I hear people write puzzle journals on their birthdays.
grroa://qqq.tiyryvw.xin/q'rxg?c=6yof'Y"xhvx

For anyone using the Pathos Engine, a new update has dropped, adding some new features and fixing issues.

Link to the repo:
https://github.com/TheOverfloater/pathos-public/

Changelog:

- Add missing entries for knife to hud script.
- Add support for displaying ammo counts for item/ammo/weapon pickup history.
- Add "Documents" viewer Game UI feature.
- Add muzzleflash particle script for silenced weapons.
- Remove HDR feature due to severe performance issues caused by FBO blitting.
- Add experimental Bloom post-process feature to Pathos.
- Add missing schema definition for screen text.
- Add explosion gibbing burn damage to gibs.
- Make pressing Escape key while in a Game UI window always close the window.
- Add support for Bitsets to client/server User Message system.
- Add support for custom colors to AI awareness bar.
- Added GameUIScrollableSurface class.
- Add support for 32 mission objectives max in Objectives Window.
- Fix view model snapping issue when exiting ladders due to view model lag.
- Expand CBitSet class to cover all basic bitset operations/checks/features.
- Fix issue with flashlight disappearing for 1 frame after exiting ladders.
- Hide engine command _set_hrtf from users.
- Improve overdarkening feature used by lightmaps.
- Fix it so that the "stopmusic" command completely clears music, no longer letting it continue on reload.
- Add engine function to server to allow retrieval of the invoking player edict on an issued command.
- Fix issues with engine render code not filtering skybox/portal entities properly when rendering.
- Fix issue with alpha to coverage corrupting the menu when used with legacy transparents enabled.
- Fix engine to use R_BindCubemapTexture for all cubemap texture binds now.
- Fix dynamic lights set to not be culled by the main view frustum still being culled regardless.
- Fix lightstyle for dynlights being broken if shadows are disabled via cvar.
- Add safeguard against problematic angle values in dynamic light code.
- Change usable object glow aura color from blue to green for better visibility.
- Remove more C-style casts in favor of C++ ones.
- Modify any rectangle texture binds to use R_BindRectangleTexture instead.
- Fix an issue with portal surfaces not always binding the rectangle texture properly.
- Fix decal generation code memory corruption issue with bone index arrays.
- Add support for dynamic-sized CArray<> basic variable types to the save-restore system.
- Add support for CBitSet to the save-restore system.
- Optimize memory used by entities by only declaring save-restore field data when being saved/restored.
- Add data sync issue on level change with player prediction when on moving entities.
- Fix MSG_SNDENGINE_OGG message reading channel as unsigned and not letting all chanels be specified.
- Fix prediction being run on client even when local server is halted.
- Add error message to schema loader if file is not found.
- Fix issue with SDL_INIT_VIDEO not being called in the right order, not allowing context version to be set.
- Modify NPC AI code to use CBitSet for AI bitflags instead of Uint64.
- Expand AI lean/enemy awareness code to support awareness levels for multiple entities.
- Fix crash issue in NPC enemy awareness code.
- Modify NPC code to support determining whether to proritize enemies that can be melee attacked.
- Modify Patrol NPC code to clear the patrol history far more infrequently when errors occur.
- Modify some schedule names to feature the names of the base classes.
- Added support in ambient_oggstream to fade out/stop a specific music track played by another such entity.
- Add index/name consistency check to player weapon type enums/definitions arrays.
- Add index/name consistency check to sequence activity type enums/definitions arrays.
- Add index/name consistency check to bullet type enums/definitions arrays.
- Fix light_environments on levels not using alternate lightmaps not being setting env lighting values at all.
- Improve materials definition script code to be more efficient with memory.
- Add feature for spawning entities with "give" command that allows givin them targetnames using a third parameter.
- Modify saved passcode system in player code to rely on dynamically sized string_t CArray type.
- Modify weapon pickup code to leave empty weapons behind in special cases.
- Add new HUD weapon slot for submachine guns.
- Modify mission objectives code to use string_t CArray dynamic array instead of fixed-sizeo one.
- Fix weapon code to properly play pickup animations if player picks up a matching weapon with the clip empty.
- Modify same ammo types shared by weapons to be single pools of ammo instead of separate.

I've been thinking about making a series of tutorials on fragMOTION for a long time. Is anybody interested in that? Maybe someone wants to start modeling(modelling?) for Half-Life, but Blender seems too intimidating?
I've spent too much time in fragMOTION, and I've got a thing or two to tell about it.
If you have a suggestion on what to cover specifically, please, tell me.

List of tutorials that I want to write/have written, and the key points.

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☐ Tutorial: Zooming in to the subunit world of GoldSource mapping

• Describe power of 2, usage of resizer blocks, methods:
  1. do work at power-of-2 scale of the final object
  2. move/scale at po2 fractions

☑ Tutorial: The packing (and non-packing) of bodygroups and skin groups in GoldSource models

• Describe how bodygroups are packed and how to calculate them for use as body kv
• Describe how skins are NOT packed (only uses first one) and how to manually pack skin groups into the first texture group
• Example model: scientist?

