sektor2111 wrote:Btw, speaking about lights, after aligning brushes a bit, preventing some flicker effect with doing semisolid, I could see that even lighting works different, simply we have shadows here and there and it's truly shinny. I'm curious about the rest of fixes.
That's the beauty of using a multi intersected subtractive poly for your main layout when it's a large open area and using additives only for decos/trims.
1. You exempt your map from bad alignment and bad snapping;
2. Much easier for editing since you have to deal only with 1/2 vertexes at once instead of 4/8, carefree from bad snapping.
2. You prevent nasty overlaping between wall-floor polys/deco-trim polys;
3. You get a much more uniform illumination over large areas/multiple surfaces;
4. Faster to compile and smoother to run.
I also added those wood beams at the square holes to give some finishing and get easier to the eye. Oh, and some more torch poles on dark spots of the path.
As for the lighting, that's another story...
Actually, this map is a lesson of how not to map:
Mistake 1: Adds a huge subtractive brush;
Mistake 2: Tries to fill in that large area with poorly edited cylinders;
Mistake 3: Don't check for flickering surfaces, bad alignment and bad snapping;
Mistake 4: Leaves global lighting at 0.
Mistake 5: Adds a bunch of lights at max brightness to cover the whole area.
And don't get me started on level design lol
The map is shinnier because I edited the global lighting, also it looks more gradual and smoother because I ajusted brightness and added more transitional lights with different setting to make it gradual and well lit. it's not perfect but that's what I can do in half a hour. The zone portal at the beginning is there because I've changed the global lighting of the area to match the wall torches atmosphere in contrast with the lava pit outsideand and to get smooth shadows instead of pitch black spots. I also edited the settings to give a more reddish/yellowish tone of fire and lava to the environment.
sektor2111 wrote:but did not entirely help until I changed to semisolid (still have a small null surface but no flicker)
Semisolids may help with bad snapping but does no good for flickering and bad alignment as I showed in that 2D screenshot. Besides, if you make your floor semisolid you take the risk of making it not tangible and fall through. Semisolids are for wall/ceiling/trim decos, not floors you can step in, unless you're overlaping an additive for some trim effect.
sektor2111 wrote:I'm sure that You can recreate this map using different small brushes and it won't be any convex issue if area has multiple brushes not a single one messed up
You can see an example of that in the fisrt update I posted. I did use small cubes to rebuild the first cliff before the triggered bridge. It's just not optimal for lighting, overlaping brushes you may add on top of it, editing, etc
)
You might do other such revisions in such Levels.