Where did hull 0 go? Aren't there four hulls? 0 is point hull, 1 is standing hull, 2 is big monsters, 3 is crouching. I don't get why the amount of clipnodes is 18/36 instead of 24/48.
Used for differentiating entities in the editor, and shouldn't be used on world brushes as it may cause bugs. VHLT strips faces with this texture, making it visually identical to NULL.
Acts like NULL, but changes the clipnode of a brush in a way that any player approaching the brush will not be collide with the brush until their origin reaches the plane that the BEVEL face lies on. It can be used to eliminate exterior corner clipping bugs, and any remaining clipping bugs that the -cliptype preciseCSG parameter may miss.
Similar to ORIGIN, but used to define a bounding box for an entity. Useful if you have a lot of complex, off-grid geometry and need a bounding box which is snapped to the grid.
Marks the brush as a water volume that will not render anything outside of it. It also removes collision from a brush and mirrors the faces inside out.
Faces with this texture will split visleafs, allowing you to optimize what parts of the map are visible. Other faces of the brush should be textured with SKIP.
Renders the skybox on faces with this texture, and emits light if all faces of a brush are textured with SKY and you have a light_environment or light_spot entity. Clipnode generation is optional with VHLT and can be turned off with CSG parameter -noskyclip.
Commented 3 months ago2023-12-15 18:23:54 UTC
in vault item: Lab HuntComment #105730
Honestly, i enjoyed playing this Little map. Its pretty fun also. Guiding Barney off some rooms, especially the starting room where you find barney can be pretty frustrating, because there Isn't a sigle mode graph. Another thing is the tank: seems parked in a small inaccessible room. And the last thing: the ending. You end in a room full of crates. And nothing.
But to be your First map, i think it's pretty good and fun! Keep Up the good work man!
I kinda thought this might have a few jokes. It's presented as a troll map, but just lacks any attempt at lulz, earned or otherwise.
Architecture:
Extremely blocky. There are two clipped/VM'd brushes in the entire map.
Texturing:
Mostly aligned, but very strange choices throughout. Two separate wads for a grand total of two custom textures, both of which are somehow simultaneously overused and also completely absent.
Ambience:
70MB of completely unnecessary, base-game overwriting song ripped from, i think, Mario 64?
Lighting:
Floating point-lights with no source. Over-bright in most areas, plus eye-gouging colour clashes with the texture choices.
Gameplay:
Monsters stuck in floor (yellow dots), monsters clipping through walls, no node navigation. One vaguely interesting combat space in the whole map with your office cubicles that might have been fun if there had been nodes to let the monsters run around.
If this was a genuine attempt at a fun map, I apologise for being so harsh. But it needs a lot of work to be worth a download.
If it was a troll map... it's totally devoid of any personality or jokes.
If you're overwriting original game files (Suspense02.mp3), please package this as a minimod, otherwise the file will be changed in the player's base game.
Click here to see how to do this with no effort
Although I'm myself practically retired from mapping by now, and wasn't a big practitioner of mapping automation through tools like MESS, I found the tool remarkable and unique in what it does during my brief period of trying it out. In fact, I think that new mappers should absolutely try adding MESS to their compile process and utilizing the macros that it makes possible to engineer - it has great potential to reduce a lot of annoying and unnecessary work.
Brush entity merging is a really annoying technique to use manually: to reduce the amount of limits taken up by your map's entities this way, you have to sacrifice "readability" of your map source file. For example, it's rather time-consuming to take a single piece from merged entities and perform any individual operation on it. Your tool finally providing an abstraction over the technique gives me the hope that it can go as far as make this optimization zero-cost in terms of mapper's time spent, and this is extremely important - nothing kills the wish to map like the amount of brush paperwork that you have to do at times.
I'm excited to see where MESS will go in the future and would love to hear of any further improvements and new features!
EDIT:
Looking at the feature description, although this is a rather small detail that can be avoided if you use the feature carefully, I wonder how it determines the resulting "principal" or "primary" entity to merge all of the provided entities into. I think there should be a way to explicitly specify which one entity will serve as such.
It can make the map more refactoring-friendly: when you change things, some keyvalues may go out of sync with your changes and intent, and you may end up with bugs that you may not immediately notice.
The bsp takes a little getting your head around but its a real impressive design. I found a few vids on quake but the collison detection is way over my head
Now problems with parsing J.A.C.K fgd files solved.
Worldspawn model vertices can be edited using Face tool, but it not easy, and map crash if do big changes.
Whole map can be exported to .obj with all textures (for example convert part of map to .MDL to bypass BSP limits) but without lightmaps.
Also part of map can be compiled as func_wall and exported to .BSP model with working lightmap and collision to bypass BSP limits.
Also can export .wad from embedded textures. Import textures back to map. Can export files needed for HLRAD.exe for recompile lightmaps. Any bsp solid entity can be exported as .BSP model with working collision and lightmap.
