Forum posts

Only difference is indeed that models are more rare since not many mappers know how to make them. Other than that, the same overuse-problems exist.

Though perhaps not as much in HL as in HL2 since HL isn't very straightforward with using models for details.

Personally I don't see what's so bad in using light entities except for that they often take a bit more time to tweak and get right than texture lights. I'd say, don't limit yourself and keep in mind light entities are more versatile while texture lights are easier and faster to use.

Games are supposed to be fun, so yeah, a little humor now and then isn't a bad idea. The amount and type depends on your public and your intentions.

Why don't you give it a try, create a map that you think is good fun and ask some others for feedback? Best way to find out.

Model lighting is determined by the light intensity of the solid face below it. Black lit models sometimes happen when you're standing on an entity (func_wall for example) and below that entity there's a dark world brush, or a nullified face or a skybrush.

Now I don't know if you've used entities on the floor or anything but that might be it. If not, try looking up and down and see if that makes any difference.

They'll get overused just like prefabs are as you can see in the current HL2 maps, but it might be nice to give a place for modellers to put their stuff in to encourage it somewhat. Might be a nice way to teach people how to model as well.

Alternately, there's the links page that could do with some links to model resource sites.

It's fun indeed, and that's what it's about. Win or no win.

Give your first frame a texture name starting with +0, the second frame a name starting with +1, and so on, up to +9.

You can look up those things yourself as well by simply checking the HL animating textures for example. It isn't so hard to find out.

I'm for a good link page, yeah. I'm not for redoing a lot of existing tutorials. Hence why I'm for a good link page...

If you think you can't finish this, choose something you think you can finish. Finishing something is a great encouragement, failing at something is often less fun (though good to learn from anyway).

Idea's are often not the problem, working them out is where things often go awry. I wouldn't advise to start something you're not sure of if you can finish it.

Also, don't worry too much about the looks of it, make sure it's playable first. You may get stuck detailing area's too much while there's still a lot of other maps that have to be finished...

So, there isn't even decided about what weapons or not while the mod is already long in production? Those things should be planned out if you want to make the best of them. Adding a weapon as an afterthought is, well, just a weapon. It doesn't mean it's usefull or adds anything.
Things have to work together to do well. If this mod is being built without custom weapons in mind, then do it without custom weapons. It'll only get confusing and might mess things up for no good reason.

Too simple for a tutorial, though a tutorial or article on the concept of landmark entities (since the idea is used for level changes as well as teleporting now) might be appropriate.

An example map is probably a good idea, but about example maps, they're organized quite lousy right now. Were you planning a better system for them specifically for TWHL3, Seventh? Sorting on subject or a sort of category system for them like the tutorials section?

Funny idea, see if you can work it out some more. Doing multiple versions of maps sounds a bit like overkill, some of that could be accomplished using entities (namely global stuff and such). Only for really structural changes in the maps like the city getting ruined or day/night maps an additional map should be made.

Think about it some more and try to find a good solution to this. The idea sounds funky and it may well become a fun thing to play if you manage to pull it off. Good luck!

When hl2world has a nice and fine entity listing, and Valve's wiki seems to be building one too, I don't see the need for so much work to give TWHL it's own guide. Don't you think so? I mean, doing a little research is essential if you want to get any further so a link to those sites should suffice.

We didn't built an error page like Tommy14 either, simply because he already had the best out there and it'd be a lot of extra work to get anywhere near that quality level...

When I play games these days I often see things happening that I feel are scripted, but somehow it doesn't hinder the games pleasure a lot. I like to see how those scripted sequences are used, I like to see things I technically understand being used well. Sure, you know how things are triggered, you can imagine the entities behind them but when I play, that's not what I think of. I'm curious to see how this stuff is being used and enjoy it as well.

Of course, games have lost their magic somewhat after you played a lot of them and especially when you know how things are made, for me they're no longer so 'special' but at the other hand, things become more interesting because I understand more and more gameplay mechanics and games stimulate my creativity.

For example, I played Codename Panzers: Phase one recently. I liked it, it has great detailed environments and the units look and feel real, but the gameplay didn't live up to it at times. Something I hate is endless streams of enemies coming at you, and especially with such graphics I expected the gameplay to be more realistic as well. This makes me thing about how different parts of a game interact with each other and how they work together. You can't simply mix up stuff like where the graphics are cartoony but the story is dead-serious.

Mapping isn't my only interest, I model and do textures as well and I'm working out concepts and I'm on a programmers education. So there's lots of things I can explore and look into and maybe that's what makes games so much more interesting to me even though I can spot flaws and all much faster. About flaws, I believe it's not little flaws that count, taking into consideration that developers have limited time to do their job. The larger, more structural things like gameplay aspects or whole map parts count much more. I don't care for some misaligned textures in a backalley. I care much more if that backalley is long, boring and repetetive and needs to be travelled through 5 times before I can make progress. Design > technical.

/rant

I've found those sites while ago anyway so why not post them for you...

I suggested them to get into the Links page but that still hasn't happened...

Hallways can be a bit blocky at times and square area's aren't really a problem, some real places are awefully square. What I think makes maps feel blocky is long, monotome surfaces. A few decals to break up their repetetiveness can do good, some small objects placed on such a surface now and then can make it more interesting too.

Those lightbeams look too bright, bytheway. You'll only see such beams when there's dust or smoke in the air and then spotlights would have this the most, not really such lamps that you see in such hallways. A glow would fit better but don't overuse those, either. Light beams and glows have a high 'looking-good' factor but they're easily overused or overdone which kills their effectiveness.

Wires are a good idea here. Non-solid they shouldn't get in the way but a few of them could look really nice.

That screenshot with the red light in the background and the lightbeam coming through the wall looks best, I think. A subtle light beam, some light glowing in the back... looks good.
The underwater screenshot doesn't look that good on the other hand, most striking is the bright water versus the dark environment. Those two don't fit with each other. It looks quite square too though I can't see much in it...

Good luck mapping bytheway.

You want tutorials for Source? Check the following sites:

The Valve Developer Community - the official Valve wiki
Gamewag - a long list of tutorial links
Interlopers - tutorials, and a problems check page
Halfwit-2 - tutorials
Edit Life - tutorials
Hl2word wiki - entity guide

There's more if you search for them but this is probably enough for now...

Actually, that folder exists or otherwise would get created in most occasions. It's the map that wasn't found.

I think your map just wasn't created because of problems in the compile process, or you didn't configure your compile proces properly. Can you give us some more information (like, the complete log)?

Neither do I. Maybe one for the input/output system and a generic overview of phys_ entities or such, but those are covered elsewhere already too. Source tutorials are a bit scattered over multiple sites though so a links page wouldn't stand wrong here I think, but hl2worlds wiki has a usefull entity list and most other stuff is covered somewhere on the Valve wiki (I still don't like wiki's because they're so generic (feels poor) to navigate, but anyway, luckily there's a search option).

And Googling may seem like too much work but I don't think I would've learnt so much as I did without Googling now and then. It has an advantage in that you can occasionally stumble upon an undiscovered source of tutorials or inspiration. That's the nice aspect of Googling. It doesn't limit yourself to one site, too.

Yeah, he. But DarkMonkey also worked on it, he was one of the coders. Knew that?

I liked Darktruth. Looked awesome, but sadly the team lost motivation and had some trouble. The sourcecode of that mod is or at least was made public, I still have it on my HD lying dormant somewhere.

Named lights can flicker using custom styles, in the a-z form, but lights with the same name will have the same light style. Or so I remember from a few years ago.

They're not meant for a FPS so that's just right... These models have less poly's than the original HL models, let alone those from the HD-pack so they're no good in current FPS anyway...

Thanks for the comments people.

I'm probably going to use them for one or another RTS, dunno exactly yet, but they're made with RTS usage in mind.

School just stresses me a lot sometimes, it's probably not that bad but recently I found it hard to get to work for it, and nearing deadlines is something I don't like... but ok, I'll stop mentioning it.

Yeah, SpaG, I'm still working on the textures but that's a point, it looks rather cartoony right now.

Anyway, I promised some new shots of what I'm working on now:The APC itself is 370 poly's, with the trooper in it it's 510. Could be optimized a bit because I just quickly copied the upper part of the trooper I already did to it.
It uses a 128x128 skin but I think it's too low-res for it, it doesn't look as sharp as the trooper does. Still working on it.

Func_walling everything isn't a solution. You know about the vis process? Entities don't count for it, so when everything's a func_wall there's nothing to block the sight of the player for the engine, so everything is being rendered at all time...
Just stick to using world brushes without tying them to entities when they're just meant to be walls. Smaller detail stuff should be made func_detail (not func_wall, that was in HL but HL2 offers the much cheaper func_detail for it).

You know, one extra displacement map really doesn't impact performance so much so I think you've got some serious issues with your map... have you read this optimization guide already?

Anyway, I'm not really sure what causes your problem, but you could upload it to this site in the Problem Maps section so we could take a look.

I do a programming course, not a modelling one. I map and model for fun, I program for school (and sometimes, for fun too).

Has anyone suggestions to make this trooper look less cute and more mean?

Opening a .vmf in Hammer 3.4 doesn't work. Hammer 4.0 can export to an AutoCad format tough, as far as I know, so if there's AutoCad there you could do something to show it off. Perhaps there's a custom tool that can convert .vmf's to .rmf's, but I haven't encountered one yet...

HL1 doesn't support dismaps so whether you use Hammer 4.0 for HL or not, you're not going to get it to run...

School has wonderful opportunities too, like writing a logigram solver or a scripting language parser for a self-made language...

And, yeah, I'm planning to write some AI for this but not in the near future. School's to busy for that right now, I can do some modelling this weekend but after that it's hard work ("this is hard work, can I have shoes?") again. Meh.

It's indeed (much) more detailed as the Generals infantery models:Then again, I don't know the poly count for these units but I'm guessing it's somewhere near 150 poly's. Anyway, I found the Generals units to look too undetailed. Not a bad decision because there's no real unit maximum like in Age of Empires or Total Annihilation, but I wanted to give my model some more detail.
As for the gun, it's not a Halo gun, not really inspired by it either. It's a design of my own, a little influenced by a gun from Stalker.

I'm working on something extra for this now so there's a new shot coming soon...

It really depends on what you think is smart for AI. I've got some AI courses at school and the idea I've gotten now is that creating an AI like seen in CoD2 already takes a lot of time and really isn't as simple as it seems to some of you. I don't know if their smoke grenade useage was scripted or not, but they seem to take good cover and flanked me several times too in the more non-linear levels. While not as smart as real enemies, I think it's getting there.

But, and that's where I agree with you guys, it's not advancing quickly enough to keep up the pace with the graphics department. And that's where I think it gets to feel odd: realistic looking soldiers are expected to behave realistic, but their AI isn't as good as their looks which is somewhat disappointing.

@Strider: some levels allowed you to take on the objectives in a different order, which for me resulted in some frantic running around the area with attacks on multiple sides, where I could choose which way to go more than just two paths. Some levels also slowly unlock routes to previous area's which are then reused like in the Russian levels with the tank hunting. Only after playing it through the second time I noticed the area was strangely familiar... that's good level design I think.

Heh, thanks.

I'm not really going for a high-poly version, it's more a test to see how low I can get the polycount while still keeping the shape intact. I've created it with the use in a RTS in mind, not a FPS, so maybe I've already put it too much detail for something you see from afar most of the time.

Or are you guys thinking about a HLDM player model or such?

After a test-week at school I wanted to do something different to put my head off the hectic school-stuff for a day. Since I draw a lot of soldier concepts during courses, I decided to do a low-poly soldier model. This is the results, 250 poly's for the soldier and 50 for the gun:The skin is temporarily, done in Paint for the moment since it's just about the correct uvmapping for now, but I think it turned out well for 300 poly's.

