Forum posts

Posted 7 years ago2017-03-31 12:50:33 UTC
in Can I recreate an old game in the Source Post #334172
Source is one of the the worst options you can go with since big open worlds are a big nono, it can be cheated to a certain degree (as Archie suggested with fog for example), but if you look at all the HL2 open maps they have a clear entry and exit point, usually a zigzag pattern path so that you would not see the end of the level before the transition happens.

It may be possible to do it in a grid like structure with loading the required map if a player moves one grid up/down etc... I've been toying around with this idea for a long time, but never got around to testing it. However even if it works there's still the problem of the view distance and ability to see the end of each level. Fog can only go so far.

I don't think Source supports or could even support preloading levels, since maps are BSP trees its pretty complex to manipulate them w/o causing issues for the renderer.

I wouldn't recommend going with Source or any other Quake type engine for this reason.
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 7 years ago2017-03-29 20:13:43 UTC
in Now Gaming: ... Post #334148
I think when they moved from UE3 to Frostbite this is the consequence we were left with :D
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 7 years ago2017-03-29 11:01:02 UTC
in Now Gaming: ... Post #334140
Ok so got about 10 hours of ME:Andromeda gameplay accumulated already.
So far i can't believe how no one in Bioware could have not noticed that the face animations are that horrible, like seriously guys has no one playtested the game before release?
The mechanics are more complex compared to previous games, but its probably for the best since i am not a person that likes tinkering around so much compared to what this game is targeted towards.
Nevertheless I am really enjoying it, the only 2 things that could be fixed are the eyes, the movement and the rendering feel unnatural and the skin in some areas looks pale and in some my character looks sunburned :D
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 7 years ago2017-03-23 19:36:24 UTC
in Post your screenshots! WIP thread Post #334113
Never owned an AMD/ATI card so can't comment there. I have one at work though so i might test and see what i get compared to Nvidia.
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 7 years ago2017-03-23 14:56:19 UTC
in Post your screenshots! WIP thread Post #334108
I don't know about you, but if i uncap the framerate i get ~1,5-2k fps running trempler's or bruce's huge experimental maps. Where are these performance issues you speak of? :D
Everything runs fine for me on w10. Granted not everyone has a top of the line i7 or a gtx1080, but i guarantee any 10 year old system can push a decent 400fps and if you are running that maybe its time for an upgrade? I get that there are some outdated methods used in the rendering pipeline, but it still works fine on most stuff. Unless its remade for convenience sake, but then we are back into the whole modifying thing...
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 7 years ago2017-03-23 13:48:53 UTC
in Now Gaming: ... Post #334106
One more hour and i get off work to play Mass Effect.
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 7 years ago2017-03-22 20:21:41 UTC
in Post your screenshots! WIP thread Post #334092
We are not against GS we are referring to the clone engines, they add very little benefit but segregate the already shrinking community.
As a mapper i can't justify the use any of these "3rd" party engines because they are not as widely adopted as the version currently on Steam. The look and feel of the engine is there, was there and will be there in the form of the original engine.
GS was not meant for elaborate entity setups or huge open worlds, why do you need to change that ?

Ive looked at Xash or was it SOHL or whichever with all these graphical improvements and a map on them looked horribly lacking polish (props, lighting etc...). The thing with GS is that you can get away with using just CSG for your map keeping the look and feel authentic. That's why many never moved to Source because the level of detail needed to make a decent level is way higher.

The only thing that keeps this engine from going under is nostalgia. Valve pulled the other reason when they released csgo.
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 7 years ago2017-03-22 06:46:33 UTC
in Post your screenshots! WIP thread Post #334080
I say that Valve policy about independant developers is not very clear or helpful
Factoring in everything, today it sounds like this: Do what you want as long as you don't make money off it.
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 7 years ago2017-03-21 21:08:18 UTC
in Post your screenshots! WIP thread Post #334075
HL code by far is not Quake code, yes its based on quake and quake2 a little, but is leaps and bounds ahead of what quake was at the time, with Valves additions to the code. Models with bones to name at least one thing.

If the code is not 1:1 what they supposedly stole it doesn't count as stealing. Unless there are patents involved, which serve to protect the idea and the realization technique behind it in this case code which as far as i am aware is not patented. And there are also licenses. Anyway code theft is kind of hard to investigate, because you can always claim to have stumbled upon a solution which just happens to be identically coded as Valves.

Piracy and reverse engineering are not the same, they go hand in hand because RE can be used to crack DRM games and such and that's why media makes it look like its a bad thing. Granted 80% of all licenses have a "No reverse engineering" clause which i believe also exists in Valves license.

