Forum posts

... also i haven't had any good sleep all week. that may have been something to do with it, and I only got sick just that one time. So i dunno, its rather freak. I eat well enough though, but i don't care for salads.

yeah i really need them. they also help me focus and think clearer. which is dreadfully necessary.

How are you guys with character design? i might want to post some sketches later.

the industry is looking awfully fun right now. even though i think it will be the same stuff except i get get to do just theT[b]e[u]Xt[/b]U[/u]rI[b]n[u]G[/b][/u] and get paid well.

i got sick because i lacked nutrition. i ran out of vitamins for a week.

a bit of weight off your shoulders

no, not really. in fact, i made it worse for me. I simply gave time to my team mates, they deserve it.

hmm... this project is for my advisor's approval... who is a part of the school... which school comes first...

i think i know what you're saying... ^__^

EDIT:
HL is specifically blocked at my school! Like someone has done this before!

I do recall that asshole in the equipment room playing HLDM a long while back. He's no longer around but he probably got it banned.

This might actually help, because as long as I can show that I did it (not necessarily completing it wink wink) I may buy some time and still have it done and approved.

Also, summer break may provide a few additional weeks.

Lets see what happens

EDIT AGAIN:
Just had a good talk with my adviser. I told him everything that has been going on as far as production goes on the project. He said that my part alone in the project can be my capstone, not the project itself. Since I'm the art guy, that works. So instead of a demo, he wants the pre-vis and art as well as story. Thats a load off.

Big change of plans however. The last day of my summer break (which is 4 weeks of absofuckinglutely nothing else important to do) is Sunday July 13th.

Bumping it back may have the best results. It may allow me to properly finish my all my stuff, make a good length demo thats pretty, and still meet the requirements of the capstone parameters.

I really wish he would have told me that working on a project could count. Hearing "Capstone Project" inferred an actual project. Wasn't so much my fault as it was his never explaining what a capstone can be. Most capstones are self set anyway so its hard for them to say what can be what.

So I pulled 6D from its capstone project status and moved myself to the capstone experience status. Which buys us an additional 4 weeks and moves my adviser's attention away from the project and onto just me. Which is fine cuz it pressures Grim and Daubs as well.

Will keep you posted.

its been one hell of a day...

demo launches in 22 days from now.

and HLG, don't bother me or my team ever again about this project for.... like.. 22 days or something...

well... too bad. i'm guesting for the class i'm in right now, and in 30 minutse or so, i'm walking home to work on it.

hehe, student guest speaking in class to other stoodentz... pwnage! i'm honored.

EDIT: going home anyway. i got sick. X____X

audition

That means you have to match the rest of the mapping. Although Daubster pepped me up a little. I may skip my tonight class to go home and work on it.

just stressing out. after this i may want to audition some mappers to speed things up.

you lal'd. (laughed a lot)

---

22 days until demo? it looks impossible, even for me.

It might not look as pretty as I may want it, but for fuck's sake I will try to deliver something. I also have finals for homework.

If I get a working demo by the 13th of june, I could turn that in to class and spend Summer Break making it nice for public release if you guys really want me to. That may benefit with more maps, gameplay, and graphics. Or you could settle for a more dirty version, but at least the project will get off the ground.

inside Gman's briefcase


Which consists of:

1 sidearm
3 no.2 wooden pencils
1 card size pocket likely carrying something of that sort
1 document that I seem to see charts in that manner of some kind of wave, T, and a circle, as well some kind of math notation on the top part of the document.

Of course, I can only zoom in so far... but there ya have it.

He's good at teh maths. He does his homework and turns it in like the rest of us. No need for speech.

Gordon's not dumb. Maybe you just suck at playing as him?

Unless you want low quality sounds, make sure you change the output. If there are few sounds, go with a higher quality, otherwise don't.

its a start

it looks like basic telekinesis and toggle in the demo, plus whatever I can make with mapping and using those abilities. which is a lot.

the stuff thats not going to be there, i guess, is the fancy polish.

This guy.

doesn't it say on the old HDD what its specs are or something, such as speeds and type. I would look into that and try get something similar to it, consider power supply and all that.

of course, newer and larger.

Had a few ideas how the view models are going to interact with the player's abilities, but nothing is certain as far as that goes.

Also, the player is not allowed any weapons. That was decided a while ago.

Not sure what features will be missing, or which ones are going in at this point. Haven't heard from Daubster about it yet.

