Forum posts

I can make a couple of them, but you need to define the dimensions. Source materials are much more strict when it comes to dimensions. A lot of valid HL1 texture sizes won't work with VTF files.

Like I told you with the "Molten Gold" screenshots, I have the Blue-Shift pak file in the valve folder

If you pressed the correct lever and the scroll is unprotected, you have to press "E" or whatever key you use as "action". It might not be very clear, but it's something that you should have tried yourself
Not that you're missing much. It's a very anti-climatic ending.

Edit: it's certainly an improvement. The whole map looks better now.

I'm compiling it with a -sky 0.5 parameter. Apparently it works the same as bounce, but only affects the light_enviroment, which is just what I need! Let's hope it works.

Thx. I'll give it a try. The problem is that the amount of light bounces and minimum brightness work very well in the inside areas of the map

Here's my problem. I have a light_enviroment with these values: 215 138 68 300
The parts that receive direct sunlight look fine, just as intended. But the parts in shadow look way too bright. If I make the light brigther, it only gets worse. If I make the light dimmer, the sunlit parts don't look as bright as I want to... Can any RAD settings help me out?

What do you mean by heal?
Try making a logic_auto, and tell it to trigger the breakable glass entities OnStartRound or something like that. It's worth a try.

Aren't some of those solids invalid? You should always cut them diagonally if you are going to do tricky VM.

how i could make an invisable room that you can also walk through but once inside you cant be seen

You can't. If the room is invisible, it would have to be transparent. If it's transparent, the player will be seen by other players.
However, if you use a func_occluder (brush based entity), you can make all models behind it invisible. Give it a try.

9 new spoiler mini-screenshots. All of these are new and belong to the second map. There are still some details to add, specially in what concerns the little houses, which are window-less atm.
http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/7548/idol10ns6.jpg

I was also thinking I could include a retextured Vilcabamba map with these maps and linking them with a level change, since they are part of the same story. It would give me the chance to improve it based on the MV comments and other reviews. It would also increase the size of the zip file...

Are all games probably going to become Vista only? Yes.

I depends on what OS people have. Have you ever seen the study done periodically in STEAM to see what systems people have? I doubt we would see Vista-only games from Valve if their target customers are less. And many other game companies would think the same.
HL1 will not be Vista-only, so I feel safe in a way.

After reading some parts of it, It seems to me that there will be an important boycott to this new OS.
DRM only makes things harder for users of legitimate content, which seems very stupid as the number of those users will decrease and sales will drop even more.
People are quite happy with DivX, Xvid etc. We've been watching films at normal TV resolution for decades. "High Definition" is not a real priority among casual people, or at least that's my impression.

Anyway, Microsoft can always make a patch disabling internet capability for XP, forcing the whole world to move to Vista

I don't want to hear about Vista. Unfortunately, software will end up being Vista-exclusive
XP works fine for me. The only "blue screens of death" I've ever seen in XP were hardware related, not software.
I haven't read through all the new features, but I bet most of the useful ones could easily be included in a XP update.

Do you have photoshop?
There's good plugin which enables you to save VTF files directly. It makes the process much easier.

Ut2k3 was one of the first games where I saw ragdoll physics (jumping through the hoop in BR_anubis was fun to watch)
I didn't bother checking out 2k4.
I think the title should be UT 2007. They should leave the "3" for "Unreal III" if they are going to make that game.

The info file you make with notepad is a VMT
You need to make a VTF file. Sometimes I wonder if having tutorials is actually useful at all in this site.

Models are not lit with lightmaps. That's why sometimes they look crap and out place amongst the brushwork. The bigger the model, the bigger the problem.
http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/7015/vlitak5.jpg

My computer ran it OK even with HDR, but It's really not playable once you have player and hostage models around.
It had good and bad things, like most maps do. Not all of them are mappers mistakes, by the way. I find the vertexlit system for models to be a horrible part of the Source engine. It doesn't only happen with props used in custom maps, mind you. Play "Dark Messiah of Might and Magic" and you will find tons.
At least the map had things we hadn't seen many times before. Waterfall, the big models, hot air balloons etc.