What do you think? Got some tips or comments or such? Glad to hear them.

Voice communication reminds me of crappy high voices yelling something ununderstandable in CSS or HL2DM. So, well...

Anyway, I don't know exactly what you're up to but it's good to see something being done. I'm interested to see what you've finally made. Good luck.

Can I hear someone yelling the new CT models have arrived?

Ok, well, that's fixed so now it should be noob-friendly.

Scripting and linearity aren't bad for these games people. Scripting ensures everyone will experience the impressive elements of the game, though it removes some replayability value, the first time you see them they're often really good (if done right of course). Linearity gives the player a direction to follow, a goal more or less. Too much freedom can get pretty confusing in such games.

After playing most of the levels now I really think CoD II is a good improvement on CoD. It doesn't rely on new weapons or puzzles or such, essentially it's the same gameplay: gunning down enemies, blowing up vehicles.
But it's worked out better than the original. The graphic overhaul means there's larger terrains available and those allow for some much less linear levels (the first few levels are somewhat linear but later levels are often more free, letting you pick your objectives in the order you prefer). The Russian levels looked much less repetetive now and also later levels had a much better feeling to them.

All in all, I expected just 'more-of-the-same' but it's actually improved 'more-of-the-same' and just as intense as playing CoD for the first time, if not more. I like it so far. I haven't checked out the MP and I'm not planning to do so either unless there's a lan some day, but the SP campaign is worked out nicely. Nothing groundbreaking but well executed nevertheless.

Just checked - there's no export to .map function. And indeed, Worldcraft dude, those new HL2 elements like dismaps and all would give another .map type file than HL maps would give anyway.

Mentioned before, it was halfwar.wad I assume? That's fixed now. Or did you miss another .wad?

I don't know, I think this whole compatibility is kinda senseless anyway since the older versions are still downloadable and run easier.

It's all about the names of those textures, or rather, their prefixes. Copy the image itself and put it in a custom .wad with a different name and you can tile it just normal. Of course you would have to include that custom texture with the .zip or into the map itself...

And a lot of times custom HL2 maps look like HL maps...

Don't really love that...

While you're thinking up on a layout, incorporate these things already. They're often harder to do as an afterthought.

The nice thing about creating a rough layout version of your map first is that you can much more easily change it or go with a totally different layout - there's no precious details to delete or work that took you weeks that goes down the drain. Don't be afraid to change layouts early on. I've done so for my current HL2DM map, as the first layouts I created just didn't play well. I started one from scratch and it played much better. Right now I'm detailing it, doing the looks, but I know I won't have to delete all that detail work because I know I don't have to change the layout anymore.

which need transparant textures just as well...

Model textures are almost the same as world textures, except for some little differences.

Alpha channels, basically. If those links above didn't help, you can always decompile some existing materials to see how it's done. VTFExplorer is a good tool for such tasks.

Order isn't that important as long as it works, don't you think? At least it's better than getting stuck inside each other and it allows fast team movement.

But wait a second... this is the Source section... in that case, look for the Local Destination Landmark propertie of the trigger_teleport. This allows you to pick an entity as a reference, and teleport players to the info_teleport_desination with the same offset as they hasd to that reference entity when they teleported. That should prevent getting stuck in each other and keeping the same order for the players as well.

I know you can trigger buttons if they have a name, though I can't really remember if that resets them or just makes them trigger their own target again.
Safest solution probably is giving them all the same master, and setting that master state off once they're all pressed, and setting it on again with a 30 seconds delay. Then it doesn't matter if they reset after a second because they aren't useable then anyway.

And yeah, doors can deal damage. Play with that.

No difference with European media, if you ask me... media is just one big bunch of fakeness with a few exceptions here and there.

What exactly do you want with that door?

Doors in deathmatch tend to take out some of the speed of the game and often that's not a good idea. You'll notice a lack of doors in a lot of dm maps for a reason...