Forum posts

There's a minigun on that last level, you can pick that up and wait by where the clones come out. There are two exits, and they'll always take the one opposite from you. So if you face away from their door you've got one spot for them to come out of, makes it a lot easier.

Kavinsky - Outrun
Link is to the wiki page for the whole album, as that is what I'm listening to.
I'm currently playing Drive, which is the song that got me interested in Kavinsky, and which I first heard here, on Birgirpall's Drive video.

I'll bear that in mind then when I'm mapping.
And I had run into the problem from the other thread before, I had been trying to make an artificial habitat with a holographic sky, as in itlooks like sky from below, but like some kind of transparent energy field from above. I kept running into the problem of the viewing platforms above being visible. If only that thread had been around then.

I was under the impression that texturing a brush with both sky and normal textures caused errors. Is that just with older compile tools?

I've been wondering for a while, if you bevel one side of a brush, and normally texture the other side, does that create a one-way brush?
As in you can walk through it one way, but it blocks you if you walk the other way.

I would test myself, but I am currently on a library computer so I can't for now.

I was feeling really proud of my texture. Thanks for making me look bad, geez.

All are excellent suggestions Rimrook. I had been trying to get it more lifelike by messing with the lighting, it had never occurred to me to think of all those extra details. And that also answers a question I've always had, being 'Why are all the fires in Hald-Life so lifeless?'. None of them had any of those little details.

And I used Paint.NET for most of the work Tetsu0, but I then transferred the file to my tablet which has Photoshop Touch so I could do the glowing embers, as the stylus makes it a bit easier to do that kind of thing. You might also notice there are faint white streaks here and there one it. I had attempted to make it look like some of the bits of log had turned to ash, but I wasn't able to do it well enough. I then found out that PS Touch has a quite limited amount of undo's available.

As for what it is, I had an idea for a fancy house made from a converted lighthouse, so I decided I would build it. It would also be an excuse to force myself to start practicing texture making.
Plus, even though it's not really my house I thought it might make a nice addition to the Map Your House Coop project if CT is still interested. I haven't posted it in the thread, or any pictures of the house itself in this thread yet because it's still rather WIP.

That shouldn't trigger the coplanar surfaces error, although it is an invalid brush anyway because it has a concave section.

I liked the endings to Halos 1 & 3, it was quite fun to just drive through a massive obstacle course in a large car at top speed. It was quite fun to play on coop with friends to and try to race each other.
As for actual boss fights, I'm not too sure which is my favourite. Probably Bowser from Super Mario 64.

It's not a race, I'm just trying to subtly say how good it is to release demos Archie and Urby.
To be honest though, HL mods aren't really suited to demos unless there is significant coding, so I don't mind The Core not having one, as the plentiful media releases are enough to make everyone excited for it.

I played it on the weekend, but I haven't had a chance to comment properly yet.

I liked it, it had a good level of difficulty and I liked the fact that the characters are all real people. Especially that particularly handsome fellow at the start.
I especially liked the minigames, and I hope there are more of them in the final version.
A minor complaint is that the town feels kind of empty. There are only a few people there, and some of the shopkeepers disappear after you talk to them which adds to the emptiness. If it is related to the story though then it is excusable.
Overall I would say I really liked it. Beforehand SMJ and The Core were tied for first place of the things that I am looking forward to most, but now that I've had a chance to play SMJ it has come out into the lead.

I'm sure it would be, although I have no experience modelling for Half-Life so I won't be able to help you with that.

Unfortunately I am a beginner to Photoshop, so I probably wouldn't be able to do a very good job.

I am, and it seems to be caused by the pointlights. However I have found that moving them around 64 units further away from the wall seems to fix the problem. At that point it's closer to the other wall, although it doesn't cause any problems there. Perhaps it is just some odd interaction between the two types of light sources.

I'll give that a go today when I'm free.
I've done it using texlights only, and that didn't show the error, but I don't have screenshots.

Also, yesterday I put a brush textured with LAB1_BRD3D in a dark room, and it has no lighting values.

Also, you put the WADs in HalflifeValve, as Half-Life doesn't have a materials folder.

LAB1_BRD3B, which I'm fairly certain has no lighting values. I'm currently compiling with a brushtextured with it added to a room, but I haven't added any.
So unless it's a texlight by default I doubt it is related.