Cafeteria is the best shot. the rest of the mapping needs to look to that level of detail, unless you're doing that already.

i'm preseting 6D right now...

EDIT:

barely approved... i thought it wasn't going to fly at all.

Needs to be organized much better, presented better, and all that. going to have to bust some ass on this one... :/

EDIT AGAIN:

Ok i cleared the soil from my trousers.

Within the next few weeks. I have to crunch down on all of my part, Daubster has to get somekind of update to the code and I'm very proud to announce that Grimmeh is in on the project composing music tracks. (my stuff is good but its not Grimmeh-good.)

Besides from mapping and such, my design document is going to get finished and I'll pass it to the team.

Now is SO not the time to be lazy. If this project doesn't hit a solid-as-hell demo in 5 fuckin weeks, the project won't fail, i fail. This project is academicly recognized as a capstone project under my name as the leader of the project.

I will rips you're balls off, you can have them back when we're done because;

1: I'm pissed off.
2:
3: Profit.

EDIT: i meant grim and not doodle. i got mixed up, it was a long night... oi.

Woah...

am i the only person that uses the window quick launch feature?

What i want to do is print stickers of the program icons and stick them on my F-keys for even better quick launches.

WC you're suggestion worked.

but it'll still be tough to get it replaced right. especially with the shape of the head, the jaws don't match up at all and the body doesn't like to fit on the skeleton right.

i'll try as hard as i can to get this working, if not, i think its lights out for the navenger and its on to plan B.

but i wonder if using a seperate mesh for the head will get it to work. like the scientists are any how.

this isn't fun anymore

yes.

that was the result.

1000th post!

wewt

I did try to rig it to the original animations. Body swapping was the only way. I've done it before, but this time it just did not work.

I really need help with this. I can provide the models in 3ds format (which loads into milkshape just fine) if someone wants to pitch in and rig/animate it.

preferably someone who knows what they are doing

This is as close as I'll get.Technically, this should have worked, but didn't. The first thing he said to me when this loaded was;

"A failure of this magnitude is highly improbable."

...yes... yes it is. At least its textured nicely, but doesn't look like its supposed to. I'm asking for help on this one

yeah... no...

I think i figured out the max problems though.

HL was made with the built-in classic biped structure, which are NOT the same as the new custom set bones I use. I haven't tested it, only pseudo testing is using milkshape and swapping meshes.. I noticed the difference when picking through the SDK. Barney, headcrabs, scientists, all land characters were built on the biped. The controller, apache, Ickthyosaur, leeches, were all built on custom bones. Thats why only some of my models are working and some are not.

Problem. Solved.

IF there are still problems, it is possible to swap meshes using the tools in milkshape, which works thoroughly.

I guess whatever works is good. max is good for HL1 stuff because HL1 was made with max 4. you can open the original sdk source files and learn from them. HL2 was made with XSI. Why is beyond me. I think they just wanted to promote it :/

Milkshape is considerably cheaper. But GMax is free all the way, and the modeling tools are identical so my tutorials apply. At least the basic stuff does anyway.

I have coded my new gun, but I don't know how to code in two muzzleflashes to coorespond with two attatchments on the gun. Help plox?

No need for coad!

make two attachments, one for each gun in the correct spot.

the attachment QC command is like this:

$attachment <ID#> <bone> <X> <Y> <Z>

$attachment 1 "Bip01" -10 0 30 (Example)
$attachment 2 "Bip02" 10 0 -30 (Example)

make two and place them where you want the flash, like the muzzle of the gun.

then use these commands. It'll flash a sprite at the attachments.

{ event 5001 <frame#> "spritename" } (shows sprite)

{ event 5001 2 "flare1.spr" } (example)

{ event 5011 <frame#> }(shows guntype sprite)

{ event 5001 2 } (example)

the attachment 0 sprite can be anything specified, but ID 1, 2, and 3 are all preset. 1 is the mp5, 2 is the 9mm/357/shotgun and 3 is the hornet gun for some reason. for the ID 0 sprite, just choose the same sprite the 9mm uses.

just so you know;
5001 = ID 0
5011 = ID 1
5021 = ID 2
5031 = ID 3

if its still too much trouble, pass it to me.

anything is free if you know where to look

... i didn't say it...

from my understanding of them, HL doesn't always do a check for visible or not visible faces. intead, it bases the drawing of faces on the player's view and the node area he is within. you can make these smaller to run more checking more often as a player runs through a map. the only down side is compile time, and the performance of the map is helped by a lot with a higher resolution of checking zones. Another down side is that some (for me mostly) if you use a large model or other kind of entity, it can disappear behind the slightest of obstructions. But it does save on r_speeds and its in game performance on your comp is hardly noticeable.