New update has many bugfixes. Please create issue on GitHub if have problems or feature requests
I'd rather have it be in the mod's own DLL folder, but I'm not entirely sure how to change that...
Have you found out that? i've implement this in my mod and it's a really cool feature so people get it, i'd even add a button for "Download mod" but i have only one concern, are the discord_rpc.dll going to difeer between updates? if so, i'd like to have it in the mod folder as well if posible
The original Part 5 of Worldcraft 2.x's tutorial covers more things than just prefabs (which aren't available in JACK, which made people skip this part and miss other basic detailing things)
For now, I'll copy-paste just this part, until there's an agreement on a more permanent inclusion of this part or the whole of WC's original tutorial series into the wiki.
Excerpt from wc.hlp
Details. These are the things that aren't necessary to the gameplay of your level, but they do help to give it a certain atmosphere, which is essential. Right now, the tutorial level is just a couple boxes separated by a tube. There really isn't anything in it to draw your attention besides a flickering light. This must change!
Once again, here is out baseline picture...
Now, I'm thinking..."What are these rooms??" This is the main question that should help you decide what to put into a room as details. This could be some type of control room. In that case, there would be some type of computer equipment. Most places will have some type of ventilation system. Let's say this room has it exposed. Some pipes, running to...who knows where? Basically, you have free reign to add all the touches to the level that make it "yours".
Go ahead and add stuff to your tutorial level, or load up tut5.rmf in Worldcraft to see my example.
As you can see from the above pictures, details make a big difference. Some of the things done were:
signs - the biohazard sign and the emergency shower sign give the area a realistic look. Half-Life's texture set includes a number of signs that can be used within your levels.
furniture and accessories - in the starting room, there is a swivel chair and ashtray, and a shelving unit with some random boxes on it. None of this would matter in gameplay of course, but it gives the level an interesting look.
exits - although they don't go anywhere, and in fact do not even open, I've inset two doors in the level to make it appear like this is actually a part of a building. It is important to make the player feel like he is not just being dropped into a box.
interactive objects - the medikit box on the wall can open, dispensing health. (It is actually a rotating door with its "healthvalue" key set to "15", so that when the player opens the door, 15 health points are transferred to him). The boxes on the shelves are explodable if shot.
shaping - the immediate tendency for most people when they start editing is to make everything square and flat. Square rooms, doors flush with walls, and things like that. It is important to get to know the three main types of brush shaping Worldcraft has to offer: Carving, Clipping, and Vertex Manipulation.
Sounds like fun...
Sound is another important aspect of a level. Up until now, the only sound you'd hear in your level is your own footsteps. Let's add some other sounds now. The computer, pipes, and flickering light are candidates for sounds.
To give an object a sound, you need to place an ambient_generic entity near it. The only thing you'll need to do in the entity properties is specify which WAV file to play.
Evolution
Well, from the first tutorial to now, you can see quite a bit of evolution at work.
I tried to grab the accompanying tutorial files but the installer cannot be run. sorry.
As for leaks, the map must be completely sealed against the "void".
While it has to do with how the compilers process the geometry and calculate what's supposed to be visible, you can think of it as entities not being allowed to come into contact with the void and so you must build an airtight container for all entities in your map.
It's easy to be tempted to put a giant hollow box around your map to prevent leaks, but this will cause the compiler to think everything in your map is supposed to be on the inside and fail at optimising it. It's essentially turning your entire map into one big open area, which the GoldSrc engine really doesn't like.
In the good old days of 1998 when Half-Life hit the shelves, bundled in the CD with the game is Worldcraft 2.0. It's really primitive and so is the compilers, but it has one very crucial thing: A step by step "In The Beginning..." tutorial that guides you step by step of making a playable, presentable first Half-Life map. The tutorial series was dropped in later Worldcraft versions, and that I think was a misstep. Sure, everyone is borderline terminally online 25 years later but not having an "official" tutorial series leaves new people reaching, bewildered by 25 years of accumulated knowledge, and become paralized.
Luckily for you, the "In The Tutorial" series has been somewhat recreated here on TWHL.
It's good enough but one part deviates from the formerly-official series so it left a basic knowledge gap. Luckier still, I have the old help file, with the original tutorial series, decompiled below:
Loading embedded content: Vault Item #6737
You can take a look at the original tutorials and start your journey the same way I did in the early 00s. Note: the images are not embedded into the text document but you can just cross-reference with the images on the archive.
Commented 3 months ago2023-12-06 17:00:39 UTC
in vault item: dm_leveldirectorComment #105705
Got to try it, it's quite sick. I love the lighting in this map.
I spotted two g502 lightspeed boxes ;p can I assume this mouse is good but also has defects often? That is my experience with them at least.
