May as well make the thread now, especially as it will be useful for any questions I happen to have later. Plus it creates a little commitment . Any information here is potentially subject to change.

"The significant Skaarj presence on Na Pali has drawn the attention of the Earth military, and scouts have already been dispatched to the planet to scope out the situation, get information from the natives, and mark areas of interest in preparation for a potential war.

A spire-located a little offshore from a coastal Nali town-used to contain an ancient temple complex, but it was abandoned long ago. In the years since any who have entered the place have never returned, and, with it's old name long-lost, it is known only as "The Forsaken Spire" among the Nali. The Forsaken Spire has mostly been below the notice of the Skaarj, but that is about to change, and it will soon play a pivotal part in the upcoming conflict..."

If I pull it off, this entry will have a pretty unique (at least for Unreal) idea behind it. It can stay secret for a little, but here's a (probably) give-away for anyone familiar with another mapping community: or google The Inverted Manse.

First released WIP screenshots now here:

Now for a mapping question. Is it possible to create a Cylinder with even sides without nasty grid issues? The Cylinder builder seems to make even-sided ones but it ends up really-off grid. The 2D editor version I've made is on grid but the sides seem a little uneven however I tweak it. Is there a way to have it just right? Preferably a 2D editor shape as then I can resize it how I want whenever I need it.

The cylinder builder creates a mathematically-regular shape, so it will necessarily not be perfectly aligned to the grid. You'll have to settle for a 2D-Shaped brush or tolerate the off-grid vertices.

You could try the actor align functionality (have your cylinder brush selected and enter "actor align" in the ued console). It will not be perfect though. Cylinders, being round, tend to have polygonal approximations that are not so nice to work with, so either you brush will be slightly off proportion or slightly off grid (assuming the number of sides is greater then four).

Thanks for the info on that; so I guess I can't have both. This particular map in the entry is tiny, so I'll probably go for proportions as some off-grid stuff won't become a problem in this case.

I decided to show a couple of shots of a relatively finished area (and added them to the OP):



This is still the "first pass" of design (and not fully done yet), in particular I need to add some vegetation later, plus there's already a few things in the shots I realise I need to tweak/add. The good thing is that even if I don't have enough at the deadline I have enough idea where I'm going that I can withdraw and turn it into a separate project (and probably make use of some custom content in that case).

Looking sweet

My first reaction:

what he said!

Beautiful work, MMAN! That really evokes the good Unreal temple feeling. Very ornate, well-detailed and colorful!

That is a bloody good work!
But:
Blue fog = bad imho.

Thanks for the comments. The grating thing (and blue fog there) is something I'm not fully sure on, but its position makes it pretty easy to modify later on.

At this point I can say I won't finish in time for the contest, but I will finish the map/pack despite that barring some out-of-my-control disaster that stops me (if I don't/can't outside of that I'll pretty much fully quit mapping).

Yeah I think taking out the fog would be good; it just looks out of place. Maybe make it green and REALLY unsaturate the color so it's nearly white?

Shame to hear you'll be withdrawing, too, but understandable.

The fog source is from some water below the grate, so it's supposed to be some sort of water vapour thing (which reminds me that that got lost and it ended up far less subtle than it was supposed to be). I've made it a lot more unsaturated and lowered the brightness and it definitely looks better now.

Any chance this might be continued? It looks so niiiice.