De_oriental/Untitled *wip*

[teshok]

I literally haven't opened hammer for six months and i'm kinda rusty.

I'm going for an oriental inspired theme however i don't have any decent custom textures or models, and i cant model for shit.

[goldendeed]

I like it so far, i know its a WiP, but be sure to add some more cover and maybe develop an overall theme of what that area does. e.g. a house or a market or whatever. Its a good start, keep up the good work

[teshok]

I've made a lot of progress since my last post.








I'm having a hard time finding usable models though, still looking for bamboo

[MayheM]

The roofs could use a little work. The arched roofline is a traditional look for japanese design, but typically the roof is a bit more ornate. Often the roof comed to a single point and the bottom corners actually turn upward. Like the image below.


The rest of the look you have is good. I would expand upon the idea and look at a lot of Asian styles to pull influence and inspiration. Other than that I would say the name could be better. It just seems very generic...

Anyway good start...

[mookie]

Bombsite B looks pretty weak, as far as I can tell it's just a rectangle protected by a wall with three holes in it. Maybe lose the wall, elevate it, then shift the whole site to the side so you can walk into it from the space between the two stair runs. You could make the inside of the building on the other side playable and include a stairwell so it can be used to get into the site from the end of the bridge.

The bridge and area around it (presumably CT spawn) seems like a very exposed area that players will want to avoid trying to cross. Imagine trying to get across the bridge and into bombsite B while someone hiding by the double stairs tries to hit you with an AWP. If you're able to jump down into the water, then walk out (up some stairs or just up the bank) on the other side that would make a big difference. Or, if you're able to walk a route through the buildings that overlook the bridge and get between the two sites that way (It looks to me like you might be able to walk out there from near bombsite A, but can't actually get to B). There doesn't seem to be a good way to add cover to the bridge.

The alley running towards the double stairs looks long and forbidding, and the smaller alley parallel to it on the other side of the building looks to be the same but narrower. Losing this long rectangular building and replacing it with a few smaller buildings is probably the way to go.

The stairway the weaves back and forth by the canal near T spawn seems excessively complex. It may look nice, but it's a great spot for a gaggle of Ts to get blocked if they all want to rush down the stairway into A.

Looks pretty nice, but can't see much of the T part of the map.

[Ale]

Looks really nice.

A bit ot, was I the only one who nearly shat his pants thinking wiggle updated his old dm_oriental (home of the best tree evur) ?

[teshok]

Thanks for the input guys Ive made a few changes

messed with those alleys at the back. Now you have to pass through one of the buildings


dont bother trying to read with they say i just picked the ones that look cool

[Hypey[UG]]

Custom texture isn't gritty enough tbh.
Otherwise it looks good! (despite the wall texture reminds me of gm_construct) D:

[Stormy]

Hey you could probably use my model on that map.



Download

It's ragdoll and selfillum.

[teshok]

thanks Black_Stormy ill make sure to use that in my map.

ive finished the layout for now. Its now a hostage rescue gotta build the skybox optimize and test. Then its onto detail work.

the yellow lines are paths through buildings.

[mookie]

If this is going to be a counterstrike map instead of defuse, you will probably want to rethink that zig-zag staircase as it will (at best) slow down the hostages. The narrow canal could be an issue as well, as hosties tend to shamble around and fall over ledges. It looks like there is another S-curve staircase leading out of T spawn to the east; if both of the routes out of T spawn give the hosties much trouble, I'd consider the map to be defective, no matter what it looks like.

Spawning the CTs way in the back corner of the map seems unnecessary. Based on the overhead, the area behind/beyond the rescue zone seems excessive. Any part of the map here that can't be used for camping the rescue zone should be destroyed, although without knowing what the ground-level structure looks like down there it's hard to say if that would mean just losing the CT spawn room, or parts of the former bombsite as well. The position of the rescue zone itself looks good relative to the bridge and staircase, although it could probably be bigger.

Spawning the CTs in or around the rescue zone is usually a good idea since a lot of players will simply try to return to CT spawn once they have the hostages, even if that isn't where the rescue zone is. Thinking specifically of Kismayo, I've seen a lot of times where players will actually go past a rescue zone with the hosties. I would not be surprised if players coming down the stairs towards the zone frequently take a left turn into those doorways and head back towards CT spawn. This is one reason why it's good to make the rescue zone large (so you can't run the hostages past it by accident) and not have a lot of dead space behind it.

I'm not sure, but it seems like you have too many ways to go through the main part of the map; maybe you should lose the long alley running along the northern edge of the map since it's redundant with the alley and the path through the building south of it.

P.S. If you want to show a good overhead screenshot, use cl_leveloverview.

[MayheM]

Just to add some input on mookie and his comments... He is really good at seeing flaws and just as good at giving suggestions on how to fix/edit said flaws. I would pay attention to what he posts. He has helped me on two of my maps and the before and after are pretty awesome...

[teshok]

Thanks for the input mookie. I'm gonna start working on those changes, I'm gonna delete that area with the zig zag stairs as I'm at 99% water indicies and its causing all kinds of errors. also gonna move the ct spawn.
pics without changes ( spent the last 3 nights optimizing got the compile down to 1 hour 30 still not good enough)





wtf causes this !!!!??!

[iTrump]

Just throwing out a thought you should try to get some cherry blossom trees to really add to the realism and color.

[mookie]

It looks like some faces are disappearing or just not being rendered. Barring some error with the map (I've had sometimes where one or two triangles will just not appear even though there's nothing wrong looking at it in Hammer), most likely it is overflowing the amount the engine is willing to draw. That is, too many faces potentially visible. The best way to fix this is optimization. If you can't get it done with hints (should be doable), you may need to use some areaportals. For any optimization to work, you need to make sure all the brushwork is solid (i.e. not with tiny gaps all over the place). Areaportals are really a last resort, after you do everything you can with leaves.

On the compile time, you should probably ignore the VRAD component for your optimization, and just run with VBSP and VVIS so you don't waste time. A long time spent on VVIS is going to indicate that the map needs a lot of optimization. It's hard to say how long it should take since the time spent on VVIS is probably going to grow something like N³ (or worse) if N is the size of the map (i.e. if one map is twice as big as another, it might run 10x as long on VVIS, so there's not much point even asking for a number on how long it goes). If you're getting it down, that means you're probably optimizing the leaves successfully. Doing a good (-final -both) VRAD compile probably should take a few hours (or maybe less; my computer is seven years old by now!) and a lot of time spent on VRAD by itself does not indicate a problem.