Apologies for the delay, due to an oil spill on the highway my 2 hour commute on Friday turned into a 6 hour one, so I didn't have time to do anything.
Here is the WAD, although judging by your other thread you probably won't be using that image for long. Once you have changed the logo I can help you put that onto a texture.
If you want to be able to put the image over a wall without having a square border, you could use the {S2K_PBIA texture on a brush based entity which has been set to use the solid render mode, with a value of 255. Doing so can get you an effect like this:It would be more effective to make a decal texture, although unfortunately I'm not familiar with how you would do that, so I would be unable to help.

Nope, positive. The light values are:
245 155 148 1250 for the texlight, and
255 68 53 185 for the pointlights.

Half-Life 1 and all GoldSrc engine games use WAD files for textures. The simplest way to make one of those is to use a program called Wally, which you can downloadhere.
Vtf files contain more information than Half-Life uses, as WAD textures are made up of several 256 colour images - The texture itself, and mip images, which are lower resolution versions of the main image used when the player is far away to save rendering time.
What you need to do is open the vtf in an image editing program, crop or resize it so the dimensions are multiples of 16, save it as a normal image type (bmp, jpeg, png) and then import it into Wally.
I tend to open the image in MS Paint, select all and copy it, then open Wally and press ctrl+v. (copying it from Paint seems to be necessary, as images copied from more advanced image editing programs apparently contain more information than Wally is able to handle)
Once you've copied it into Wally, you'll be asked to name the texture (beginning the name with certain characters can give the texture different properties), and once that is done you can save it as a WAD. You can then put this WAD in the directory of the game or mod, and add it to Hammer.

Doing it this way is fine, but individual WAD files can contain multiple textures. To place all your textures in one file, use the WAD merge function in Wally, accessed through one of the tabs at the top of the program.

If you need any more information I can take screenshots to walk you through it later when I am at my computer.

Does anyone know what could be causing this lighting error?For each light I've got a pink/red texlight and a red point light in front of it, to try and make it so that the lighting is light red, with darker red around the texlights themselves (because the texlights alone leave the wall around them very dark) However neither type of light is anywhere near that pale, so I don't know what could be causing the pale spots.

I've been trying my hand at image editing to make textures. I went from this:To this:Which admittedly isn't great but it looks fairly okay in game:

I do it all the time in SketchUp, but I tend not to do it in Hammer due to the issues with all the different map names, and having to clear up the bsp files once the whole thing is done.
However, it is interesting to be able to see the work at all the different stages of development.

I watched the LOTR trilogy recently to prepare myself for going to see the Hobbit, only to find the money in my drawer that I had been saving has mysteriously vanished. No Hobbit for me.

I also dislike the HD models, so I was about to get annoyed and then I actually checked. I've still got the old models, does this update when you restart Steam or something?

I would have given fucks, but I have heen off the internet for about a week at this point unfortunately.
Good work you fellows.

How about this?
White, milk or dark chocolate?

For me it depends on what it's in exactly, but in general I would say milk chocolate. White chocolate can be really nice, although it tends to be better to eat as chocolate, rather than as a flavouring.
Although the other day I had some white chocolate Lindt balls with pieces of roast cocoa bean, they were really nice.

Nope, and I only know of one person who does, and I've never even met them so they may be a myth.

In the context of ice cream, in general I think vanilla is superior, but nothing beats high quality chocolate ice cream. Although CT is right. When it comes to Ben & Jerry's, the particular flavour doesn't matter so much, although I am rather fond of both Phish Food and Baked Alaska.

In the context of cake, chocolate is a nice type to have once in a while, but vanilla flavoured plain cake is a nice all-round snack.

In the context of Coca-Cola, Vanilla is awesome and I wish they still sold it here. Chocolate Coke isn't even a thing.

I've finished Hitman 1 the other day, and while the last mission was rather different from the rest I think I rather enjoyed it. I'm currently on the Middle Eastern type mission in Hitman 2 and I can definitely see why Urby wouldn't like the first. It's a different type of gameplay in a way. The first focuses more on the difficulty of getting a disguise, whereas the second focuses more on general stealth and acting correctly when disguised. Not to mention the fact that you can't save mid-mission in the first game, which adds what you might call artificial difficulty.