Commented 3 months ago2023-12-06 12:12:27 UTC
in vault item: corridors_collideComment #105703
Looks like you still left one entity with fluorescent.wav. It's not a big deal but consider that my server already has sound/ambience/fluorescent.wav and I don't know if it's the one you intended, but it would get propagated to other players. That's a minor issue but what if someone's server does not have it, and one player has it and another does not, then the one with it will be at a disadvantage having more difficulty hearing someone else's steps. And Half-Life does not complain about missing sounds like it does about missing models or sprites.
Instead of manually placing all these entities, I have written an automation tool named MESS that can generate this entity setup from a single mtl_trigger_random template entity. It also uses less entities than the setup in this tutorial by giving the func_buttons carefully placed origin brushes, so there is no need for info_targets.
Note that the 'Random strike' flag is not required for random targeting - it randomizes the time between strikes.
An alternative to manually placing all these entities is to use mtl_trigger_random, a template entity that comes with MESS, an automation tool that can generate entities for you. One added benefit is that mtl_trigger_random produces less entities by giving the func_buttons a carefully placed origin brush, which removes the need for info_targets.
Commented 3 months ago2023-12-05 05:41:51 UTC
in vault item: kz_pipe0(地下通路:序章)Comment #105696
你说得对,我也能找到不少相关的教程,不过,我希望别人能用到我制作的纹理,因为我用了不少别人制作的纹理。礼尚往来,这算是我的一份回礼。
You're right, I can find a lot of tutorials about it, but I hope people use my textures because I use a lot of other people's textures. Well, if that's what I want, it's a little something in return.
Commented 3 months ago2023-12-04 20:05:41 UTC
in vault item: Sehc's LabsComment #105692
There's a separate category for hldm maps
Anyway, I think the map should be a little smaller, and maybe with some more details.
Straight wide concrete hallways are boring to look at and play, so maybe change up floor and ceiling heights, add some pipes, bridges, pits etc.
Cool toilets tho, and I got caught off guard with the giant fleshy rotating "SEX" in the middle of the map.
Try looking at the official deathmatch maps (espeically the new ones) for inspiration on how to decorate your creations.
I hope you don't take the 2 stars as completely negative, It's just a honest review and a sign that you should try to improve
Legend
zhlt.wad
requirementshalflife.wad
zhlt.wad
zhlt.wad
Tool Textures
CONTENTWATER
andfunc_pushable
with a speed of 2048 units/s in +X. [note1]CONTENTWATER
andfunc_pushable
with a speed of 2048 units/s in -X. [note1]CONTENTWATER
andfunc_pushable
with a speed of 2048 units/s in -Y. [note1]CONTENTWATER
andfunc_pushable
with a speed of 2048 units/s in +Y. [note1]CONTENTWATER
andfunc_pushable
with a speed of 2048 units/s in -Z. [note1]CONTENTWATER
andfunc_pushable
with a speed of 2048 units/s in +Z. [note1]NULL
.NULL
, but changes the clipnode of a brush in a way that any player approaching the brush will not be collide with the brush until their origin reaches the plane that theBEVEL
face lies on. It can be used to eliminate exterior corner clipping bugs, and any remaining clipping bugs that the-cliptype precise
CSG parameter may miss.NULL
, but has a lightmap. Brushes with this texture can cast shadows.ORIGIN
, but used to define a bounding box for an entity. Useful if you have a lot of complex, off-grid geometry and need a bounding box which is snapped to the grid.BEVEL
but for clipnodes.CLIPBEVEL
, but affects every single face.SKIP
.NULL
, but no cliphulls are generated. Similar to thezhlt_noclip
keyvalue in entities.HINT
, as it may cause bugs.SKY
and you have alight_environment
orlight_spot
entity. Clipnode generation is optional with VHLT and can be turned off with CSG parameter-noskyclip
.@
prefixed textures exhibit this property.Legend
zhlt.wad
requirementshalflife.wad
zhlt.wad
zhlt.wad
But to be your First map, i think it's pretty good and fun! Keep Up the good work man!
In SC the black_hidden texture is not drawn. It's also hidden.
Texturing — 1
Ambience — 0
Lighting — 0
Gameplay — 1
Architecture:
Extremely blocky. There are two clipped/VM'd brushes in the entire map.
Texturing:
Mostly aligned, but very strange choices throughout. Two separate wads for a grand total of two custom textures, both of which are somehow simultaneously overused and also completely absent.
Ambience:
70MB of completely unnecessary, base-game overwriting song ripped from, i think, Mario 64?
Lighting:
Floating point-lights with no source. Over-bright in most areas, plus eye-gouging colour clashes with the texture choices.
Gameplay:
Monsters stuck in floor (yellow dots), monsters clipping through walls, no node navigation. One vaguely interesting combat space in the whole map with your office cubicles that might have been fun if there had been nodes to let the monsters run around.
