As usual, I begin the contest late due to timing with school. At least I've got the layout planned. Let's see what I can do with the time that remains.

Maybe add a vertex or 2?

Well, I'm at 306 polys at the moment. Only just started sculpting from the plans. I'll be posting frequent development logs (daily at least), given my time constraints.

Wwwoooooohaaaa I can already see the epicness of that map!! Man, you're a shure winner!

Your first speed map back in 2008 was really good so I'm waiting for this one.

first pic is a winner

Lots of responses from such little content! Polycount has tripled since I last posted, by the way. Expect the same effort as I put into the six-hour contest.

Edit, 1:27a EST: First day's work complete. The terrain sculpt is going quite well. I'll have the base brush complete in two days— three tops.

Most anticipated entry

few words on what's going on with those placeholder tess cubes? i'm interested in your method

Ok.. this is... ehm... a run from start to finish, with holes and traps, lots of movers and stuff everywhere. Falling in will "warp" you thru a tunnel and drop you off at the start again.

Those are intersected prefab cube arrangements. It's just so I have less individual brushes to worry about when I'm sculpting the base terrain. This is the first time I'm doing it this way, and it's working out really well so far.

I'll likely intersect the entire thing into one brush when I'm done with it, unless mapping veterans can give me better advice.

nice.

Keep it up and add another vertex or 2. (I like your interpretation of adding a vertex or 2 )

Intersecting them together is good to a point, but don't make an entire cave system one brush. Breaking it up into smaller sections (where each separate tessellated brush is a separate room/tunnel before intersection), and then deintersecting large but sectioned parts of the whole cave system together, if need be. I personally break my terrain up into parts, but that's just me. Avoiding a large, higher-poly brush like what a whole cave system would be is likely a bad idea.

Caves look awesome for how long they took you to make. Great work.

Day two is finally over— most productive day I've had in ages. This terrain is turning out to be huge. The red square brush is 16384x16384. Hopefully that will translate to a long playthrough. 'Night.

Huh. So many colors! I don't understand!