paulmega, if I can make one quick point of advice. Mitre your corners. It will look a lot cleaner...
Like this

[Paulmega]

@Paulmega, if I can make one quick point of advice. Mitre your corners. It will look a lot cleaner...
Like this

Good one, thanks!

[CrazyMan]

Well,i have a trainstation map,its far from finished.Got some pics here.If you have any suggestions,feel free to reply.

Note:In the first picture you see a combine food supplier.I made that food supplier a health charger,I just placed the health charger underneath the model and it worked.

As mentioned previously, work on your texture choices here. Very, very rarely do you want to use the same texture for both the floor and walls in the same room, it looks very unnatural.

Try raising the ceilings another 128-256 units, or perhaps even more. Generally indoor spaces have a lot of extra head room, this space also gives you room to add interesting details that won't get in the players way. The low ceilings in your shots look very cramped and ugly.

The lighting is very uniform and flat. Raising the ceilings will help with this somewhat, but as Joe mentioned try using light_spot instead of light for the light fixtures to give a more directed and realistic look to the lamps.

The long hallway needs something to break up the long walls, it is very dull right now. Typically a hallway this long in somewhere like a train station will have various T-junctions and waiting areas for passengers. Perhaps a second corridor running parallel would work nicely here also.

It looks like you are trying to add a lot of detail to your level as you build it, with little pre-planning. be very wary of mapping in this way as it can lead to a lot of wasted time and effort when you have to change large parts of the map because a gameplay element isn't working. It may seem dull but boxing out the playable space first using the orange "dev" textures will help immensely in the long run.

Well,thanks Dave. I added light_spots and made the ceilings higher and changed the textures.

[pk_hunter]

First peak of one of the final areas of The Core. This is the first time the player will have seen sunlight in quite a long time and that marks just how close they are to escaping Black Mesa... But will they be able to get past one final hurdle?

A lot of this is subject to change as it's only ever had one compile - in particular the lighting, but I'm actually quite pleased with how it turned out.

You might also recognise an area we haven't shown since the very early days of The Core - the lighting has just been completely reworked. Do you like the change?

[Dives]

Work in progress for my L4D2 campaign's Disneyland Main Street.

[source-maps]

looks cool, but it's rather open.. in my experience, open areas are usually not so fun for versus

[Dives]

Much of the map is inside those buildings, I just didn't take screenshots of that. Its not going to be for versus.