Thanks for taking the time to write such a good review. The default texture thing was a stupid mistake to make, and to be honest only happened because i forgot. Same with the incomplete clipping. In regards to details around the cliffs though, those cliffs and border walls were some of the most painful things to do for the whole map. Trying to mix different size blocks and heightmaps is a total nightmare :( but i'll see what I can do regardless. I like your suggestion of adding snow, which I think would be easier than trying to get a good natural feeling out of the skylight. (I tried at one point, and it looked stupid)

I think you're right about the playerstarts, but I've been really struggling to figure out decent places to put them that didn't make players who spawn there either really vulnerable or really lucky.

Do you know which spots the textures were broken in? I'd like to fix them.

I'm not going to light up the hallways, they're just meant to be background, not distracting. There already are some lights there, and I feel like that is enough.

@height map
Height map is good for blocking things out but you have to go in and manually do it, its painful but its really the only way to get good cliffs

@broken spots
only one i can remember right now is upper middle of your screen shot, theres a fixture on the wall the top of it is default texture

@hallway light
Meh your choice they are very dark you cant really see down them but whatever

@playerstarts
its a small map there are no good spots to put them .. just having a lot of them will make it hard to guess (im thinking more duels than anything)

@edit
found the other 2 spots
on top of one of the towers to the right of the fixture
on the underside of the wood backside and frontside were the two beams connect

Considering that I basically did do that with the cliffs, I totally get where you're coming from. :(

I think i got all of the texture issues now, even found one by myself. Thanks! The one with the wood I never would have found myself.

I did try the snow idea, but it's really, really hard to make it look convincing. I think I'll have to give up on that idea. Maybe you could give me some tips for a good skylight value?

ill look at it and see what i come up with. Adding snow is more or less just using blend paint brushes (they're super easy to use once you set them up correctly).

When doing cliffs most people use a larger grid size (like 2 up from what you used). Your texture will do most of the detailing for you, the key is just to add a lil light variency. (then maybe add in a plateau or 2.

You could always cap it off so that there is little or no sunlight, (maybe just a lil tiny hole). Then you could go with more of a dark map theme :) and it would solve the detailing problem.

Ill look at the lighting and either give you values or just post a preview map (with some pictures;)

chasester

@edit

did some modification

here

I think there's something wrong with the file you uploaded. It's only ~86kb and it can't load in sauerbraten for me.

durrr.. i edited in tesseract (no lightmap) thats why its so small ... ill try to fix it idk why it buggin out ... if i cant figure it out ill post pics and write a mini tutorial.

... this map is for sauerbraten, not tesseract. :/

http://puu.sh/5J607.png

How does this look? I haven't finished yet, but does this look any better than before?

I am still working on it after all, but really, who needs both kidneys?

The screenshot looks way better already.

Edit:
After checking out the map once more, I noticed the part which you've added is actually 1 of the places which do look good compared to the rest of the map. However, the rocks which surround the map still should be less square. It feels pretty unnatural.
I'm still not font of the piso2 texture of the aftas textureset. I know it's a fitting texture, but it has no bumpmapped shader-settings. This makes it look quite odd against the other wall textures.
Most places rely just a little bit too much on those wall textures (WT_GK_010_cc, WT_GK_012_cc, etc from the gor textureset). You've already tried to adding those wooden beams, but it often isn't enough.

About the tree models;
Make sure they aren't in contact with walls., as this looks pretty awkward.
Some suggestions to improve the performance;
Try to skytexture surfaces which aren't in sight of the playground. This saves up a lot of generated lightmaps, which saves up a lot of file-size. For example in the next couple of screenshots.

I've also found a clipping bug right under a piece of noclip.

The pickup placement still hasn't been improved.

Thanks for pointing out some of the errors. Sadly, the skytexture thing just isn't happening unless you know a way to make it stop casting skylight lighting. It's why most of the corridors aren't using skylight at the moment.

skytexturelight 0

derp :D

I've been thinking: What if I made a bump map for that texture? I'm not sure how I would package it with the map, but the license from that texture pack implies that it would be okay if I did. Thoughts?

Thanks! I think I might use these settings in the next release. :)

lolz thanx, they probably need tweaking i did them in like 10 mins ;)

chasester

Yeah, I increased the fog distance a bit to give players a more reasonable sight line down that long path.

Try skytexturelight 0.

Fog has nothing to do with lighting actually (there aren't being lightmaps calculated for that). It just changes the atmosphere of the map.

Thanks for the command, I had no idea that existed!