When did I ever state you should suck my dick?
When?
It seem's your sole reason for being in this thread is to cause issue so, I'll say it again.
Get out.
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You seem to be under the impression I don't take advice? I don't listen to other members.
Explain to me why would I sent Mech a copy of one of the assets for him to take a look at after he asked me to.
If I was so stuck into my own mindset would I not ignore his suggestion and offer of help and just carry on?
You're not even worth arguing with, there's 200 posts in the last 2 pages of this thread proving my point, not yours. (Lets not even get into the posts that were deleted :allears:)
PS : I like to jerk off to 343 too.
http://i50.tinypic.com/y1bns.png
I'm sorry; but I have to go with Selentic on this argument, considering everything he said was true.
No, Sel's intent to cause as much drama as possible, The only reason I made a thread here was to get tips and advice for the mod, You and several others have gone out of your way to try and twist what I've said to appeal to your own opinions.
I would have thought with the latest updates it would show that I'm willing to take tips and advice, even inferno has started to notice the change.
Currently the only two people working on this mod are myself and teltaur, so progress is obviously going to take a while.
I recently started watching through a 8 hour lecture on Sub-D that snafubar suggested to me, once finished I plan on using
the techniques shown for making newer content, the spartan biped has been restarted as well as several other works.
Honestly, it boggles the mind why someone so hell bent on hating the mod because of who is working on it would still linger if their intent was not to shit the place up.
Selentic is pretty much right. Even though you have gotten lots of feedback your work has not improved. And your pretty fucking hostile to criticism.
Right, I'm starting to feel like a broken record repeating myself.
Do I need to go through a list of what I've asked for advice on and what I've done with the tips given?
I've redone the map several times, I've gotten a licence for geocontrol to improve the latest map design, I've remade several objects such as teleporters, redone the UV's for bases, restarted the entire spartan biped.
Need I say more? Honestly if I was so hostile to advice I wouldn't be making those changes, several time's I've offered to talk one to one over IM as it's easier and quicker to relay the ideas back and forth and no one, not a single one of you have taken that offer up.
If you're so interest in me improving talk to me privately over IM be it steam or MSN and we'll see where to go from there.
We all have given you criticism to your shit, you still have not gotten better, and every time we do give you criticism, you reply back to it with hostility.
Wouldn't you think that YOUR wrong when everyone else is saying the same exact thing? None of us are going to want to help you improve if all you do is reply with a shitty attitude and thinking that your always right.
Since the beginning of the project I've had people being hostile towards me, One can expect me to slowly become a little harsh in my comments.
I've never said I was always right, what I've said is that I'm willing to change the mod for the better and when something is out of my grasp I've said as much, apparently admitting something being out of my control is wrong or at least according to tweek.
I've given you the offer to talk to me personally on IM if you want to help, me and inferno are talking right now.
From this point on, discussions about Warlord's ability/inability to respond to criticism will be conducted in private. This thread is for discussion of the project and its content, not its creator. Warlord this also applies to you, you may ignore people's comments or respond to them but you will not tell people to get out for expressing their views on content.
Sorry, no I didn't, since I clearly have 100pp
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3332789/misc/wrongagain.jpg
Stop using heightmaps to make your terrain. Period. Sculpt that shit up. The examples mech gave are quite clearly more than heightmaps back on the very first page. You may be using geocontrol but that really looks like it's for creating wide area views, vistas, landscapes, NOT a player area, which is your entire problem. aside from that,the surrounding area looks like nothing but heightmap/displace w/ sound modifier in 3ds max. You need a real vision for what's going on and a clear way to approach it.
I don't know if it's the videos or not, but the surfaces of everything and the colors all look very washed out, and that is a way to create severe visual disinterest.
ye know the people i gave the harshest crticism are the ones that improved most?
look at Hunter & hunter.
i burned those two relentlessly, and everyone told them to listen to what i had to say, and suck it up.
they actually amounted to something now.
hunter doesnt produce utter garbage anymore, but he's building things which are actually pretty decent.
granted, he's still stuck in I CAN ONLY COPY HALO STUFF rut, but at least he makes decent work out of it, and he's improved MASSIVELY.
selentic i've been burning in IM's, and giving him advice and tips on how to improve, and look how far he came in a VERY short amount of time. he went from producing mostly garbage (no offence selly <3) to building proper high-res trains (some better than others) and baking them down, asking for feedback every step of the way, letting me check his UV's, etc. when i suggest something, he doesn't bitch about it, he fucking does it.
i told him to COMPLETELY redo the UVs on one of his trains. he didn't complain once, not even a sadface smiley.
selentic has progressed and improved on a MANIACAL PACE.
you on the other hand, haven't.
e-peen flex-mode on!
it comes down to this, i'm better than yuo, i know more than you, and everything i will say will be right, and correct.
if you choose to ignore that and do it wrongly, that's your choice, and you'll suck for doing so.
