new update, with pictures

I've worked pretty hard for the last few days to finish up the bulk of what I want include in on the third beta version of this project.



The backyard is close to what I want it to look like. It's a bit bigger now, and the addition to the house itself is pretty close to complete, if it isn't already. The building addition isn't much more than a visual addition, but there is a significant extension to the cave portion of the map. There's a new large room, and it connects to the backyard via a tunnel. I've added pics of the new room and the building extension, and I'll add more of the tunnel when it's more detailed.

The additions are still works in progress, I'll update as often as I can.

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the learning process

Learning a new skill set can at times take an amount of patience that you might never have known you had. The villa map I'm working on is still my first major solo project that I'm aiming to release to the public, and it's the first major project I've done with the latest version of the Hammer Editor. That means that some days I'll spend five, maybe six hours working on a room that's roughly the size of my bedroom, just ironing out wrinkles and correcting mistakes. That's not a bad thing, though, and this is where patience becomes important. 

For every portion of a map I spend five hours on one day, the next day I'll tackle something just like in time enough for my Pasta Roni to finish cooking. It's a fantastic feeling when you have solid evidence that you're learning something, like you can actually prove to yourself that you're not just wasting laaaarge chunks of time. And I mean those chunks of time can feel large! 

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finally an update!

It's felt like maybe a few months, but the villa has seen an update.

The back yard is a bit bigger, and the building extends around the whole yard now. I liked the two-tone look of the villa, with the courtyard done up in brick and red paint, and the outer portion with stones and browns. I played around with a number of different configurations for the building itself and I ended up dividing the wall into about four portions, each with a different texture. I'm still learning a bit about visual design technique, and this is the first time that a number of different textures have been used on one wall. I'm happy with the look.

The next job is to extend the tunnels underground. They might end up connecting to the back yard via a doorway in the brick wall, as well as through the trap door which is now behind some cover in the back corner of the yard.

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i feel an update coming

Finally I am going to have something worth writing about! I've worked for weeks and have added (and deleted) large portions to the villa map, and after all that, I've made slight progress. The entire frontal addition to the map I deleted.  I felt like it's openness and size contrasted with the overall small, tight, and fast design of the previous map.  The back yard and the underground portions are slightly larger now, in hopes that the map will still feel fast and furious for a few players, but accomodating for a larger group at the same time. The update will be coming soon! *fingers crossed*

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