Working Model Of The CN Tower!!!

Yahoo!  Victory is mine.  I'm going to recommend Propper here.  It is solely responsible for me getting my first working model in game.  Yay.  Took a lot of screwing with, but it's done.  Had to go through CS:S in order for it to work, as you'll see below.

 

So there it is, way in the distance...  The CN Tower is a model.  How terribly exciting.

Brushwork in CS:S

 

With a wee model...!

Going to do some play testing now...

CN Tower in the 3D Skybox?

Working on the 3D Skybox today. Made the CN Tower in Hammer, then shrunk it down for the skybox, but of course now I have a few microbrushes. Didn't consider that. It works in-game, but I'll have to use a model of the tower I think. I'm wondering if and how well Propper works. I had no idea it even existed until today. I'm sure it's not the best way of doing this, but it might do for the time being... Also been messing with horizons for the skybox. Valve's textures aren't going to do what I want them to, so again, I'm going to make my own gradient texture I think. Valve now uses these black skybox models, but they do it with instances, so your whole 3D Skybox is called into your map from a separate .vmf... If you use these models in your skybox the old-fashioned way, they appear to screw things up. Maybe instead I'll figure out how the instancing method is done. Might be a better idea...

A couple of screens:

First attempt at getting the CN Tower and Toronto skyline into the map. Top of the tower gives me the microbrushes... Too bad, doesn't look too bad. Still works, but I don't like the idea of having errors in my compile. Gonna have to be a model...

 

Some of Valve's horizon textures. I don't think these are going to do it...

Back to work now... Cheers!

EFP Beta v2 Out Now!!!

Alright, so the .vpk issues remain unresolved, but 1SG.Heartless (many thanks!) was kind enough to point out that there's a work-around for the time being.  Basically you don't include the map files in the .vpk.  Instead you create the .vpk without them, then zip it up with the .bsp and .nav files separately.  The .vpk goes in the L4D2 addon folder as normal, map files go in the L4D2 maps folder.  Then everything works.  It'll do for now!

Here's the link to the temporary download site.  Follow the readme for installation instructions.  Can't put this up at l4dmaps.com because they only accept .vpk uploads, and that defeats the purpose.

I've created a Steam Group for the map, as well.  Hopefully this will help with getting some testing groups together.

Version 2 of the beta has a ton of changes from the original beta release at the end of the WoLD 11-Day Winter Mapping Contest.  Looks a lot better, plays a lot better.  Hope everybody enjoys it!

Cheers!

L4D2 Escape From Parkdale Beta Version Now Available!

So the World of Level Design 11-Day Winter Mapping Competition is finished, and I've released my first map!  Download the beta version.    What a fantastic and crazy process this was.  Anyone who's interested in the development can view my whole WIP forum thread here.  Going to play test it for a bit, but first a few screenshots:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cheers!

Many Thanks To Valve!

Yay!  There are still tons of issues, but Valve today fixed a whole bunch of problems with the L4D2 SDK.  Check them out here.  I'm quite excited.  Haha.  WOLD Level Design Challenge is going quite well, altough I'm already feeling brain dead!  Track my progress here.  Cheers!

WOLD 11-Day Level Design Challenge

Alright, so I've decided to put off finishing the CS:S map in order to enter World Of Level Design's  11-Day Level Design Challenge...  I won't be posting that much here for the next little while.  Instead I'll be following progress here.  The main forum where we're all posting our works in progress is here.  Gotta go, only 11 days to finish an entire L4D2 Scavenge map!  Yikes!

Another CS:S Screen

Here's one more.  I've just been working on this section.  Now off to kithiero's birthday party.

Counter-Strike Screenshots & L4D2 Update

First of all, I finally have a working test map of Scavenge Mode in Left 4 Dead 2.  Was a real pain, but it's all going on now.  I'm considering writing a tutorial, but to be honest I'm still a little confused, so I'm thinking that one should maybe be left to somebody with a little more experience... We'll see as I start to build an actual map.

Here are a few screens from the CS:S map.  Texturing is getting a lot better.  I'm getting near finished the texturing and optimization.  Still a lot of work to be done.  Next things to do after this pass will be the ground displacements, then lighting.

 

 

 

Figuring Out Left 4 Dead 2 SDK

Counter-Strike: Source map is coming along quite nicely.  I don't have any fresh screens, but the texturing and optimizing is going well, around 50% complete I'd say.  Still need to do lighting after that, it's all very basic right now.  I also still have to switch the exterior ground to displacement, which I think is going to improve the look and feel a ton.

Anyway, I've been looking at L4D2 in the past couple of days, trying to figure out the new instancing methods and trying to get a test map going on that will do both Scavenge and Survival modes.  No love yet, but it's coming along.  There are no tutorials to speak of on any of this yet, so it's basically fighting your way through the Valve example map (Deadline 2) and trying to figure things out...  Complicated as hell, but I think once it all becomes clear it's a far better system.  Posted a little tutorial on l4dmaps.net forums on the instancing thing...

Anyway, back to trying to get this working!