Or 'Where I left off'
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City - mostly completely untextured. You'll notice I removed almost all textures and reverted to jorge in 90% of places - only retextured a bit of it.

Caution! Only go into game mode with light_bright OFF! Otherwise GOBs textures have horrible transparency issues as they're GIF files.

You'll also notice that I made the city solid: there is now one humoungous air brush, and the levels are made of solid brushes. This has unfortunately destroyed some of the ramps + detail, but is much better in terms of polys & cells.

You'll also notice Hagia Sophia sitting to the left of the city - it's unfinished atm, but if you find some reference photos or summat, please continue work! I started making object columns in one place, but it needs refining & finishing everywhere else. It's also not connected to the city yet - there is a small entrance which does not yet connect. Be careful, though! We can't afford to have as many stupid little chambers like Alexius' cathedral, otherwise we will hit limits. If you are going to add bits to Aya Sofia, do it cautiously, and keep it simple. Big corridors with large textures.

Don't go look at aya sofia without saving first, and especially not from the top of the city. This will crash DromEd, and possibly requires some serious optimisation/simplification/large blocking walls to restrict vision.

I included all the new textures, you should have the Imperial textures (if you have the old ones, use them, cos I didn't download the new updated ones yet, although there shouldn't be too much trouble). With the new textures, some have errors (ie bits of white). Either fix this or just build around it with little bits of nice detail in those areas.

Also, the new textures mostly don't have sound metaproperties added to them. This means that, if you did put a roombrush in, and jumped around, you wouldn't get sound out of most of the surfaces. I have just about finished adding basic sound to the snow textures, but they ALL NEED DOING.

If you want to do this, you go into Editors->Object Heirachy, and use the drop down box to select 'textures'.
Scroll down to the new ones - they aren't in any particular order and I didn't add them to the existing groups. This means that the metaprops must be added individually to EACH AND EVERY TEXTURE. The way I was working up until now was to just add something like 'MatSemiSoft Tile' or something to each, and then to go back and change specific ones.

Just click on the texture, click Edit, and click on add - a big list should open, go to Metaproperties->Materials-> and select one.

After you do this, you must SAVE THE GAMESYS - Save Gam from File menu. SAVE IT WITH A DIFFERENT NAME THAN THE MISSION FILE. Then you must save the mis - different name remember, then type into the command box - "set_gamesys x" where x is the name of the gamesys you just saved.

Right now, it is SOUNDSTART.GAM.

Don't bother about this unless you are ABSOLUTELY SURE OF WHAT YOU ARE DOING. Gamesys errors can destroy whole mis files, leaving work lost forever.

Anything else? Erm...I can't think of anything else right now. Oh yeah, if you see jorge where you think jorge shouldn't be (mostly on Hagia Sofia) - then there may be some missing textures - get back to me on this, consult some screenshots I posted to check which areas are textured - the places where you should have jorge are mainly everything in the city.

What I suggest you do:
Fix the errors in the city which I created (oops) whilst making it all solid. There are houses which jutt over the edge of layers with no floor etc.
Texture more of the city.
Sort out more of a player route - make buildings to go in, using area brushes to finish off the area in detail before moving on.
Do some more of Aya Sofia (you may feel daunted - I do).

If you feel I've made a complete mess of the city - which I have in places - just delete whatever I did and redo it. It feels horribly haphazard atm.

If Mortal Monkey ever finishes making the domes I asked for, then replace the existing ones with his. They will be 10 sided, rather than 16, so if you make any domed bits, make your cylinders 10 sided in preparation.

Gah, I hate those towers. I really do want to make some new ones.

I had some really ambitious plans about little RPG-style side-quests within the city - like person X tips you off about a criminal gang in place Y - you have to go and sort em out as an Imperial Legionnaire & you get a bonus for completing it as an optional objective.