Mind if I point out something Neuro?
Notice how I've not been showing the Spartan biped that I've Been sub-D'ing?
Notice how I've only updated the general mod not how I've spent countless hours in the past few weeks grabbing as many tutorials at possible to do exactly as you suggested?
Just last week I downloaded an 8 hour lecture on sub-D a AK47 to learn from it and hopefully improve by.
The cliffs are going to be improved by making rock face objects in 3ds max and then imported as prefabs, which according to several people is the right way to go about it.
At the current moment, textures are the only thing I've not got any hand in as Teltaur is the guy in charge of that, So when i politely ask to move along, it's not because I want to avoid the discussion it;s simply because I do not have any hand in the development of that portion of the mod.
As it currently stands, I am going through as many tutorials as I possibly can, not rushing them but taking my time to go through them to understand the concept and work flow behind them.
What bothers me is when half way through watching a tutorial I get sel bitching at me about not making a effort, when in the past he's posted a shit tonne of stick figures in the thread to intentionally shit it up and then I'm the one who get's warned because I ask for him to not bother starting up his old tricks.
I've offered many times in the past to talk directly to me as it is simply easier and quicker to convey thoughts through a IM than having to make the essay long reply on the forums.
I took mech up on his offer to take a look at one of the assets for the mod and thus far got no reply since sending the files.
I fairly regularly talk to snafubar when I feel I'm stuck and need tips, Throughout the entire thread the idea was to get idea's for the mod on what features people would want to see, Not for the childish "ooh hey look at what i did lololol" I simply am not that kind of person, It's a shame you seem to think that way no matter what I've told you on the contrary.
If you honestly want to help, let me know of any decent tutorials on making good rock models as so far they seem scarce and few in between.
Wait until I update the thread again, By that time the new cliffs should be in place making the level seem a lot cleaner and more tidy.
Been doing some sub-D and currently got some forerunner tech pattern going for various things.
Sub-D' the light fixtures in this screenshot:
http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/378/controlroom.png
The UV's are no where near in a finished state, infact the bitmaps probably won't even be the same, the smoothing on the light fixtures haven't been touched nor have they been unwrapped yet.
Might as well update this thread.
The mod was on standby since the last update in here after my motherboard decided to commit suicide and it's taken me up until the end of September to get a cheap and nasty motherboard let alone a new video card.
Finally got a new card in a exchange with XFX mid October, so I'm now rocking a new 4850 1Gb card, more than enough to replace my old 4770 512Mb card.
Changes since I got the ball rolling again beginning of last month.
- Scrapped biped model entirely, Need to get some references and sketch a design up.
- Terrain radically altered, no more "dead" space that was useless, Level more stylized like Valhalla, Got a forerunner wall being made to run along top of one cliff side, Got forerunner bridge being made to cross between canyon walls at mid section, breaks the sky up a little.
- Making high resolution Halo ring for use in skybox, After much tweaking with the idea of using a distance cloud idea to project the Halo ring in the sky decided to make a ring and add more detail than could be gleaned from the CE menu ring.
- Current High poly ring at 66k tri's, Been using this as a sub-D trial as well as learning other tools like bend and shell.
- Low poly ring currently stands at 50k but working my way on getting it lower, the mesh is currently having to be arrayed 45 times to get a full ring, I'm hoping on getting the base section to a lower triangle count.
- Cliff rock face modelled and undergoing UV-wrapping, Looking into possibly altering stock rock files to fit purpose.
- New corridors, All my corridors and buildings are now modular, the old designs were thrown out completely and been using sub-d for those.
[LIST][*]Currently the rooms are very bland, I'm working on using a prefab style work out, this way I can make the basic rooms and then add different attachments to said rooms and label them differently.