Back when Valve were making the engine the quake engine was not free or open source and they bought (licensed) it from Id Software (makers of quake). And even to this day all the Id Software engines are free for non commercial use, meaning you can't make any money off selling a game with the engines code in it. That's why i believe Valve does not care about all the reverse engineering that's going on with the GS engine. All this interest in it just makes Valve more money in the long run.

Valve is a very closed company and its no surprise they don't reply to his or anyone else's e-mails for that matter. The fact that he did get a reply is sort of a miracle :)

In the end you are here because you like working with this engine, i don't see you modding for Quake or any other open source even totally free engines so who's the real winner here ? (psst it's Valve :) )
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 7 years ago2017-03-19 19:57:56 UTC
in Post your screenshots! WIP thread Post #334054
Once a year someone talks about maybe pulling it together to open source it but once again there are not resources to do the actual work need to package it up. The Sven Co-op team was luck in that there was a package and someone to make it available to them, that does not exist today.
Someone made it available, who's that someone? 5 min question for Valve to ask internally. If Valve's intentions are to open source it and only sven has the code then get the code from sven... (Has no one thought about this?)

While the ability to execute commands on the client side is an ethical concern and should not be done. The command is there and therefore is a feature which can be used for things like redirecting players around or worse. Ive though many times to write a server reverse proxy for my needs.

I seem not to be able to stop derailing this WIP thread :(
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 7 years ago2017-03-17 16:27:03 UTC
in Post your screenshots! WIP thread Post #334013
Yes, but at some point the new updated engine would go too far out of scope to be even called GoldSource anymore.

I am a purist in this sense that i believe all the bugs, limitations and everything else is what GoldSource truly is and should not be messed with, if this is why Valve is not releasing the code then i applaud them. Even if they would what would happen? Suddenly all the bugs would be fixed? I doubt it, i can bet you Valve would be too lazy to release the updated version on Steam anyway. Last i checked unless you are a die hard Russian non-steam HL player whatever the majority of players are on Steam. Look at Id Software, they release all their old engine's, sure there's a ton of mods, but if someone plays them its probably the original game. Its the same here.

Even if i sound like a crusader for 1 engine i have nothing against all of you who do make these engines, it proves that you know what you are doing, but i believe your skills and talents are better put to use somewhere else.
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 7 years ago2017-03-17 14:05:16 UTC
in Post your screenshots! WIP thread Post #334004
Im also kind of against all of these hacked up clone engines. But it is what it is.
We are just stuck in the past apparently :)
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 7 years ago2017-03-16 12:26:46 UTC
in Post your screenshots! WIP thread Post #333984
I wouldn't recommend even -high, tested Tremplers Stalkfire on my i7-7700k, with compilers set at high i got only a 10 sec gain from compiling on -low (which is the default for vhlt) the PC was unusable during that time.
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 7 years ago2017-03-16 10:40:31 UTC
in Post your screenshots! WIP thread Post #333980
I think the problem with GS compiling is that the compilers themselves are old and unoptimized. Basically built on top of quake compilers used in the first versions of GS.

Someone could really do a rewrite for them instead of making "yet another goldsource renderer" :)

And if someone could point me in the right direction that explains the whole process in detail i would appreciate it a lot.
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 7 years ago2017-02-19 13:21:09 UTC
in HLDM Server! Post #333622
Is dm_quakearena on there? :))
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 7 years ago2017-01-20 09:38:16 UTC
in Removing HL Steam option menu tabs? Post #333121
Yes you would need to modify code, I believe you can do this with the HL SDK, but don't quote me on that.

What is the problem with just hiding them ?
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 7 years ago2016-12-13 13:55:32 UTC
in TWHL4 Design Crowdsourcing Post #332688
I was waiting for someone to suggest "Comic <insert any name here>" font :D
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 7 years ago2016-12-13 12:27:23 UTC
in TWHL4 Design Crowdsourcing Post #332684
Its called responsive design, yes it can be done.
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 7 years ago2016-12-13 12:03:57 UTC
in TWHL4 Design Crowdsourcing Post #332682
I hope in some way we can retain the "old style" design at least in a few areas.
I'm getting tired of seeing huge buttons slapped in my face just because it makes it easier to tap on when using a phone. Not long ago i saw a new design that uses small fonts and everything isn't blown up and it looks amazing.
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 7 years ago2016-11-25 14:50:04 UTC
in Half-Life Timer By Zerotech Post #332453
Only if you have V-sync on and even then its questionable. Yes older games are more fps locked, Quake2 for example if you adjust your fps you will be able to traverse terrain that would otherwise be impossible to move through, i know this because i had binds for 3-4 different fps values to do so. Gsrc is in that gray area where the fps matters, but not as much. Push yourself over 400 you will see what i mean.

