Forum posts

Reminds me of Beyond Good and Evil. In the bossfight, at some point your controls were inverted... I can't think of any way to get me more annoyed in a bossfight...

Why not test such a thing in-game before asking here?

Powers of 2 are somewhat easier to handle for computers, which is why they're used so often.

Changing the grid size is a reliably method as well. The grid size is displayed somewhere in the lower bar, so counting units shouldn't be too difficult. Be sure to have snap to grid on (it's best to leave it on since you can use the Alt key to move things without snapping them).

A func_tracktrain already has an origin propertie. Turn on helpers to move it in the 2D views, though you can manually enter coordinates as well.

Looks really good, promising. I'll definitely be picking up this mod when it comes out.

ok.open for tips on how to make this cave in look better.

First of all, by lighting it. That means, posting in-game screenshots. Also, posting a shot that shows more of the map than a dead-end wall/rock helps a lot. Things have to fit together, you know. A rock can look great but when it's totally out of place in it's environment, it means nothing.

After editing a post, you get a 'done' page or such. The 'return to post' page that appears after you've posted a post might be better to display.

Impressive wish-list. But what can you contribute yourself?

Without skills, you can't lead a mod-team. Hey, even leading a team is a skill on itself...
And we don't know what your skills are until you show something.

Any face that doesn't touch the inside area of the map gets culled by the compilers. Don't worry about them.

Your face only touches another face, no space, right? Then it doesn't need the nodraw texture.
As a thumb-rule, nodraw textures are only effective on faces that are rendered, but not seen by the player. For example, the brushes you have to put behind displacement maps to seal off the map.

Use the url of the file. Something like http://www.website.com/file.zip, for example.

If your file is under 2 MB, you can upload it to TWHL itself. The link-directly rule then doesn't apply.

Some of those left-out models have been used by mods, if not all of them.

Anyway, it's not only models that do not always make it into a game. Maps, features (code), textures, sounds... The Borealis levels from HL2 never made it into the final game, for example. Leaning was also something they tried out, but they decided it didn't add enough to the gameplay.

As for using this model as a replacement for the HEV suit, try adding a model key to the item_suit entity. Use the Advanced Editing button on another model entity to see what sort of key I mean. I haven't tried this with item entities before so it might not work, I don't know on top of my head how these entities are derived.

Physics and such will probably remain the same, while a new render pipeline can be added in.

With physics cards coming up, there might be some changes there... Perhaps a software/hardware option for physics like the rendering options for HL. We'll see.

Thanks, Rabid. How're you doing?

The indication images for the forums could use a title tag for FF users... nice for those that don't know what color indicates what.

Good program indeed. Supports syntax highlighting for a variety of languages, including html, php, C++ and such. And it has a tab system similar to FireFox. Me likes tabs.

The Dutch version of 'Der Untergang', written by Joachim Fest.

Interesting, so far.

Yeah, works. Better would be to do this though:

if(mysql_query($sql))
{
echo "News entered successfully.n";
}
else
{
echo "Query failed.";
}

This ensures that you only see the successfull text when the query has actually been executed without any trouble.

Just use bitmaps. Once inside the .wad format, it doesn't matter what format you were using anyway.

Use forms (html) and handle them with a php script that does some mysql inserting. Search for the mysql_query function to execute queries on your selected database.

I just don't like that ragdolls passes through (does not collide) with physical objects, like barrels, or, wheels.

As far as I know, there's a console command for that. It surely is possible but is it worth the extra CPU usage. Personally, I think not.

Source is barely out... how can you expect any good mods so fast?

I found that Eclipse to be quite well executed for it's time. The really good mods are yet to come.

All in all, I like the Source engine, and I like the entity set of Half-Life 2 over that of Half-Life. Luckily I've been modelling for Half-Life, so the transition to do more modelling shouldn't be too hard for me. I think the reliance on models is one of the most radical chances for the design process, maybe.

Aftermath is a HL2 add-on.

Half-Life 3 will probably indeed use a modified version of the Source engine.

Xen was a designers choice as well as a story choice. It's the homeworld to the HL aliens, and invaded by Combines just as earth is being invaded. Because it wasn't a popular part of HL, they left alien worlds out of HL2, and instead made earth somewhat alien-affected. Designers choices are made in conjunction with story choices sometimes. It's not that they had the whole story up and running beforehand. I think it's more like they have a red line that they're basing on.

Ant lions are just alien animals, probably inserted during the portal storms. So were houndeyes, bullsquids, headcrabs, barnacles, ichtosaurs, and so on.
They're definitely not Combine, even though Combine are using headcrabs as a weapon sometimes.

Neither do I think it's the same train. I think Gordon is put in some sort of stasis. Something like that.

