dr_hallsofdeath

Please upload the pictures to a site like imageshack and use

 

Better yet, get dropbox.

Edit: Map is terribad, going to look at the vmf now.

Edit 2: After looking at the VMF, I have concluded that this map is cancer and thus shouldn't be touched. Infact, the pointfile system gets so confused, it doesn't even know where to start.

Edit 3: Decided to be nice and fix up the first area of the map. Heck I even added two visgroups for you, to hide the middle glass and the skybox. I also deleted some bugged / invisi ents which were preventing the map from compiling correctly. I haven't improved the playability of the map, just the functionality and heavily optimized it, seeing as it was effectively a brick.

Link: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5512246/hallsofdeath.rar

A few tips: Don't use dev textures, don't put env_lights everywhere (for the love of god, learn how to use them - http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Light_environment ) and the rest I'm pretty sure you can figure out by looking at the vmf.

 

Well if you're going to whine and bitch every time someone says bad things about your maps, and give up mapping, you won't ever "be a success."

 

To explain some of what I did in a nice list:

• I applied nodraw to areas that the player doesn't / will never see. This means that vvis / vrad will never have to bother thinking about them during the compile, and thus they will be ignored. Lets you have faster compile times and it means that in the event source likes to cock up (ie every other moment) the player won't have performance issues. Look between the cracks with brushes, look under the buttons, nodraw, nodraw everywhere.
• I correctly positioned the spawnpoints to be above the flaw and (this was just a personal touch) alligned them. If they're too close to the ground, they can error and players can actually spawn in the ground. Again an issue with source, however it's better to get you into good practises early on.
• I reduced the texture scale to be 0.005 which makes that nice little pattern / design on the glass instead of having some giant stretched combine glass texture which looked plain ugly.
• Dev textures are textures that have /dev/ in the file path. These were designed as placeholder textures / example textures to be used until the actual textures were made, and thus really shouldn't be used as most of the time they look plain ugly. Again this falls more into good practise than it does neccessity
• I say your maps are trash because they are, you need to focus, learn from what you've been told and try improve upon it.
• The giant skybox that you have around your map in your vmf is a biiiig nono. No, you don't do it, even if you can't find the entities which were causing errors which leads onto-
• Use pointfiles to find leaks and if you can't find what the leak is coming from, read the compile log. It told me exactly what the problem was, and what was causing the leak. This admittedly wouldn't have been something someone like yourself would have caught without being told, but now you know.
• Everything is sealed. I didn't leave any parts open and allowed a giant idiot box to catch any errors I did. Compile the bsp and notice that there's no leaks (ie use the pointfile to tell you this).
• I used the skybox texture for the sky. tools/skybox is what you're looking for. For skybox textures - http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Sky_List
• Vis groups - Double click any brush / ent, click edit groups, new group, enter name and colour, close, your group should appear, tick the box. Any further brushes / ents you want to be in that group, you can just double click them and tick the box.

I'll be a bit nicer now, keep going and try to improve, it seems mostly you've followed some tutorials and not taken the time to experiment or keep clean. As with anything you learn (be it a language or mapping) you need to learn from the getgo to try and keep clean, efficient and neat.

 

Constructive criticism, It'll be the best criticism you'll ever receive.

 

If you can't take criticism, then you won't get anywhere - half the fun of getting criticism is then proving the ungrateful cretin who provided such criticism wrong later on. Even I used to get several levels of shit ripped out of my when my maps were released and riddled with bugs - if everything is already broken in your map, then it will break again when it goes into MP! Everything Teddi did is very easy to do. You should never release your first map, look at my first map released DR Map, Citadel, was it good? No but it was much better than what you released here today. You aren't going to get good at mapping overnight, it took me a year to create something like this below (Even I can point out a few issues with it).

 

What I found really easy (I mean, after you learn the basics and junk like skyboxing, learning the tools through and through, lighting, etc) was making surf maps. All you do is make some boxes and cut them into a pyramid shape, and that's surfing. You might want to try that flash.

Edit: Don't get me wrong, it's still work.

 

Sounds like someone has low self-esteem

 

source SDK confuses shit outta me (probably through lack of use) so dont put yourself down, theres people out there (me) who cant even do what you did....

 

Here's an old mapping tutorial of mine - http://www.bbroleplay.co.uk/forums/...pping-Tutorial!(Basics-to-get-off-the-ground) . It should be enough to get anyone started.