I've been away for awhile, but I had continued working on Rats 1985 well after going silent.
Things happened, which I will explain. A release of the new build will be coming this month, even if only a test so you can enjoy the new and improved Rats once and for all.
This month I'm also updating my indie game "Pirates" - Indiedb.com
Please vote for me and my team so we can build a following and get funding for it.
Details:
I never released 5.3.2 after showing it off (only crappy 4.2 is available, don't recommend it at all lol)
Can't remember exactly why, but I did eventually resume work on the map in late 2012.
I had made a deal with the PVKII mod to release my map as an exclusive map with their next update. However, my time with PVKII was unpleasant, so I decided not to do that.
Afterwards I lost motivation to continue the map, and also became busy with my indie game after rebooting on Unity, but it is time to get 5.3.2 out once and for all :P
The next update will focus on a release for Counter Strike: Source and Counter Strike: GO;
I'll focus this weekend on getting the BSP uploaded here, so look forward to another update soon.
Some new things that were done since my last update in 2012.
- Baking lighting onto MDL textures for full shading and colour bleeding.
- LODs/optimisation (5,000 poly keyboard becomes 500 when in the centre of room)
- Superior lighting (50 static spotlights to simulate Mental Ray light example in Max)
- Skybox WIP (no longer just a blank skybox, details being added)
- Flying snowspeeder from Star Wars (didn't make this, but added it in)
And more. Stay tuned.
Image time!
3DS Max copy of map. Used for baking light into MDL textures, since MDL's in Source don't have lightmapping.
First test at mirroring Max's lighting in Source.
Visible colour bleeding on MDL Computer Monitor
Baked shading on MDL Keyboard + Subtle Gloss/Shine on black keys.
First detailed 3D Skybox test
WE Phone added, not fully textured yet.
"It's cheaper than dating"
Little details add up and make the room come to life.
Isn't that the HUD from uh, oh Pirates Vikings and Kinights or some mod? It looks so familiar!
About baking the lightmaps! Looks awesome and much better than Source's normal lightmapper (though that isn't as bad as the one in UDK). Did Source just let you use custom lightmaps? I have been trying to use them in UDK, but it seems there is no option (that works). So Source just let you do this?
I might switch to either the next version of Source or Unreal Engine, since the stuff the lightmapper from UDK bakes is often just ugly.
About PVK2:
Yes. I was working on making a PVKII exclusive release of 5.3.2
until I realised the PVKII dev team is anything but developers; mostly made up of beta testers that don't know a thing about game developing.
The only reason the offer to make my map exclusive was given to me, was because the PVKII team was and continues to remain completely desperate. But the nail in the coffin was having a worthless beta tester criticise me, when I was the only active developer for 3 months; No appreciation for my efforts at all, and so ended any PVKII exclusivity. So I don't think we'll be seeing anymore PVKII huds next update :V
Baking/Lightmapping:
The shading and colour bleeding is actually inside the diffuse texture. Source MDL doesn't allow for proper lightmapping, and it only has 1 UV channel. I just use "unlit generic" w/ the diffuse texture, which works fine.
I haven't tried the latest version of Source yet, but will give it a look while preparing this map for release.
I've messed with UDK in the past, but I've moved to Unity on my indie project & prefer it over UDK.
Rats map brings back so many memories from 1.6. I'm Digging the map, looks awesome and I love the 80's style. If you would ever be interested in making a version for No More Room in Hell let me know. It might not work that well with our game but just tossing the offer out there since this looks like quality work.
Sure. PM me and I'll see what I can do.