I don't think stalkers were useless to be made. You see them several times, and in fact they do contribute to the story somehow. It's a sign that Combine are using humans as slaves, turning them into... well, something that the Combine can use.
Also, it often happens that content never makes it into the final version of a game. This was a nice way to use such content. It still served some function, showing the nature of the Combine. And it's intrigueing...

Did you know about the Borealis? The ship level they made? Never made it into the game. But it was a time where the Valve team learned for themselves what way to go with this game.

I'm really on a go, posting here, haha.

I'm off, mapping. See ya.

Project still going?

How's progress?

(Yeah, thought I could as well post some things when changing the reference to my site and all. ;))

Combine used the HL aliens as slaves, just as they're turning humans into the Combine soldiers you fight in HL2. That's why you see aliens without green belts as your allies. In Nova Prospekt, you could see an alien with belts being tortured. In Insertion Point, you saw one with belts labouring for the Combine.
The syth creatures are just another race that are enslaved by the Combine. See the Combine as a sort of Borg, assimilating every race and using their strongest points against other races.
Dropships and gunships are probably another race as well, or at least they have been part of one. Now they're all Combine(d).

It seems the G-man has put you into stasis, calling upon you whenever your services were needed again. Which is why the other guy didn't see you get on. You didn't. The G-man placed you there, just as he placed you in a train at the end of HL.

Ant lions are just another sort of animals. Headcrabs and houndeyes didn't seem to be the only one.

After all, it does make sense, though it might be unclear at first.

Actually, you don't even need to decompile a map to adjust certain entities like sprites. These are found as plain text almost at the end of the .bsp file...
(Usefull for finding secrets perhaps, by searching for item entities? ;))

I'd say you shouldn't worry about this. It hardly ever happens that people 'steal' custom maps.

I'm still alive, sure...

Plus, I'm still mapping. Doing Mudanchee for HL2DM this time.

Red text on a black background isn't very clear at first. You'll need to look closely to read it well. I'd say using a more bright color for your text would do good. The links do jump out nice but compared to the other text it's too much. They take away your attention from the text. Brighten the text, maybe darken the links a bit.

Second thing that jumps out are the Flash animations. They're nice, but I feel it's somewhat pointless to repeat them over and over. I've used an animated logo on my first site, cpcp.tk, and it tends to get annoying after a while, plus it detracts from the sites content. Consider if they really add to the sites appeal, or scare off visitors after a while.

Third thing is the menu. It's not as intuitive as most other menu's. An easy-to-navigate site should have it's links quickly accessible and best would be to have them prominently visible. Your menu allows quick navigation, but a visitor can't see what the site has to offer at a first glance. A dropdown menu can allow easy and fast navigation, but in this case it lacks the oversight that most menu's offer.

Size. Though the site is fine in 1024x768, it isn't in 800x600. You could optimize for this, using tables with sizes in percentages rather than fixed width. Something I've done wrong too on my latest site, captain-p.com. In 800x600 it's fine but there's a large blank space to the right in 1024x768 there. Not nice.

Newsposts could use a bit extra information, like who has written them and when they were posted. Especially a date is handy, since there are quite some 'dead' sites. A fresh date shows people that this site is likely to be updated again.

Picture page formatting could be more nifty than just putting them on a row. Thumbnails could be a nice idea, as they give a nice oversight and load faster. This way a visitor can quickly decide what pictures look most interesting and select these to view them. This method is used often by designers and concept artists to show off their work.

Oh, and when I'm on your contacts page, the menu dropdown is suddenly different. It then offers a link to a maps page, which doesn't exist. Needs to be fixed or corrected.

Overall, not too bad, but there are a few things that need to be fixed. Plus you can improve on the look of the site. It's a simple layout, and that doesn't have to be a bad thing, but maybe something to give it a distinct feeling would be good.
Plus, as Pepper said, get a better hosting. Ad's are annoying. Good luck with it!

No, an animated texture essentially is a series of textures, starting with a +0... texture, up to a maximum of 10 frames, thus the textures that make up the frames need to be named +0..., +1... and so on.

Now when you want this animation to show up in-game, you need to apply the +0... texture. If you apply any of the other textures of the serie, then it will not animate but only show that particular texture.

If you're that good, kevin mod, then show us. Free webspace isn't hard to get these days...

Oh, and DirectX can be pretty confusing at first. OpenGL might be simpler to start with.

IE is used by the majority of people. It's no wonder that it's more targeted by spyware and other malware creators. So the lower risk may not actually come because of a 'superior' browser.

Personally I prefer FF over IE, mainly because it's tabbing system and somewhat easier download manager. Recently I also downloaded some nice extensions, though I've heard all these features aren't so unique as I initially thought they were. Nevermind, after all it's just a sake of personal preference...

