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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canada is over

Yep, I'm back home and ready to get back to work. If I have it my way, I will have the third beta version of the villa up in three weeks. That's a semi-serious goal right now.

As for now, it's late and I should most likely go to bed, but before I do I will show off the terrible moustache I had for three minutes earlier today before I freed my face of facial hair.

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let's go to canada

Tomorrow is the first day of a five day vacation in Canada. I may be wrong, but I think Whistler just might be a little nicer than heaven. We'll soon see.

I'll be back in a week. With pictures.

Adios!

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i may have doubled the size of my map

I'm extending the back yard right now to add some breathing room to my map. I'm adding a total of three new areas that will wrap up the design of the map, and I would say I'm maybe 25% through with the back yard. These are some (very) rough drafts of what I have in mind for now.

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progress!

I've made some progress tonight. The first screen shows off the new frontal area of the villa where the gate and main door will be located, the second is of the stairway arch connecting the old backyard to the new location. Tomorrow is a day off, so I'm planning on making a full night's effort on this thing.

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my newest map addition

Right now I'm working on making a full addition to the backyard-soon-to-be-front-yard. The addition will include a gate with a road entering the complex, to add realism, a full frontal addition to the villa, and a large archway connecting the new and old portions of the yard.

This is a screen I took of the arch as it is in my editor:

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version three of the beta

I started work today on the third version of the villa map. I haven't worked on this project in nearly a month, but in that time I've been directed to a couple of sites (fpsbanana and HL2DM University) to promote the map, and both have been immensely helpful. I wanted to get feedback from outside sources and sure enough, there were at least a dozen pretty important issues that most likely never would have thought of fixing.
The biggest issue has to do with overall performance. FPS were pretty volatile on a lot of machines, and it was enough jumpy for me when I played on a server in Japan. I'm going to do a bit of reading but I know there are some ways to boost performance without hurting the looks of the map or the gameplay. For now I'm going to increase the lightmaps (reducing the shading quality)and compile the map in LDR to make it easier to download and install.

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