CS_Warhouse

[TheOneKnownAsJosh]

this is a new map im making Cs_warehouse, its set in an industrial area the hostages are being held in a large warehouse and have to be saved. the CT's start on the street and the Terrorists start in the warehouse







progress is slow as my level will currently not compile in less than an hour

[slayerA]

Have you done as much func_detailing as possible? Should help with compile times. Some of the textures like in the 1st pic left side look out of place. Granted you made them look as about as good as anyone could. The green glass or windows in the background look funky and repeative.  The ramp in the 2nd pic look very tall and out of place. At least add a hand rail. Your brush is awesome though.

[TheOneKnownAsJosh]

ok ill change the glass texture, also there is a handrail u can just make it out through the fence, what is func_detail?

[Aldéz]

Detail brushes are a class of brushes that are grouped to avoid unwanted face splits when small, detailed brush objects meet large surfaces. Detail brush geometry is made by creating a func_detail entity out of a set of brushes. The brushes that are included in the func_detail will not clip (or split) non-detail brushes. A common example is a cylinder brush (such as a pillar) touching a floor in a room. Normally the cylinder would split the floor face into many smaller faces where the two brushes meet. By making the cylinder detail geometry, no such splitting will occur. Any rotated piece of brush geometry is also a good candidate, and will cause fewer vbsp splits if it is made into func_detail.

Detail brushes do not block visibility and cannot be used to seal the world or areaportals. Since they do not block visibility, detail brushes have a side benefit of simplifying the visibility set. Proper use of detail brushes can greatly decrease the time it takes for vvis to compile the level.

Brushes that are func_detail are an entity in the Hammer editor, but the entity information is discarded after the map is processed in VBSP. This occurs to reduce the memory requirements of the geometry. The entity information is no longer needed once vbsp has used it for reducing splits. In the engine, surfaces that were created with detail geometry are identical to all other solid brush geometry in the level.

Objects that are small, complex, and/or do not seal areas are good candidates for detail geometry. Examples include pillars, gates, small rocks, fences, debris, piers, etc. A good way to tell if you need to switch non-detail geometry to detail geometry is to use glview. In places where you see a high density of leaves in glview, you'll want to switch some of the geometry in those areas to func_detail.

Mark the brush(es) and click the toEntity button and choose func_detail from the entity list.

[TheOneKnownAsJosh]

yea i vaguely understand that, but im not sure what to make a func_detail in my level

[TheOneKnownAsJosh]

here's what i have so far, im looking for any advice or ideas to make it look better 

[Aldéz]

You can add gutters, chimneys with smoke, trees (in the background), traffic signs, decals/overlays (decals/decalmetalmanhole, decals/decalstreet00 etc.) and fill the warehouse with something, shelves with boxes for example. You should make pillars and facade details to func_details, everything that won't block visibility (small objects like stairs, fences with transparent textures etc).

[ConS]

The streets look too clean

[TheOneKnownAsJosh]

so do you think some man hole covers parked cars and trash decals would make the streets better?

[Slackiller]

yes 

[TheOneKnownAsJosh]

anything else?

[TheOneKnownAsJosh]

heres some improvements

[Aldéz]

It's good, but I'd like to see more in the background. Trees, hills (small) and maybe some houses? Look at this again:

You can add gutters, chimneys with smoke, trees (in the background), traffic signs, decals/overlays (decals/decalmetalmanhole, decals/decalstreet00 etc.) and fill the warehouse with something, shelves with boxes for example...

[TheOneKnownAsJosh]

yea i will, im going to have more details and a 3d skybox

[Slackiller]

a good 3d skybox will help alot 

its looking good