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Beta Mapper Application / Critique my map


BEAR

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Looks great! I especially like the front approach, and the 'lofty' type area with the ladders. Also the solidness of the construction (this goes over big with me, e.g. Blade of Darkness) and the tall windows are very cool. A lot of potential in there. It's actually gotten me a bit back into the mood.

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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.

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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.

post-342-1217218845_thumb.jpg

post-342-1217218908_thumb.jpg

post-342-1217218960_thumb.jpg

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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.

 

You don't really want an ambient light to be colored black...that won't really help. It has to be something slightly lighter that just barely lifts the shadows out of Doom 3's total blackness.

 

You use the Dark Radiant Color Wheel.

 

post-3-1217244451_thumb.jpg

 

Click on the outer wheel to change the range of colors, then click on the small circle inside the triangle to drag it to the color you want.

 

This is all available in the light editor in Dark Radiant. It's either J or L to bring it up.

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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 :)

 

I really like that last one, the room just feels cozy and late at night

 

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.

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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.

 

Yeah, you really have to play around with it to get the hang of it. I'm not sure why...but there is a huge difference between what you see in the Dark Radiant Render and what appears ingame. All the lights are much darker in the dark radiant render than they appear ingame. I think we need some type of gamma adjustment so a user can match their DR settings to TDM.

 

Lighting is a major factor in a game like this, so you should really start experimenting with the lighting. If you're just dropping the lights in at default values, it's going to look awful, especially if you are placing lights that should be casting a small amount of color to match the light source.

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I don't know if anyone cares,

 

I definitely do! :) Just a bit overloaded with work atm, sorry! /me loves the screenshots :wub:

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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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 :P

 

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 ;)

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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 :P

 

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 ;)

Nah, it is okay, I know I crave for attention, too :) You put all this hourlong work into something, and then nobody cares - hard on the soul :)

 

Anyway, I love what you do with the limited resources you have available. (What happened to your betamapper statues, did you receive it yet btw?). Especially the orange v. blue light shows promise, I never seem be able to pick up "nice" colors for lights...

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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I like the 'cast light' pattern on the floor, but it looks kind of strange that the window is glowy yellow and the light is blue.

 

You've essentially been cleared for beta-mapper status...just have to get your permissions set up.

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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.

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I think part of the reason your performance might be bad is that your rooms are really, really large.

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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!

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I wouldn't worry about it too much until after you optimize.

 

If you don't have any portals at all then you are always rendering the whole level. That's a major killer right there.

 

Plus after you get the beta-mapper stuff you'll have optimized (ambient) lighting and AI. 2 more major performance enhancers.

 

I'd recommend doing the portalling right away though. I think that's gonna tell you whether or not it will be playable. It will also give you a really good idea of what you are doping right/wrong so if this map doesn't work out you will know what to do before you begin another one. Optimizing really needs to be thought of during map making instead of as an afterthought for best results.

 

Your screens are looking pretty good btw.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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Yes, definitely learning process, very valuable. You can do "quite a lot" with DR, but not "anything", as experience will teach you. The extra creativity comes when you work on becoming more masterful in balancing performance and art

shadowdark50.gif keep50.gif
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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 years later...

BEAR !!!

 

Since you've returned I figured I would re-awaken this thread (with the hope of seeing some screens... ^_^ )...

 

Is BEAR still cleared to be a Beta Mapper :laugh:

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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