Thought you'd like to see this

[HLR]

Here's an almost-finished concept map I made to demonstrate a building technique. I don't remember when I started it, either 2001 or 2002, but most of it only took a few weeks to build. I've toyed with it on and off (mostly off of course) since then. I dunno how practical it will be for play, since you have to concentrate a bit to get around in some places. I'd probably be good for slower-paced games, with quite a few players of course considering its size. You could consider it in a pre-betatest (would this be alphatest?) stage right now. Take a look if you want, comments are welcome. This is the big cave map for those of you who have seen it already.
bakdm1.zip (2.2MB -- Big!)

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I have this and all my other mapping on hold for now. It's because I'm using a very old computer--a P133--that I built in 1997, and the sluggishness that comes with big maps gets to be a real drag and a severe distraction. (This is partly why I still work almost exclusively with Q2: my computer doesn't run any newer games.) But I just picked up a P200 CPU and will be getting a TNT2 card in a few days. That way I'll have hardware-accelerated OpenGL and things will go a lot faster. I use QERadiant, which relies heavily on OpenGL, and my 3DFx card only works with 3DFx drivers in games that have them and early Direct3D. A long time ago I was doing some mapping on a friend's PIII-500 w/TNT and things went so much faster on it. Mine will be about as good--mapping will be fun again

No flames about my having an old computer now I support myself entirely and don't have a lot of extra money to throw around. But I'm planning on putting together something like a PIII-800 out of used parts, that will have DVD burner and other good stuff and will become my main computer, and later on a slim-as-possible gaming machine with maybe a P4-2.5, for games and compiling and other number crunching, and ethernet them all together.

[Le Ray [Q2C]]

Checking it out, comments on the way.

[Le Ray [Q2C]]

HLR, this is a really cool map!

It must have taken a long time to create, with all the terrain.

Very cool looking, I like the lighting.

It kind of reminds me of some of Maric's more recent all terrain maps. Very similiar. Maybe he got the idea from you.

Maybe you could release it as a DM Map?

Everyone should check it out, good job HLR!

[Wixen1 [Q2C]]

Hi HLR.

Just checked it out. Very HUGE map, must be good for up to 24 players... . Lot of work must have gone into this map. Like the colours 2 and all the staircases..walkpatches...and soo.
Great job

[HLR]

Thanks. Believe it or not, I had maybe 90% of it done within four weeks. It went way faster than one would think--surprised myself even. Mostly because it's a bunch of meshes of triangular brushes a la Gensurf (only I made them by hand) and you just need to drag the points to wherever you want them.

And yes, this was a DM map from the get-go. It's what I call a "playable exhibition" map. In other words its primary purpose is to show something off -- in this case a construction technique -- but it's also playable like a normal map. A player load of at least 24 or so should probably be considered for this one, maybe even 32.

As a rule of thumb, maps I make tend to be massive. The "temple" parts under the underwater window are based on the style I used for my unfinished Astral Palace project (screenshots), which started off as a monstrosity that I called a 128-player map (not kidding!). It got too big for Q2 so I split it in half with the plan to make two smaller maps out of it. One is almost finished (and almost as big as the original!), the other untouched as of yet. I'll post it later on, maybe the original monster map too..

[Le Ray [Q2C]]

Cool,
I'd like to see the monster one too!

Hey, have you ever tried using Nem's 3D Generator for creating terrain? It's very easy to use.