Forum posts

Your skybox is TOO THICC! Sky IS actually water for the engine, with special (no) drawing properties. So, don't use more than 16u thick.
PS: Always use grid! Avoid "carve" and "make hollow" tools.
PS2: get other people's map sources and you'll learn a lot faster.

What a coincidence! I was trying to fix this bug in XDM for hours, only to realize it was a HL bug!
You may notice that inside the portal room one of the plant's glow shows up near the butterfly cage and toggles on/off accordingly. I tried lots of tricks, traced the s2c code, tried fixing client code, but nothing worked! Mainly due to lack of time I had to abandon that. So, in conclusion, it's not a trivial fix. IMHO.

Lol, but then you'll have to recompile both DLLs to accomodate hull changes. There are plenty of places with those constants.

Yeah. Welcome to our little hell

No one mentioned G-man Invasion https://www.moddb.com/mods/g-man-invasion ? Really???

Still making your collection? There's one here https://www.moddb.com/mods/xdm/addons/half-life-dm-gold-multiplayer-maps-century-megapack1

V*LVe explicitly hates people who does this. For years I had an idea of having a txt file with descriptions instead of WAD (or bmp/tga/yougetit) textures. But that would take ENORMOUS time to generate.

There's an AI animation event for this, AFAIR.

Well, not for me. I only see the input rectangle and the "Submit" button. 8( I've even enabled images and JS - still nothing.

Half-Life DM GOLD player models
century megapack - best of all times
version 1.1 (1998 - 2018)

• Official ModDB news post (info, screenshots, humor): https://www.moddb.com/games/half-life/news/release-of-hldm-gold-century-megapack-best-half-life-player-models-v-11
• Official ModDB download (mirors are also posted there): https://www.moddb.com/mods/xdm/addons/half-life-dm-gold-player-models-century-megapack

About
Whenever I installed Half-Life, I was always disappointed with selection of player models it had. For years players had to search and download models from various sites and stash them somewhere on their harddrives. ad voice But not anymore!
This is the Half-Life model collection I promised to release some time ago. Similar to the HLDM GOLD map pack ( https://twhl.info/thread/view/19823 ) , it's a huge compilation of various player models found across the internet. As usual, bad models are filtered out, documentation is preserved, thumbnails are re-created where missing, AND: for quite a lot of models I have manually created topcolor/bottomcolor-supporting textures! Palettes were a big proble, which I solved by writing modpal - a palette sorting utility (included in XDM 3040 source code). One thing still to be done - porting models made for other mods to HL. For example, CS, TS, TFC, etc.
More info inside!
Share, comment, repost

Half-Life DM GOLD multiplayer maps
century megapack - best of all times
version 1.1 (1998 - 2018)

• Official ModDB news post (info and screenshots): https://www.moddb.com/games/half-life/news/release-of-hldm-gold-century-megapack-best-half-life-dm-maps-v-11/
• Official ModDB download (mirors are also posted there): https://www.moddb.com/mods/twhl-maps-and-mods/addons/half-life-dm-gold-multiplayer-maps-century-megapack1

About
This is a major update to the previous map pack ( https://twhl.info/thread/view/19466 ) which contains a lot more: maps, fixes, playlists and a bonus!
Unfortunately, it took very long time to finish as I didn't get any help with it, and it is a side-project to my mod, XDM ( https://www.moddb.com/mods/xdm ). And I'm also releasing a player model pack of the same scale. Please repost and have very safe and productive year!

PS: special hello to people still putting 44100 Hz 16-bit WAVs into HL after these 20 years... (-_-)/ (hint: it does not work)
PPS: seems like TWHL changed a bit since my last visit. I miss the preview button... and formatting help.

A compiler? In .NET?? :facepalm:
What did C ever do to you? :_(

Strider, port it to HLDM, pleeeease =)

tschumann, is that for adding entities on a map? I did something similar a few years ago. Even made custom K/V fields and ability to work together online. Did you make a FGD parser or it's just hard-coded?

