It has been 2 years roughly since I started development for Omega Protocol. What a trip it has been.
(First map I have ever made for Half-Life)
This map was terrible and looked awful compared to some other stuff that I have made and even worse compared to other people's maps.
(A lot of my maps I have deleted and lost the images for)
(Shitty old cliffs)
This is a showing of how I used to do cliffs, terrible, terrible cliffs.
This is the new way I had started doing cliffs, still shit but a little better.
This was a map outside (obviously) that I was attempting to feel open. It was also my first attempt at triggers in Half-Life, it didn't really work out.
This Office is ugly and confusing with how the computers and layout are used.
This was a remake of the first map (now scrapped). The textures and the use of them was poorly done by me and the other maps I had been working on at the time to.
Big jump to this map. (quality and time wise)
This maps architecture is okay but the map in total felt really empty.
This map was made for the combat and wasn't really made to look good. As some people pointed out the walls made no sense and I saw why after looking at it. Around this time I also swapped to using Opposing Forces as the base for the mod.
Here was a fun map that I have somewhere on my hard drives. The map was quite fun as I played around with the idea of running around with ally soldiers against blackops and HECU. The map was too dark however and needs a lot of attention if it will ever be released with the mod.
A big jump in quality from previous maps in my opinion but could be much better (every map that I'm working on still could be better). I also started using Night Watch textures and well, it worked pretty well.
This is quite recent, the map is still being worked on due to it being bare.
I'm quite happy with this map as it mixes industrial and labs. The combat is fun and the lighting uses vluzacn's compiler which makes the quality of it much better.
And here we are now. The 2 years spent on developing the mod has been quite annoying and fun. I will be hoping to get something released by the end of 2016 (no promises). But all in all I am extremely grateful for you people and your comments on how to make the mod better. Thank you.
Also thanks to Urby for telling me that Protocol is not spelt as Protocal.
Ah you walked a similar path like me and I'm sure every hl1 mapper that came before us too.
In my first release ever about 6 months ago I implemented some of my first maps which were previously used for my main mod "Firestorm" as it turned out people noticed that as they pointed out in their reviews that some maps were of really of good quality while others looked terrible.
While I'm reluctant to admit that any map looked "terrible" (let em construct some maps and see how that looks like". I admit that there were quality differences.
Anyway unlike you I never deleted any map. If it had some solid base geometry I usually tried to enhance upon it whenever it seemed right to implement such an older map. (By fitting in line with any previous map on any of my mods.)
Your journey has been a shorter one than mine if you truly stick to the premise of releasing 2016 (I hope so - want to play your mod! :) So that's rather solid and a nice way to go. I hope you didn't delete the bridge map as I liked the screenshot though remember my comment of what I pointed out back then.
I salute you on your improvements at least you listened to the general feedback and improved yourself unlike some other newcomer mapper recently who constantly releases 5 minute made maps in the Opposing Force & hl1 AddOn section here on moddb.
Considering your post it's quite obvious that we can expect one hell of a mod from you.. Looking forward to play or even beta test it.
Greetings 23-Down
I really like these kind of news posts. Interesting to see your improvement from the first map to the ones you are making now. I can assure you, my first map was a lot worse than yours ;) . I am glad you are improving, eager to learn more and open to suggestions and constructive criticism. Not many mod developers are like this. And I agree with 23-down, never delete old maps. Keep them just to remind you from where you have started or to simply improve them and use them in the future. At some point, I remade most of my crappy old maps and I managed to create 20 new ones from them. Imagine if I decided to delete them :S .
Good luck with Omega Protocol and I hope we will see something from you soon enough. I am more than happy to see another GldSource mapper around here with such a quality, old-school mod! Don't hesitate to contact me with whatever you may want or any help you may need.
Cheers and keep going!