New map: Excalibur

[Mayonaise]

Heya guys,

I made a map. It's called Excalibur. I made the map mainly for ictf and ectf purposes, but someone did the suggestion that it would also fit for hold games, so I put bases on the map as well!
Tell me what u guys think!

The zipfile with all you need is in the attachment (I think)!

Hope u like it

Greetz,
Mayonaise

[rabe]

Good job so far. Except for the lighting:

/ambient 55 is way too high. It makes it impossible to create natural contrasts/shadows. The sunlight does not come from the direction of the sun displayed on the skybox. Be sure to point your crosshair at the sun and then execute the command /getsundir to fix this.

I would try a different lighting concept for the map. Choose a night skybox with a moon. Add some (not too much) skylight and a slightly stronger sunlight coming from the moon. Give those a slightly blue (also not too much) touch. Keep it darker. Then use torches and fires as lightsources (slightly orange/yellow), as you already did. In addition open some of the windows and use them as lightsources, too. Let the lights shine to the outside from the inside.

I addition I would think of some blendmapping, the floor textures could use some at the borders. It would really look good to blend some of the grass or sand over the stone paths.

[frosty]

next time upload a preview screenshot foo!

[Mayonaise]

@Rabe, good advice you gave there, I totally forgot about the ambient setting  (must have put it on 55 very early and then forgot about it )
I adjusted all the lightings and added a nighty-skybox as you said, and I think it looks better now. Thanks rabe!

@Frosty, this time i brought some screenshots too!

Greetz, Mayo

Here are some screenshots:

[Nighty]

Nice, i remember helping critique this map. I think i will enjoy it once ive played it.

[Suicizer]

Nice to see this map being released to the public; I was looking forward for that.

I like the map having the "old village" theme. There aren't many of that yet while having a good flow and gameplay. I think this one should be added to that team also.

The lighting feels fine and the overall texture is a pleasure to the eye. The idea of hopping from roof to roof and bridge to bridge is a lovely thought.

Glad to see the effort spend teaching you about the shader-system is paying of pretty well ^^.

Next to all that fun stuff, there are still certain things which could be improved.

The zip-file contains stuff like .DS_Store and _MACOSX.
Please read the caveats of the packaging guide found in the next link: http://quadropolis.us/node/226.

The map still needs some refinement of the performance. For example, there are a lots of crates which have been copy-pasted around the map, but there has been forgotten that they have some geometry inside the surfaces (which are facing walls right now so you obviously can't see them during play).



The map still could use some ceiling of clip. You might not be able to get on top of it right now (although I'm quite sure you can with a doublenade jump when you've practiced), it ensures that players stay in the playground. It also helps the PVS-culling system (which perhaps could be pretty efficient on this map) to work properly.
The rest of the clipping seems sometimes unfinished also. The screenshot of that pointy building is an example.



The placement of the weapons and playerstarts is quite odd. For example; there are 2 YA on the roof which are very close to each other. If both are still not taken, you can easily control them by picking one and rocketjumping to the other. it is also hard for bots to pick; so you would give them a serious disadvantage which makes it pretty lame to play with them.

The waypoints still could use some improvement. For example; why are bots not allowed to just jump right on top of the edge near the flag 360 1 0 0 0? Those playerstarts near that could be putted a bit lower also. The bots can't reach the roofs while there are quite some pickups (like the YA) spawning right there.

There are many more of such examples, but I won't bother you by telling you all that.

There are small things like the marking of the flags not having a nice round shape since a edit error and not being noclipped, but that's okay for now; those things are easily fixed.

Well, time to stop talking about what still could be done and look at the map generally. It's a nice map which combines XY-axis fragging with the Z-axis also by using the rooftops and I like that.
So keep going like this man!

Edit:
Forgot to mention; there's no difference in appearance between the bases. Perhaps some banners to make it more recognizable?