- Longsword model is now fully unwrapped, needs texturing, halcyon cruisers are on their way to being unwrapped.
- Environment generators, These I plan to be a device to help differentiate the two opposing bases a little differently.
The idea is there are based upon the devices found on the last level on Halo 3 just outside the control room where the flood drop.
The idea is for one of the two to be malfunctioning and have snow in that portion of the map.
These thing's I worked on making sure their angles were perfect 30 degrees, never known a compass to stick to a monitor screen before.
They're not finished yet, they still have some details not yet crafted in, I've got a final design in my sketch book which still has some details that need adding to the front end.
http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/701...generators.png
http://img121.imageshack.us/img121/2...enerators2.png
The trigger and magazine needs unwrapping and the scopes bolt needs a little editing, other than that, only thing left is getting my head around importing it.
- The magnum, Teltaur worked on the bitmaps for this and I like the end result.
The pistol has been modelled with customization in mind, use the scope or don't players choice.
http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/2003/pistols.png
- Spartan laser, I'm going by the original concept art that was released for Halo 3 back in it's beta days, I prefer that design over it's eventual design.
http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/7...artanlaser.png
This started out as a if and when Model, I don't always feel like doing the same model two days in a row so I mix it up a little, work on one thing one day and another on another.
To be frank it's kept me sane considering the various other issues going on at the moment.
As for some more visual forms of what's been going on I released a video about 2 weeks ago showing off some of what is going on in the mod, I know some thing's need working on such as most of the structures, thy're there until I've completed the fully detailed versions, more of a sight finder for getting some view of how the final map will look like once completed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaBrd...layer_embedded
On a last note, Teltaur get on MSN sometime so you can get around to telling me about this specular thing you mentioned a while back.
I think it looks great, just need more detail and that groundmap needs to be recolored.
The present "grass" texture looks a bit tiled. I also feel like the Forerunner textures could use more bumpmapping so they don't look so flat; right now they look like they came straight from Blam! proper, which is not what you are trying to emulate I don't think.
Other than that, this looks pretty good and has come quite a way from last time you showed it off. :)
Fake E: Was that music from Inception?
If there's any ideas that people might have or if anyone has seen any concept art from previous Halo game's that they think might be relevant to the mod I'd appreciate it if you let me know.
I've been scouring different artists again recently looking for concept art as well as ideas.
It would be nice if we knew the premise of the mod, to help give ideas. :|
Also, I kinda figured that about the grass placeholder, but thought I should point it out just in case.
The premise of the mod as it stands right now is to make a multiplayer map which consists of two parts, the outdoor valley and the interior hall ways.
The interior will be in the rock face that the waterfall is in, one exit will be just next to the waterfall side closest to the most adjacent base and the other will be along near the other base.
I'l make a overhead view a little later and put some diagrams showing what I mean about it all.
E:
Been tweaking shaders now teltaur has sent me the new batch.
Old:
New:
http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/2...1119543393.png
Ignore the boring shitty scratched grey metal thats clustering most of the walls, the shaders been tweaking are the floor and the ceiling lights.
sorry I have to ask, did you even play any of the halo series?
I really wish the geometry wasn't so... un-forerunner. Shaders are at least getting better, though.
Someone needs to look up a tutorial on modeling forerunner stuff.
Actually, it reminds me of the old pre-xbox Halo.
Check out 5:50
It's close but not quite right yet. I wouldn't use that scratched up texture for the walls. It seems like everything is way too bright and shiney for the amount of lighting you have in there. The thing I always liked about Forerunner interiors was that they were dark and mysterious.
@Sel: Considering I've played every version of Halo besides mac and have all the limited edition discs as well as various other content associated, I would have to say yes I have played Halo.
Nice try no cigar.
@Dwood, Do you actually do anything around here at all besides bitch?
I've gone through the limited forerunner tutorials, Alot of the designs I'm using are derived from forerunner architecture already found in the games, I've ensured the angles are correct using a compass.
Well considering I'm actually following the angles used in the previous games and mix and matching certain aspects of previous forerunner, There shouldn't really be too much of a problem.
I thought that creativity was something very much needed in things like this and were I to simply borrow designs straight from other games then this mod would have little to no creativity involved.