Another thing that can be said, is that you don't need to have a gameplay area as big as the visual area. I think you are right with the scale, things are not so out of proportion.
The problem is that every spot of floor you can see is floor you can walk on. It's a good freedom in terms of "I'm in the Hoth base and I can look around at will", but not so much when it comes to navigation.
When I end up a having an area which is too big, I usually fence off some area or make adjustments to the walls. Campers like big rooms, and I don't like campers

The text looked much shorter in WordPad

Your mapping workflow is bound to cause a mappers block.
You have a theme, and a main idea for the layout. The problem is, you map it all before knowing if it's the best option.
That might be a first cause for being blocked. It's easier to change and imagine things in your mind/paper that when they arealready solid world brushes.
I don't know why, but I think you're not controlling the scale yet. Adding a monster_barney or two around the map, or using chase_active 1 is a good way to always know how big things are. Right now you have a big and mostly empty map in front of you, and filling it with props and retexturing doesn't seem fun, am I right?
If you texture things at the same time as building them, it's easier to make them feel right. You should visualize what you are mapping before actually doing so.
For example, you have high vertical walls. Now that they are textured with a placeholder tile texture, you are subconsciously excluding the possibility that those walls have closed gates into which you can look at, or instead of flat they are actually irregular and made out of rock or snow.
Most of the map right now is in a flat plane, and the vent ducts don't feel like a good idea: players don't have a real advantage going inside.
There are a lot of improvements though. Lighting, although still very basic, is much better in this version. The red lights work as a landmark the way they are placed. The props you have so far look nice, although you seem to have different types of speeders. R2D2 and the other droid look great. The deathstar hologram is funny. I would make it bigger and maybe put it in the center of a control room. It could work as a good landmark.
You got rid of the halls, which is good, but I still feel it takes long to get from one place to another because of the size and lack of cover. I know it's considered bad, but you can add big crates in the hangars. Placing items on top of some of them will give players a reason to climb them and increase vertical gameplay.
More later.

Not that I can edit it now...

But hey, if it isn't noticeable in a frozen screenshot, it might not be a huge problem if I eventually don't find a way to solve it.

Ok, don't ask me why, but certain models and even brushwork are drawn before a certain material that is closer to the player.You could think that my glass material is messed up, but notice how it doesn't happen with the glass on the left. The trees are clearly behind. It also happened with other glass textures, so I'm kind of guessing it has to do with the model. Any ideas of why that happens? Have you seen this effect anywhere else?
The glass is func_detail, by the way, and textured only in one side. The other one has nodraw.

These are the vmt contents of that glass material:

"LightmappedGeneric"

{ "$basetexture" "fallingwater/wglass1"
"$surfaceprop" "glass"
"$translucent" 1
"$nocull" 1
"$envmap" "env_cubemap"
"$envmapmask" "fallingwater/wglass1mask"

}

Any one of us can make a map featuring water/rain just by looking at TWHL's tutorials, there's nothing that will set entries apart other than the actual location the water is set in

We been through every kind of rain there is. Little bitty stingin' rain... and big ol' fat rain. Rain that flew in sideways. And sometimes rain even seemed to come straight up from underneath.

Some words to trigger your imagination:

waterfalls
fountains
bath spa
aquapark
ripples
aquarium
ocean
ice? I don't know if solid water fits the rules
rainstorm
flood

etc
etc

The architecture style I'm going for is rather blocky, that's true (It's not like I haven't done different things many times before, used curves and other shapes.This has nothing to do with a habit).
This thing is built literaly putting one rock on top of another. If you notice, those rocks are quite big, so I'm not sure doing certain operations will work.
I can try to isolate some of them and make them stick out a bit more, making the surfaces more imperfect. If I do that somewhere in the map, I would have to do it all around the level to keep it consistent. That would mean a lot of extra work which wouldn't make the experience significantly better. You can understand my dilemma.

As for the mix of nice and blah architecture, I think "blah" makes "nice" look nicer. For example, the second map (which I haven't started yet) will be prettier than this one, more colorful.

Edit: after seeing my Floating Surface map, you should know I don't rely on texturing to bring the art to life. Lighting was the tool in that one.

9 mini-screenshots. They are a bit of a spoiler.
http://img235.imageshack.us/img235/342/idol97hr.jpg

The idea now is to make three maps. These screenshots would belong to the first, which takes place outside the sacred city. Next would be a map of the city itself, and finally the main temple and escape. Vilcabamba would be the fourth or rather "zeroth" map, representing another entrance to the city along with a sacrificial altar, one of the Gargantua keeping places and an idol shrine to which Gman got first, as those who have played it know.
Remember this is not a minimod, so I'm not considering music or voice acting at this point.

Ok, the theme seems interesting and my latest water-ripple effects will come in handy
Even though it might seem Source has an advantage with reflecting/refracting water, the limitations of "only one water plane per VIS leaf" will make me choose HL1 for this. That, and the easier process of creating materials, scroll textures etc. On the other hand, Source let's you create cubemapped surfaces for a wet-look effect...

No, if you use "KillTarget" they won't be activated again as far as I know.

If you didn't make any mistakes with the names, there shouldn't be any problem with a trigger disabling the other trigger. However, you would trigger them back on when breaking the transmitter...

