I rarely post things here, so I thought I'd share a few pics of a level I'm working on. It's for MotS.

Campgrounds





There's more info on the project page. I showcased a level like this a couple years back, but then it got destroyed. So what do you think? I'd like some feedback on the trees especially.

I like where this is going.

But it seems the trees are outlined or something. Kinda distracting.

Your textures are too dissimilar.

I don't like the trees, their texture resolution is too low...

actually i quite like the trees.

They may be just photo/texture plates, but at least u can have a lot of them without killing framerate.

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

Well, they might be ok as a LOD model, but close up they look really poor.

I think the trees lok fine.. (remeber this is the JK engine).
I would suggest more variation on the ground.. Looks too flat right now.

Ahem. JK engine, so what? It can do better trees.

Also, it's flat. Really really flat.

Yeah, there are some great tree models out there with actually branches and things. Try making you own and see what you come up with. In a campground level trees are #1. Oh and is that a Christian camp? Couldn't help noticing the sign.

Well, for having not touched Jed in 2 + years, I think I did a darned well job.

In regards to the tree texture resolution, that's about as good as I can possibly get them. Much better than my last trees, which were solid green everywhere.

Yes, the JK engine can do far better trees, but having 60 - 70 high resolution trees all on one screen isn't very forgiving when it comes to framerate. You see, I'm not focusing entirely on aesthetic beauty; I want to find middle ground between that and good, fast gameplay.

As for the utter flatness of the ground, I will indeed stick some bumps and hills here and there. I agree that it's too flat. Oh and yes, it's a christian campground...kind of a humorous play on this very dogmatic and legalistic church right down the street from my house. Like....."buy your way into heaven" kind of church. Hehe.

So what? Ever heard of LOD? It would be madness to have high poly trees in 200m of the player, but it's also madness to punish him with what's not much better than 2d sprites in 10m. As I said, your trees work fine for distant objects.

I just noticed what bothers me about the trees.. The trunks go up way too high before te leaves/branches start.

Esp. for pine trees, the one in my front yard has branches at about 7 feet, and thats because it was groomed, the usually start lower then that


also, please don't make it a cloudy day there...

Not in a forest, where there isn't enough light for branches to have any use close to the ground. I'd still have pointy remainders though.

Uh, these are the kind of tree's I'm going for. As you can see the trunks go up very far.



Btw, I made the sky blue with clouds (thanks for the suggestion) and changed the main grass texture.

true, but those trees are much closer together, preventing sunlight from reaching the lower areas so the lower branches are useless... On your campground level, the trees are spaces farther apart, and thus the branches should go lower.

I kinda like the old grass texture, but that's just me. To make this more realistic, I would probably recomend using a dirt texture with small patches of grass. And you should also add some fallen leaves for good measure.

ryham speaks sense... At the least, put a dirt texture in a circle around the trees and a transition texture to that grey grass/bark stuff. (and maybe put some grass sprouts around the trunks of the trees (either a seperate 3do, or at the very least texture them on)

The main problem that I see here is that it's just too flat. Almost all Jedi Knight levels share that same problem, and I know it's not easy, but it will make your map look that much better if you go to the effort of putting a little bit of terrain variation in. Even if the ground is supposed to be flat, it's not supposed to be 2D flat. You should see Ruthven's thread for a current reference on terrain in a level.

Also, an old program made up by Hellcat allowed you to paint terrain heights through grayscale squares. I forget what this process was called, but basically what it did was it measured heightmaps through the brightness in the square that you make, say in MS Paint or Photoshop, and it would make a terrain 3do out of it. It is very handy if you cannot make good terrain otherwise. (Someone else would have to link you to it, as I no longer have it myself.)

That's my only sugguestion, and other than that, it looks like it's off to a very good start

[Edit] By the way, I know this issue has been addressed thus far, but I figured by going into it with a little more detail may help you more.

