Journals

Suppose that you just won a considerably large ammount of money. Maybe it was the lottery, maybe a relative died, maybe you found a suitcase full of money (just make sure to remove the handcuffs and the severed hand).
So, the next obvious question would be: "How do i evade taxes?". But, i am yet to write something about that, so we will, unfortunately, have to move on to the next question: "On what should i spend the money?". Many people would first consider something like "mom's surgery" or "electrical bills" or "my son's college". But, for the more exccentric people, the dreamers, the weirdoes that don't know what the hell are they doing here, they might consider buying large, expensive jewelry, such as large diamonds or golden crowns or Lord knows what.
Well, this text is meant for those people. Think twice before you go to your nearest black market salesman!

A reocurrent issue with such items is that there will always be a Doom McEvil or a Thief O'Crime around desperately trying to fill the void their parents left with materialism. It's almost certain that your precious Pink Panther will be stolen, your Royal Crown will vanish misteriously, or your dog will swallow the rubber pig with the diamond (and Oasis will make a banger of a song about it).
While there might be a Hero McGood that retrieves the diamond succesfully, you'll still spend thousands, if not millions, on security, museum expositions, useless henchmen that will get their asses kicked, investigators, lawyers to hide the dead African kids that died in the mines to get the jewelry, and taxes (until i write the other guide). At some point, you will spend more money than the cost of the precious diamond, and i'm no economist, but that is quite the problem.
Unless, of course, the thingy is more valuable than money. You know, maybe it's the friends we made along the way, maybe it has a sentimental value to you, or maybe it's the key to find a cure for that werewolf curse you got a year ago. You were just minding your business when that damn furball popped out of nowhere in that park, and tried to kill you. At least he was polite enough to hand you over a pamphlet when he got back to his old self. Maybe he wanted to avoid getting a lawsuit. It's not like if you can call your lawyer anyways. What are you going to tell him? "Mr. Jenkins? Yes, it's me, i'd like to lawsuit Lupin Night, for passing me the curse. Yes, i know you are busy with the Africa child labor thing, but this is severely more important!".
Or maybe, you are going to buy something that will be much, much more valuable in the future. Properties, stock, an old oil rig that still has plenty of juice left. After all, when the Antichrist comes, he's gonna need plenty of fuel for the Christian-hunting machines, that is, until we find a way to use their blood as fuel.
In conclusion, don't buy the MacGuffin, unless it's more valuable than it's own price.

And with this, i bid farewell. Dr Cunningham is calling me, and he said that if i behave well this week, i'll get chocolate pudding every lunch! Man, being on a psychiatric institution rules!

Suppose that you need something, but don't have the time to do it. Maybe it's just too good to leave it archived, maybe it took considerable effort, and you even made a labor of love on it. Maybe you simply want to get rid of it, publish it, let the world know it, etc.
I'm pretty sure everyone (or most of us, at least) have recycled content in some form. It can range from a simple idea to an entire map, a whole model, pehaps even the mod itself!
But, is it ethical? Is it correct? Are you not commiting any "modding sins" by reusing content? Why am i even bothering to question such banalities?
I guess it's not a bad thing, but from my experience, it could be frowned uppon by some modders. Maybe because it shows a lack of effort, or it can break the vision of the whole thing.

For example, my submission for Make Black Mesa Come Alive was no exception.
For starters, this miniwarehouse section was recycled from another mod that i never finished (and will never bother to do so). It was heavily modified, so only its essence remains. The grenade models were recycled from a cancelled deathmatch mod i was working on too (Can't remember it's name, but it had a Mod DB page somewhere). A character that you only get to see once is this guy (during the short vent sequence). He was supposed to take a more prominent role in the maps, being required to unlock doors and disable security systems. Another character that was also supposed to appear at the very beginning was this unnamed security guard, who was not in a very good shape. Similarly to other games, he would have served as a companion that taught you how to work in teams (like at the start of Black Mesa). You were the brains, he was the brawn. His model (and concept) was recycled from my cancelled entry for The Buddy System.
Gordon was to take this role too at some point, tho you would have followed him instead, and helped him to open doors and such. Gordon's model comes from an unfinished mod of an alternate universe. Both the security guard and the scientist had scripted arguments and dialog that made them feel more alive, making the player forget just for a small second that one is a bullet-spitting machine and the other one is a living keycard. They also had animations for jumping over ledges and railings, climbing rooms and ladders, a concept that came from this awesome mod.
Finally, there was also supposed to be this small sequence where you entered some random lab and freed a vortigaunt. The model was reused from yet another cancelled mod. The purpose was to show that vortigaunts are slaves, and constantly being forced to participate in an invasion they probably don't want to take part in. Most of these stuff were cut, but it just amazes me how much content i have been trying to reuse lately (i also wanted to display these models because i consider them too good to be archived).
It also makes me think, how much unused or never-seen-before content has been made by the community, and how cool it would be if people posted every single thing they made. Something like TCRF but for Half-Life mods.
Sure, it would probably lead to a massive flood of mediocre/unfinished content. But it could also give us some uncut gems. It could serve as inspiration. Imagine, a map you never finished serves as an inspiration for the next "They Hunger"! That would definitely be cool to see.
Just a tought.

