Titan

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(05 July 2010)

Hi,
I tested your map yesterday. Nice ideas, nice jumps but here's a few little mapping issues. I think you know most of them but I'll tell you anyway.

Your models are not clipped. Clip them.
Those lamp models have no texture when you look at them from above. You could put a brush inside them and give it a texture so you can't look though it from the top.
titan1
The same goes for the model in the middle of the spawn room
titan2
The flames stick into the walls. Make the brush smaller or move it a little, so that the flames won't stick in the walls when you look at them from that angle.
titan3
You should caulk all the sides of brushes that you can't see in the game. So it won't load them. That way you will save a few fps. But that's not a problem in your map anyway. I've got good fps everywhere. Still, it's considered good style to caulk the faces you can't see in game. Normaly you build all the brushes with caulk texture and then apply the textures you want to see in game only to the faces you can really see. Here are just two examples: You don't need the texture under the table at spawn for example.
titan4, titan5
You can lemming on a few surfaces. Make sure that all your floor textures have nodamage.
Most of your spawns/teleporters aren't placed that good. I always have to go backwards into a corner before I start the jump. When a lot of players are at the same jump there will be lots of blocking. Move the spawns to a better position.
There are quite a few places where you have two brushes sticking into each other and causing flickering textures. Build it so that the brushes won't overlap. You should go over the map again and check everything but here are a few examples:
titan6, titan7, titan8, titan9, titan10, titan11
I think the shader of this lamp model is not correct or the path is not correct. Normally the black part you see at the chains is supposed to be invisble. You have to check that one.
titan12
These two torches at jump 8 are flying in the air.
titan13
At body's bloodbath you need to move the waterfalls just a little bit up, they stick inside a brush.
titan14
At a few places you have light shining "through" the walls/corners from the other side. You might want to read Deliriums solution to the problem: Solution
titan15
There's lots of misaligned textures:
titan16, titan17, titan18, titan19, titan20
It's possible to do most jumps by stopping in the middle. I don't know the numbers but it's maybe 5 different jumps where you can stop and then still make it. You have to decide if you want it that way or if you want to make it harder. It's of course more interesing if there are more ways to do it but it's easier.
Some cave walls don't fit well at the edge. It looks like cut.
titan21, titan22
Make sure your teleport brushes are thick rather than a thin brush. When people are lagging it's possible to fall through a thin teleporter. At jump 1 for example when you fall through that teleporter you are trapped in that hole. Better make the teleport brush big enough so it will cover the whole hole so you can't stand down there. Or you could leave it like that and make a secret there. But then you should add nodamge to the cave texture if you haven't already.
At some places you have to move some brushes just a little bit.
titan23, titan24, titan25
In one jump you use ladders. You can lemming at those ladders. Try to write your own ladder shader and add nodamage to it. (actually just copy the common one and change paths/names)
In your .pk3 file you have some thumbs.db. You don't need them in there. Make sure check your pk3 for those and remove them before you distribute the map. You will save a little bit of file size that way.
You also don't need the shaderlist.txt in the pk3.

Ok, that's most of the things I noticed. Most of the issues are just small ones that the normal player won't notice. That's normal for an alpha version. All in all I quite like the map. The jumps are not too hard and they are inventive. I also like the theme of the map that Egyptian(or what ever, I'm not sure) cave/tomb theme is nice. I laughed when I read Body's Bloodbath at one jump. I like that name smile. So, I hope this information is useful for you. I'm looking forward to the next version.

Thanks for letting me test it, have a happy day!

(23 August 2010)

Ok, so here are again some constructive notes
I guess you know most of the issues but I'll mention them anyway so you won't forget.

Some missing textures:
titan26, titan27, titan28, titan29, titan30, titan31
The rope texture at the start needs some fixing.
The patch mesh at the start is floating a bit.
titan32
The texture of the fence at jump 9 looks stretched out. When you select the meshes press S and choose "natural". That should fix it.
titan33
At the end, when you look through the teleporter, the torch model looks like ... hmm, hard to describe, it looks like it's in front of the teleporter but it is not. I'm not sure how to fix that, probably modify the telepoter shader/model. The easiest way would be to just remove the torch behind the telepoter. Or leave it like it is now, you decide.
titan34
At the finish room, there's light shining under the walls. The same is true for the room where you can go from the easy jumps to jump 5 of the normal route.
titan35, titan39
The first two pillars at easy jump 5 need some work. The first one has a black line on it. You probably just have to delete it and build the brush again. The second one has strange lighting. One side is very dark compared to the others.
titan36
Again easy 5: the teleporter at the end is too high. You can't really grab the ladder because you're teleported away. And when you're teleported to the start of the jump, you fall in the teleporter again. You need to move the teleporter destination.
titan37
When you use the mirror teleporter after easy 6 in the other direction(from easy 7 to 6) you fall back to the start of jump 6.
titan38
This lamp looks a little strange because the shadow/lighting is too hard. It's because the lamp is in a hollow.
titan40
There are two brushes sticking inside each other at easy 7. And one of the textures needs nodamage. The two torches are not at the wall.
titan41, titan42
The texture at the ceiling doesn't fit.
titan43
At the last room of the easy way, the torches are not on the wall. And you can also get stuck when you use the button. Maybe you can make the button move inside the wall rather than from side to side.
titan44, titan45
14. The teleporter at easy 9 doesn't have a destination.
titan46
I had a look at the "egyptlamp" model and why the chain isn't transparent. If you have a look at the shader of the model there's one line that says "//alphaFunc GE128" you just need to remove the two // and then the chain works correctly.
The easy route needs a little more detail. Especially some of the hallways. Some don't even have lamps in them.
The floor below the rope at the start needs nodamage, too. Or maybe it was your intention so that people have to use the rope, idk.
There are a lot of ways to get over the cliff walls at the beginning.
Missing location names for the easy route.
The two little walls that you break to get from easy way to jump 5 have two different sounds. One sounds ok, the other one sounds like glass.
Some models are clipped, some are not.
The invisible brush at jump 3 that prevents you from grabbing is too thick. You really notice it in the game.
At jump 5 there are two brushes overlapping and some of the torches don't touch the walls.
titan47
There's a tiny gap at jump 9.
titan48
Maybe you can remove the black corners at the terrain at the start.
titan49

Ok, I think that's it. Now here's the part where the jumps are rated by their difficulty. I finished the map 4 times and wrote down how many tries I needed to pass each jump. Here are the results:

Jump1: It's very easy. It's just one wj.
Jump5: I think this is the hardest one. The next hardest jumps are 10 9 8 7. So maybe you should make jump 5 a little easier, or move it to the end.
Jump6: The Corridor is way too easy. It's easier than jump 2.
The rest of the normal way is ok.

easy5: This and easy 10 are the hardest. Maybe it's just because the teleporter at the end is too high to grab the ladder, idk.
easy9: This one is far too easy again. You can stop at the pillar and do one wj. But even if you don't stop it's too easy.
The other jumps are ok.

I really like the map. Great theme, great jumps, great map! smile I think this is going to be a huge success. Here are just a few screens of what I think are the most beautiful places:
titan50, titan51, titan52, titan53, titan54, titan55, titan56, titan57, titan58, titan59

If you have any questions feel free to ask me