I think we should take our time and get things right. Let’s not start writing until we’ve locked in the features after Alpha. 
Well, yeah, let’s not rush, but consider what we already have done. The areas that require the writing are up to a level of completion that they’re about ready, sans if we do anything special for the outro. The lines within the course are mostly just, “Very good,” as well as whatever is to be written for Gina. Most of it [the writing] is done thanks to Half-Life, we just need to add our own spins and whatever extra bits we add.
TL;DR Areas that require writing are mostly ready, writing consists mostly of touching up the originals, modifying to fit our changes.
Exactly. It’s one thing to spend time doing something you enjoy. It’s another to spend time doing something you enjoy, tailoring it to please other people, spending months on it then finding out it’s shit, no matter how proud of the work you are 
This may sound stupid, but how about adding a soundtrack to [redacted] in the guard room?
Not one of BM’s soundtrack but one made from our composer.
It would make it more fun?
Be a bit more vague, and it sounds like an alright idea, I guess.
Changed it :p.
You have contact with said composer?
I’ve said once on a meeting we got a sound engineer/composer.
He was actually applying for voice acting, but it was to Irish.Instead he wanted to do sound, or compose anything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54FtCLgdkiw
His track showreel.
By the way, I combined the Hazards room with the shooting range and swim map since there was a lot of free space in our size budget. If Jeff decides to tackle it, he should make sure to only touch the Hazards area, since I’m still working on the shooting range and swimming section.
Alright, but don’t forget there’ll be a lot less free space once we start combining the completed maps.
Welp, I’m all for the idea, so long as the track fits. Sounds like he’s got a particular style.
I think the only thing left do in the shooting range is to fix the bug with the props.
Also we currently use almost 40%, and we are not even at alpha stage.
I got a feeling once we hit alpha, were already above 50% and hell I dont even want to know how much space the beta will take.
Also incase anyone missed Lars his news on the models, here is his last update:
Made a couple of things for the tram station platform:
Models: /props_hc/hc_t0a0/walkway_beam
/props_hc/hc_t0a0/walkway_hanger
and a new texture: /props_hc/darkgreymetal
In the map hc_t0a0_130115.vmf I have incorporated these along with wires.
I also aligned a few things and added some env_cubemaps along the pipes
on the right side to get rid of some weird reflections.
I’m fucking happy with Lars in our team.
Agreed, Lars is great. We just need a texture artist for his props and then his stuff will be extra-great.
As for space, I think we have a lot of room for free will in our maps. Currently the most expensive objects are the shadow-baking brushes that I use to bake grate-shadows onto the lightmaps. If I use them sparingly, we should be able to squeeze out plenty of room.
You’re not the only one, Crypt is also using it for the third room.I like it however, because it gives a nice little touch.How long did it took to make that though?That brush is very similiar to the grate texture.
Michael can do textures for us.
It took maybe several minutes to make it. It’s not too difficult. Just a lot of precise shift-cloning and a little bit of vertex manipulation. It eats the BSP vertex limit for lunch though, and can dramatically increase VBSP compile time, depending on how much you use it. Those brushes are the reason why I had to split the basic movement into two maps.
Obviously they should be able to be optimized though.
Dont use it to much.I’ve seen you used it 5 - 8 times for the whole map, and the more there is the more the loading points we are going to need to add (which will suck since Source is supposed to avoid many loading points).
Plus the fact that you gotta lower the lightmap scale to extremely low numbers over a potentially large face shoots up VRAD’s time for a crap load.
I can look at the textures and see if I can create at least some semi-decent placeholders, but I’m no pro by any means.
But fuck that seat texture.
Yeah. But there are times where it becomes really worth it to use it. Dramatic lighting is really really cool.
Again, a dedicated texture artist would be cool.
EDIT: Hehe just ran into a No Free Edicts. That’s actually funny. 
Optimization time! 
Haha, I’m addicted to it. Most times I even consider touching the lightmaps on a set of faces, it’s to crank them down to 1.
That’s a really easy way to crash VRAD.exe though.