If this was a genuine attempt at a fun map, I apologise for being so harsh. But it needs a lot of work to be worth a download.
If it was a troll map... it's totally devoid of any personality or jokes.
Click here to see how to do this with no effort
Texturing — 9
Ambience — 10
Lighting — 9
Gameplay — 8
Texturing — 9
Ambience — 9
Lighting — 8
Gameplay — 9
Although I'm myself practically retired from mapping by now, and wasn't a big practitioner of mapping automation through tools like MESS, I found the tool remarkable and unique in what it does during my brief period of trying it out. In fact, I think that new mappers should absolutely try adding MESS to their compile process and utilizing the macros that it makes possible to engineer - it has great potential to reduce a lot of annoying and unnecessary work.
Brush entity merging is a really annoying technique to use manually: to reduce the amount of limits taken up by your map's entities this way, you have to sacrifice "readability" of your map source file. For example, it's rather time-consuming to take a single piece from merged entities and perform any individual operation on it. Your tool finally providing an abstraction over the technique gives me the hope that it can go as far as make this optimization zero-cost in terms of mapper's time spent, and this is extremely important - nothing kills the wish to map like the amount of brush paperwork that you have to do at times.
I'm excited to see where MESS will go in the future and would love to hear of any further improvements and new features!
EDIT:
Looking at the feature description, although this is a rather small detail that can be avoided if you use the feature carefully, I wonder how it determines the resulting "principal" or "primary" entity to merge all of the provided entities into. I think there should be a way to explicitly specify which one entity will serve as such.
It can make the map more refactoring-friendly: when you change things, some keyvalues may go out of sync with your changes and intent, and you may end up with bugs that you may not immediately notice.
https://www.youtube.com/@MattsRamblings
PVS from the top
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMeUxF4mHJA
You might find this code helpful.
https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/32751/Half-Life-Game-Level-Viewer
Worldspawn model vertices can be edited using Face tool, but it not easy, and map crash if do big changes.
Whole map can be exported to .obj with all textures (for example convert part of map to .MDL to bypass BSP limits) but without lightmaps.
Also part of map can be compiled as func_wall and exported to .BSP model with working lightmap and collision to bypass BSP limits.
Also can export .wad from embedded textures. Import textures back to map. Can export files needed for HLRAD.exe for recompile lightmaps. Any bsp solid entity can be exported as .BSP model with working collision and lightmap.
New update has many bugfixes. Please create issue on GitHub if have problems or feature requests
For now, I'll copy-paste just this part, until there's an agreement on a more permanent inclusion of this part or the whole of WC's original tutorial series into the wiki.
Once again, here is out baseline picture...
Go ahead and add stuff to your tutorial level, or load up tut5.rmf in Worldcraft to see my example.
Sound is another important aspect of a level. Up until now, the only sound you'd hear in your level is your own footsteps. Let's add some other sounds now. The computer, pipes, and flickering light are candidates for sounds.
ambient_generic
entity near it. The only thing you'll need to do in the entity properties is specify which WAV file to play.Evolution
Well, from the first tutorial to now, you can see quite a bit of evolution at work.
As for leaks, the map must be completely sealed against the "void".
While it has to do with how the compilers process the geometry and calculate what's supposed to be visible, you can think of it as entities not being allowed to come into contact with the void and so you must build an airtight container for all entities in your map.
It's easy to be tempted to put a giant hollow box around your map to prevent leaks, but this will cause the compiler to think everything in your map is supposed to be on the inside and fail at optimising it. It's essentially turning your entire map into one big open area, which the GoldSrc engine really doesn't like.
Luckily for you, the "In The Tutorial" series has been somewhat recreated here on TWHL.
It's good enough but one part deviates from the formerly-official series so it left a basic knowledge gap. Luckier still, I have the old help file, with the original tutorial series, decompiled below:
I spotted two g502 lightspeed boxes ;p can I assume this mouse is good but also has defects often? That is my experience with them at least.
Note that the 'Random strike' flag is not required for random targeting - it randomizes the time between strikes.
e.g.
LIGHT1 150 200 255 2000
You're right, I can find a lot of tutorials about it, but I hope people use my textures because I use a lot of other people's textures. Well, if that's what I want, it's a little something in return.
Also this door is kinda weird..
Anyway, I think the map should be a little smaller, and maybe with some more details.
Straight wide concrete hallways are boring to look at and play, so maybe change up floor and ceiling heights, add some pipes, bridges, pits etc.
Cool toilets tho, and I got caught off guard with the giant fleshy rotating "SEX" in the middle of the map.
Try looking at the official deathmatch maps (espeically the new ones) for inspiration on how to decorate your creations.
I hope you don't take the 2 stars as completely negative, It's just a honest review and a sign that you should try to improve