According to you, Caggerin and Higuy, Unless I follow Your vision of what forerunner is then anything I visualise is wrong.
It baffles the mind that someone who has never even spoken to me directly let alone know much about me would know what my vision is for the project.
If you honestly think there is nothing to criticize in the thread then why are you still replying?
But why hide such a artistic talent?
You're doing a wonderful job.
Don't even bother posting here in the first place if you're just going to post some remark like "have you even played Halo?"
If you think there's nothing worth critting then there's simply no reason at all for you to post here. Take this to PMs if you want to discuss it further.
Sel may be a bitch but he makes a valid point about your architecture. You may know the angles which is good and played the games, but you still have plenty of room for improvement.
Theres also plenty of other things you could easily do. You may play the games, but look at them more closely to see all of the different things. This is Crysis your working in too, not Halo. You have alot more possibility to work with for detail.
It looks like a good start to me in terms of forerunner architecture. The shape of the hallway is good, but now improve on that shape with details such as forerunner support beams on the wall or something along those lines. Listen to higuy about using some kind of metal strip texture for each angle instead of using the same texture on 2 angles at a time. I'll edit this with an explanation.
What the fuck is this shit con. This content is absolutely terrible and we're not allowed to point that out anymore?
Go ahead, permanently ban me for saying that, not like it'll be a huge loss since my feedback just gets deleted anyway, despite people who have an idea what they're talking about when it comes to this kind of architecture agreeing with me!
In addition, the players who have played Halo and haven't focused 3+ years of their life to the development and studying the exact structure of Forerunner Architecture probably won't tell the difference so much to where it ruins their game experience. Just saying.
This is more for everyone else reading this thread since Sel is just looking for a ban:
Just dropping by and saying "it's terrible" isn't what the community is about. You have to be constructive. People may agree with your assessment of the content, but not the way you say it.
I would appreciate it if you guys didn't bring this up anymore and stuck with constructive criticism. if you aren't being constructive or you aren't taking this conversation to PMs only like I asked, then you're going to wind up with an infraction like Sel here (and maybe even a point accumulation ban!)
Someone asked me to show a representation of what the basic overall route of travel I've got in mind for the mod.
Since looking at how other maps worked, I've figured for the time being at least, the best router for foot travel is by avoiding being dominated by vehicles via travelling through the valley rock.
Below shows a concept I've currently got going and have started constructing the cave and corridor network.
@Higuy;
http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/5...rridorwhat.jpg
I'll get the work on that indent in a moment, just finishing off the holographic room.
I saw some new stuff from Aftershock by HBO. Looks really cool so far. You plan on making custom weapons and bipeds to go with it all?
I've currently got an MA5C ready, an M6D/C ready which will allow toggle to use sight attachment or not and have a Spartan laser being modelled.
As for bipeds, I do have some work on a biped in work.
My main priority is getting the level it self done to a polished state, the latest picture here should show the direction I'm heading for and should be a great improvement to what the area previously looked like.
I've got someone else involved in the project now, someone I've known for several years and I'm showing them the ropes, they specialise in lighting so It would be a good guess they'l take over the ToD and other lighting aspects.
I haven't bothered to update the thread here because after I last updated here I found myself being stalked by a couple of people trying to cause a stir at one of the other forums I update on this.
Simply put, not worth the effort when you have clowns trying to cause trouble.
Glad to see that some new weapons will be available. I just wish I could ever have a computer powerful enough to play Crysis games. Even when I obtain a new laptop next year, I probably still won't have the power necessary to play it without blowing up any piece of hardware.
Depending on which laptop you get you may be able to play Crysis on the lower settings which even then, looks pretty good.
first time I played Crysis was when the demo came out and I was running on a 9600 PRO AGP card running on lowest settings.
I'l just drop this here incase anyone whose interested in the project hasn't seen it yet.
http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/2318/frigate.jpg
That said, Crysis isn't overly demanding until you start trying to crank up AA and AF with the details already at their maximum.
I think its going to turn out quite well.
Im guessing theres a hill in the middle, else there'll be a lot of sniper whoring going on.
