Lesson learned - the smaller the area, the easier it is to notice the small details and vice versa- the bigger, the more difficult.
This is the main reason the small cave area in my map has a max wPoly count of 1400- complex surface overkill, and it still feels like it needs some more work, (anyway I simplified it, originally it got to 1600). Still the hole area has less wPoly count- 1200 - 1300, although it's bigger and has more stuff in it- the details are simpler and the rocks are much less complex. And it doesn't look like it needs more work, in fact I like this area's rocks more than the cave part.
You may not notice, but in the hole part the texture of the rocks is stretched by 50% in width and height. The detail texture hides that. I also tried with no stretching, but the repetitions of the textures got easy to notice and it looked a bit ugly. Like this, it's fine. While in the cave part I haven't done that- the rock texture is not stretched. I got to say, that detail texture is pretty good, it is the only non-custom one in the map.
Like I said- custom textures. Oh yes. Back in the day (when I was working on Citizen arms), I had a camera, so I tried to make custom textures. With a lot of success I was able to make something quite awesome- almost every texture to have it's own unique detail texture. The effects were amazing. Unfortunately, I don't know if it was my old PC or the Half Life FX mod, but at one point some of the detail textures started to disappear, while others did not appear at all. I thought that this was a limit or something.
But now, I don't experience such problems. I tried to make the same thing, and it's with the same success and I am using detail textures that have two or four times bigger width and height. Well... As long as I make the textures look good, things look good. I use photos to make textures, and if the photo looks a bit blurry, afterwards even the detail texture will look blurry. Despite that, I still have to learn how to make both the small resolution and high resolution textures look better- they still have flaws.
Using universal textures is something I'd rather avoid- you can't see the detail from distance, and when you get near, you can see that it's all a transparent texture placed on a blurry textures and it doesn't look good most of the time. With my method, both textures look like one, high resolution texture, without making the wPoly count get ultra high. Still, the shadows will remain with low quality.
Anyway, making the textures is nothing too difficult. Take a photo and make a high resolution texture out it. Afterwards make a colorful small resolution version- the basic texture, and a gray-scale high resolution one- the detail. There are tutorials out there on how to use detail textures and how to make textures, that you can check out, if you still haven't learned how to make textures.
In the future I will have to try to make bump maps, but for now, let me get better at making textures.
