Further Development Images

Rendered images of dm_extraction

These are a few screenshots of my level built and running on steam, however so I diddnt have to wait all this time for a proper build VIs hasnt been enabled which means its direct lighting only as well as a few other problems, also I havent dont any lighting properly yet so its just the occasional basic light source.

As you can see there are a lot of small things that need fixing as well as general decoration and optimisation, the images speak for themselfs, the only thing to post next for now is maybe an image of a above view graph to better describe how the map was designed.

Work for the Steam Servers

Designing the Map

Well although its taken me longer than I had thought to get this far and I split tea on my keyboard so now x,c and v all stick, my Christmas project is nearly finished. This project was to get a foot in on the Steam servers by creating a really good Half Life 2:Deathmatch server map which should attract a lot off attention hopefully to my map designs. This will be aided by programming the server to offer a invitation to every player who plays the map to join my steam community group or add me as a friend. The group which I haven't thought too much into yet will be somewhat about good level design, team work and beta testing but mainly telling the players about current map/s or up and coming ones, but the main benefit of this is that anyone who is a member of a group can receive event notices for scheduled times, this I can use to tell all members that a new map needs testing or an event to get a large number of players playing at once.

The map I have designed is cunning in nature I hope and I will be explaining more about is as I finish off the map. So far I need just a few more days to complete it to the point I can test it out on a server. The basic shape of the map is an S shape, each side of this team deathmatch map has a base building with the main way the fight each other being a wide S shaped outdoor arena. But each side has the option of going around a different route which is full of tighter and smaller arenas to eventually come in from behind the enemy via either underground sewer pipes or a broken down wall. Also their is a bridge that can be reconstructed with planks that grants that person and others a quick way to the enemy until it is destroyed again. Here are some design images I took recently of my work so far, everything is pretty much laid out and textures need now applying in places and objects created as well as roughing up wall edges and such.

This is a kitchen area on the combine side, I could have gotten shot of this game rendered ingame but unfortunately I didn't have enough time to build the level as it takes hours at the moment because the file hasn't been optimised to gamepley yet which consists of identifying objects and surfaces the don't need to be rendered or needs to be told to not react to lighting or exist as a solid. These things save on memory and file size as well as cuts down on the time it takes to build.


Here we have the basic layout for the main entrance to the combine building, the players are given a good chance to defend here but also attackers have a chance to run for cover.



One of the things I realised while playing Deathmatch was that whoever had the better weapon ruled over everyone else unless they where more experienced or just lucky. So it was important not to place weapons in the wrong place for the sake of team balance, to answer this problem I came up with the technique of making weapons hard to acquire but ammo placed in some of the areas where that type of weapon might be desirable. For instance the combine have a guard tower which would be perfect for a rocket launcher, but since that would just mean everyone would stay there and get kills I will put a small amount of respawing ammo of different types of weapons and make the corresponding weapon harder to acquire without too much running around.


Something I had to learn for the first time in Hammer was terrain, I had to keep the number of pixels down for the sake of memory because the map itself is rather big at this point, this is the first area as the rebels leave the underground sewer leading from the back entrance of their base and it is another point of possible standoff/defence of the area this is a middle ground easily dominated by either side so whoever gets it is rewarded with the rocket launcher.

This map is based on a dream I had not long ago, I wont go into the details but it had all my friends in it and we where against each other on a map like this on, I remembered the images I had from the dream and realised how great the map actually could be. The design is suppost to be a military base, the rebels side a barracks and reception/office/medical building leading to an underground lab you don't see, the combine area is suppost to be the old building next to the barrack which was used as a storage docks, officers rooms and a room which is a big bathrom for the soldiers. These two areas are separated but an S shaped middleground full of debris from the wrecked building and previous attacks, this map is suppost to capture a moment when the combine have attacked and securely taken half of a rebel base in an old building and after a short siege are trying to finish them off.

Week 3

Presentation Pics

These pics are here for temporary presentation use.

And finally the calamity

Well I have done what needs to be done on the unreal level, it took ages. But despite all this effort I can't place GUNS! I have tried everything under the sun to fix it and apparently I'm not the only one who cant do it either, plus I've heard a lot of people's stories of glitches and invisible walls. This is very annoying because I need to game test it soon and its going to be hard with no weapons or items, I can place player starts however. But anyway this left my with no choice but to use what I had I took a few people around my level and i watched dhow they moved around and explored or got lost, it was all very helpful in making last minute alteration, in fact one of the main game testers Terrance Nabbs wrote four sides about the level on all of our opinions about it and what needed to be changed. (Click to enlarge)



This helped make some last changed despite the opinions based against it not having weapons, me Jack Boyles, Tez, Richard Norman, Ollie, Graham and Ashley Nabbs all tried to imagine how things would play out in certain situation, the discussion where pretty in deep sometimes, all in all I'm happy with it but I'm not finished with it by far if i had the time i would make it bigger, maybe less compact but that would alter the feel of the level. The textures are my number one hate, defiantly going to do differently next time.

Using time like a one night stand

Now there isn't much time left so I have been doing all the things to finish my level off, the floor and ceiling have been given there final touches and the tedious texturing of stairs is over. also I have now placed a few large crate to jump around on in the decks, also I have placed a lighting scheme, one serious problem though is how horrible Unreal ed really is, I have been wasting hours of my time fixing glitches in the game and when i finally do other appear, in fact I seem to be making it worse sometime and if i want something big like a pillar or a support I cant because it causes problem with then level, you can see through walls and everything sometimes, other time i wont be allowed in certain areas of the level like an invisible wall is blocking my way.

I did the texture for the crates in flash, I gave each part a different layer then put that in Photoshop and gave it shadows, this gave off a nice Team fortress 2 like "3dness" to it despite its bold red colour.

Cant get enough

I cant get enough of just putting random things into this level, but I'm afraid I will run out of time so now I have been doing textures mostly, I created this wires texture from a photo that I am going to use to show a bit of power flow through the ship to hopefully make it more believable. Also i am going to make a view into outside space.


The level is really starting to take shape by this point, my aim is to make each area of the ship differently themed so there is a distinction between all areas of the game so its harder to get lost I have found that leaving engineering can be hard but that's if you forget where the exit is.


By this point i have decided to scrap the whole space station idea as i feel i should concentrate all my efforts into making them ship really good because it works well as a 8-10 player game with enough areas for weapons to go.

To help with my texturing dilemma I used the classical yellow and black caution strips this helped me frame a lot of the levels features which somehow gave them a very interesting look. in this environment.

A while in the works

This is after a few weeks of design, I have taken the opportunity to add lots of little things t0o frame the rooms and i have a lighting scheme in mind, I already placed a great one in engineering, a really great red light that travels far. I'm not even finished modelling but already I can squeeze in so many paths to different rooms. The level does look a little blocky at this point and it had low ceilings and I still don't really know what my texture and colour theme will be.

getting textures to work has been annoying but it has been solved recently thanks to getting Adobe Cs4 and a few patches for Unreal, hopefully now textures should work without problem, and I can believe it took me this long to finally get it, that you have to put mylevel in the package name. So a problem pretty much solved there