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I’m sure your all wondering why in the hell I’m on the Vega team. I mean, this guy Mek, he’s too lazy to do anything! Fortunately for me, mapping is one of the few things that keeps me from turning into a lump on the couch

So what have we been working on in the past few weeks? Well as you may already know, we’re still in one of our visual phases. Esselfortium and I have been working on the visual style of the game. Since the decision has already been made for us to go in the direction of cel-shading, we’ve been trying to find what I’ve been calling the background of the style. As in, how the maps and other related bits are going to look against the foreground (the foreground being the cel-shaded models and whatnot). My task in this goal was to make the map that would help us flesh out this look, which would then be used throughout the rest of the game. Essel was tasked to make the textures and….Carnevil and TheDoomFreak slacked off (I’m kidding, of course!).

Up to this point I’ve done lots and lots with making map structures, but until recently I hadn’t really done much with the lighting and texturing. Needless to say I’ve learned a lot…and I’ve still got some learning to do. But tonight we have gotten closer to our goal of finding the art style; I finished up the demo map! Would you like some screenshots? I’m happy to oblige!

BONUS SHOT HERE YES

Ok ok, before we get ahead of ourselves here, a few notes:

• This is just a preemptive strike: NO, this is not Quake 2. I’m serious. Really.
• The map uses 99% all brand-new textures made by essel. The exception is the skybox, which is from UT2K4.
• A slightly useless but interesting bit of information: This map is actually a Deathmatch-style map that I started on for practice. I named it Quayplex and I’m going to be sad if we’re never able to play multiplayer on it (/me pokes Carn).

So hey, mission accomplished! Right? Well…yes and no. The “look” isn’t quite where we want it. I don’t think we’ve pin-pointed exactly what needs to be tweaked just yet, but yes a few of us also thought it came off as Quake 2-ish. Since I’m still learning the ropes as far as texturing and lighting goes, it could be that I need to work on those aspects more. Or it could be the fault of that UT2K4 skybox. Or it could be the textures. Honestly, I’m not sure right at this moment. And please, feel free to share your opinion on this matter! What does matter at this point, though, is that we’re on to a great start. Not to mention what’s done so far does look very cool (in my opinion atleast). With some more discussion and tweaking, we’ll be able to figure it out really soon :D. I’m certain that I’ll be sharing more screenshots with you guys in the near future, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled!