Forum posts

If you tick "Prisioner" in the flags of a monster_human_grunt, he will point at you but won't shoot you. You can tick "Wait for script", he will be idle until you tell him to do something with scripted sequences.

As for Spirit, I'm sure your friend would need the DLLs to run the map. You can make a minimod for your friend with those DLLs.

And assuming you don't map for a game company...
There are infinite forms of mapping. A lot of paths to get to the same places.

Looks great! (except the part where displacement meets floor )

My biggest complain with Elite Force II (and most Quake3 based games) is that the lighting looks so incredibly fake. Little or no defined world shadows, no clear lightsources in rooms (sometimes the texture indicates that the lights are turned off but the room is bright) etc. It happened with the Jedi knight games too. I think Medal of Honor's lighting was a bit better, but all of them pale in comparison to the HL1 lighting. Weird.

Back to the topic. To those who have played the official Star Trek games, I can't guarantee a better gameplay experience as of now. That's why I want to spend more time planning something original for the starbase.

Lol sorry.
Then my advice would be to change the light supports and use even more different textures for the crates.

I would change the supports for the lights in the second pic. They look strange.
As for the barren room, you could add some beams in the celing. They would break the repetitiveness of the ceiling and wouldn't get in the player's way. You could use them to put more fluorescent lights instead of using one point light for the whole room.
For example. Imagine that instead of one light, you have a sequence of three fluorescent lights. 2 of them have white light, and the last one is red. That would give players the sense that they will be entering a different area. Just an idea.

Edit:
http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/2862/wcdude2lh.jpg

ModDB is probably outdated compared to Rabid's journal entry.

The standard CS fgd doesn't have half-life monsters. The standard HL fgd doesn't have CS weapons... I don't think you can mix them easily.
A CS map is singleplayer if you have the deathmatch 0 parameter but as you said, you wouldn't be able to "buy" weapons.

1. 70% of a Half-life SP mod. About 4 months of intense mapping. You can imagine.

2. Yeah. People don't wait to read the whole monotonous text before clicking "install". Highlights would be good.

3. It is their duty. Hence the concept of game patches.

It would be nice to find out who these guys really are.

They are evil green aliens with aspirations of World domination.

Don't forget the flares. They are one of the greatest additions to the franchise.
I hope Episode2 brings new content. The change of setting should help them feel free of the city17 theme. Let's hope it doesn't turn into "Forest 17"

I don't know about that :
Episode1 is the only official Half-life game in which you are not moving when it all begins.
Half-life and Blue-Shif have the Black Mesa tram, Opposing Force has an osprey? and Half-life2 and probably Half-life2 Episode2 start on a train.

Is the path written correctly? ambience/yoursound.wav (without the valve/sound/)

Is it set to "Start on"?

If what they say is true, these Episodes are the only sequel we'll get.
http://pc.ign.com/articles/711/711560p1.html

If that's the case, I think it's dissapointing. Maybe Valve can't bear the thought of having to spend another four years making new models and 2048x2048 textures.

I will finish it, don't worry. My finished/unfinished map ratio is something like 50/5

Bad news for the trekkies. I have almost completed the first map of the minimod, the one that takes place in the Federation ship. I got a working levelchange and a transportation sequence. The problem is the destination.
I have tried several themes for the planetary/star-base to which you and your team arrive, but I'm extremly unhappy with the results.
Playing "ST:Elite Force II" has only increased my deslike for the new map, so I will probably park this minimod for a while, waiting for sci-fi inspiration or planning a good and convincing layout.

Today, I began a HL2 SP map. Puzzles and surreal events will be an integral part of the experience.

however the level is by far too big to be loaded all at once.

Have you actually tried it and reached the limit? or is it just an assumption?

For a first person game, I think the story is told very well. I haven't played Deus Ex (well, a demo which got be bored after 2 minutes) but the rest of the FPS games out there don't seem to be doing much better at storytelling than HL2. The storytelling method in F.E.A.R for example consists in reading the text in the loading screens and listening to dozens of phone messages.

And now that I think of it, Sonic & Knuckles takes about an hour to beat and it cost me more than Episode1. Damn it!!

I've played a total of 180 hours of Final Fantasy VIII, and I still don't think Episode1 is any sort of joke.
I've heard some Resident Evil games can be completed in 3 hours, and those games are highly regarded by some people (not me).

Well, any excuse is good to bite at valve I guess. If HL2 started in Xen or Black Mesa, explaining that plot hole, you would be the first to say that the game was crap for not being innovative and for reusing characters, locations etc.
If you want to know what happened after HL1, play Absolute Redemption if you haven't done so yet. It's absolutely free, so you don't have to worry.

I think that might be the issue. If there's a company whose episodic games are actually worth it, it is Valve. I don't have Sin Episodes: Emergence or any plan to get that game.
If there's a company I would actually like to make profit it is Valve.

I don't think the same approach of playing as a grunt or as Barney would work as well as it did in the HL1 universe. In HL1, the chamber accident was a reference point from which you could relate the stories. I don't think there is an equivalent event in HL2.

And it's also the only viable reason for game expansions which have been around for a very long time. This concept you are criticizing is nothing new that comes with episodic content.

Why? HL2 is different to HL. If HL3 is set in even a further future, I see no problem with working on the new game while making expansions to the existing one.

Why not get started on HL3!

Nobody says they haven't. They began planning for HL2 shortly after finishing HL1.

Opposing Force and Blue-Shift weren't HL2.
When you create worlds and themes of such artistic and gameplay potential (Black Mesa, City 17), you tend to bring the best out of it (and $ too). As mappers, we also reuse themes when they work and we like them.

It looks much better and more metallic.

I understand you mean "partially flooded"
I would make cylinder shaped brushes 1 unit high and textured with NULL except the top, which would have a water texture. I would afterwards turn them into func_illusionaries, and maybe add a func_friction brush entity to make it slippery.

I can compare them because they are both HL2 singleplayer experiences. I do agree that they should've been able to do so much more in 18 months since I have done 24 maps in that time (please don't completely ignore HL2DM, Lost Coast, DoD, some CS maps and parts of Episode2).

You are making the assumption that the valve team is lazy because the game is short. Maybe the decission to give the game such a length is someone else's fault. We can't be certain. I hope Episode2 will be much longer, after the feedback they will get from the whole community.

Wow, that must be driving the portal leafs crazy

I have played both Minerva and Episode1. Episode 1 should be a bit longer considering the price, but it is much more fun than Minerva. I would never replay the latter, while I've already played the citadel part of Ep1 three times. I think the character dialogues and scripted sequences make a huge difference.
Minerva is still extremely good for a free mod, but it didn't really add anything new to the HL experience for me.

Now, I cannot speak for everyone but I bet a few of us think you have a crew working for you and somehow you're the only one taking the credit.

Absolutely true, but I never talk about them since people wouldn't beleive me

Thanks!
I'll probably have to tweak the damage done by the weapon if I leave it as the egon. I haven't made much progress on the minimod because of HL2:Ep1 and Star Trek Elite Force II.

I'd say your parking lines are good candidates for being turned into func_wall

You can read this article if you want to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mipmapping

You can remove the blur with a higher screen resolution or changing the anisotropic filtering in your gfx card settings.

Have you tried to manually load the map from the game menu instead of automatically running after compile?
Also, the game will crash if there's no info_player_deathmatch entity.

It does look like surface overlapping (z-fighting) caused by the viewable distance.
The max viewable distance you specify in the map is related to what the engine can draw, not the way you see it. For example, you will see the smaller mipmap version of a distant texture with a low screen resolution even if your max viewable distance is huge.

Max Viewable distance >> what the HL engine renders
Screen resolution >> how your gfx card renders it

Try using a higher screen resolution and see if it changes.