Try to go for higher poly.. JK can handle it

But camping maintenance would probably cut off the lower branches.

I did some more thinking about it, looking at some of the trees up in this area (I live in an area with lots of evergreens) and I noticed there are a lot of trees that do have trunks that go way up before the branches start, even when spaced farther apart... However, these don't look weird cause there's smaller branch stubs sticking out towards the bottom... Maybe put some broken off stubs on the trunks.

ZOOIkes, that's what I'm thinking. The campgrounds people like to keep the trees nice and tidy.

Adding some detail to the level. Let me know what you think of the cabins.

I'm working with Hellcat's heightmap 3do program to TRY to get some good terrain in there.

There's a really big style inconsistency in your map. (Like Kirby said earlier)

The grass, stone tiles and cabin textures all have similar amounts of detail, contrast and style. They fit perfectly.

But then the foliage is much less detailed, has radically different colours, is much less realistic looking and has more contrast.

I think that if you'd open up your grass and tree textures in paint shop pro or photoshop or the gimp or whatever and colourized them so their colour lies sometwhat closer to the brownish green of the ground, it would already look much better.

Those colours might then not be as realistic, but then the foliage will feel more like it belongs there. Currently it kinda looks pasted on, in my humble opinion.

Also you might try giving the the tree-trunk texture a little less contrast. (basically make the black parts less black)

I hope this tips are helpfull to you.
(This is the kind of stuff they teach us at Game Design)

I agree with ZOOIkes, although, it is looking a lot better. But try to keep the color palette a little closer, rather than having a bunch of randomly different colored trees and plants everywhere.

Looks better though

Yes, lose the orange trees. They stand out too much.

EDIT: Or at least make them green.

I really like it Delphian. As already mentioned, the best outdoor levels have a variety of terrain, so keep that in mind if you want to make this level top-notch. Unfortunately, terrain is very hard and painstaking to do in JK editing, at least with level archi. That's why I've attempted very few outdoor levels, epsecially since I'm bad with 3dos for the most part. Hellcat's terrain generator is a very good resource, if you do decide to use models. Just remember to cut it up into different layers, each below 512 vertices and surfaces, so that it will display in-game. I would also recommend you texture it with ForceRemap. You can find that on the Hub I think.

I like the look of it so far. True, it will be better with less fully lit lighting and varying terrain, but it still retains that "Jedi Knight" feel to a level like CO or JHS had. In otherwords, its OK to not have photoreal textures and everything to make it look like HL2.

If you added some dark lighting to the scene it will really start to come alive even without terrain.

Your trees/bushes fade to black, but THE SKY ISN'T BLACK.

Either a) make them fade to the sky color or b) (harder to make look good but if you can it'll look much better overall) don't use fading and make the sharp edges look good.

Hey it's hard to get rid of all the black junk in the BMP ok? Anyways, I'm fairly satisfied with what I have so far. Lighting will definitley be an issue.

I'm working on the main chapel/building right now, screenies soon.

Yeh.. inside. Thinkin about changing the super boring wall texture.


Steeple:


View of the main building:

Still really sparse around here, as far as foliage and detail goes.

Either that or add some detail 3dos to the walls (like figures of angels, and whatever else might be found in a church). Or do both.

yeah, the steeple is definately lacking in detail. Maybe put a walkway down the middle with a different color carpet or hardwood (with a border). For the walls maybe some wood paneling or something...

You look like you're going for a colonial American-style church. Try using these pictures as a reference.

I don't like how the trees on the outside of the church look like they were "planted" there. They aren't random, and they're perfectly aligned. It just doesn't look like a forest, it looks like they took giant pine trees and planeted them in a grassy field.

Yeah, they do look too uniform. Maybe throw in some random ones and put some stumps down around the church. And speaking of the church, it needs more stained glass windows.

You know what looks worse than a map with no lighting? ... Neither do I.

David Hasselhoff in a speedo?

Looks really cool.