Comments

@CPripyatUit: I don't map for source, but I would suspect the it works similarly to the citizens? However you select their heads, so too would you select the zombie model so long as the model has any submodels.

Ah there we go, great work! 🙌

Ah man... My aspirations were too high... 😔

Anyway, let's just take small steps forward. As long as we move forward it'd be ok.

I'm scratching my head over how to do IK. I want to freeze a bone in place while moving the root bone in an animation. it doesn't work, the "frozen" bone just moves along with the rest of the skeleton. a tutorial on how to it how i meant it to work would be much much appreciated.

I should've said that earlier, but although I'm proficient with fragMOTION, still, I don't know everything. There is, indeed, a lack of information and tutorials on that topic, and even the "manual" that comes with the editor is bare bones at best. There are some things that I can't comprehend - IK is one of them. I tried working with it, but I think it's just broken. You can make it work with simple skeletons.
I'll look into it again, mayhaps I'll figure it out.

That would be nice. I ended up switching to Blender instead of fragMOTION due to the lack of tutorials.

Much as I'm a Blender addict, I'd appreciate seeing some guides for other tools, at least out of curiosity. I think it'd bring value to the community overall.

Yes pls! 😁

I'm scratching my head over how to do IK. I want to freeze a bone in place while moving the root bone in an animation. it doesn't work, the "frozen" bone just moves along with the rest of the skeleton. a tutorial on how to it how i meant it to work would be much much appreciated.

Very good list, especially looking forward to #2 there (body/skin groups one)!

One might think I wrote Map2Prop just to avoid writing Part 2 of this tutorial, BUT actually
a) it's been a very busy year since I wrote this tutorial
b) I'm tired
c) Part 2 is going to be about rigging and basic animations and M2P can't do that, so I'll have to write that at some point anyway 😔

(Also that previous comment from me above was in response to a now-deleted user, sorry for any confusion it might have caused) :p

VTFEdit is no longer maintained, so I changed the section to talk about VTFEdit Reloaded instead. I believe it should work the same. It's a fork of VTFEdit

Thank Erty and the Almighty for map2prop, one can now make prop models entirely in jack/hammer and never have to touch Blender

Probably the sprite type/orientation/format explanation from env_sprite can be moved here.

Also it appears that the sprite renderer has an in-built way to render the sprite attached to a studio model's attachment point. This is why making env_sprite render models can only use body and skin 0, because those properties are taken over to store part of the information used to get this to work.

Ohhh that's cool. I don't map GoldSrc, but a question: does the same principle work for Source? I.e. if I recompiled a HL2 model with additional body groups and edited the properties in Hammer?

This is a good idea NGL. There could be omitted visgroups ("export only visible objects") and non-planar faces.
Edit: ack, the visgroup part doesn't make too much sense since you don't see them anyway when disabled. Bah! It can still happen under some circumstances.

TODO:

1. Custom fonts
2. Console fonts

I feel strongly about loading the exported .map file to find leaks, since it's what the compilers actually see when they compile the level. In fact this image from the page might have been just that, so why not just explicitly tell people to do it?

IDEAS FOR UPDATE:

• overhaul for modern tools (HLAM/Crowbar)
• dead bodies of stock models that have death animations, but no dead poses (coincidentally the NPCs using these models don't have monster_*_dead versions)
• gib-able dead bodies

My opinion is that HL2 is a good game, but a bad sequel.

The change in setting is too abrupt, jumping 20 years from the Black Mesa research facilities in the New Mexico desert to a cold-war looking eastern European city similar to Prague, from contemporary military sci-fi of “experiment gone wrong” to a futuristic “alien 1984” setting.

The Combine were never mentioned in the first game. The fact that they managed to conquer the whole Earth in a 7-hour war is ludicrous, and contradicts the fact that an underground resistance movement exist that not only opposes them, even manages to score several victories. If they wiped out all of the world’s armies in 7 hours, how come they can’t squash those pesky fighters? And despite the assistance of Gordon Freeman, his actions are seemingly unneeded for the “war” to advance.

The fact that many former Black Mesa employees (and Gordon colleagues at that) are all coincidentally at City 17 and lead that resistance is too much to believe. Not to mention that they still recognize Gordon after 20 years, and are not puzzled by the fact that he hasn’t aged a single day. In addition to this, Gordon has now apparently turned into a messianic figure, a legend, in spite of his actions in HL1 being minor and mostly secret.

The HEV suit, the crowbar, the zombies and headcrabs, the Barney Calhoun character (a generic security guard in the original game, there were dozens of them) or the Eli Vance character (another nondescript scientist in the original) and other stuff (“prepare for unforeseen consequences”, oh come on!) seem to have been thrown in to justify the game being a true sequel and make it relatable to the players of the original, but feel forced.

In the original game, the G-man character was known to be some kind of government officer, perhaps CIA, now he turns to be an omnipotent alien being, a broker for Gordon in his role as an intergalactic mercenary. This took many people by surprise, HL1 single-player mods released before 2004 are a good example of this. And what exactly his plans are? Probably not even Valve know for sure, they just keep running forward.