No problem. I got a link to it from Orpheus from The Snarkpit. After I used it I was convinced that the extra work was well worth it.

I also found a Firefox extension for web-designers: Web Developer 0.8. Haven't used it a lot yet but it looks like it'll come in handy in the future. Allows for quick resizing of the browser window, disabling of style sheets and images, can show hyperlinks referring path, outline tables and more. Worth a look.

Good, to get you started:

Colors are a pain to the eye, especially the bright-green on a black background. The first link on your news page led me to HL Rally's page, wich was a lot more pleasing to the eye. Try some less flashy colors.
Layout is probably even worse, with scrollbars even being nested... Try to get rid of the scrollbars especially in the side-menu. One thing to get started would be to make it more compact, as several items don't necessarily have to be there. I also noticed several menu items are mailing links. I don't know about others, personally I found it pretty annoying. At least indicate in the hyperlinks text that it's about mailing.
The site is also heavily inconsistent, with white, grey, reddish pages all trough the place giving little feeling of coherency.

About the news posts: adding a date to them could surely be nice. It helps people see if these posts are still relevant to them. It also shows how regularly the site is updated. Adding more to a newspost, like the person who posted it and such could also be nice though that's a designers choice.
Proofreading articles before posting them is also handy. There's no "Neutral Selection" though I do know a mod called "Natural Selection".

A tip about images: with the proper tools, you'll be able to make them much smaller in filesize. Pages load a little faster, a little less bandwidth is being used, more webspace left for other things... it costs a little time but that's really all there is to it. May I recommend XAT JPEG Optimizer?

There's also some broken links and some wrong references. I don't think 'new NPC pictures' was meant to take me to a HL2 review...

Site optimizing for 1280 x 1024? That's quite a rare browsing resolution. Most people either stick to 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768. And that's where your site isn't good at. You may want to reconsider your target resolution. Again, I would recommend a program: Sizer.

Wow, that's a long post. Thanks for giving me a break opportunity from my programming. Good luck with the site!

If it's a rule for TWHLmix 2 not to change skins, then you shouldn't.

However, perhaps it is allowed to add extra skins instead of replacing the current ones? I believe there's a similar key for that too, though I haven't used it extensively as multiple skins aren't used as often as submodels.
And if there isn't such a skin key, there's the submodel option I was talking about.

Either way, the leaders decide on this. Good luck.

1. Is there a way to change a model of a couple of grunts or apaches without making it so everyone else has to use those models?

1: No.

Incorrect, actually. Though it's a bit different than just replacing models, you can modify them so they have more submodels to choose from, wich a mapper can define manually with a 'body' key and a value that corresponds to a specific combination of submodels.
I thought several people here knew that already?

Anyone noticed the title of that window...

Half-Life...

Definitely looks like some sort of mod, or photoshopping.

Reminds me of Half-Life's intro. It happened when your train came near that lights went on.

However, since you can only have 3 different light-styles on a wall (Think about why: rad generates lightmaps that in fact are a sort of layer over your normal textures, so they look lit. For an animated light, one that turns on and off, you need two lightmaps. Therefor you want to limit the amount of different light-styles, as with each animated light you're rapidly increasing the amount of lightmaps you have to generate.) you should either increase the distance between the lights, or count several lights as one (naming them the same causes them to have the same style, thus it lowers your change of hitting the limit). Also breaking up the wall, floor and ceiling into more, smaller faces can help (as lights may be out of reach for them, where they wouldn't have been when the wall was one large face.

Kol, your texture-toggling idea in fact happens with lightmaps, but that has a limit somewhere. And so would texture toggling have its limits in that you can't get the light effect to reach too far on a wall, or you would have to toggle between a whole lot more textures...

That is actually an OpenGL rendered heightmap, created with a hex-editor. Not the most easy way, but serves fine for testing purposes so far...

Wich means I'm busy writing a basic terrain engine. And that'll probably keep me busy for quite some time.

Though I could add something to the mix2, as I have some snippets of code for a custom hud and an extra health and armor item lying around somewhere (including sprites and models for them), but I don't know if that's what you want. After all it has more or less been decided that the code won't be modified, right?

I have other bussinesses to attend to.

Actually, Haz! contacted me, sortof, so I thought to come by once more.

Well, it's the direction you choose, so I wish you good luck on it. I hope it does turn out better this time, the overall result I mean.

Good luck!

(Oh, and if you need harsh betatesters, just give me a call... ;))

CptP; The rules are you must adapt the theme of your map to the previous' users map, in order to create a smoother gameplay and overall theme.

I know. I just think it's better to implement it in the whole, instead of just looking at the previous and next parts only.
You see, brainstorming sessions can go a long way. Generating idea's, encouraging each other in doing so, and afterwards selecting the best ones can give better results than thinking up on things yourself while being limited by the previous and next part.
Read up on Valve's Cabal system if you want to, it surely explains this method more in-depth. It offers some valuable insight.