Waw.. This is awesome, I would of mocked you if this were campaign, but I just relized its a multiplayer game map. I assume your going for a Battlefield type game play thats awesome. Are you going to add Pelicans and others for maby CTF or somthing? Dude this is what the forum on Bnet us going nuts about I swear if you get this right you can prolly high jack the there users.. Ive been posting concepts and plans for a multiplayer overhual and everyone seems to agree.
and if it is campaign I must let this out no offense but you might as well use the CE engine becuase those models are no different then CEs also I was wondering for the mod is it possible to raise the "first person camera" I would really like that the default camera seem to be to low
Warlord, watch this. it has long been forgotten, but here it will give you ideas, inspiration. :downs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8pas3CxniU
Well this was pretty fucking epic:
I have a idea!
Perhaps, suddenly a massive line of light appears! the sheilds quickly stroub on then off then a hole spawns, debres and plasma fire breach out from the undercarage!, for breif amount of time its as if this behemith of a ship is simply to assertive.
For a breif moment the ship arrogently laughs at the projectile, still whoving its glassing laser and elegantly fixed in the distant sky. In not more then 3 seconds subsequently a massive dreadfully loud shutter fills your speakers followed by a second loud screaching and grouwling, the ship dauntingly starts to travel out of its original position, the stern of the ship slowly turns on a curcular trajectory slowly desending, still seamingly no damage! mearly a red multin hole left on the under belly of the ship.
The cruiser falls beneith the clouds and in that breif second its as if the ship is dead, BUT wait the ship SLAMS! to the ground even with it appearing to fall slowly the impact has the power to effect nearly everything, the trees, rocks, ground! The glassing laser still active, blaseing, glassing everything, a smoldering red mist highlights this, and in following seconds the ship gauntingly leaves a last grouwl and a eruption of plasma liquid and fire a mass upward in a massive cloud breifly maxing over the mountiens and disipating.
IN TIME LINE:
Start: Line of light 0.3 second
Sheilds strobe once 0.3 second
Hole spawns + Debres-Fire 0.4 second
----------------------------------------- 3 second pause
Shutter (tearing air) 2.0 second
Screaching-Grouwling 1.5 second
----------------------------------------- 3 second pause
Cruiser moving seqience 30 second
-----------------------------------------
Impact 5 second
Impact Force/shockwave 3 second
Laser Blast effect 3 second
Laser/ship explotion 10 second
TOTAL TIME LENTH ALL: 1 minute
by the way this is a smac firing
please acknowledge warlord
Ship needs to be like 2x higher at least...
And the beam needs to be almost as thick as the emitter.
Could just be a surgical glassing, a la Halo 3. Personally, I like the thin beam. It makes it look more like a weapon and less like a chintzy particle effect.
An ineffective weapon maybe, the beam should be as thick as possible or it would take FOREVER to glass something...
Well, it would look pretty weird for a CCS-Class Battlecruiser to have a really thick beam. The smaller CCS-Class Battlecruisers are probably mainly used for small glassing operations such as those in Halo 3:
A thicker beam for glassing large regions would probably come from a Covenant Assault Carriers. The Covenant Super Carriers, on the other hand, would probably have a beam as thick as a country due to their large size. Observe a Super Carrier (large) in comparison to the size of an Assault carrier (small):
A beam like that would be perfect for glassing a planet, such as Reach.
This is a tactical glassing, not a global glassing. If it were a global one, the ships wouldn't even be that close to the ground. I retain that Nylund's description of a global glassing is correct, but when they need to destroy smaller areas, they get in close and use beams. If you are trying to be precise, you don't want a huge beam.
Covenant, precise? LOL!
They did when they had to leave the equatorial region on Reach intact. They did when they had to destroy half of Africa. And then, let's not forget that they used the particle beams on the ships to dig, too.
Those aren't exactly precise strikes. Leaving the general equatorial region intact seems fairly easy, even with giant ships/beams. Same with Africa.
Several of the books and the short story in Evolutions describe many ship masters carving ornate Covenant symbols into the planets they're burning.
As I recall the one from Evolutions burned the Covenant symbol meaning "Faith."
The can be precise when they need to be, they just don't deem humanity worthy of the effort half the time.
And let's not forget them trying to roast the Chief in Halo 2 on Delta Halo...
Speaking of which, I just powered through the Halo 2 campaign on Heroic; that was the most fun I have ever had playing Halo 2's campaign. I don't know what I did different; I think it was me not giving a fuck about which guns I had. That said, my TV sucks ass because it's so dark and I can't adjust it, which made a few sections difficult and frustrating.