The Black Mesa "administrator" (only briefly mentioned in HL1, some even thought it was G-man) now turns to be the local Combine overseer for Earth, after negotiating peace with them (not the US President or anyone, just him).

The whole plot (and setting) feels like a mix of ideas that the developers thought were cool, loosely tied together by the Black Mesa theme used as an excuse, and even contradicts some events in the original, retconning several things. Back at Valve HQ they were probably proposing new ideas constantly, and Gabe was like “Yeah sure, whatever!”

And the “HL universe is the same as Portal’s” is just preposterous. They just did that because the latter was very successful and they wanted to capitalize on that.

If you ask me, HL2 is not canon. So far, HL has never had any true sequel.

What does it do?

@kimilil Credits info

TO DO: Add a note about sprite trains ( https://twhl.info/vault/view/6461 )

I think adding entities used for displaying models, such as cycler* entities and env_sprite, could come in handy for those wanting to use props with multiple body/skin groups.

What got updated? 🤔

If this is a birthday journal it's probably the most obscure one yet... well done.

Ah I forgot that you people do cryptic journals during your birthdays. I should've done that 3 days before.

Nice map. I'd give the player grenades. That herd of headcrabs outside was asking for it.

If this is a birthday journal it's probably the most obscure one yet... well done.

Another Neeh..

I think different paradigm is possible: a single func_train elevator cab with built-in doors, and func_wall_toggle cabs that are stationary at each level. doors would be local to each level.

very fun xen map good job

should we add all other entities not available in the FGD, as well as all other hardcoded models/sprites precached and used by all these entities?

2'8" is too wide? I eyeballed my shoulders and they're exactly 2ft. Add to that a bulky HEV suit and a little bit of personal space and 2'8" isn't too bad. The doors around my house are 3ft wide and would fit him just fine.

And don't forget that info_hullshape exists now. You can squeeze Gordon into as narrow a space as you like. It's just that his buddies (and enemies) can't follow.

The biggest flaw with sticking to 16u = 1ft in Sourceland is that you have rooms that are visibly too large... exactly 33% too large. NPCs interact with door handles and buttons at chest height that in real world (and visually in Sourceland) are at the halfway point i.e. waist height. And props are built with 12HU=1ft as well so they're also 75% of the size relative to the geometry of the room they're in.

The picture Alabastor_Twob posted in the comment above in case you're curious (thanks Wayback Machine)

considering its cut content status, it has surprisingly more use as it can target other entities on touch as compared to health/hev chargers where such function is most desired.

The link to the list works now. We hadn't archived that page yet, so I did.

There are more articles like this which we haven't archived yet: https://web.archive.org/web/20090417185416/http://www.vlatitude.com/resources.php

Thanks kimilil 👆 well worth a read

The FGD grammar is technically whitespace-agnostic. You can for example spread the @ThingClass declaration across multiple lines in cases where there's a lot of attrs() with long values, for readability sake. The problem is that third party programs that doesn't use a proper DSL parser and parses directly, makes assumption that it's always on one line. Worse still there's one snapshot of TB that assumes property lines must be indented, and breaks with a custom FGD written with poor indent discipline.

There's a link to a "Weapons Programming - Zoomable Weapons" wiki article, but it doesn't appear to exist

Looking good you got a release date yet?

There's been some WIP screenshots posted in the discord, but yeah its been relatively quiet
I've finished my layout with dev textures, now I'm just going through the phase of lighting and admiring goldsrc shadows rather than actually doing any work

Sweden and Norway are beautiful in different ways.
Norway has fjords and some pretty dramatic mountains, while Sweden is full of forest (so much forest) and the coast being full of archipelagos (the skärgårdar).

Not to mention there's a big difference whether you're north or south of the Arctic Circle in either country, such a big difference in the nature you get to see, not to mention that north of the Circle you get midnight sun and it's a very popular place to see the aurora borealis.

There's also lots of glaciers in both countries, I highly recommend seeing one if you ever go to either one 🙂

Entities mentioned: monster_grunt_repel, monster_human_grunt, info_node, func_breakable, multi_manager, trigger_once, env_explosion, monstermaker.

Cyprus pootis. I'm living in communist Sweden if wanna know.

If you're curious about how lightmap sizes are calculated, and the techniques used to light those lightmaps, I highly recommend this excellent video: In Half-Life/GoldSource/VHLT it's more like Q2's QRAD3. Also discussed is Ericw-tools, which you can use on GoldSrc maps (though support is only in alpha as of writing)

Sweden is the budget version of Norway. Almost as beautiful at half the price

This looks great..useful for those who want to see detail in their maps

good

@FreeSlave I have checked the map. No, all ambient_generics have sounds. I think that's C1A0 announcer. I am not sure why it has problems precaching stuff. Also, see this: https://twhl.info/thread/view/20817

this hldm map uses monstermaker to spawn hornets, as part of a trap. really cool.