To be sure the triggers are KO, you might want to trigger an entity that has a "KillTarget" field, for example an invisible door somewhere. Put the name of the triggers and lasers in the killtarget field of that door and they should be disabled. Set the door to stay (delay of -1) to avoid further problems.
Your button and breakable entity would target that door.

On topic: the path in the picture doesn't look as wide as what you've got so far in Hammer. Either make the path thinner or make the slopes around it higher. Are you going to include the trees? They have a good shape for the HL1 engine, nothing impossible to do.

Off topic: I always keep my left hand on the arrows and shift key for 3D navigation in Hammer. Using the spacebar would mean a constant change from that position, so I still have those scroll arrows and move around with the keyboard arrows
I wish it could be done with a Mouse3 + drag like in Microsoft Word or AutoCad...

Quite nice. Did you make replacements for the hgrunt voices or is it planned?

The thing is, the top texture is the one made by Matt Hill for the Tomb Raider Xtra pack. The idea is to remake that top texture on my own.
The place seen in the pics was supposedly for animal caretaking. Some sort of drain is missing in the center of the floor (it is slightly slanted towards the center). In a way, the material needed would be more like a mosaic and not just some pebble floor.

Here is another view. The original texture has a mosaic look which I overlooked while making the new texture. I might give it another try.

http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/3569/both1pz.jpg

Mipmapping makes the pebbles in the second pic look worse. The older version looks too cartoony IMO. I'll post a close-up screenshot as soon as I make another complete compile (I was currently testing my first monster_grunt_repel )

The only screenshots I have are those two and the one before. I would post more, but It might really spoil the experience. I never manage to make long SP maps, and if people see screenshots of many areas, playing through the map might be unsatisfying...

Yesterday I decided that even though the Tomb Raider textures by Matthew Hill work very well for this map, I should remake them on my own. Some of them might look worse than the originals, while others are a bit better now. I made a sample screenshot with both versions.

With old texture set
http://img239.imageshack.us/img239/2006/matthill0ll.jpg

With my own version of those textures
http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/9858/kasperg0he.jpg

I will also say it in the map description, but it is important to NOT play this map directly after Vilcabamba, since the textures loaded into memory having the same name would stay the same (at least in WON HL). It also works the other way around. After loading this map, I can go back to Vilcabamba and automatically look at it with the new texture set, even though I wadincluded!

I think you should include a "thread bumping" award for the next edition of the awards.

The price of the PSP had probably nothing to do with it

PS3 and 360 are last generation. Nintendo is the only one bringing something new to the table.

It's not the consoles the ones who should bring all of the novelty, it's the games. PS3 and 360 bring better visuals to the table, both in rendering power and output image resolution. Better visuals is the reason why PS2 was made after PS, Gamecube after N64, Gameboy Advanced after Gameboy etc. ""Graphics are not everything" is not an excuse for any company IMO.
Wii introduces a new way of playing (which could also be said about the NES light gun or the GunCon I use for Time Crisis :D) but stays behind in image quality and has a better price.
They all have their pros and cons, and like others have said, it depends on what you like or how much you want to pay. Personally, I haven't seen enough greatness to justify getting any of the three systems yet. Time will tell.

Just give people a set of names for maps and their corresponding landmark names.

Well, rowleybob had a similar opinion. They look good aesthetically, but are not realistic. That's why a simple texture change from concrete to metal would work IMO.

It would work as a metallic structure, but not concrete. Pipes are added after the primary structure of a building is done, so it's strange to see them crossing a support. The source mod "Rock 24" and the base map I did for the "destructification" compo also had their share of pipes embedded in pillars. In order to do that, you would need to make the holes with a hydraulic hammer which is a bit messy
I would either change the texture or find another way to hold those pipes (look at the compo 20 base map for ideas). Structural concrete is almost always reinforced with steel, which would be impossible in the thin part seen in the screenshot.
/student of architecture mode off

I meant something sort of like this http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/989/hubz9ll.jpg
(it's a quick example I just did, not part of any map)

the PS3 is expensive, but it's totaly worth it!

How is it worth it? Is the price difference percentage a real quality difference percentage? It doesn't look like it.

And besides, people tend to break the TV with the Wii

Those anecdotal events are hardly a deciding factor when it comes to choosing a system

Give the bus a name.
Use that name in the 'parent' field of each func_breakable entity.

I tried to play TP at a friend's house, but he didn't let anyone use the wii-mote. I did get to see quite a bit of tiled grass textures, jagged edges and blurry geometry in the background. Maybe it's because it was mainly designed with Gamecube in mind, I don't know...
Graphics are not everything for me, or else I wouldn't be mapping for a game released even before Ocarina of Time, which is Half-life1 For me it has to look good and play good and the same time.

PS3 is overpriced. I could think of some nice PC components I could buy with that much money.