by mookie on Fri Apr 01, 2011 8:08 pm
The overall atmosphere/light seems very consistent. However the combination of relatively bright light from the sky with a lot of miscellaneous lit artificial lights does not seem right. Usually outside artificial lights would not be on during midday, or if they are on, they would not be casting a noticeable amount of light (except in more deeply shadowed areas). The clean whiteness of most of these point lights also does not seem to fit with the general atmosphere. Instead I'd expect warmer yellow (red/green) light to contrast with the cooler light from the sky. As they are, these point lights seem to me to eliminate visual diversity wherever it would naturally exist, rather than allowing either naturally shadowed areas to contrast with the lighter open areas, or cool, naturally lit areas to contrast with warm, brighter, artificially lit areas. A tool like kuler or the colour selection part of any Photoshop-type program may be useful to pick out colours by HSV rather than RGB. Be careful not to use colours that are too saturated, as they will usually make textures look worse.
The curbing lining your roads looks strange, probably because of the way it lunges back and forth for no obvious reason (e.g. screenshot #14/21/27, in front of the hotel). Try first to make it so that the road only moves side-to-side in order to avoid an object, rather than in many places where it seems like the road lunges to one side just to bring it closer to a nearby wall (screenshot #23, screenshot #19). It does make sense broadly to avoid having long, straight areas in a map, but there is not much point to applying this to the ground in this way, because the difference between the road and the sidewalk is immaterial to gameplay. Also, you probably want to avoid having things actually overlap the curbs, like the two wooden columns on the right side in screenshot #14. Generally, it doesn't look good to have a column or wall come down on top of another brush so that the outside edges of the two are flush, rather it's usually better to leave the one brush a little bit wider so there's a small ledge/overhang.
It seems like the lone wooden columns that you have in a few places could use some strength in terms of having some protection around the foot or having them visibly planted in something (like concrete) rather than just hitting the brick sidewalks. Mainly the need is to provide some separation between the ground and the column, so that it doesn't look like the column is just standing on top of the ground, but rather driven into it. Many if not all of the buildings themselves could probably use a small but visible foundation running along the feet of the walls.
The buildings that are made of brick could use some strengthening, especially anywhere that the bricks are hanging over space (screenshot #21). It looks very unnatural to have bricks hanging with nothing below them like this, but also it does not do the building any favours visually, because all the walls blend together into a same-textured jumble with no visual separation between the different walls.
Try to avoid using easily-recognizable props from other maps (e.g. crates from office, brick piles from dust/dust2), unless they fit visually with your map. Creating a custom crate texture or two to fit what few crates you need to use is very easy and can help make your map feel like it's its own. Custom materials don't need to be especially flashy or eye-catching. A good example is probably the various crates in de_cpl_fire.
Signs and decals are definitely an area to use a custom material, like your hotel sign, which looks like the letters are made of brushes.
The brickwork around the stairs going down to the railroad track looks flimsy.
In general, try to design the look of each building individually, as a whole building, with a consistent visual and structural style. In general your buildings look OK, although they could probably each use some work to make them a little more interesting. The one building that stands out (in a bad way) is the blue/tan brick building alone in a corner of the map (screenshot #29, center, screenshot #18). These colours just don't work together.
You may want to use blend materials on some of your displacements, especially the dirt by the railroad track, to vary the ground visually. If you need to, you can make a custom blend from any two existing textures just by making a new VMT file.
The huge brick wall blocking the railroad is an area that looks like it needs a lot of work, and possibly major changes. Depending on what you want to do with it, keep in mind that you can model the inside of a tunnel until you run out of light, and the just block the end with black.
"When you mess up, it makes me feel better about me." -- Vince Masuka