Everyone wants to create his little part and everyone wants it to be a surprize...

But don't you think cooperating and sharing your idea's will get you much further? Letting your fellow mappers playtest your part so you can give the public a bug-free surprize instead of some nasty 'surprizes'? Letting your fellow mappers adapt to your part, and vice versa, so to create a more consistent gameplay experience, one that flows nicely? One that is actually fun to play and encourages the player to continue?

Now I know this is basically meant to let everyone add his own little piece, but if you want a good result, you should go further than that. I didn't really enjoy TWHLmix, and I know as a mapper myself that seeing the public despising your map doesn't satisfy you... I don't want to spend my time on something that'll become crap and badly playable, instead I want to invest my time in something that is fun to create as well as it is fun to play.

Then again, you decide wich way to go...

Not being able to play has happened to a lot of people. Re-validating your files seems to solve the problem, though. And I've heard there was a new patch to solve the problem so perhaps restarting Steam only would do the job already.

As for the contest... I'd be happy with 5.000 dollar. Some extraordinary amount of money (read: over 5.000) would just be too much for a map, regardless the quality. Or at least that's what I think about it.

A skybox isn't rendered as faces or the like, it only shows the sky. The actual problem with 'skyboxing' a level (placing a large box around your level) is that is causes a lot of extra places in your level to be compiled, and in-game to be rendered too. Sometimes the effects are worse than in other situations, but the method is usually discouraged.
Therefor, I would recommend you to keep the outside as simple as possible, only letting the decks be compiled, e.g. sealing of the rest with skybrushes, so that the hull of the ship isn't being compiled. I suspect that that area of the map causes a lot of extra VIS work.

I would definitely recommend the use of entities to avoid a lot of unnecessary face-splitting. True, face splitting will happen in a lot more occasions, but some face-splittings are just easy to prevent and unnecessary. Small, detailed brushes should nearly always be made entities. Better for the VIS process too.
Sure, there's an entity limit, but you're closer to your performance limit than to your entity limit...

As for r_speeds... true, nowadays computers can handle a lot more, but that doesn't say the Half-Life engine can... it's only flexible to a certain amount. 1200-1300 is the aim of some SP mods, but 800-900 should be kept as DM maximum (and only such high numbers in non-combat zones preferrable). You may not see slowdown but keep in mind there will be played in your map, and that on itself already takes up calculation time. Then image a few player models having to be rendered... There's more than only polygons that slow down a map, so you'd better not take it too high.
Also... not everyone has such a higher-end system. Now it indeed depends on the public your aiming for, but I think it's best to keep it easily playable, even for the lower-end machines.

And... to see the actual performance, run full VIS. It would also be good to plan out the level beforehand, marking high-poly and low-poly area's, starting with little detail and watching performance, then deciding where's room for some extra detail and where isn't. Planning saves a lot of time on the long run...

You didn't read that correctly.

It's Dutch bytheway...

Heh, misschien vind je het leuk eens op m'n forum te kijken, daar zitten een stuk of 10 andere nederlandse mappers... Leaks vinden zijn we wel aardig experts in tegenwoordig...

CP forums

Coplanar face betekend dat je twee faces op dezelfde plane hebt liggen, kortom, ze liggen op hetzelfde vlak. Dat soort brushes kun je het beste opnieuw maken ja, Fix problems doet dat vaak niet erg goed.

Btw... voor wat voor mod map je eigenlijk? Ik had je hier nog niet eerder gezien...

What has been said about the info_player_start is correct, however, when you start in multiplayer, you'll need info_player_deathmatches (to wich the same rules apply), otherwise you'll start at the very center of the map's grid (0,0,0)...

Have you checked if that .bsp file is indeed created? Perhaps you had some errors during the compile process, so the .bsp isn't created wich is why it can't find that file.

Kortom, kijk eens of jij de file kunt vinden...

Aside from the quite basic texturing, it's in some spots also a bit careless texturing. Some of them don't fit to the surface they're on. This doesn't make them work well with the architecture. That's not just because you're using HL textures, it's also how you use them.
The architecture itself also needs some tweaking, the details are often oversized or not really finetuned. I'm not really sure on how to put it, but I guess that's what it is.
The lighting is in some places nice but can use a great deal of tweaking on other spots. This in conjunction with the architecture. You may want to make some parts darker, as the overall feeling I got was too bright for those area's. Of course, it's also based on the function of area's...
I must say though that most area's seem interesting enough concidering details. They just don't look so well always, but the amount of detail is fine so far, I think.

So overall not really bad, but there's room for improvement. Good luck!