DXMP_Railway

[Whiplash]

My first DX map, will be posted when its done, will be somewhat larger than Iceworld or Pool, centering around a single track railway line. There will be a level crossing with a local road (accompanied by a defunct gatekeepers cottage which will be a spawnroom). Hopefully also a station (also a spawnroom) and some buildings at the edge of town. (also spawnrooms). I'm also going to put a hedgerow along the railway line, perhaps some ditches en-route as well. Anyways heres the first sshot.

[jager774]

Nice idea!
What about putting an inactive train ( or two? ) on the railway, and use its cars as spawns?

[ShadowRunner]

Two things impress me so far, you've given it thought to lighting and also to detail.

Can I make a suggestion. It appears you simply added two very long brushes for the rails. This is not great for a number of reasons. Specifically, two additive brushes touching the whole floor and both map edges, in my opinion are likely to cause you some problems later on, especially when you start to add sleepers or the bolts every few metres along the way.

It would be better to make smaller rails, exactly like in real life.

Again in real life, I could be wrong but I think you will find rails don't exists on the road, but in fact a groove or subtraction in the road exists and a rail is placed at exactly the same height as the road surface. I've quickly tried to give an example.
The top of the rail is polished by the train, but the sides are rusty, just showing how the rail is higher than the pebbles, but same height as the road, with a groove in the road, for the wheel to run along the trail.



The other thing I would comment on at this stage, is skybox. It's really difficult in outdoor maps that are square, to hide the squareness and produce a decent skybox.

There are two stages to getting this right and no-one ever bothers. Firstly the content of your skybox needs to be the right scale. This means deleting and reconstructing your skybox scenery as many times as necessary until it looks the right size to the player in-game, you can't use the scale button. Secondly it means having the map edges not all the same level. Sometimes it should be something tall, sometimes a low fence, if the corners and edges of your map are all the same height and size, your skybox will fail, however good it is.

An example of someone bothering to make a skybox is my Indiana Jones map. It's square, but it doesn't looks square, sometimes there is no map edge at all, sometimes a corner might have a hill, sometimes a building, it is not square. Also the town inside the skybox is sized reasonably well enough to look real.

I think this will be the hardest part of your map, it's outdoors and needs a skybox. Overall though it is a promising start in terms of details and lighting.

[Mastakilla]

This is more then I'd expect for a first map, well done

[ShadowRunner]

I should make that point too, the stuff about skybox is never expected from beginners, but it will make a big difference to the outdoors environment I think. I was just so happy with those 4 little alarm light posts, I can tell you are thinking of detail and lighting...

[Whiplash]

Thanks for the feedback, Shadow in particular. This being my first map, I'm not going to go overboard with skyboxes etc.

In any case, the map is done now, it's called DXMP-FGS-Railway-V1 (as I'm likely to start a whole new version at some point). It's a bit schizophrenic but I think it will be fun - I was careful to add elements to accomodate the 3 main playing styles, sneaking, sniping and close range combat.

Can you attach maps to posts on this board? Or would it take up too much space or something?

[[FGS]Chees]

Whack it in a win-zip folder and post the zip file for all to download.
Edit your on trial Whip so take on board what Shadow said as it makes perfect sense if you want to be in FGS. Spend some time getting the sky box done as it shows strength and willing to learn from what others teach, when we all vote yes or no when the time comes.

[~DJ~]

Awesome, Whippy!

[Whiplash]

Whack it in a win-zip folder and post the zip file for all to download.
Edit your on trial Whip so take on board what Shadow said as it makes perfect sense if you want to be in FGS. Spend some time getting the sky box done as it shows strength and willing to learn from what others teach, when we all vote yes or no when the time comes.

I understand what you're saying, and I agree, but for this map, development speed was the main factor - I was impatient to get somehting "out there" and so getting the railway, the road, the spawnrooms and some features was key.

I also wanted to get feedback from the map itself as an implementation of the idea.

I may make a V2 of this map and I'll be keen to do it as well as possible, taking into consideration all the feedback I get, including everything Shadow said above. Edit: but that will take much longer.

[Whiplash]

Final version posted in the "Maps" subforum.

[ShadowRunner]

Actually skybox was just a suggestion, simply because this year has been bad for outdoor maps. Only Antarctica by Face (unreleased) and the Indiana map (unfinished) had skyboxes. Perhaps it should be the next map challenge, "Face and I are the only real mappers lol, map gods have to prove us wrong" bleh lol, someone know my joking here about "real mappers".

It was one of the most noticable things in the mapping contest also, perhaps due to the 2mb limit. I suggested it, as I saw how Gobary and Bunkers suffered in this respect and players didn't vote so much.

Personally I think DXMP_S9 skybox is fail, it has to be at least as good a single player skybox, or use one or there is no point, just make an indoor map.

Not referring to your first map but speaking to all mappers when I say ...There's no point to being a mapping god inside the player area and then sucking terribly at making the "bigger" area or view in the map, or just chucking in a SP skybox.

I can do alien planets easy, but real life places on Earth outside cities or built-up areas are the hardest, even at night, your corners have to be perfect or hidden without the "I'm hiding corners" look. Cities are relatively easy and don't take long, but no-one bothers, every single Urban map released this year had an empty skybox. Sounds like a crusade, but just thought it was useful to mention this in a mapping forum.

[chin.democ.]

I tend to have out of bounds brushwork in the map rather then incorporate it into the skybox, play around and see what works best for you.

[ShadowRunner]

Yes but what do you have beyond your brushwork, black sky all the time?

For example, turnpike street, whole one side of map is black. is this turnpike in the middle of nowhere? Fair cop if it is...

Same thing on UR map and Upper Hengsha, some work cut there, presumably these are urban or suburbian settings.