Also, regarding Silent Assassin:
Those fucking ninjas are the worst thing since sliced bread.

I bought the first three Hitman games recently. I used to have Hitman 2 as it came with my X-Box, but at the time I was rather young and didn't like the gameplay enough to play more than halfway through the first mission, so it spent all of it's time at friend's houses. Eventually, after playing MGS2, I decided I liked stealthy games so I wanted to give Hitman amother go, only to find the last friend had managed to completely ruin the disc, so I was never able to play it. The Hitman games were on sale recently so I got the first three. I'm now about 3/4 of the way through Hitman 1 and I think it's absolutely brilliant.

Gigli. It really is as bad as they say.

Since I am afraid this thread will potentially dissolve into an argument, I offer no opinion, and just want to say something that is relevant to the discussion, perticularly regarding the phrase 'Assault Weapon'.

I believe the laws in the US are, at least on a federal level;
If one is over the age of 18, having no prior felony convictions and having no history of mental illness requiring a court ordered intervention, they are allowed to purchase or own any long gun.
If they are over the age of 21, with the same rules regarding felony convictions and mental illness, they can purchase or own any handgun.
There are more restrictions, for example certain types of weapons (explosives, automatic weapons, silenced weapons, things like that) are illegal unless they are registered. One needs to pay for a government tax stamp to get them registered, and the registry for automatic weapons was closed in 1986, so effectively the average civilian can't get their hands on automatic weapons*. It is entirely legal to buy an assault rifle registered (not made) before 1986, but due to the fact that they are rare (and getting rarer), and they are mostly in the hands of collectors who won't sell them, getting even the cheapest of automatic weapons would cost so much money that the average person would never be able to get one unless they saved up for a long time. Impulse buyings just don't happen, and as such if a spree killer ever uses an automatic weapon you could bet money on it that it was illegally modified.

* The point of is post is to clean up some confusion that I have noticed is quite common. This paragraph is not relevant to my personal stance on gun control, it is just a result of the fact that I dislike when people intentionally misrepresent information. It has been pointed out before on various websites that the media in the US often uses incorrect terminology when describing gun laws, which can lead to confusion. After seeing some examples, I can't help but agree that it does seem purposeful at times.
One thing that seems to be quite common, is that people often refer to shooters using 'assault weapons', and saying that these military weapons should not be legal to own. 'Assault Weapon' is not a real term, but is similar to the term 'Assault Rifle'. An Assault Rifle is a lightweight, select-fire weapon with a detachable magazine, chambered in an intermediate cartridge. The important point here being that they are select-fire, meaning that they can be fired in automatic (or burst) mode. A lot of people don't know the specific definition of an assault rifle, but they do know that they are military type, automatic weapons. So the fact that people are referring to 'Assault Weapons' can be confusing, and infers that the shooter had an automatic weapon.
Generally when the term Assault Weapon is used, it is used to refer to a 'military style' weapon, or in other words a civilian variant of a military weapon. While it is understandable that one may see these as unreasonable for a civilian to own, it is an important point that they are invariably semi-automatic only. As such, they have no more capability than a lot of other hunting weapons that one may buy. In fact, since Assault Rifles (and by extension, civilian variants) fire an intermediate cartridge, they are in fact less powerful than most hunting weapons, which tend to fire full-sized cartridges.

I have an idea, but I might have to tone it down a bit to make it in any way workable, not even taking into consideration something else I'm supposed to be doing.

I didn't forget about it, I was just unable to continue. I was mapping on my old laptop, then my brother had me lend him the screen so he could get files off his laptop (which had a broken screen). He still hasn't given it back.
I was so pleased with that map too, JeffMOD had an ant colony called 'Colony 42', Soup Miner had a minecraft mine attached to his room that had a minecraft chest full of soup, you know, little puns like that. You and Archie had a secret tunnel connecting your rooms, Skals and Blitzkrieg shared a room after their tryst in the TWHL Big Brother House. There was a secret room where the Big Brother Gnome watched you through hidden cameras, plotting his revenge.
These were meant to be things the player would have to discover for themselves, but by the looks of it I'll never get to release the map.