Then developers started separating these values apart, making the fps and tickrate independent of each other, to prevent "fps cheating". Games should be able to run at any fps you want and not influence the game logic in any way, because framerates vary wildly where as tickrates are constant producing the same result regardless of whether or not the display can show it right now or the next frame. This has become easier when games started using threads.

As for the Hertz, its actually pretty simple, American power grid runs on 60hz any old CRT TV screen will flicker at slighter difference from the grid frequency (25,50,100 etc...), the EU runs on 50hz so multiples of 30 Hz would flicker and cause a bad experience for users. Hence why there are weird rates such as 29,97fps to reduce the chance of flickering and provide a perceived 30fps. That's why different systems were developed. This is mostly historical stuff why this happened.

And to correct you there are 1000 ms in 1 second.
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 7 years ago2016-11-25 08:19:37 UTC
in Half-Life Timer By Zerotech Post #332442
Iv'e never seen a gsrc server run at 64 or any multiple of 2 tickrate.
Eveyrone sets sys_ticrate to something like 10000.
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 8 years ago2016-11-22 12:48:27 UTC
in Half-Life Timer By Zerotech Post #332393
Umm, did you test it on a dedicated server ?

I do believe that if you host a map on a listen server the framerate is capped to the client and can fluctuate thus producing varying results.
I advise you to get a Linux server and test it on that running at 1000fps (Windows has problems getting over 500fps) and see how everything runs.
Also try varying sys_ticrate and rates to see if that has any effect.

Amxx plugins do the timing by creating an entity and making it "think" (tick) every second (or any interval you want) then catching the event when it ticks and producing a callback to a function that increments the timer. Basically doing it the same way you are in your map through the entity system, though with way less entities. You can recompile the plugins to start the timer with your zone triggers rather than the button, i believe its 2 lines of code that register the fired event, look for timer_start and timer_stop entity names in the code.
I would love someone's with more low level engine experience input on this topic to clarify what would produce the difference.

I'm also not sure how much gsrc is decoupled from fps and tickrate, in source the tickrate measures events accurately assuming there is more fps on the server to give it enough "resolution" to produce a tick at the exact time every time and not miss by 10ms or so. However this inaccuracy is nowhere near as large as what you are getting, thus it suggests that you might have some errors somewhere.
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 8 years ago2016-11-21 17:35:00 UTC
in That time of the year again... Post #332383
It would be pretty problematic for me to get away with 25th. Id love to, but family is family.

Anything up until xmas is fine though :)
9th,10th? 16th,17th?
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 8 years ago2016-11-21 09:04:17 UTC
in That time of the year again... Post #332375
Well as you can tell from the title (You probably can't), i thought why not have another TWHL X-Mas tournament :) yeah I've been promising one for ages now so it's about time to put my ass in gear and do something about it.

On with the details then, i'm proposing a classic map HLDM tourney, everyone nominates one of their own maps, the first one they uploaded to the vault or any map that has been uploaded before a certain date, lets say 2009 ?

Tournament is as usual ticket based, so to have a chance to win you just have to drop in at least once and make a few kills. The more kills(tickets) you get the more chances you have to win.

So I need you guys to suggest a date we can do this on, keep in mind it would be great if we could have everyone from all timezones get a chance to play, mainly EU/US.
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
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Posted 8 years ago2016-03-24 18:42:26 UTC
in Cs sdk? Post #329540
If you like a challenge grab IDA pro and get cracking :)
Might take you a while, but you can reverse engineer all the code.
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 8 years ago2016-03-18 09:44:09 UTC
in Can Wally... Post #329438
Its about time for a new version of wally or a PS plugin to come out (anyone?), the original is hella unstable.
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 8 years ago2016-02-26 12:58:15 UTC
in Lighting prop models? Post #329025
The analogy "If it ain't broke - don't fix it" applies here.
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 8 years ago2016-02-21 09:17:16 UTC
in is this as bad as the poster says Post #328957
Nothing surprising, valve implemented the tools to make this possible a long time ago. As a post on that thread explains.

Since a server is essentially a master for clients, sending files is quite easy. If you can reverse engineer software you can find how to craft a custom file that the client executes and infects its host system.

In any case a client-server system that can send files (models, maps etc...) is a security vulnerability.
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 8 years ago2016-02-15 12:57:01 UTC
in General MOD MISUNDERSTANDING Post #328893
VAC has been broken for years, well at least on GS they don't really update it anymore as opposed to CS:GO's engine. Ive read some material quite a while ago on how to avoid getting detected by VAC, some really in depth stuff was there, but since im not that good of a programmer I didn't understand much. Don't know where to find that doc/site now though :(
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 8 years ago2015-12-26 10:00:15 UTC
in Building (or buying) a new desktop Post #327920
Hated Windows 8 until 10 came along, probably the worst product from M$ by far. I don't know if it is sloppy design or what, but its like a lottery 50/50 that it will work fine. Have a top of the line Thinkpad and have weird issues with 10 on it, even though it should be fully supported. Switched back to 8.1 and been happy ever since. I don't understand why people hated 8 (8.1 and 8 are the same to me if you can't tell by now) in the first place when classicshell fixes the only issue for free, most things are still nicely laid out compared to 10.

Honestly i think Windows is done, even the bloody Mac is better at this point. But if it has to be this way then i think its for the better, people are thinking of switching to open source OS'es. At least that's where im going when 7 and 8 are gonna be unsupported.
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 8 years ago2015-12-09 15:28:02 UTC
in TWHL4 Suggestions Post #327721
Is TWHL 4 running on an off the shelf framework or your own ?
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 8 years ago2015-12-09 10:49:34 UTC
in TWHL4 Suggestions Post #327709
Not sure if this is a great idea, but how about being able to link your TWHL account with Steam ?

What i want to say is "Login with steam".
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 9 years ago2015-11-04 22:05:36 UTC
in TWHL Tourney Post #327408
Unfortunately i can't make it on the 7th, some unexpected stuff has come up. Is a week later ok or should we do it later due to Fallout 4 ?
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 9 years ago2015-10-15 07:06:11 UTC
in TWHL Tourney Post #327277
How does November 7th sound like ?

I vote CSGO.

Lets leave HLDM for xmas :)
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 9 years ago2015-10-04 09:02:44 UTC
in TWHL Tourney Post #327193
Id go tf2. Want to try rocket league, but sadly i dont own it. And ita not very source/gsrc :)
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 9 years ago2015-09-30 12:00:28 UTC
in TWHL Tourney Post #327113
I thought i would be able to organize something during the summer, but much work and yeah you know the rest.
Anyway its been quite a while and i think its time to do another CSGO tourney?
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 9 years ago2015-08-30 20:20:01 UTC
in Windows 10 Desktops Post #326885
I was excited about this, aaaaaand its gone.
I don't think classic shell can remedy the horrible new design, i seriously thought it might look better, some parts like the horrific icons can be changed, but the rest still looks dull. Its dark too, im a big fan of dark designs, but this does not work. I keep changing it, but it still just doesn't suit my eye.
I know im complaining about the wrong thing, but 100% of the time its there and im not going to force myself to use it.
Probably going to stick around 8.1 until i get my Linux right and never look back.
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 9 years ago2015-06-11 08:41:00 UTC
in Acceptable modern r_speeds? Post #325885
Id say staying around 4k is a good idea.
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 9 years ago2015-06-04 07:56:58 UTC
in WallHeath Charger: time between use Post #325791
Im sure you can code that functionality in.

As for conventional methods, there isn't a way to hide them without putting a big ass wall next to it. Maybe a button that comes out and the player would push on it instead of the healthcharger ?
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 9 years ago2015-05-20 08:49:12 UTC
in Your Apex Map — Your Mapex Post #325600
Spaceships, more specifically the interiors.
Something among the lines of Dead Space 2, Alien: Isolation etc...

This was always my aim when i was at least mapping back in the day, but could never get the look right so it the result would always look like crap to me and i would trash the map. Well maybe someday.
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 9 years ago2015-05-06 07:50:09 UTC
in One Super-Sized Source map... Post #325474
This idea was somewhat accomplished in a GMOD mod (The tower ?) where different servers had different maps, so an area change would mean a connection to a different server, but the state of the player was preserved. This can be done on source or gsrc with some clever user of server side scripts.
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 9 years ago2015-04-23 20:24:03 UTC
in Competition Proposition Post #325354
pre 2k !
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy
Posted 9 years ago2015-04-19 12:11:57 UTC
in Tutorial & Example Map requestor? Post #325307
I overheard this golden thingy. Yes this would be a great feature for the TWHL 4 cylinder engine when it finally comes out. If it is in some sort of development we need to start a list of stuff we want :)
rufee rufeeSledge fanboy