As someone who has yet to finish a map, god I shouldn't have looked at this thread 

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/screen_shots/mjb_cloudy.jpg

Another random WIP of my personal AD map.

I might look into the QS Spiked rain effects even if it is only for those who use the engine...it sure looks like it is about to pour!

I would appreciate any comments or criticisms even though this is entirely up to change and nothing is final.

*Oh, and ignore the random floating square >_> 

Looks great, as moody as they come. If you implement rain for QSS, you should also do it for DP.

random floating square Make that a giant meatball for a cool pop culture reference... ;) 

Thanks man,

If I do go with rain official I will certainly attempt to enable it for DP as well. 

Cool! What's that awesome skybox you're using? 

http://wwwtyro.github.io/space-3d

It is a free Space Box generator that uses random seeds to generate a sky/spacebox. I think I found it from FifthElephant's twitter a long while back. Seeing his groovy green spacebox made me save the page...glad I did! 

Skybox generator is what I used for my next map 

 

nice work 

If you need some guidance for DP implementation, check this tut by Seven: http://quakeone.com/forums/quake-help/quake-clients/6869-tut-creating-rain-snow-fog-darkplaces.html 

Thanks Nitin, I am definitely okay with this vibe.

Thanks Mug, I will take a look...if I do it would be at the very end of the map's life cycle. 

Of course it would, since it depends on your map's geometry. You're welcome. 

this is something I whipped up in the past day and a half. I'm moderately happy with it, I guess. Same texture set as another map I've posted about before, but no other relation here.

Question: How far along have you gotten before giving up on a map before? My previous map in a similar style was/is quite long at this point, with a lot of effort put into it (months). But i've lost my motivation to work on it recently, so I did my noirjam map and then started working on this one instead.

Not sure if I'll ever go back to my older map, but it's the first time I've ever "abandoned" something that was so far along. 

You're talking about the map with the lava pit? I was looking forward to this one. Have you considered a collab with another mapper? Some of the greatest maps around were made from scraps. 

It might still happen some day. If this map ends up getting finished though I'll probably release the source map file + wads publicly. I wouldn't mind someone else finishing it, but taking the effort to specifically collaborate isn't really my style of doing things. I'd be more interested in seeing what someone with free license to mess with things hacks out of what I've made. 

This is crucial to finishing a map. I thought this video was pretty good for layout creation ->

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUwcX5Hbdng&list=FLdR9SxCXvkZjZfBdpQEUkyA&index=1

Granted it's CS:GO but as a general principle it works for level design, You can skip to 08:00. The hurdle, I feel, is fleshing out a full layout in the editor and refining it. This is time consuming and at least for me it's not a lot of fun. Your map also looks like crap and it's hard to imagine how this blocky layout is going to look good eventually :P

Here is a video on this process, the making of the CS:GO map de_piranesi. As you can see the designer spends a significant amount of time refining his blocks and playable spaces before adding art!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--FxLX1RhuE

It's not easy but if you can persevere through the layout stages without getting caught up in too much detailing, you stand a good chance of completing a map. 

Interesting, but this would have been more suited to the Mapping Help thread. 

I got caught up in the discussion :) 

Greyboxing is good, but it's a lot easier with small maps for multiplayer than it is for larger singleplayer maps. Maybe if/when I find myself with a better eye for scale it will get easier, but throwing away large parts of a level because while it might have worked "on paper" but didn't in practice is exactly the sort of thing that killed my motivation on that last map.

Also, the "missing texture" texture is ugly as heck. Does anyone know if it's possible to replace it? 

The screenshot looks nice. Dark and dank is how I like my Quake and I can appreciate the shoreline blend you did at the edge of the water. I also think you do well with infusing rock into your brushwork. 

dark and dank 

I made my first serious attempt at the greyboxing method for my Blood level. Started off as an experiment to get a solid layout down and its design stage didn't happen until a start, middle and end had formed.

Several areas changed over time for the better; the library section was originally three separate rooms (bedroom/bathroom/library) before merging the space together and moving some places around.

Working in this way really helped me out and wish I had tried it way sooner. Was easier visualising level flow and could change anything on the fly if it wasn't working out. No time wasted adjusting visuals. Definitely sticking with method this going forward. 

I never give up on maps. A Roman Wilderness of Pain came out ten years after it was started. Lol.

But I know what you mean about layouts, my problem is the opposite though: I sketch out a gigantic layout, and then it takes forever just to finish the architecture, and even then plenty of other mappers have maps at a way higher level of detail than me.

+1 for the collaboration suggestion, that's always a good idea. 

specifically pritchard's screenshot's rocks 

Pritchard: builder of rocks in maps since 2013

http://quadropolis.us/node/3967