BEAR

Cool, I'll check it out! I think I'm going to have to run an SVN update first since I don't see it yet. I'm questioning whether my map will accomidate a skybox or not, I'm wanting to do kind of a big one. I'm putting my church up on an island (at least i think its an island now, I might eventually make a bridge to it or somehting but we'll see. I created an island with the intention of miniturizing it and putting it into a pre-made skybox I borrowed from the graveyard map, but I realized I couldnt scale models down and I wanted to have a couple of those wrecked little boats and boulders, so I'm going to see if I can't have a full-sized one. It very well might die but this map is more of a practice map/showcase anyways so I'm not going to worry too much about it. I've got the church itself visportaled pretty good so when you are outside it shouldnt be a big issue (hopefully). I'm going to have to figure out how to make my water darker but also visible though. Thanks!

I'm just putting in a skybox at the moment and playing around with some of the various moon elements (which are great by the way) and I got to wondering if it was possible to have a halo or circle around the moon. Best as I can figure that would just be a matter of making that part of the texture, right? Is that the kind of thing anyone else would be interested in having? I might attempt it but I'm no artist (in fact I'm pretty bad when it comes to such things). From my basic understanding it would be perhaps one of the existing moon textures with a tranparant surrounding halo and circle? May just be nitpicking but a moon like that really gives me a sense of wonder and reminds me of being out at night in the winter, which is a nice feeling to be able to capture.

This brings up an interesting point, do we have a repository for pictures of whole buildings that could be recreated or used as inspiration? There are several cool little churches around that I've taken a few things from just in driving by, but I've thought of walking around them and taking more pictures of them. It seems like it might not be a bad idea to have a place to store pictures of whole things, instead of just having a bunch of pictures of cool things. They could be catagorized and named by theme or something giving people a place to go for hi-res images that could also contain texture source images. Forgive me if this already exists and I don't know it, I cant get into the SVN yet

I've noticed a trend in things that I do, where I reach a level of complexity that troubleshooting really becomes impossible. To fix one thing you must fix 3 others first, but fixing those breaks several others and it just keeps cascading like that. I do a few things thinking that surely there is no way to break something, so I copy a working door+visportal to replace open walkway minus door, and the new doors work fine but the doors I copied to make them, all the sudden THEIR visportals quit working. Is it possible copying a visportal texture causes only one of them to work? That would be a hillarous bug if so because there would be nothing better for making me lose my mind

Ah, I think we've confused each other slightly. My problem is not leaking with the void, but leaking within the map (I might not be using the term correctly). I should provide some screenshots or something. Its more a matter of sealing rooms off from eachother (some have doors and some don't but in my testing it seems a door doesn't really matter unless you have the visportal touching it so it takes the open/closed attribute of the door). The map itself doesn't leak with the void, but all I can figure is there are leaks between a few of the rooms to eachother or the outside of the church because the visportal/door/door frame have been tested independently and are working. I've been using the r_showportals 1 extensively, would be nearly impossible to know what was happening without it its quite useful really). What I meant I'd done was to put a visportal over an open space (like a stairwell) even if it isn't going to be all that useful as a visportal, it seals a room off from a room that might have a leak in it somewhere, its helped me to isolate where my problem is. I think my map is so poorly organized for visportals my issues are probably more confusing than most.

I found some of my problem by blocking off rooms totally to isolate the problem and was able to check off a couple big spots that had previously not worked at all, but it still leaves a few portions where I'm going to have to find the leaks. Just to clarify, it would be better to have the whole window be func_static and have the visportal bigger than the window touching the worldspawn on all sides? I changed a bunch of things back to worldspawn from func_static thinking it had helped but fixing leaks might have been what helped instead. Are extra portals considered good for sealing leaks? It seems like maybe a cobbled solution but in a couple cases I was able to create visportals that I initially didn't plan to use that sealed a leak allowing others to work. I was thinking of doing that in another area that was causing me problems if I cant find the actual leak.

I did not do this as I should have, I really should have taken it into account as I built the map, but its decieving because when you are working on it with ambient lighting it runs at 50fps solid even with huge areas. I clearly saw as soon as I started lighting that I needed to work on it. My problem is not putting in visportals or knowing where, but making them work I think that I can, my map is just kind of quirky (like building a house on an unlevel and unsquare foundation, by the end it gets kind of tedious), but I'm pretty sure I can get it. I've already made it a lot better at its current level but I don't think I can keep doing significant lighting until I get it totally visportaled (and it would irresponsible of me to try).

