Need some opinions/feedback (css beta map)

[teshok]

Ive released the map
http://www.fpsbanana.com/members/622518

[teshok]

hmmm well i soldiered on anyway.

[mookie]

It's hard to tell if those (first) screens are taken from eye-level or free-floating, but my first thought is that it's generally oversized. The overview shot gives some idea of the layout but it's tough to see what's what in that. It looks like the route leading to B is isolated for too long a distance. The hallways leading into the middle and A from the T side also look pretty long for being straight and having very little cover.

As a general rule, it shouldn't take more than 25 seconds (more like 20 or less) to reach either bombsite from T spawn, and hopefully there are two routes between the two sites that take 15 or less. I'm at work so I can't download/play this map, but my guess is these numbers will be a lot higher here. That will tend to make for boring rounds because it takes the CTs a long time to rotate, defusing will be much harder with the stock 35 second timer, and it will take too long at the start of a round to encounter the enemy.

A lot of your brushwork looks too big/blocky. Looking at the first new screen, it would seem like the beams/columns would be mostly overlaying each other (with maybe somewhat of a notch cut out) but you have them going clean through. The interior parts of your window frames (the parts separating the panes) seem far too large, I'd think 4 units at most for this kind of thing. Your arches are weird, how they're arched onto the columns that support them, but then just hit the walls of buildings at a right angle. Normally they'd probably arch back down and have a column flush against the wall, or pushed partway into it.

Where you have low walls, a lot of them look like they might be 32 wide; 16 is probably plenty in most cases. Your prop lighting over the cubicles is not good, better to use a light_spot with wide angles than to use a light here. Since you have a drop ceiling above, better yet would probably be to set fluorescent lights into the tiles like in cs_office etc.

I don't understand what's going on at B. You have an arcade, but then you have a wood ceiling hanging under it. Usually an arcade or a colonnade would support a roof above it (if anything at all), not a free-hanging ceiling.

It seems like there are a lot of long, straight, wide hallway-type areas in the map. These areas are tough because when you get halfway down them you're a long way from any kind of cover. Adding crates is not usually a good solution.

Looks promising but probably needs to be tightened up a lot.

[teshok]

thanks for the feedback i was planning to release it today but i wanna make sure its perfect.
small update.

i nodrawed the floor in the second story to show the route better.

[mookie]

If you use cl_leveloverview, it draws everything below you. So you can take overview screenshots of areas even if there's stuff above them by putting yourself in the right spot.

[jgoodroad]

could use a bit more height, for detail

[teshok]

progress




does anyone have any good tips for matching the fog to the skybox

[mookie]

Downloaded. Game crashed out before I got past the MOTD. That seems to be only w/o HDR though.

[Major Banter]

Had a bit of a play. Noted down a few things.

-Lots of props without thier shadows disabled; specifically bushes and debris. Looks weird.

-Prop_rotating_door should be used carefully in CSS. Not for every fucking door; I ended up staying outside because of the time it takes to open a door. Delete some strategically. Also causes players to get stuck.

-Get a shadow_control in there.

-Your brush work; i.e. the mezzanine floor, is usually awesome; but I don't get why you should have incredibly dull, dull, dull areas outside and amazing interiors. Liven it up a bit; try to captalise on a theme. It's a sorta industrial italian at the moment; try going full italian while maintaining the interiors.

[nub]

Gameplay wise, the biggest issue I can see is the darkness. Maybe the HDR is causing it in the screen shots but the environment light creates this big contrast between the lit areas and the shadowed areas and you have no additional lighting in there, so you've got these big pockets of darkness. This can make it really difficult to see people sometimes.


Also, some of your ground texture choices are a bit weird.

[antie]

It's a real nice map, and it's showing a lot of promise. The main problems, IMHO, are:

1) Lighting is problematic. Weird reflections, glares, vast dark patches.
2) There is too much free, empty space.
3) There are too many repeating textures (this is linked with no. 2). I'd scale things down a bit and maybe add things like support columns too add more flavour to the texturing.

[teshok]

I only ever get that crash the first time I run the map after i build the cubemaps and analyse the nav, and it only happens rarely. Ill see what I can do about sexing up the exterior spaces later on. For now i gotta do a research paper :S
edit: totaly forgot to mention the lighting its not quite as dark as it is in the screenshots jpeg makes things darker. There are a couple of rooms that could do with some attention though.
thanks for the feedback guys really helpfull.


edit: i made a couple of updates that hopefully fixed the crash.
I reduced the entdata it was at %140
and i had a texture linked to multiple cubemaps.
could anyone who was crashing before please confirm if ive fixed it.