Started making this single-player game about 10 years ago. Gave this map an update recently.Yeah, that's good ol' Black Mesa. Map is veeery large, it uses more than 8192*8192*8192 units of space, but that's still not enough for the setting. Because railroads are about speed, and when riding a fairly fast train, this map is reduced to 2 minutes of gamepaly. This should be a full-sized railroad (for cargo trains) unlike those in "On a rail" chapter, but HL map size limit doesn't allow much.
Still worth sharging, I think. )

Nice to see some mapping action!
Those WIP screenshots make me wish original HL was this detailed... But I wouldn't be able to play it on AMD 5x86 then

PS: without question, all HLDM entries are going into the updated HLDM 20y anniversary megapack (if there aren't any objections ).

csapdani: you're welcome!

UPDATE: as you all are probably aware, it's time to celebrate Half-Life's 20 years anniversary. And so, let's bump this project and make it up to the big date!
The primary goal is to find and include all HL multiplayer maps that have been made or updated since this megapack was released (dec 2017). AUTHORS: this is your time to act and flood me with links! =)
The secondary (optional) goal is to provide a preview screenshot for every map. Something like a 1280*960 (4:3) JPEG. For easier navigation and possibly for future in-game use. I have some screenshots ready since last year (those on the background), but that list is far from complete. Currently noone is assigned to this task yet, you're welcome to try )
I'm also working on improving playlists and... something more to include.
This is going to be something of the scale of GoodNES archive or similar projects!

When the 35th competition ends, I'll be happy to include all HLDM maps, regardless of the prize, into the upcoming release!
Thank you for your support! Hope to see more feedback

edit
yup, it's Power Up for me too. Didn't read the whole post in a hury

Surface Tension
:trollface:

Sure! That's the point!

Thanks!

I'm open to suggesitons on keeping this archive up to date. Something like git maybe.

rufee
You had a chance to show it in previous thread But don't worry, I plan, as long as I'm alive, to release update(s), and also HL anniversary (20 years since 1998) version. Thanks for the mirror!

I also haven't included any self-made maps because of the hurry.

I'll post a list of all reviewed maps soon so there'll be a good opportunity to add those which are missing.

IMPORTANT WARNING:
Do not use the uninstaller script as it is now!
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do a full testing, and so it happend that a few original Half-Life files got listed in mappack_files.lst:
valve\mapcycle.txt
valve\halflife.wad
valve\xeno.wad
and maybe some others. That's because I used modified versions of those files and they were automatically added by diff. Sorry.

Windawz, you're welcome )

Anyway, nice job out there. Judging by the readme file you had to go through hell to get most of the maps lol.

Exactly!
I really love to play HLDM ocasionally, so it had to be done

Bruce, yes, animated lights are a nightmare. On modern videocards one stupid candle can drop fps down to 10 on an otherwise fairly optimized map. For example dm_hairpoint is almost unplayable on some systems because of just 1 light. I think it SHOULD be possible to set the number of lightmaps to 1. But the question is, will HL be able to read other structures normally?

PS: share your thoughts on these maps if you found something new and interesting!

PS2: if you have downloaded the file from direct mirror, please consider seeding it through the torrent. Sharing is the future!

Hi, it's been a long time! So long, in fact, that the old thread was archived. Finally I have finished this "project", and hope you enjoy it!
Sorry it took so long, but sometimes unavoidable circumstances appear. Anyway, it's done! In a way. I hope it will be continued because, luckily, maps are still being made and, especially, good ones Right now I'm thinking of some Git-like version control system for future updates. But Git itself doesn't like binaries and requires server that'll have to take all the bandwidth.

Thanks for all the good wishes, I think they helped me a bit

<<< Half-Life DM GOLD >>>
century megapack - best of all times!

version 1.0
1998 - 2017

[ DOWNLOAD HLDM MEGAPACK TORRENT ]
IMPORTANT! add trackers from https://github.com/ngosang/trackerslist - "best"
[ DIRECT DOWNLOAD mirror (slower) ]
Official thread mirror
For seeds ask at half-life@conference.jabber.ru Jabber conference.

This is the most complete (because maps are still being produced) selection of Half-Life multiplayer maps of good quality every server must have.
Not only these maps were selected and tested, but also missing or damaged resources were recovered, mistakes and bad resources were fixed.

What's included?

• 805 maps for multiplayer game.
• all required resources (textures, models, sounds, skyboxes, details, etc.).
• documentation, whenever available.
• original fixes that you won't find anywhere else.
• 7 playlists, sorted by genres.

