mbombz wrote:No one has said the playtest is private. You assume .... tsk tsk.
I run a dedicated server on the West Coast of the 'states'. Gametime is 6PM PST (GMT -8). Depending on whereabouts you are located on the globe.
As someone who's responsible for a pub of our own in Chicago, I guess I have a different idea of what's public and private; as far as I'm concerned if I can't download the map and load it onto a server it's private. I guess I could cyberstalk you to try and find your server, connect, read sv_downloadurl, and browse your FTP to see if the map is on there, but that would feel dirty.
Mostly though I just get annoyed when I download a final release of something which is also the first public release, and there are problems with it that should've easily been picked up.
Looking forward to seeing how it plays.
Visually there's not a lot to say. To my eye though it gets worse the further up off the ground your eye goes. The ground looks great: nice brushwork and nice textures, although it looks to me like the red carpet could benefit from stronger or more homogenous lighting. Outside, the first story looks fine, and so does the second, but most of the buildings individually seem discordant. Really, it's like the second story is a different map, and to my eye the net effect of that is that the outdoors looks chaotic and blah. I think the textures that are really killing you here are the red with white edging (upper story of near building in the first screenshot, and others), the white with white edging (upper part of building in second and third screenshots), and the white with no edging (upper part of building toward the left of the third screenshot). The first one would probably work if the edging matches the edging of the building below, and the brick matches or complements the brick of the building below. The other two IMO just don't work with the rest of the map as you have it here.
Ideally, I'd say retexture all your building walls with three or four different but complementary custom texture sets. Maybe get away from using brick on every building, as even though the ground level looks OK, so many different shades of red brick is not looking that great. Smooth concrete in the right shade usually complements red brick well, and larger non-red bricks or stonework would probably add some variety without breaking thematically with the ground.
It looks like most of the shop windows are just a picture. It would probably be better to have them covered up with some kind of shades or blinds than to leave them like that. Much better would be to partially detail the inside and put some advertisements in the windows to cover up the lack of detail.
The one inside area seen here looks OK, but not great. I think the ceiling might be throwing it off because the color is so far off compared to the walls; I'd expect something in a very pale blue rather than cream. Those lights you have look tough to work with. It seems though like you've just got a light entity a little ways off the wall and below the lights. Maybe a light_spot, directed down and away from the wall, with very wide angles would work better. Whatever you do here, it'd be much better if there weren't these big patches of light hitting the ceiling.
