More images of a map I'm making for my mod.

I did most of the work this time in the warehouse, as you can see there's a crane and more boxes.

My suggestion is to work on your mod first using already-made levels or quickie-made levels without texturing or props. Once you have some fun gameplay then you can start working on details.

Yea I totally agree, but if I'm busy with alot of stuff I'd rather just sit down for 30 minutes and work on a level.

Also partly the next steps in development are going to be harder than what I've done so far, like radar =X.

Edit: has anyone ever worked with VGUI before? I totally understand the client side of it, but the documentation for sending messages from the server is super vague..

Looks like the contrustion of the level is good, but something about the lighting is ...off. I don't know exactly why, but it makes the environment bland. Kinda reminds me of something from Quake 3, lighting-wise.

Perhaps change the color subtly? Nothing is really "white" when it comes to lights. Maybe weird shadows too?

Then again, it's an early build so it would be unfair to expect the lighting to be great.

I think that's because I haven't added a light_environment entity yet, which basically acts like the sun. I've just been placing light entities where I wanted to highlight.

I just placed one and am recompiling the map.

Also, if you are going for a more realistic-ish approach (you don't have to overdo it though), you might want to look at the structures you got there. Perhaps you should add something to those ramps to make it look like they aren't going to collapse on themselves. For supports, instead of just grey brushes, look for more real world counterparts. For example, the beams that hold up the floors in the warehouse could be I-beams.

Yea time-consuming details like those are what I'm doing now that I got the basic layout complete.

Gonna go with Echoman, a lot of those crates aren't casting shadows, there's no shadows in the middle of the warehouse. Tone down those little lights on the sides to create contrast in lighting. I'll reserve any more feedback for lighting after I see directional light screenshots but as those lights are inside it shouldn't affect much

btw, does Hammer have post-processing effects? Bloom/DoF/Scene highlights/shadows/midtones etc? Fog?

Fourth screenshot I can't even tell what it is a screenshot of. Not really sure how to feedback :/

How is the flow in the warehouse? It looks like I should be able to jump across the warehouse on top of the crates (screenshot 5). Or maybe stack them up sort of so I would be able to jump up to a part that I wouldn't normally be able to access.

4th screenshot is showing the crane machinery.

I think source supports bloom, and it does support shadows. like i said im just lazy when it comes to lighting

Source not only supports bloom, but HDR.

That's the reason you should focus on the core mod first. Whenever I did projects and did stuff I liked or wanted to do first instead of focusing on getting the core functionality working, I would lose interest before I had anything usable or interesting.

Putting off doing the "hard work" just makes it worse.

If you get the core mod working as fast as possible, less chance of you losing interest in the project and shelving it forever since you'll have something playable and you just need to fill in the gaps around the core to make it look nice.

You're right. I really don't even have alot of programming left to do; besides finishing and polishing the weapons I have radar and laying down to write.

I'm mainly just frustrated because I can't figure out the server side programming with VGUI, and the only content I can find on it is very vague.

I'm not sure what you mean by that; VGUI is client side.

the server calls client side functions when certain events happen (player hp change, etc)

HDR compile