☐ Tutorial: Fake corpses

• A way to have dead props of monsters without _dead variant (their models don't have death poses), and without messing with QC/SMD/CPP
• env_sprite
  • pros: can freeze animation at end of dying sequence
  • cons: cannot set body/skin
• monster_furniture
  • pros: can set body/skin
  • cons: sequences reset and needs scripted_sequence, needs to play death seq. in full plain just doesn't work without seq. events in the dying act-sequence
• explore other options
• explore a way to have gibbable corpses (func_breakable is too goofy tho)

☐ Tutorial: Divide And Conquer Method

• How to narrow down on sources of problems in a map
• touch on prelims: map > check for problems... [& also entity report?]
• examples: allocblock, entities causing crashes on load

☐ Tutorial: Jerry-rigging props into GoldSource

• Finding the best entities to have models. criteria and use cases:-
  • props: can set body and skin
  • corpses: can set body, skin, sequence, frame

☐ Tutorial: Entity cryptids

• Entities that exist and spawnable (particularly with monstermaker) but not listed in FGDs
• test_effect, grenade, hornet, hvr_rocket, rpg_rocket, crossbow_bolt? (maybe there's a few more, needs testing)
• → Probably going to be a Vault entry only

☑️ Tutorial: Finding center of rotation from initial and final positions

• Basic geometrical construction method to find center of rotation for any object-image (or initial/final) pair

Reason 1: Isaac has a better arsenal of gadgets etc. (he can fly or throw exploding tears) Can make deals with the angel and the devil also...

Reason 2: God can intervein events for his favor and Isaac can call powerful allies to his fights.

Reason 3: Isaac is more endurable (physically and psychologically).Isaac takes no damage from falling and can survive explosions and such.

Reason 4: Eden. No elaborating words... too self-explanatory. (Wsaac) Reason 5: Isaac can come in many versions.(Lazarus for example)

Reason 6: W ending . In this reason, Isaac proves hisself to be more real than Half life characters. Honorable mentions:
Better modding community than half life's: Better character design (hdtf and blue shift are an exception): (too f#cking cute!!)
(when you compare him to Gordon Freeman and Adrian Shephard you can see how dull they are)
You can see how mighty Isaac is after reading this...

Anyone in Cyprus this September?

Might be able to grab a beer or do some boating or whatever it is that you do in that country.

So you offer to help someone with their map, or perhaps you're collaborating with someone, and right away after opening the RMF/JMF you're met with Invalid texture ('!C2A5') and Invalid texture ('WWOPCLIGHT2A') etc. The author has forgotten to let you know which non-default WADs were used in the map and has now run off somewhere and is out of reach.
Sometimes that happens.

Well, I made a simple CLI tool, Which WAD, in Python re-using some Map2Prop code to help out in that scenario.
It can also extract those textures, and automatically searches _addon, _hd and _downloads folders as well.
I'll add some functionality to use wildcard (*) later on.

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Other than that, summer has been very tiring. Caught covid twice and barely started to recover. But I managed to release the first full version of Map2Prop, a year after I started that project! So that was exciting. Still have to properly celebrate that, once I'm in a shape for such.

Oh and our tomato plant finally yielded a nice, sweet, ripe tomato! Very happy with how our first tomato fruit turned out!
We had it with some mozzarella, olive oil and oregano 👌

This is Neeh. She's a scientist. The style is based of an old friend's art style. That friend is unfortunately not my friend anymore from awhile ago.

I've finished my first big complex map. I began making it on July 22nd, with the goal of finishing it before August. I think it's a good sign of progress since I first started making maps for goldsource around 3 or 4 months ago.
It's just the first map of We've Got Hostiles, except each room has its own custom "Jeffrey" variant.

I'm looking for Iranians to play with and possibly collaborate with on projects. If you're Iranian or know of any, please reach out.

tags: iran iranian persian persia farsi

Posting a drawing!

For those of us enjoying modding GoldSRC the background image on the main menu is certainly a nice little reward each time you boot your mod up. Really gives it that proper mod feel.

Well, I wanted to do that again, but I didn't have to to go through the pain of splicing up an image, so I decided to spend more time programming something to help me do it than to just do it again every time I needed to make an edit. Saves me some time converting all the files!

And here we have it: GoldSRC Steam Background Image Converter.

This tool is based on the Tutorial: How to Make HD 1080p Backgrounds for HL1/Goldsrc Games. Big shout out to MrFloyd76

You'll need the config files from that tutorial, but it saves you much time in cropping / splicing your images.

The main benefit of this is that you can use any file format your browser supports, bust most importantly: bmp, jpg, png, and even SVG without having to download any third party files. Technically you can use gifs, but the first frame (though not sure why you'd want to do that!).

For now, the tool is set to output at 1920 x 1080, in sets of 256 x 256px,* uncompressed 24-bit TGA images*.

Your input images should be 1920 x 1080px.

Once you've loaded the image click each of the images to download each tga.

Loaded into the tool. In-Game