Who is this for?

• First of all - for players: no more need to spend hours digging a couple of nice maps out of mountains of garbage.
• For HLDM server owners: pack does not contain any trash like temporary files and you will find maps for every taste there.
• For collectors: this is history!
• For admirers of beauty: this is art!

Features:

• Original documentation was preserved and recovered (all text saved to mapname.txt).
• Recovered lost resources for many maps.
• Many maps were fixed (e.g. wrong transparency modes for ladders, fences, etc.).
• Maps were tested for playability.
• Fixed sounds: markers, frequencies, some loops were purposefully cut to avoid crashes on some HL versions and for smooth looping.
• In some rare cases "music" was cut off - huge WAV-files with horrible quality that were playing on the map (like the train announcer voice at the beginning of HL).

Installation:

• Unpack the entire archive into Half-Life directory, when asked to "overwrite folder valve?" choose "yes".
• Note: all files are new (no standard HL files will be overwritten), they can be safely deleted to restore HL to its original state.
• Nothing else

Important notes:

• mapcycle.txt cannot be larger than 8KB (8192 bytes)! Because of this it is better to keep it in unix format (LF) - Half-Life does recognize it and more maps can fit inside.
• Some maps contain animated lights (flickering lamps, fire, etc.), that on some video cards may drop FPS from 60 down to 10! That's how the game is made.
• Old Half-Life versions (WON) have tighter limits on models, sprites and sounds - some maps may fail to run there.
• Also, some Half-Life versions are likely to crash because of unsupported sound file format (> 22050HZ, > 8bit, > 1ch) or those containing bad markers/regions/etc.

Afterwords:

• Pack author: ~X~
• My respect goes to map authors - without them we wouldn't have anything to play!

Just updated a HLDM map that was 10 or more years old.Single room, vertical gameplay. Very hard to balance detail level and not drop FPS.

Hi everyone! I apologise for my absence - lots and lots happened IRL, had some TakeDamage() issues and now can't play games for.. a while. Now bots do all the job
If some maps were released since I've been here last time and anyone wants them added, please post links here!
c ya

I thought it turns Half-Life to some kind of an UT alternative so I'd be able to...

Well, it is somewhat true. XDM can be customized (using cvars mostly) to be from EXACTLY HL1 to UT1-like game.
And about those meme event icons - I had no time drawing something better and though that would be fun. I've disabled that by default long ago.
Anyway, watch youtube less, save time for mapping, MORE MAPPING!

@Admer456
thanks! I see you're a busy one too

amxmodx won't save the day because contents of mapcycle is sent during svc_serverinit message directly by the engine (although I see zero reason to do that and a huge security hole). So, even with LF (unix) mode, not all maps fit in that message.

No sane server would run just mapcycle.txt with that many maps in it

why not? I do it all the time with 10min timelimit %) Otherwise there's a possibility some maps would never be played by anyone. ever.

Thanks for the update. Take your time.

You're welcome!

So much of SC advertisement going on here, I'll pour a bit too.
SC is not hte only co-op mod out there, and it is proprietary and uses modified engine. Why not try this http://twhl.info/vault.php?map=6172 ?
Works like a mod even with WON HL, does not even use custom rendering hacks. Windawz have you tried it?

hi, cant say for sure, got lots of troubles IRL and internet cut off...

Bruce
nope, I haven't released anything yet.

As for progress:
I've recently reviewed some pack of about 150 maps, 40 of which were good enough and lots were just pure garbage (like first/test/undone/hacked maps somehow got into the web).
It takes time and investigation to recover missing resources (usually sky images). So the pack is now roughly 800 maps total. But that's not as huge as it might sound. I play server with 11 minutes time limit and it never gets boring! On the other hand Ive discovered that HL has yet another stupid limit that probably noone has yet discovered: mapcycle.txt cannot be larger than 8192 bytes and current list of approved maps goes above that... what can I do? (and why does hl send it over net anyway?)

/!\
It's also hard to stay updated, so if you want something new (like in the WIP thread, but not limited to) to be added for sure, post link here.

Um... Isn't SOLIDHINT texture designed specially to glue brushes efficiently?
At least it really helps to avoid getting faces broken into pieces by compiler. I use it on all invisible adjacent faces.