The covenant have been shown to use particle beams to glass planets, burn ships in orbital fights and excavate monuments and installations.
They're referred to as "when the Covenant destroys a planet, They typically move in their large warships closer and blanket the world with a series of crisscrossing orbits to ensure every last millimeter of the surface is covered with plasma bombardments"
They are very meticulous in ensuring planets are entirely glassed and not just portions.
That's something the AI council made a mistake on as shown in Reach.
Lower level orbits is what I inferred when Nylund said that, not being a thousand metres off the ground. So, a tactical strike is what we see in Reach when the Super Carrier is uncloaked and when those two CCS class cruisers demolish New Alexandria.
IMO the beam itself is fine. It could move a bit slower, but what needs the most work is the lightning effects. They appear far too often and in strange ways. Flashes that silhouette the cloud are nice but they can't be so sporadic, and I think the lightning sprites are too small and thick. They need to be more like what you see IRL.
The lightning sprites also repeat themselves too often. It's the same shape in the same spot every time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_8KSaoIN2E
That is a super carrier, now using the coast line and Mombasa super towers you can get the size of the ship, fucking massive things. Now envision a Cruiser's size compaired to the Carrier, place the cruiser in the lower city, there not massive godly craft, there spaceships if u were to put a Cruiser in orbit it would appear small like a star, even if it were to fire its laser in orbit the laser would be tiny.
But that's just the thing; they aren't supposed to be firing beams while in orbit. They fire massive bolts or "torpedoes," if you will.
Beam != full steam from a hose. Steam is not coherent and it spreads out quite a bit with distance. The torpoedoes likewise don't just impact one spot, they spread out like a wildfire...only a helluva lot faster.
Your cruiser isn't in orbit. It's at a very low altitude. I don't even know why we are talking about this.
Cobby, Warlord. I would love to see this finished, Halo CE HD will not be on PC. and I hope not but prolly Halo 4.
Please continue on Aftershock project. I hope I can play it one day, It has a real Halo feeling, stupid Halo producing company Get there money from the consumers and 70% of its consumers are children-teens. and with that there culture. so I hope u can continue this project for a real halo game
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qLJYHSawoI
Still rough, only opened up the editor today, but I'm assuming this is the kind of thing people were asking for when making the plasma in short bursts?
Maybe make it last longer whilst making it "sway" along the ground?
warlord i dont know how far away that cruiser is, but remember, light travels much faster than sound. it would enhance the effect if you heard the firing sound a little bit after you see the beam fire
At the moment, the model nor the plasma itself is scaled correctly, the sound effect happens on cue with the actual stream itself, so unless I add some sort of delay to the sound there really isn't that much I can do, I've been trying to get the build up charge effect in sync with the actual firing and even that is causing problems.
Not bad Warlord, but the beam could go for a little longer. Much better than initially though! Keep up the good work!
I'm looking at completely resigning the beam, the length will be extended but hopefully I can achieve something to the extent of the first beam.
On a different note, working on plasma explosions, there's one bitmap i've yet to find so i can edit though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Rz_H3LmCmlo#t=4s
E:
Todays update video is up, new cliffs, refined terrain, vegetation, skies, old passageways closed new ones opened.
Overall much more polished.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKLwTtRV_cQ
The whiter base (the Valhalla replicate) needs a better "bump map" (or whatever the modernly technological term is) on that floor. Otherwise, looking nice.
Actually, I think the specular being too strong is what's making that texture look unideal. To be honest, if I had to say anything, I think all the speculars are a bit too strong at the moment, though it nearly isn't as obvious as on the base's floor. The more I toned them down when I worked with them in UDK (and then a little tampering with your existing materials in Cryengine 2), the better they looked overall. You could see more of the diffuse itself, with the specular detail being much more subtle, much like the original materials from the Halo games.
I agree, the specular is a little too strong currently, also something to note is I've noticed a change in how the specular is perceived when I edit the time of day, for instance the higher I set the HDR, the brighter certain things seem to become, once I've got the level laid down and got the actuall major portions finished, I'll take another look at the shaders.
I've just got some new RAM in the post/mail today so I shouldn't have so many problems with low FPS where as before I was running on only 2GB's, I've now got 4 to play with.