I have mine set to 128.

ya know, 1.1 minutes ago i learned something really cool that will speed up the tediousness. I need to update the unwrapping tutorial.

EDIT:

Project is to be proposed in exactly 1 week...

I need some kind of demonstration for class, as well as a supporting wealth of concepts for places and people, things and such, and some kind of animatic for a master trailer.

goody-goody-gumdrops.

i'll post of the products here tho. it'll be fun to show the concept to finished all in one run.

well valve better not suck to the cliche son-father crap. it better be good when they finish it off.

snow is easy.

i can send you my snow particle setup if you want it?

actually, red blood wouldn't be so bad.

If its true BnW, you'll have to modify explosions, muzzleflashes, and so on. a bit tedious until you really want to do it, which would concrete the them.

you can't spam screenshots because screenshots market is in an all time low right now, down 0.44

No one said that the Gman concept was original.

lol, change the hud to black and white too. its still orange

whoa that looks cool! melikes!

Precise mode almost halves the ammount and keeps the clean collisions. ZHLT upgraded the code quite a bit to do that. Now I compile only in Precise, which allows me to add larger and more complex areas. Believe it or not, my Pylons map was huge, I had maxed the nodes out and switched to precise to see what would happen, it cut it down to about ~45%! overall the map was finished at ~75% and i could have added more if i wanted to.

Use precise mode. its good.

Also, anything generally flat that has fine detial (like a ceiling or something) place clip brush over it to flatten it out so it counts as 1 instead of 32 or whatever. Any area the play can not access, fill it in with the clip brush so the number is drastically lowered. Also a good idea for multiplayer maps to keep control of where the player can go. For fine details like lights and cords, use func_illusionary to save on even more, not by much but it adds up.

Clipnodes max out fast sometimes, so reduce them when necessary. no one is going to miss being able to stand on a tiny little edge on the wall, or the window sill. get it?

Work smarter, not harder.

wow glad you aren't seeing my hallways. they look just as bad for the moment ;/

either way, it is important to master the gameplay first before the detailing. But after that, flesh the maps out, otherwise it looks like Black Mesa is well underfunded. Also, scale everything to the player's size. Use the info_player_start as a guide, and most doors are 64 units wide and 96 units tall.

Run through HL for a short while and get an understanding of the level of detail, also jot down shapes and structures that are signature to Black Mesa and the way its built. Study it intensely if you have to and mimic it in your own and your team's mapping.

hmm... should I pitch in or not? damn 6D project.

who's smart-ass idea was it to dye him pink? he was getting awfully big, i don't think you'd want to piss him off.

No, i've been to Kraken's place before, he really does have a jaguar. so why did you shop an image? Did soemthing happen to him?

New Tutorials on www.maprookie.com

Photoshopping textures
A QC reference guide
and a short tutorial on some more UVW tricks.

Read them over, and I know the site got a makeover and stuff isn't quite lined up right. Still working on it.

yeah. gmax has these same stuff im sure. just nothing mega advanced.

EDIT: interesting thought my professor told me, those who do any tutorial on the internet often stop using it at the end of that tutorial. most of the time, people don't apply the material creatively after that. I told him I kinda experienced that with my tutorials. a few people picked up on it, but it takes a lot of practice to become comfortable with the tools. I'm going to once-over my tutorials so far to make sure they are clear, modify the unwrapping to include a WAY FUCKIN EASIER method of unwrapping. since finding this out, my modelling work has been lit on fire.

I'm going to do that on saturday, as for tonight.



i think i'll do the riggin tutorial next.

STAY TUUUNED!

you're not the only one, i use wonHL1 1.1.1.0

you should be fine.

3ds max 7 with the plugins and such. join the TWHL modelling bunch and try a few of the tutorials

Tutorials Link

there's also a thread for questions and comments here in the forums.

Thread

WUT DOUBLEPOST?

anyway, if you would just like to model, i would gladly paint it for ya. texturing doesn't phase me anymore and I would gladly to it as practice.

that goes for anyone.

good luck to ya, if you think there is something that needs to be covered as far as that goes, i'll modify the tutorial or write a new one about it.