Thanks, that clears a few things up. The actual visportal has to be surrounded by worldspawn correct? How would that work if I made it bigger than the frame surrounding a window, causing the visportal to encompass a worldspawn or two? Does the portal like/need to have a single worldspawn that it touches on all sides or can it be a bunch of them that touch? The main problem I'm having is some portals work fine, and others dont work at all and I'm having trouble figuring out why, I've copied door+frame+visportal and moved it thinking that it would work and it sometimes doest. I ended up "concreting" up a lot of my windows so that I can tackle them one at a time (I did a ton of them at once because it takes a while to compile the map). The finding leaks thing is where I'm worried, but in some cases I've plugged all the holes I can see and there are some portals that refuse to work, with others right next to them that work, making the hole problem seem unlikely. I'm thinking I'll pay more attention to my windowframes, because a lot of them were func_static's but I made them worldspawn to select individually and didnt turn them back into func_static which might be causing some of my problem. The tower I have (if you've seen the screenshots) was of particular problem, I couldn't get a single visportal to work in it and I'm not sure why, but the func_static issue might be part of my problem. I think I hoped to knock this out in a big flurry of work but I think its going to probably be a long steady process of doing them one at a time and fixing errors with my map while I'm at it. Thanks for the tips!

I have some questions about visportals, but before I start blathering off I'm going to try and figure out as much as I can myself. I did a test map where I experimented with what would break them and what wouldn't, and that helped my understanding of them quite a lot and I thought I pretty well had it figured out, but when I got to the huge and complex "real' map I'm working on, things did not work out nearly as well. What I'm wondering is there a good example map out that I could look at? I have looked at thiefs den a little bit but without the layer info its pretty hard to see whats going on (getting that might be enough). Preferably it would be nice to look at something with fairly big open spaces (unless I'm the only one daft enough to do that) with doors and windows and what not to see how others have done it. I don't have access to betamapper stuff just yet but as I understand it I will sometime here in the future, so does anyone know of something that might help me out? I've read through the wiki article several times and it has done me really well, but some real specifics of how I have things placed as well as the large scale make testing and fixing problems very time consuming. Thanks

Just as a friendly tip, if you've not done it, look into visportals. You're map looks easier to do this in than mine, but they are currently pounding my ass so don't go too far in before you find out whether the map will work or not. What I did was create a sample map to play around with them and see what works and what doesn't, what breaks things and what doesn't. Not that its helped me that much in my regular map but you cant start that too soon methinks.

Its funny because I designed the whole thing in the editor looking almost just like it does ingame, wheras if I look at thiefs_den you cant really see almost anything in the editor, I have no idea how he did it (layers I guess). As such I worry if this map will ever be playable of if you will need a cluster of quad cores to run it. We'll see, there is a lot I can already do (no visportals at all at this point, ashamedly, but soon!). It wont be easy either since I have so much open space. I will either have to figure out some clever or horribly crude ways around it. And yeah, the rooms are huge. I was aware of scale when I started but apparently not enough. I used AI to try and size things up but I kind of eyeballed it, meaning by the time I loaded the map up to feel it out, I realized it was much bigger than I thought ;-). Its all a learning process though, if nothing else I should have some half decent screenshots!

Great! Thanks guys! Take your time, no rush. I have plenty to play with in the meantime. Those lights aren't supposed to be yellow either (at least on the inside), but is the only decent glass texture I have atm (I think) ;-) Technically the light will be coming from a streelamp outside or something, and I'll probably use one of the distorted clear glass textures I've seen around on the inside. I think my biggest problem is going to be performance, its already chugging with the minimal lighting I have so that will be an adventure I'm sure since I didn't really make the map with that in mind. Experimenting with dmap shadowopt options atm.

