You know how it is. You got an idea for a cs-map. The idea is one single effect that is just soooo cool. You rush into VHE and start building it up... done. Then you realize that this is not a map, its only one tenths the size of a map. You need to add more

     Then you start building the map so its playable. Making some different routes and stuff so the map is even for both teams. But then your map feels empty. What good is a map with the gameplay of de_aztec when it looks like something released from Microsoft. Noone wanna play Hover no more.

     This article was made to help the unhappy mapper in such a terrible situration. An artist without inspiration, is like a cup of water with no water in it.... empty, and barely a cup of water.

     I will now bring you some screenshots from different good details that makes a map kick ass in the visual aspect of mapping.

Index

A decent roof effect

      When I installed Halflife Opposing Force I was overwhelmed by the following screenshot.

     What makes this picture so apealing is the reality that it shows. Ignore the soldiers and aliens, they are nothing that a cs-mapper would be impressed of. The reality is brought to us by drawing our attention to something that is easy to make look real in Halflife.

     Wall textures mostly suck, and so do most roof textures. But here we look at a simple roof, wich looks good. It's not that big deal regarding brushwork. But the grids with the light behind makes the roof seem threedimensional. As if its not just a single gray brush above the level.

     The fact is that this kind of roof is actually used in greater malls, but as we see it will go nicely with a factory map aswell. The technical part of this is no big deal, its just some func_walls with a {grid_texture in them. But it looks good.

Another decent roof effect

     This screenshot is from the map cs_seldomseever. The map gains a heigh degree of respect from me because it adds goodlooking effects in a lot of simple but different ways.

     The light fade effect comming from the roof is along with the leafs real eyecandy. There is a pitfall about using the fade effect (wich is explained in many articles on the internet). This pitfall is that when the player enters this ray of ligh, he wont be blinded, which allways works unnatural. Even worse, the player sometimes apear to be able to swim in these func_illusionarries. That is not very realistic either.

     The rays of light along with the leafs adds sort of the same effect as the roof from the Opposing Force screenshot. The difference is that the Opposing Force roof is adding an 3d feel to a concrete environment, and the Seldomseever roof is adding the 3d fell to a happy summer pringles map. The sun would make rays of light, where we in the concrete invironment can observe that there actually is some light behind the grid.

Well textured outside cliffs

     This screenshot is from the map cs_costabrava.

      The house is impressing, but I will not focus on that right now. What is more inspiring is the cliffs. They are simple, say four worldbruses or so. But they look like cliffs anyway.

      The trick ofcourse is to stetch out the cliff texture, so the tiling is less obvious. And as if that was not enough it makes the r_speeds decrease heavily. And low r_speeds are what makes the creation of cs-maps not only an art but a sport as well.

Faking the look of real windows.

     This screenshot is from cs_libre. Again I will not focus on the house, because its only the few of us who ara gonna make a house exactly like this in one of our own maps.

     The eyecandy is not the windows, but the grid infront of it. The effect is again allmost the same as in Seldomseever and Opposing Force. The player sence 3d, this house has dimensions in more than one direction.

Conclusion

     Those cool effects can be retextured so they will fit into allmost every environment that a map can be build of. The genneral idea is to add a litle eyecandy along with those oftenly box on top of box maps, that we all tend to make.

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