This is in its early phase, it's going to be a sanctuary (duh!). I know there's not a lot to show, but the entire level will basically be the texture scheme and architecture style shown in the screenshots. What I want to know is if I should continue with this, or just scrap it. Is it too curvy? Is the texture scheme out of place? Lemme know what you think!

Wow, I really like it! Your skills at JK editing have improved tremendously since I saw your last work. If you keep up this creative streak, I'd reccommend you release it. I especially kike what good use you've made of th Baron's Hed Texture set, it seems to fit very appropriately.

Now for some suggestions:

1) Perhaps a little bit to neat. I know it's still in the early stages, but a few more sloped wall faces, or some cracks and crannies in the walls, ceiling, maybe fallen debris, could add a lot. I assume you're going for an ancient, forgotten monastary kind of look (I could be wrong). THis brings me to my next comment.

2) The first thing that came to my mind when I saw the title of this thread was the Shambala Santuary from Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine. That was a great level, and if you have the game, I'd reccommend you'd play through it for ideas (especially seeing as both JK and TIM use virtually the smae engine. Several things I'd recommend adding off the top of my head: a candelabra 3do in certain rooms (I think there's a 3do on Massassi), an outdoor area with snow, stain-glass windows, and an altar and some pews.

3) The lighting is good and I like that wooden trellis you made. I would reccomend you darken the level overall slightly, and have something hanging from each beam of the trellis, whether it be a candelabra (as stated above) or a small paper mesh ornament or candilier.

4) I don't know what other rooms you have in mind, but perhaps Google "sanctuary" or "monastary" for ideas in how to implement further rooms/designs.

I really like where this is going. Keep up the good work, and get this baby released sometime!

Lighting = good

I say u need 16 bit textures

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

Reminds me of my JED days... man I didnt think anyone even still had JK installed... lol, oh well, looks pretty nice, better than some of my first works.

exactly what I thought........

just the top of tha door ther if it was a little shorter.. just like 1 jku lower under the roof.. so it looks like real archi...

Thanks for the input guys. As for the door height, I really don't see how that couldn't be real architecture. I'm sure it could be done, but if it looks out of place, let me know.

Wow, very nice, man! Keep it up.

pretty nice looking

The lighting needs to be smoothed out a bit, but you've done a fine job texturing.

Yeah, I'd say that lighting is my weak point. If anyone has any tips for it, let me know. I know of using a bunch of little lights as compared to one big light, but I like the one big light better for some reason.

Alright here's some extensions that I've added.

Your strong point seems to be texture alignment and making sure things fit together properly; please please please keep that up (I cry every time I load up a modern 3D game and see all the misaligned textures... level designers don't even try anymore). On a nit-picking note, there's a misaligned texture in the last picture posted (to the left of the 3 rectangle/crosses texture).

As for lighting, keep things visible; the average person has their gamma/brightness turned up way too high, so don't darken your levels, just tell them to turn the gamma down. Spicing up your lighting wouldn't hurt though, and adding little wall-mounted candles or lamps as the origin may make the light make sense. The sky appears to be night, so maybe some starlight pouring in would explain some of the light.

Can't comment on the theme really, I prefer high ceilings, but I don't picture a non-cathedral sanctuary having particularly high ceilings... go with what you imagined. At this point in JK's life, archetecture and texturing are more important than gameplay, seeing as JK level design is more an artform than creating the perfect deathmatch arena.

QM

Thanks Quib! Actually, what looks like a texture misallignment in the third shot is actually a fault of lighting. The light is following where I cleaved the surface to extrude the rectangle. I'm not even going to try to fix it yet, because I've tried fixing similar lighting problems in the past, and they end up being worse than the original problem! It's all about cleaving I'm sure, I just gotta practice my lighting more.

Alright, I've made a chandeleer (sp?) 3DO, and it's acceptable, but in game, all that is shown is a little dflt.mat colored box. This has happened to me before and I haven't found a solution.

Here's what it looks like in JED, I'd like for it to show up in game as well.

You can only have so many surfaces per layer, or else you'll get that dflt box problem. Just slice this baby up, select sectors, hit enter, and change the layer name. Do this so that each layer has around 100 surfaces on it, and you'll be fine. The max per layer is 300, but it's way easier to divide it by 100s.

I'd suggest redoing the candles on that 3DO though.

JediKirby

K kirby, I get the slicing the sectors part, but the whole layers thing throws me off. I'm not a hardcore 3DO maker, so it's all Greek to me. Also, this is a preview of the 3DO in JED, so the lighting on the candles might make them look better in game. If not, I'll re-texture them.

Select the sector you'd like to make into a new layer. Hit enter. Go to the 'Layer' text box. Double click. Now change the layer value for the sector. Hit ok, and repeate for each seperate sector of the 3DO. Sequential title than number values tend to work best for orginization.

JediKirby

Lighting is easy if you stop and think about it. The reason you're getting jagged lighting is because your surfaces don't all meet at a common vertex. If you cleave the surfaces so that they do, you'll lose the jagged lighting. If you cleaved a surface to extrude it, you need to make sure that the surface touching it also has a cleave at the same point. This is how you control lighting to create shadows or bright spots, etc. If you don't get it, I'll post a wireframe of a map of mine.

In that particular case, I'd make two additional cleaves. From the bottom left corner of the whole thing to the bottom left corner of the crosses. And the same with the upperleft. Then I'd merge the two triangles and the rectangles on the lefthand side. Which should provide lighting. The thing you need to think about is that light will follow the cleave lines basically. Honestly that's great use of JK textures. It's one of the few times where they seem to fit well, flow smoothly. I'd say get rid of that candelabra. It just doesn't fit. It'd be a detractor to the rest of the level.

Ok, I'll work on the lighting when I get back from Thanksgiving break. Would a lantern fit better than a candleabra/chandeleer?

Oh, as for what JediKIRBY was describing, 3do's can be made up of multiple meshes. A player model will have multiple meshes so that the different parts can be animated seperately. In JED, these different meshes are represented by having them on seperate layers, with the layer name being the mesh name. I don't know about where a lantern would. It would depend on the specific lantern. I'll see if I can whip something up for you, that wouldn't look too out of place. That candelabra just looks horrible there. (A lot of it is that model...)