Heh, didn't mean to sound like I was guilt-trippin ya, you have no obligation to look at my screenshots but I appreciate any input Now that I re-read that I sound kind of like a dick so I might edit that. I was in kind of an odd mood (as often I am when map, kind of excited to the point where I would make an ass of myself if other people were around, but at that time of the night they arent so I spread my jackassery over the internet instead.) I didn't mean it to sound like that

Ah, to be honest I actually copied his ambient light and just was looking at it in the light inspector, and noticed it looked black, or at least pretty dark. Somehow that idea skipped my mind, and when I tried to add some ambient light it was always way to bright and I was looking for a brightness setting or something, but I didn't check to see if it was actually pitch black. I've used the light editor a goodly bit but I'm still pretty novice at lighting, its kind of experimentation at this point, but I can see its going to possibly be the most fun part That one looks perhaps a little better than it really is and the rest look worse I couldn't quite capture the lighting right in the screenshots for whatever reason. It took me a few minutes to get the right orange color for the flame but I liked the result.

For anyone who's interested, I did some decorating and lighting (this is going to be addicting, its past midnight already and I'm afraid I'll be doing this for hours now) and since I've really not showed any these types of screenshots I figured I would. You might or might not be able to see anything, I turned my gamma and brightness up really high when I took them because the ones I took previously were much darker than they appeared in the game, but these are still considerably darker. I thought they were fine when I viewed them while having thiefs_den open, but it also makes my brightness higher (even alt-tabbed) so when I closed it I realized it was a lot darker than I thought. Its a little sparse because I don't have access to that many things, some rugs and pictures/tapestries/etc would complement it some (also would make obvious what my pictureframe moulding was for), but the ones I do have look great. I can see I'm going to have a lot of fun with projected lights through windows, in fact I may just do nothing but that and bare ambient lighting (joking, or am I). I'm going to be trying to go for somewhat of a derilict look, perhaps make it look like squatters were here (though if its abandoned why would the fireplace be lit, but I'll work that out). Thanks to Fidcal for his lights in thiefs_den, it would have taken me forever to try coloring my ambient light black (I'm sure its in a wiki somewhere, but having a light to copy is great), nevermind how to get fire in my fireplace.

Glad you like it! I feel a lot better about the outside since I redid it. I always kind of felt like it wasn't what I had wanted but while looking at it I couldnt figure out why. I was just walking around the house or something and it hit me how I actually wanted it to look so I had to run up here and start changing it. I should look at more pictures and what not for inspiration I think. What do you think of the inside? Do you think the timber-frame look can coincide with the medieval style of the outside? I'm thinking that in a learning-process sense I would be better off not totally scrapping a large portion of the inside and just tweaking on that, no more major architectural changes, but I'm afraid as I get better at using patches I'm going to want to constantly go back and redo things.

[edit] removed a lot of useless drivel [/edit] Far from done (or good) but the outside feels a lot better than it used to. I think perhaps those square windows don't work anymore (if they ever did), so I might replace them with arched windows. What does anyone think of the inside look? I'm wondering if the hewn/timberframe look works with the outside, or if I should scrap it and go for a more vaulted arch support look. At the top of the tower (or the room at the top) I plan on putting a bell (obviously) and filling the windows with a slanted grate type thing (just haven't done it yet) I like the new big side windows a lot more now, but you cant really see anything through them at the moment (and the glass texture doesn't align well atm but I don't plan on using it so I've not bothered forcing it to work) The curved steps in front I liked but I realized when I finished them that I wished the top step was as wide as the whole door-frame but it was fairly easy to make them (now that I've discovered the magic of fixed subdivisions) so I might redo them later, but this worked as a good experiment.

Yep. Ah, cool.

So, is it safe at this point to assume that my application is rejected, or perhaps more accurately, not accepted? If so its not a big deal, I just prefer to not leave it hanging here. I've almost entirely changed the church outside since my last posted screenshots, but I've decided to medieval it up a good bit more on the inside with more arches and what not (with my ever expanding patch skill). Could someone give me some kind of idea of what they would like to see when I get further a long so I'm not just posting screens constantly saying "is this good enough yet"? I know lighting makes it look a lot better but I had kind of planned to do all the structural and decorating work first so I would feel like I was jumping the gun just because I wanted to see what it would look like and I've been trying to be more structured about things. I think I might be putting too much importance on lighting, I could light now and still see everything plainly in the editor so maybe that would be a good thing to aim for. What I really want some carpet, my floors look so cold and uninviting.

