:baby:So I decided to try and make a desert map using the limited textures/materials at my disposal in the demo.

I am kind of using this as a way to learn Sandbox 2, while still making a good quality map.

All I have focused up to this point is texturing/hightmap/terrain/vegitation. I plan to add voxels for overhangs, and other stuff as well for extra detail next. Then I will start adding things liek clouds, before actually starting the level design (which i where I might have more than a good share of bumps with :tongue:)

The hightmap was generated using GeoControl, and then importing it in SB2. What a fabulous program! I really like the results. I could probibly be able to achive higher quality and more realistic looking terrain if I went in afterwords and really worked at terrain creation with brushes and what-not, but at this stage of skill, that would of been overkill for me

I tried to make everything seem natural in deisgn, and each texture job have it's purpose and "personality" for being there, to make it have more sense in a visual way.

The biggest challenge for me was trying to get details in somthing so plain as a desert. I only have about 4-5 or so different texture layers, yet it took over 10 minutes to generate the surface textures due to how much/different I used each of them

The weed at the bottom of the cliffs, leaching what little water and nutrients the soil gets dry



Overhead view of the rock cliffs



Looking at Brown Mesa in the morning hours



On top of Brown Mesa in the morning



Weeds growing up Brown Mesa and leeching it dry at high noon



Night Vision is usefull/wanted during night!



Without night vision



Skydive overview of the whole area at night in night-vision




Current Issues:

Can't get my material settings to save. I tweaked the materials for both of my rock textures to make them look less buggy up-close shader wise. However, when I save+restart, although everything else is fine, my shader settings I set these two materials for reset back to the buggy-close-up defaults. Any help?

my guess its the editor.. you cant even duplicate the materials... they are read only
try placing those objects in a layer called (MatObjects) and see if it works ?(

oh btw the map looks nice..

What objects? You mean place the materials? How do I do that? I'm talking about the materials painted on the terrain for the rock

Update!

The local military village's shooting range:



Inside the recreation/work shack at night:



The village at dawn:



Inside one of the cave's that lead to to the top of the mesa:



Looking up one of the long shafts to the surface:



Currently Fiddling with:

Trying to place all my objects/prefabs/ect before it's too late, and that includes all the object detail in the caves, armories, main base, ect...

I might have to just release a "non-playable" finished version for the demo, and finish the map in it's entirety after release.

Also, I plan to add VisArea's and Portals to the caves, once i figure out how they work and how to do it in the first place. That way, I can make the caves completely dependant on secondary light sources instead of ambient light.

Very cool man. I especially like the whole night ambience.

Wow, awesome.

This could almost be a Mission to Mars mod, you kow, if the shooting gallery wasn't there I mean.

sorry.. iam very new ahm could you tell me what "WIP" means? or is it VIP ?

Work In Progress, you can understand it by reading the description

Anyway it seems that these textures are too stretched...