Working with a community to produce one more faithful to the original with more features and less bugs.

It will be completed today, minor improvements will follow afterwards.


Comment if you love Iceworld!

The SDK came out about a month ago, but I've been enjoying summer.

However I'm itching to get back, so same deal as last time. Within maybe a week or two, I will have a great version to test and anyone wanting to help only need contact me.

Hey guys, nice to see I've hit 40 members. I'm just updating to let everyone know I will not be updating again until the L4D SDK is released, for my work now is becoming as complete as I'd like it to before transitioning over.

These pictures should only give you an idea of the smooth layout I wanted with some textures I made and borrowed, you may be able to spot some homage to Half-Life. Enjoy this slideshow:


http://img23.imageshack.us/slideshow/player.php?id=img23/4478/1239864174hhx.smil


Remember lighting and props come after the SDK is out. Textures you are looking at are 100% custom. Thanks to Tune my friend for offering to let me use some.

The map is very large and there is only 4 pictures, so if you wish to have a play at it, email me at mikemayea(at)gmail.com for the map to run around in yourself. You'll have to imagine the zombies :p

Michael

Just hand painting some textures to which I'm throwing every Valve normal mapping technique at. It's mostly an investment in time tweaking the .vmt settings rather than the actual texture it seems. I have however solved quite a few road blocks, mainly one having to do with seamless texturing. Turns out, it was the bumpmaps fault; curse them.

I'm not going for a grunge look, that got old after HL2. Instead it's a clean facility with grunge replaced with blood, or humor... and zombies. It has been a vision of mine to take the whole "Cruisin USA" approach to guiding a player through a map, and having comic humor here and there with flashy stuff. I wont over do it, I promise!

So what we'll end up with is a pristine white laboratory, utilizing the best of bump maps, specular maps, detail textures, parallax where appropriate(Hope these still work in L4D), and some very advance lighting techniques I've developed myself. Thank Valve for quadratic lighting techniques for creating sharp contrast. Self Shadowing bumpmaps have to wait until the tools are released.

Expect a screenshot after the testing has been done. Also, if the time is not going to work for any of you, I'll have another one the next day if need be. Just message me on Steam friends and we can discuss a good time.



-Michael

I have some exciting news and thought I would update. The map is coming along very nicely, everything is connecting in a very interesting and intricate way which means competing teams can and more than likely will have dramatically different approaches to forming best times. The map layout will very likely be done right on time for testing, there should be no cause for sudden delay.

On another note, I've taken the liberty of finding a music artist who I feel has fantastic potential and is willing to partner with me to give a unique and orchestral musical experience for the map. This is just one way I hope to separate the map and give it a special and disconnected feel from traditional Left 4 Dead gameplay.

Finally, it is my goal to make a large percentage of the map entirely custom content in order to always give it a fresh and unique feel. This means textures, ambient sounds, props, music, everything will be custom made by me or helping hands. It is my ultimate goal to give this new game mode it's very own unique feel even when it comes to visual stimuli.

Map testing is in only 5 days! Be sure to have ventrilo working properly before then if you wish to participate. If you do not have it, it's free. Go get it!