OverDose "Stockpile" Map
polycounter lvl 18
First of all OverDose has been around for a while, but we are currently finding it quite tough indeed as we have two artists working on it, so development is slow. Slow most of all in character modeling, which for some reason even though we have a hell of a lot of concept art done for every model (See site), we just cant seem to get anybody to make just one character model for testing 
Anyway, OverDose is a free online game, you can find more info for it at the OverDose site under the about section, so I won't pimp it here as thats not why I'm here. The site is: http://www.team-blur-games.com/overdose/
Ok Stockpile is a remake of an old W:ET map, Fueldump, but remade in our own style for OverDose. Rather than being snowy and fresh, its old, ruined and sandy, which works much better for our design (In before *all games are dog shite brown* comment
).
Feedback is always welcome and while I can't change huge parts of this, I would love to get some proper crits going and I'll see what I can come up with as I designed this scene myself, so its an easy change.
Oh and yeah, it may not be UE3 and Crysis quality, but OverDose is made on QUAKE 2 tech, so you know, give us some leg room
Anyway, OverDose is a free online game, you can find more info for it at the OverDose site under the about section, so I won't pimp it here as thats not why I'm here. The site is: http://www.team-blur-games.com/overdose/Ok Stockpile is a remake of an old W:ET map, Fueldump, but remade in our own style for OverDose. Rather than being snowy and fresh, its old, ruined and sandy, which works much better for our design (In before *all games are dog shite brown* comment
).Feedback is always welcome and while I can't change huge parts of this, I would love to get some proper crits going and I'll see what I can come up with as I designed this scene myself, so its an easy change.
Oh and yeah, it may not be UE3 and Crysis quality, but OverDose is made on QUAKE 2 tech, so you know, give us some leg room
Replies
The cardboard box on the floor is hovering veeeeerrrry slightly and yeah, it does catch my eye a bit too, but the reason for that is that theres quite a few dirt decals on the ground tiles. Decals must be slightly higher than the surface they are over so that they dont cause any rendering issues (zFighting). The lower the box means that at a medium to long distance, the box will suddenly render the decals over the top, which will look odd. I'll test some more with max viewable angle/distance and see if I can make it lower.
I can post wires up NP, give me a sec...
EDIT:
Wires:
Skip Diffuse (Normal Only):
Comparison With Original Scene:
Modeling/texture quality is good though a bit flat, the biggest problem is your objects are... really random. The guy working at this computer must have been in a wheel chair because he's got a handicap railing conveniently located next to his desk, no place to sit, and a spare tire I guess just in case one gets damaged by all the knocked up tiles. Your loose papers decal is REALLY squared off for some reason although it wouldn't be quite as noticeable if you hadn't placed them at perfect 90 degree angles and parallel to your walls.
I'd get rid of the shipping palette and random ass tire and replace them with more relevant objects, maybe bring back the maps and strategic stuff on the walls from the original. Maybe give the desk a chair and move the railing to fence off the cave side of the room and the pipes going into the floor instead of protecting that wall and put the loose paper decals mainly just around the desk instead of in the middle of the room.
These things may seem random to you, but given a) the location b) the locations use and c) the plotline of the game, it makes more sense. The chair being missing is actually my fault as I forgot to add it to the scene (it was fallen over), but the rest, well, this is set 100+ years in the future when everything is old, everything is rusty, most things have been stolen, or broken, or damaged. As its a playable game level and not an art scene showcase, the reason its designed this way is for gameplay, not 100% for visuals. I could add all sorts to the scene but things are squared off for flow, as that matters more than visuals in many ways.
The paper decals I totally agree on, and will try and switch those up somewhat, they are obviously just "square decals" placed on the ground and to be honest I was thinking the same thing after I posted.
The shipping pallet and tyre actually belong in the same in relation to the original plot line of the level as a whole (read: Not just a room). I may look into moving the railings to cover the rock wall, that may work nicer.
SnowInChina -
I do hope your not suggesting I copied this from somewhere? I haven't even heard of this fallen earth, so do you have any pics just so I know Im not treading on any toes...?
Keep the crits going though guys, I'm certainly not closed off to them, but there are some things that as a level designer working on an actual plot line LEVEL and not just a scene, that will make less sense to you and more to me (Unless you play the level).
it wasnt my intent to insult you
i was refering to the feeling of the scene
it feels like an underground storage in a post apocalyptic world. something along these lines
i will try to express my mind more precisly the next time
Pallets are made to be reused (by forklifts, mainly) or recycled which is why they end up in storage areas, usually piled into big stacks when not in use. Not carried one per room into random rooms in cave complexes and left there for no apparent reason. Go out to google images and do a search for shipping pallet and let me know how many pages you have to go through to find one in a small room with a desk in it.
Even tho I understand Bibendum points, I think he's just being overly nitpicker. Not everything needs to make 100% sense in a game world space, some times, if it doesnt look out of place, and it adds to the beauty of the scene, there's no harm in leaving it in.
Do NOT get me wrong tho, Environment Storytelling is very very important in a game, in fact, it's almost everything, so we do need to pay as much attention as we can with the props we place in the scene, everything needs to fall within an harmony.
It's just that when i look at this scene, I think it fits the description you say you were trying to achieve, so i think it was a job well done, not perfect, but well done.
if I have to pick something, i say there's way to fog tinting the scene of an unpleaseant brown, and making the scene a bit to monochromatic for my tastes. Too much brown all over the place, even the original rtcw screenshots have more to offer in terms of colors, and it has cold colors whereas yours is more warm / dusty. But hey, that's down to art direction choices, aka, your call!
I specially like those vents, they stand out in a good way (maybe cos it's one of the few non-brown assets) nice geometry and good texture.
so yeah, keep up and good luck for your project, it's shaping up rather nicely.
Rock to wall transition looks too perfect to me - I like how you put tiles on the floor but the concrete wall seems to just grow out of the rock
Only think I would suggest is editing the paper decal a little bit. After seeing the wire frame, and then looking at the original, the 'squareness' of the decal is very apparent. Removing a few of the papers from the texture to give a move random, non-square layout should help.
Other than that, looks great.
This is the first of several new ViDocs I have planned to show various aspects of the technology OverDose uses, but it involves the scene above. I've tried to make it fit in someplace between "Heres all the techno info" and "What the hell is a polygon?" so its not uber detailed, but hey ho this is my first time doing one, so give it a once over and let us know:
[ame=
ModDB (Medium Quality - Stream)
NOTE: The reason the shadows at time draw in front of the hands is simple, the hands are a test model attached to the screen. That of course won't happen with the correct drawing later.