Trempler: thumbs up
Red redness is red )

Windawz yup, but at least author made extended tunnels to create an illusion. There was another map of the type, actually. It had just splashy textures on top/bottom ends, but still played good.

Windawz

Hey, what about a DM-Fractal port for Half-Life?

I've seen one and even included it in my megapack. Although from technical perspective maps was total horror: instead of making 4 normal sliding doors, author made ROTATING doors with speed over 9000 and no direction, just to make them appear to disappear.

Victor-933
I still like the original, so I'll love both

Admer456

It shouldn't take more than a year, no?

Not if it's a killbox (~_o)/

Victor-933 BM sublevels? I've played it a few days ago
New version looks less like BM here.

fuzun

I think people should make new "separate games" built on Xash3d instead of making goldsource mods. Because there are a lot of limitations in goldsource and

That's a point, yes. But I think Xash3D API is not yet estabilished outside of GS API to be used widely. That's if you want your game to be portable between different engine versions. But if you're doing a complete stand-alone with lots of engine modifications, you pretty much stick to one version.
I personally chose the hardest way of making a mod that is compatible with everything from WON HL 1110 to Steam HL 1122 and Xash3D. Just to let players run it on whatever they like most.

Admer456
Yeah, map size limitation is a very silly one. HL could technically handle double XYZ even back then.
But much worse is texture memory limit. And HL also does not clean texture memory on level change, so when you play lots of different DM maps with custom textures, HL WILL crash. Or maybe it will crash becasue of AllocString before that

Wow, gibs hit the func_rotating. Didn't think people care SO much about engine.
As far as I know, some parts of Xash3D are taken from HL2 SDK, and some really deep creepy shitty parts were probably reverse-engineered from [dis]assembly code. And for the stability part, well...
In my opinion, as a professional programmer, who also worked on a HL mod for more than 10 years, the real lego-work is GoldSource. But you cannot notice it unless you try doing something with it. And if you do, "PREPARE FOR UNFORESEEN CONSEQUENCES". One example: once in a while HL kept crashing after level change for no apparent reason. It took a year to find out (and not without help of Xash3D and rehlds because retards at VALVe even encrypt HL DLLs) that HL engine crumbles when singleplayer maps have upper/mixed case names. My maps are named like CO_MapName01, 02, etc. And there are LOTS of things like this. While I, as a modmaker, was spending 90% of my time dealing with things like that, imagine what Xash3D devs had to go through!
And yes, there's a lot of Quake code in both HL and Xash3D. MDL loading code is available in studiomdl sources, same with BSP and SPR. I don't see much reason for VALVe to be so butthurt about their 19 years old stuff.

And HL limits are killing me. I have a big (but still inside 8192 block) and vey nice unfinished map which even does compile, but crashes HL client just because there's no enough memory.

Victor-933 +1 about xen stuff
Map looks nice but could benefit from increasing BSP polycout a little IMHO.

I tend to follow most that have that classic look. I don't mean set in black mesa specifically. Original mods that favour brushwork prefabs over models.

again, +1

I dislike VALVe and closed-source stuff a lot more.
Like it or not - Xash3D is currently the only working alternative to proprietary GS. And people working on its portability. You probably seen it working on ARM/Android.

Isn't it a little too late? VALVE/Sven team kind of lost the moment to open their sources because we now have:

• opensource Xash3D
• opensource ReHLDS
• unnamed opensource engine client implementation (not complete yet)
• opensource sp/mp/coop mod - XDM
• opensource tools
• alternative map editors

So, when (if) VALVe(r)(tm)(wtf)(gtfo) suddenly decides to open their crap, we won't be needing it anymore.

You're welcome!

As a bonus, well.. there are "top %d shittiest maps/models ever" too

Hi everyone!

During past few years I've been reviewing lots of maps and models, for personal collection mostly. But after number of reviewed maps went over 2000 I decided to organize everything into a single project, which could benefit other people. I plan to put everything together in a single out-of-the-box-ready package (most likely, a torrent) for anyone to just download, copy and play. Suggestions regarding media, packaging, distribution, name, are welcome!

