Haven't decided on a particular theme quite yet, but will definitely enter SOMETHING into the contest. Looking forward to it!

http://student.cs.appstate.edu/freemancw/

Clinton "Kaz" Freeman

Nice, sir!

Hello Kaz. I don't know is it me, but your link shows just blank page.

Kaz, could you please post your email or PM me it? Thanks.

freemancw *the a t symbol here* appstate.edu

Thanks sir. Good luck in the competition! You're up against a pretty good set of mappers.

Welcome mr. Freeman.

Thanks for all the warm welcomes. I'm looking forward to competing with everyone!

edit: shadow, i am in the process of updating the site

Cool, now I have some catching up to do!

Here are a few pictures for tonight. Most of the time I spent on kazdm4 was retro-actively aligning all the layout to a grid, so with this map I instead want to use a grid from the outset, and deviate where I can. By grid I mean having a series of "structural beams" of a uniform size (64wx64l) with a uniform amount of space in between them. There are pros and cons to using such a system:

Pros:
-You can just create a single detail then duplicate it and it will fit snugly in many areas (elements in kazdm4 that worked this way: windows, doorways, archways, etc).
-Stairs and height differences work out really easily
-Leads to better cohesion and can help to avoid having to come up with a large number of designs to fit weird dimensions
-Makes vis'ing really really easy and efficient

Cons:
-In general things are more "regular"
-Can be extremely boring
-Can be boxy
-Can lead to too-similar sizes of walkways and atria

Personally, I'm come to enjoy the grid, mostly because of the way I can make things look with it. I'll be taking that route with this map, and I want to test it at each step of the way so that I can figure out if I'm not mitigating the cons with enough curves and angles!

Enough blathering, here are some pretty pictures:

Some doorway outlines (most of which I don't like, except the first one):


Tools of the trade!


Some more initial sketching, planning for how I'm going to handle changes in between height levels.

Looking cool so far. Propper planning is the key to max succes! =)
I am using 64 as default wall/floor size aswell. The only issue I had with it is that it becomes difficult to build a path above another without increasing the general height of your level.

hey kaz if yer gonna be doing the graph paper thing you could also layout the brush lines for the optimized configuration for each door..



looking good btw..

cityy: yeah i know what you're talking about. who doesn't love height though!

skin: thanks for the comment sir, the lines make the drawing significantly cooler anyway so i might have to adopt doing that. you should name yourself "the optimizer"

A proper radiant shot! Note the map file name:

Some progress:

can you compile it, now?

Great to see you entering kaz, I like the way you plan things