Rowleybob's entry had plenty of detail everywhere, which had both positive and negative effects. When you start the map, for example, you could already see things like the bomb, the crates filled with objects, and of course the damage to the concrete structure, with its metallic reenforcements and some pieces falling apart with func_rotating? entities.
The idea of making water from the pipe flood the area was quite good and daring.
I would have to complain about the retexturing of the light fixtures, but it was probably due to the lights.rad file.
The inaccessible room was a great addition and made the map feel bigger, as well as providing a chance to add more detail which otherwise wouldn't fit in other parts of the map.
The flooded are was ok (not my favourite water texture :P) and things like the green bench cushions floating among the rest of the objects was really nice.

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About the retexturing of the map, I didn't consider it a primary objective for this competition, so anyone who left the textures as they were wasn't penalized by my pov.

About the funny things I had thought while checking out the entries: One of my main interests was to see what each of the participants believed was beyond the boundaries of the map. Besides the windowed gallery, the rest was very open to interpretation. For example, most people thought of it as bunker-like structure right beneath the surface, when there could have been more levels above or below it (some of you showed it with the elevator). There were some doors that I never saw open in any of the entries, like the hangar door with the "Waste processing" sign on top. What lies beyond will stay unknown...

Once again, congrats to everyone

Check this link, there might be something about it
http://www.hlfallout.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=33750

If you load the level where J. Mossman is on the screen, I'm sure you can noclip from that room and reach the place where that monster is.

Well, he is not telling us not to buy it, he's giving us the reasons why he wouldn't do it. After all, the opening post in this thread asked for some sort of debate on the matter.

After a minute, I found something was weird with Episode1. My retail version of HL2 is 100% in Spanish, but HL2:Ep1 is not. I have no trouble at all understanding the game if it's in English, but I found it odd. What will happen to my fellow Spaniard gamers? I guess they didn't bother translating it this time. I prefer some of the voices in the Spaniard version, like the female voice of the Combine Overwatch announcements

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I agree with Xyos, F.E.A.R is not "just another" FPS. It has that extra spooky ambience, very interesting AI and some of the best particle effects. It is very badly optimized though, and the middle of the game is repetitive.

Only big companies can buy software at those prices. If those companies are going to make money by using the software, it needs to be original. Architects, for example, need to show the serial number of their Autocad software when they make a project.

Its the same length as FEAR

The ending reminded me of F.E.A.R.

I expected much more from the G-man in Ep1 though...

One thing is certain: The alternative of getting an illegal copy of a game is not always getting a legal copy. Most of the time it would be getting no game at all.
I'm sure there are a lot of games very few people would play if it wasn't with illegal versions. There's a debate between what's worth playing and worth buying.

I never bought the supergold pack. Just a retail HL2 with CS:S, first day of release.
Anyway, don't play it. We'll build you a statue: "To the man who stood against the tyranny of episodic content"
As everyone who has played it will agree, your loss.
Unless you get all your games illegally, I can safely say you have wasted your gaming money on other games before. Why not now?

Edit: Of course, if it was cheaper, so much the better. Blue-Shift cost something similar back in 2001 and it was about as long as Episode 1.

-It cost me exactly a third of what HL2 did.
-I took a third of the time to beat it.
-The quality was superior to HL2, and practically any other (more expensive) games out there.
-Episode2 looks interesting.

Just rename the thread to "Big shoutbox!" and it will be more accurate.

I would answer but I don't know how it works. I read a couple of tutorials on the subject but never managed to get it right.

What I understand from those steps, is that the mask for a bumpmapped texture goes inside the same tga file, but you need to save it as a separate file if there is no bumpmap.

Normal texture + (normal+reflection mask)
or
Normal texture + reflection mask

I don't know how to "save" things into the alpha channel. That might be where you are getting lost too

You wouldn't be buying the game "through the internet" in such abstract terms. You would be buying it through Steam, which pretty much guarantees you'll get the product safely.