Right now there are about 750 maps sorted out of 4000 and about 320 models out of 1500. All "readme-s" and other stuff was carefully kept under map file names, most of resources were found and recovered (sometimes people seemed to upload their maps without skyboxes, models, sprites or sounds). The criteria are strict regarding both the aestethic and technical sides (for example, no skyboxing). Only HLDM maps were allowed.This was truly a titanic work, which also helped me in debugging my own mod: http://twhl.info/forums.php?thread=19232
The project will be finished very soon, but! Because there's a HLDM mapping competition ongoing here on TWHL, I'll be more than happy to delay release a little bit so these maps may enter the list!

IMPORTANT: if you did not find your map in the list and want it to be added, you are welcome to post a download link here!
Reviewing won't be very fast, because map will have to be re-checked against several lists and archive, but no entry will be left without attention, I promise! But please check this list first:

Current list of approved maps: http://pastebin.com/5qWpc5yj

c2a5... C2A5... Best part of HL!
(T_T) I love you guys so much...

You're doing some really great mapping work!

Hi guys, long time no see! Back from read-only mode
To bring you some (hopefully) good news and (same here) good time!

A few days ago I finally released a big update to my mod, XDM. You may remember it as it includes collaboration work with people from TWHL.

Release article: http://www.moddb.com/mods/xdm/news/x-half-lifexdm-3038-release-after-two-years

What's unique about this release - is the included single/coop mission: Arctic Incident.
Originally released about two years ago, AI was a small singleplayer mod, but it had a potential of becoming a great multiplayer experience as well. Or so I thought. The actual work of "converting" sp to coop turned out to be far more complicated than I thought. Technically, I could just place spawn spots and live happily ever after, but the balance, gameplay, map design - everything required deep thinking.

More about the CoOp mission with screenshots here: http://imgur.com/gallery/EpAe8

But that's not all. Far from it. XDM includes other new content such as maps, models, weapons, etc. Old classic maps have also been revisited and updated. The change log is so big I don't even post it anywhere.
As a modding platform, XDM gained lots and lots of useful features from simple in-entity scripting to text-based RenderSystem (a simple visual effect generation system, includes particles).
The pseudo-scripting is very simple, yet powerful and universal. Designers may use same commands and syntax from entities AND console. What's more - they can do it TOGETHER.
XDM now also has more security features, such as user rights. Yes, user rights. In a game. But hey, do you really want some random pranksters interrupting your creation process? I don't think so. So users without explicit "developer" rights won't be able to add/edit/trigger entities right after joining.
NOTE: as I don't use Steam, these features are not tested enough. You're welcome to do it. ^_^

Official mod page: http://www.moddb.com/mods/xdm/

And there's also SDK released this time, which includes lots and lots of useful documentation, examples and real-life sources of maps, models, textures and even music!

PS: I personally didn't think I'll be updating this mod, but, well, life decided otherwise
Hope you can fully enjoy playing it or digging into it

Well, as expirience tells, the best is actually maps/mapname.txt - game can read and display it (usually, MOTD), there are no naming conflicts, automatic tools can find it, users can open it. Everyone is happy.

A readme is a text file (usually named readme.txt) containing...

PLEASE DO NOT ENCOURAGE MAPPERS TO MAKE README.TXT FILES!!!

As a person who develops a platfom-like mod, and have reviewed literally more than 4000 maps I should say: when extracting all of those crappy zips renaming every f****ng readme.txt so they won't be overwritten and so I know which map is belongs to is a royal pain in the arse(tm)!!

PS: good luck to all participants (^_^)/

2rufee:
Lots of ways:
WinAPI (nowdays considered "hardcore")
MFC (fast, but not very flexible, requires lots of std::hands)
wxWidgets (unlike QT uses underlying OS's GUI controls and drawing methods - like MFC, but crossplatform and much better)

QT, FoxTK, GTK, etc. AFAIK use their own controls.

All .NET apps start in <1 second on my computer and idle at 0% CPU.

Try disabling .net prefetcher on startup.

The runtime is included with new Windows versions

new Windows versions

I'm just fine with my good old 2003, and without any frameworks. Sorry As a programmer, I just prefer fast, reliable and small native code. .NET is a heresy
Sorry for flaming!

PS: Badaluyah, why is that model upside down?

It is written in microsoft .NET.

So it starts like 3 minutes, eats 90% CPU and requires 350MB of runtime? Thanks, but no thanks. :-/