Draco
Hey Draco, good to see you here.
Thanks for the tips. I take it you've been through most of the topic by now, so you can kind of see what's going on so far. My Nublar is nowhere near the actual size as in the movie - in fact if you take a straight run without obstacles it's only about four minutes to the Visitor Center from the helipad and maybe twenty from the very south tip of the island to the north. The reasoning for this was that, A, I have no idea how to make a larger map without using a heightmap, and that adds in all the problems with terrain which occur once it's imported, and B, I knew such a large map would cause slowdown, lag, crashes and all that good stuff. What I've actually been doing is, as I cover the island in vegetation, for each little area I do I'll go in and do an FPS/crash test since I've had that problem before, especially in the areas of the VC and perimeter fence (which are, for the moment, resolved). I understand how beneficial it would be to split Isla Nublar into multiple levels (I've read up all around the JPO thread as well regarding this) - the problem I have here is that the level I'm making is designed to be more of a freeform map with a story unfolding over time, where locations change, and your acts, such as finding new weapons and, later, upgrading them, or wiping out the Velociraptors, will persist over time until you actually escape. Kind of complicated to explain, really.
I'm sure if it did come down to that point where it needed to be split or risk dying a horrible, unplayable death, that could be looked into and incorporated. Good to hear the input, though. I'll try and hold back on previews as well.
As for your volunteering of services, welcome to our little team, thanks for your services. I take it you know what you're doing more than I in pretty much everything, so I might have to bug you here and there for help.
I'll PM you more information, where do you want to begin working? The model department is slightly lacking at the moment, Road Warrior is working on the Safari Lodge still and I'm pretty meh at the whole thing, I'm more into the level design itself and scripting. I'll send you (Road Warrior as well) a .RAR of the level files at the moment and whatever other junk there might be, look it over and tell me what you think. Word of warning - right now the level is rather unstable, it has something to do with a few triggers I implemented recently (they're all hovering next to the gray box on the helipad if you want to check them out). I've been extremely busy so I haven't had time to work them out.
Also, you mentioned occlusion objects, right now I'm just using a bunch of big ones from the original levels and the ones hppav made for the Visitor Center. They're only temporary though, the terrain isn't anywhere near completed.