Finally got enough money to build my new PC, with a brand new powerful GPU. I can, finally, run the latest version of blender without having to hear the fans go nuclear.

Went to a hike. It was agonizing, but the view was worth it.

Lookin for something to do with free time.

I have become obsessed with this barrel picture that Meerjel01 made. i love it . I even made a 3D version of it: barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel barrel

(Im just joking right now, trying to cheer up everyone here, specially all of you who feel bad or sad)

The user Erty released his tool Map2Prop, wich allows the user to make models from maps. I previously used this tool to make 3D models on J.A.C.K., but now i tested another idea.

GoldSource is not able to create maps with functional chrome textures. In fact, i haven´t seen any mod or GoldSource-based game that uses this (please comment if you do know one). The theory to test here is that we could create a brush, turn it into a model with the chrome texture and add it to the map. We also could add it to glass, so we dont just limit to a texture, but also add it a "shiny" effect.

To start i made a map with some random prefabs and stuff to test: After creating the map, i made a copy and only kept what would be turned into chome models: But before making the model, we need chrome textures. I quickly made some in paint.net. Most, if not all of them, are pretty rough and ugly, but its meant for a test rather than an actual map, so we really dont have to care that much for quality. We "compile" the map and turn it into a model, but we ran across our first problem: Either the chrome or the meshes are too big, wich turns the textures into a really simple chrome. I tested another theory, wich consisted in tiling the chrome texture to fix this problem: It didn´t made that much of a difference. I didnt knew what caused this problem, but my theory was that there were very few faces on the model. However, i did not knew how to add more faces to the meshes, maybe there is some modelling tool that can do this but i didnt found anything useful. There was no other choice but to use the model.
I compiled the map, but ran across more problems. 1. The textures were opaque
This was a skill issue of mine, i forgot to add the "Additive" flag to the textures.
2. The model does not match the map
I dont know why this happened. The model appears to match the brushed in the editor, but when compiled it does not match. I tried moving the model several times, but in the end, i never got to solve this problem, In the end, the map was somehow a failure. This because i couldn´t figure out how to solve the textures and the matching problem.

CONCLUSION/TL;DR: The idea looks good on paper, but is a pain on practice. However, im pretty sure that a skilled mapper or modeller could make this succesfully. If anyone wants to try to fix (or even improve it), here is a download link.

Recently Erty released a program capable of turning RMF and JMF to SMD, wich is pretty cool. I had the idea of attempting to make a 3D model entirely on J.A.C.K., to test and see if it was a good idea, or if it was better than normal modelling with standard 3D modelling software.
So, to start this, i tried to make a v_shotgun, and after some time i created a very basic model Wich is based on a random stock picture of a Remington (it looks more like the TF2 shotgun). Anyways i "compiled" the thing and honestly it did looked better than i expected: The only thing left now was rigging and testing, however i found quite a lot of issues when doing this (that luckly were not caused by the converter).
1. The pump-thing was incorrectly placed.
I forgot that the pump is located really far away from the barrel end, and that the hand would not be able to grab it. I could edit the model in MS3D, however i wanted to fully model the thing in J.A.C.K, so that was definitely not an option.
2. The barrels are too short and the rest is very large
In the pumping animation, Gordon cocks back. This was an issue, since the pump was very far away from the hand, and i did not wanted to edit the animation. So, i had to edit the reference to make the barrels longer and the rest shorter: I edited the reference and added some more details: Now it was time to rig and compile, but during the rigging process i ran across a problem. I dont know exactly what i did, but i "erased" the backfaces in the pump after i converted. At this point i was very tired and it was really dark outside, but i needed at least a reference or a concept. So i quickly deleted the hands, moved the viewpoint, and compiled. CONCLUSION/TL;DR: Most of the problems i encountered were a skill issue of mine, but an experienced mapper and modeler should be able to use mapping tools to create 3D models easily.

Mine are:
1. Get friends
2. Start to get out more
3. Fix my life

Tell me yours!

Or dont, do whatever you want.

Problem is, what theme?
Also im planning to give rewards or something like that. I only have like 2.5 dollars left in my account, and my next paycheck is next week so uuuh...

give me map ideas. ANYTHING.

EDIT: Im gonna do Urby´s map and then im gonna finish the koth map

I am bored + Have no map ideas + Feeling a bit bad today = Give me you map ideas!

Just give me any map idea you want and i will do it!

yesterday i played portal for the first time. but i ended up uninstalling it because my small dumb stupid brain couldnt solve the puzzles. But i got inspired, and decided to make a portal deathmatch map for Half-Life, because, why not?

So i got inspired by TFC´s 2fort, and made something like that:It felt kinda empty, so i added a few corridors and windows:Also i added a few offices:So far is lookin good, but we need the aperture super complicated white/gray/blue tridimensional cool sliding door
I started to make something, and so far it looks like this:Well i havent finished the map, but i will upload it as soon as i finished it =p
Mean while meet jerry, the bullet hole-made man!-jamie
PD: Images not showing up for me pls help

Mod edit: Images fixed by Carrot