After experimenting with surface light from lava last night I've come to the conclusion that delay 5 and delay 2 lights just reach way too far.

light 50, delay 2, wait 5, gate 50

and I still see perceptible light over 600 units away but the light right at the lava surface is not that bright at all.

Some kind of delay with fade that was about halfway between 2 and 5 at the beginning but had a more definite cutoff, similar to delay 0, farther away would be much better.

Next, I guess I'll try stacking two different types of light, maybe a delay zero at light 100 for close in glow along with a light 50 delay 5 wait around 8-10 for little more range (but not halfway across the map). 

I finally got (sort of) the effect I wanted.

http://quaketastic.com/files/screen_shots/lavalight1.jpg

That screenshot uses light 100 for the bright part, light 50 delay 5 wait 6 for the dimmer part, and -gate 15 on the command line. _color is 192 64 16 for both lights which seems to match the texture pretty well.

Looking at the lightmap, the dividing line between the two light sources is a bit more obvious than I'd like, but isn't all that noticeable in the textured view. Offsetting the delay 5 light 16-32 units higher might help that. 

Offsetting the delay 5 light 16-32 units higher might help that.

Their position doesn't matter at all if they're surface lights. 

some more wip as I've been experimenting with different ways to create rock formations

http://imgur.com/a/1rewA

Basically just create an octagon and then make a few different height variations, and start copy+pasting all over the damn place. The way the shapes intersect creates a very pleasing final effect and I'm pretty happy with it!

Today I am trying to get the layout mostly complete and am starting to add monsters and logic etc. I am trying to avoid noticeable teleporting in of enemies by populating parts of the map while the player is somewhere else to make things feel more natural. We'll see how this goes! 

Looks pretty good so far. Didn't you say that you were gonna stream again sometime? 

The surface light has a _surface_offset key, I tried it and it seems to work. The separation between the two brightness levels seems a little smoother now. When I add -extra 4 and -soft back to the batch file it should look pretty good.

If surface light didn't have the offset key, there is at least one hacky way to do the same thing.

I ran the new light utility on a different computer today and it acted a little weird. I was looking in the thread about it to see if anyone else had noticed it,and ran across some posts where the problem of excess light from delayed surface lights was discussed. I wish I'd seen them sooner, I probably could have saved a little time. Some of the suggestions there were similar to what I came up with. 

Try using _anglesense 0.3 or lower to get more glow. 

I'm finding these settings work ok on my lava surface:

_color = 1.0 0.0 0.0025
delay = 5
light = 25
wait = 1.375
_anglescale = 0.35 

Time to whine a bit. I'm not used to think in terms of single player, it's been painful. I was planning some survival / adventure gameplay based on traps and a sole super-shotgun on player's hands, but I would need much more time to come up with something worth playing. I'm delivering a stripped version, which is frustrating. Day comes and goes and I still don't have a final fight and will probably drop it. Everyday seems to take forever until it's 6 PM and I run home to map... no, wait, to lunch, to wash dishes and talk to wife, mapping from 10:30 PM until my sleepy head hits the keyboard. But I'm not giving up. 

You're over reaching. Seriously. Just make a simple map that fits the theme. Worry about unique gameplay when you're doing a mod or something. 

 

I have one big cave with a start and an exit. I'm just going to add a few more rooms and some monsters and consider mine done. I should be able to do that this weekend.

That leaves next week to add any embellishments I can fit in. If I don't find time to work on it and all there is at deadline is 4 rooms and 3 scrags, then that's what I'll send.

There will almost certainly be no final fight or boss fight. I find those tedious for the most part and usually skip them and consider the game finished. I'm more of a explore and discover type person. 

needed a slap on the face, that's all. 

I think I am getting a lot done lately, but I dropped the detail on everything but the most important stuff. I am using a lot of copy and paste geometry to make things seem grander then they are... Look closely and those archways are the same, with a few broken columns that are simply the same broken column rotated and switched sides. Those pillars of rock coming out of the lava... they are all just two sets of geometry resized and rotated.

It actually helps keep the theme in areas because it looks consistent allowing me to focus on what I want to do with the level's story telling element... if I can get it done in time. *shrug* Otherwise I also force the player through the same areas a couple times to make the level seem WAY larger than it is (note my "hub" screens, you get there four times during my design).

Don't give up. 

" I am using a lot of copy and paste geometry to make things seem grander then they are... Look closely and those archways are the same, with a few broken columns that are simply the same broken column rotated and switched sides. Those pillars of rock coming out of the lava... they are all just two sets of geometry resized and rotated. "

Yes. We in the biz call that "level design". :P 

 

Making prefabs and then rotating/c&p /scaling them all over the level is a great idea for a map jam or any project with a short time limit! if you are making every last detail custom then that is a mountain of work that isn't really necessary! At the end of the day no one will really notice that stuff is c&p if you do it well, ie. varying the rotations, size, and lighting enough to make it all feel unique.

Also, reminding everyone that this Sunday 9th is ROLL CALL! :D 

Search for "columnar basalt" for more examples. Forms in volcanic regions. 

 

 

everything looks great so far. 

Etc. 

It's gonna be kinda awesome as it's going.

Btw thinking about map jams: it may be nice to have a chainmap map jam - to connect all the entries into one large (or even giant) map. It's much harder to do because it requires someone to work on the map after everyone finished their part and make the gameplay flow mostly from scratch, but the result may really great, especially since we have bsp2 format.

It's a shame that there were no chainmaps since sm82. That was 10 years ago. 

 

mfx, I just want to say how much I fancy your maps. I'd take them to giblet dinner anytime.