gm_highroad (S1M1S)

[S1M1S]

Okay, heres for my not-very-long-awaited map, gm_Highroad! Yeah!

I'm pretty much ready to release it but alas I am only a junior mapper, so I want to avoid silly mistakes. Any suggestions from you guys would be very much appreciated.

The ideology behind the map is pretty simple, I wanted to make a map with practically no lag on any system (I'm working off a mini HP laptop with a 1.66 ghz processor and 1 gig of ram) but still good for building in.

Here come the pictures!

Spawn:

A main overview:

The test track:

Above the arena


I'm just wondering though, is it possible to, like, clean a room by pressing a button? Like, deleting all of the explosion decals and stuff... so when you press a button the room changes from:

to:


Thanks for anybody's help in advance

The .bsp: http://www.mediafire.com/?be7dedcbbviwbh3
The .vmf: http://www.mediafire.com/?4q538q6uvvm5tfa

[CorporalAris]

Heh./

[S1M1S]

Heh./

I'm glad someone replied but it's not quite what I thought it would be...

[Jordash]

Please add lights, surely low end systems can still render lights!

[S1M1S]

Please add lights, surely low end systems can still render lights!

As in the light ent? Okay, I'll do that

[S1M1S]

I'm still wondering though, is it possible to make a 'battle cleanup' button? To get rid of the explosion decals and stuff? Because the lag from the decals irritates me...

[Hollow]

erm, use a logic_timer or create a trigger so that it kills all the items when you want it to.

Apart from that, looks like you've achieved the look of a lag free map...make sure you are using all the optimization tools at hand in the SDK....but thats far from saying this is good, by any stretch. Not sure you will impress many people here visually, of course. But I don't play Gmod, so this prolly serves no purpose for me.

And for future reference, its better to use the '[Img/] [img]" codes to show images, I found it pretty tedious to click each image individually, having about 8 tabs open :/

[Plague]

May i suggest you look into this guide to make sure you're map is optimized as much as possible.
http://optimization.interlopers.net/ind ... pter=intro

[S1M1S]

May i suggest you look into this guide to make sure you're map is optimized as much as possible.
http://optimization.interlopers.net/ind ... pter=intro

Well I did the nodrawing and I hinted and skipped - personally occluders and areaportals don't intrest me - and I believe that the map is very optimised. Is there another form of optimization apart from the ones I mentioned above?

erm, use a logic_timer or create a trigger so that it kills all the items when you want it to.

Hey thanks , I'll try it out.

Apart from that, looks like you've achieved the look of a lag free map...make sure you are using all the optimization tools at hand in the SDK....but thats far from saying this is good, by any stretch. Not sure you will impress many people here visually, of course.

Yes, I never intended this to be a very good looking map, but are there ways to make it look much better without being detrimental to gameplay?

And for future reference, its better to use the '[Img/] [img]" codes to show images

Ah, I'll keep this in mind

Thanks a lot for commenting guys I will try to do as many of these things as I can

[Plague]

You Func_Detailed non-sealing/complex geometry?

[S1M1S]

You Func_Detailed non-sealing/complex geometry?

You mean the cylinder? Or the track area?

[Furling]

If you really don't need the decals, just make some custom textures with $nodecal 1
Than they won't appear in the first place

Although I strongly doubt that anyone would ever buy Gmod without expecting to be able to run at least HL2 without lag, meaning this over the top optimization is rather pointless. Still, it's your map, so do as you wish

[Plague]

You Func_Detailed non-sealing/complex geometry?

You mean the cylinder? Or the track area?

I meant any areas where it would be better to Func_Detail things, but it looks like you got optimization down pretty well.

I would encourage you to get into SP mapping, or Multiplayer mapping with this same optimization ethic.
Try making the most beautiful map for SP as you can, but make it extremely optimized.

[S1M1S]

If you really don't need the decals, just make some custom textures with $nodecal 1
Than they won't appear in the first place

Ooh, thanks for the tip! I'll see how it works

Although I strongly doubt that anyone would ever buy Gmod without expecting to be able to run at least HL2 without lag

I would

I would encourage you to get into SP mapping, or Multiplayer mapping with this same optimization ethic.
Try making the most beautiful map for SP as you can, but make it extremely optimized.

I only have episode 1, and I only got it so I could play GMod... When you say MP, do you mean for Deathmatch?

[city14]

Deathmatch, Tf2, css, multiplayer games!