Office Party

[NAKED]

Well this is one my son and I started a couple of months back...then the Orange Box update to SDK came out a screwed everything up. But I have things working again and here are some Screen Shots.







This is much lighter in game than this SS looks.




The story line is your team of crack head commando's start in the basement of the office building, and must make your way to the top floor to destory a bomb or something real nasty (TBD).
If spotted by the wrong patrol a global alarm is set off and then (A BUNCH) of combine_s will attack. so this is not to be a shoot'em up ONLY map, some steath and timing would be needed.
I will be trying to incorporate a "hide in shadows" ability, this way the NPC searching for you will not "see" you if the light level around you is low enough (I am still working on this).

I am hoping with the next month or two, to have it ready for some play testing.

NAKED

[skidz]

Gotta fix up that lighting, and the pipes sort of sticking out of nowhere isn't the greatest looking.
Its pretty good so far though.

[NAKED]

Actually if you are refering to the dark SS of the basement, it is lit up well in game. But for what ever reason the Screen Shot shows it real dark. The pipe sticking up from nowhere is actually one of 2 water mains, shut off valves coming in from the floor.

I am having issues with Cubemaps....I set the lighting then place cube maps "eye ball" height and in areas where they should be, then complie, then start game go to console and do BUILDCUBEMAPS, it runs ...then I quit and restart the game and some of the stuff still is real shinny or has a purple reflextive glow to it.

So yea I still have a lot to do to it anyway.

NAKED

[Tono-Tako]

fear wannabe?

[fug4life]

Do you have sprites in your map?

Try this before building cubemaps

sv_cheats 1, (god mode no clip)
picker
ent_fire !picker kill

Basiaclly kill all your sprites before you buildcubemaps.
(even Valve for get to do this, thats why some times you see a glow round a corner when you cant even see the light, Ep2 in sewers).
You try using the ent_fire hide sprite command but I prefer to zoom round and kill them.

Map looks quite impressive, use decals and overlays they are you detail friend!!! the first more than the second, i.e for instance you can put two rusty stain decals on the floor right where those pipes meet the floor.
It just makes the transition from pipe to floor. Also the only thing I'm not soo keen on is the long strip light, nice propstatic model ones would look better. If you want I'll send you a couple of examples of how to imrpove the lighting a little bit more.

All in all it's looking good I look forward to playing !!!

[DaMaN]

Neat-o!! I'm certainly looking forwards to playing this!

Only comments map-wise is try to use a few more brushes to accentuate the rooms - they look a bit too cubular. Take a look at a real office building, and you'll note that they aren't boxes (unlike a cubical), they have bumps and corners and edges sticking out of walls and ceilings. But yea. That's really my only complaint. Oh, and use more decals and overlays like fug4life suggested. (There's some good props and decals packaged up with Obsidian that I've been eyeing for some time - the coffee mugs, calendars, and posters especially)

Oh, and I can't wait to see you try out the hiding-in-shadows type thingy. It sounds neat and I can already kind of sort of maybe think of a few ways to do it but I'd much rather see yours.

Yay!

[larz]

looks good

[Power-Mad]

When changing floor texture so suddenly like in the last picture, it's good to add a boarder around it. Doesn't need to be a full doorway, but best not to just suddenly change style like that.

[TheMoon]

Sounds interesting, and looks solid already.
I guess you could improve the lighting a lot by using light_spots, not only simple lights. That way you'd have more contrast/nicer shadows in it.

And I'm looking forward to that "hiding" ability.

[fug4life]

I'm sort of working on a stealth map aswell, Your's sounds alittle different to mine, but stealth is stealth. I have to say I've never seen stealth in
co-op I have mixed feelings how things will go come public server online play. But its nice to have some variation in the maplist.

[NAKED]

Thanks for the comments and suggestion, all good! I currently have 3 floors and 1 basement. The Basement and 2nd floor are about 60% filled in (desk, chairs, pipes, tanks, ect.) the finer details I have not even started, and floor 1 and 3 just have the walls, floors, doors and a plan..alot of trial and error is done here, such as the hall are extra wide because I found info_node and info_node_hint were not doing a good enough job keeping the NPC from piling up. So learn as I go.

And let me get one thing straight ...the "cover of darkness" stealth thing is NOT my idea, I was reading throught some forums and another guy gave a tut on how he did it....this was back in 2004 when written and does not work as published now so I am trying to re-work it (credit will be give to author. I say this so as not to take credit for something I didn't do AND so that when I ask for help from all of you you won't be surprised.

Will update as I go.

NAKED