Thanks for the thoughtful post, I appreciate you taking the time to look at things (I cant say I've made enough of an attempt myself) I know the tower is kind of meh, it was one of the first things I did in the map and never really liked how it worked but I was too lazy to redo it. As stated I might eventually scrap it and rebuild it, but with not lighting it really heavily you wouldnt really notice its flaws so much. (It looks better with windows too) The reason that I left the square landings was more structural, I wanted it to look like the stairs would stand so I added the bracing and what not in the way that I would if I were building them (well not entirely but partly), so thats why I did not cut them off to be more aesthetically pleasing. Also part of the story of my map is that the carpenters who made it were initially unskilled but learned a lot as they went :-) Haha, I've done that exact thing. The church design on the outside was bugging me because it didn't feel right so I changed the outside look considerably and I could hardly do anything else until I finished it because I was afraid the mental image I came up with would fade. Its just like programming for me, I'll be walking around spacing out and all the sudden realize something and have to run and write it down or do it before I forget. I came up with a cool little gimic to add story-wise (not that I'm there yet) and a funny conversation I could eventually add while just about to fall asleep, and I had to get up and write it down so I would find it in the morning and put in a txt file for later use. I do that kind of stuff with a lot of things I do, I also notice detail in my own place more now since Im trying to recreate it. Staring at corners and door frame molding. I've noticed that buildings have an absurd amount of decoration (or at least some). The amount of variance in the brickwork on the basilica nearby is incredible. My only hope would be to just copy or imitate that, I'll never be able to come up with something like that from scratch. I also realize the basement needs more detail. I had pictured it not being quite so big in my initial sketches, so I'll have to come up with more stuff to put down there (was thinking coffins or something with the graveyard being right there, but I'll have to flesh out my story ideas more). I'll add to that soon as I realize I need more rooms in general. I'm definitely not restarting or making something new, that is a big problem for me in general and I don't want to fall into that hole. My goal for this map is not just to say "hey look what I can do", its to actually start with a plan and an idea and progress in a reasonable manor and complete it. If its not good enough to get me a beta mapper position its not really a big deal because I'm really doing more for myself when it comes down to it. All beta mapper status would really do would be to give me access to more textures and more nice stuff to add to it while I work, instead I'll just use what I have and then eventually go back and redo some portions, its not a major setback. I'll continue to use DR and submit bug reports as I find them and offer feedback where I can. I would post some new pictures but I think its becoming kind of redundant. I think part of my problem is that I think about the process differently. My favorite maps to play are real places that have all the aspects of a real place to explore. I like the go here and go there maps just fine, but making city streets and "fake" walls and backdrops doesn't really peak my interest, thats why I've approached this map like I have. Its probably going to mostly be lost when I light the place but I enjoy building things so this kind of emulates that except I can do a ton more, I think a lot of people would get addicted to this if they knew it was out there.

Is there something you'd like to see closer up? Maybe add some AI models or something? I suppose I could even upload it somewhere if you preferred to run around. I'm changing it all the time (while I have the summer half-off I'm working on it more), for example I've added the arched windows all around the tower and put square windows in the first and second floors of the church today and yesterday. I've not done a lot of close detail work, and without proper lighting there is not much contrast I know. A fair number of things are just placeholders (as Slash mentioned the pews are just lame brushes, one of the first things I did just to give myself perspective). Let me know how I might help give you a proper impression and I'll be glad to do it.

Is it just me or are people shorter in TDM than in D3? I was noticing in thiefs_den as well as the map that I'm working on, the scale that seemed OK when I was using doomedit (and fatzombies for scale) now seems off. I started adding doors from TDM (which were taller than the door-like-holes I had previously), I started kind of scaling by them and now I realize when I play my map that the door is freaking huge compared to me. As such some of my windows are a lot higher off the ground than I realized they were. Anyone else noticed this or have a comment? Its definitely not important but it just seemed odd that something like a door model which is pretty much static would be so tall compared to players.

Having access to practice maps and what not is probably as good a teaching tool as anything. I know I copied the doors strait out of thiefs_den to play with them because I could start with something that works and break it rather than starting from nothing and trying to make it work.

Seconded. That just gave me an idea of how to copy and paste the window, and that is to just save an entire square containing the window and he surrounding material and plug that right in!

I don't want to get in the middle of this discussion but I didn't actually mean it like that, I meant layers of effort not DR layers The way I've got layers atm is the church in one, the tower in one and the terrain in one, just to make the orthogonal views less insane. I've considered though doing layers as floors of a building if I were do be making one big enough to need it.