Also for this one I hope to create an entry, but I have a big house that was built by drunk builders who have never heard of the 90 degree angle, so to do it accurately would be quite complex. So while I would like to, I am afraid I cannot commit to the project as of yet. Perhaps I will do so eventually. :

I suppose it could come in handy at times. I sometimes wish my iPod had a stylus, although the fact that the tablet has a much larger screen might render that point moot.

I saw the movie the night before last. It's good, although I got a weird impression that they had filmed the scenes in reverse order, and had been gradually running out of a budget as they went on or something. Like the effects and acting near the beginning of the movie weren't great, but they seemed to get better as it went on.
I did like it though, and it kind of makes me want to do a map set on the surface of Black Mesa, or in a nearby town during the resonance cascade.
I would probably have to base it of Rachel, Nevada, which is near Groom Lake Air Force Base.

A bit of a late reply, I've been spending too much time worrying about the exams.

I had been looking into the different types of tablets, trying to figure out which had the best value (taking into account both features and price), but I was apparently taking too long. I came back from college to find I had been bought the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1.
It's a bit much I think, considering I originally wanted a tablet so I could read books. That said, I do appreciate it, although I don't know why going for the most expensive one was deemed the best choice.

Hey Skals, get on my level:But in all serious, I like.
I really like the texture too, although the windows might need some re-kerjiggering.

I am impressed by Instant Mix and his entity work.

As always, noSick's screenshots makeme wish I had a direct link to his mapping ability.

And I like IngSoc. As always, it has a very Half-Life like feel to it while being obviously not Half-Life.

I'm sorry Urby, but MISSION MC POKER is a far superior mod.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
That said, I voted for The Core.

I've been pointed towards the Samsung Galaxy Tab2 10.1It's more expensive, but it has quite good reviews, and almost all the specs are superior. The thing I'm worried about, however, is that the processor is less powerful; the Nexus 7 has a quad-core 1.2GHz CPU, whereas the Tab2 has a dual-core 1GHz CPU. While I likely will use it to play games, they wouldn't be among my main priorities, so I don't really know how significant the smaller processor is. I also like the increased battery life and the fact that you can use an SD card.
So does anyone know anything about this one,or how much the slower processor would affect the performance for movie watching/web browsing?

Well, that Jonathan Ross/Russel Brand thing where they prank called Andrew Sachs was all over the news, and this is similar but it also involves the Royal Family and a suicide. So it's not surprising how the media has reacted to it.

I guess that probably settles it then. Thanks.

I've been told that I will be getting a tablet for Christmas, and have been asked to decide which one I would want. So far I've narrowed my choices to the Google Nexus 7:And the Amazon Kindle Fire HD (7"):And I'm not sure which I should choose. In terms of technical specifications they seem to be quite similar (the exception being that the Nexus 7 had a quad core 1.2 GHz processor, while the Kindle Fire has a dual core 1.2 GHz). However the Kindle Fire supposedly has a slightly better screen and better speakers (although I would almost always be using headphones, leaving that less important). As for software, or pretty much anything else about them, I don't really know anything about.

Initially I wanted the Kindle, as I read a lot of books and since that was the original point of the Kindle line I figured it would be more suited to that, but I have since realised that reading on an LCD screen wouldn't be ideal. (The original Kindle has a perfect screen for reading, but my dad already has one so I wouldn't have great need of one).
At the moment, my main interest in them is for internet browsing, listening to music and watching movies or TV shows on the bus to and from college. I have an iPod touch which I use for this, although the tiny screen makes internet browsing and movie watching less comfortable, and frankly I just don't like how you have to do everything through iTunes.

That unrelated point aside, would anyone have any experience with these and be able to assist? Or can anyone see any notable differences between the hardware of the two, as I may have missed some?

A simile is like a metaphor.

I could bang out a quick Star Wars themed mod for HL?
It will consist of a box with a few weapons and 'Star Wars' spelled out with decals.

And we could maybe assign a points system. First place in each game gets 5 points, second place gets 4, and so on. At the end of it the person with the most points wins.

The Red Faction collection is currently 75% off.

And I would rufee, but I live in good old Yurop.

I've played Arkham City on the Xbox. It's definitely good, but there isn't too much you're missing from Arkham Asylum, as far as I know. I haven't played Arkham Asylum myself yet. After I finished Arkham City I found I really wanted to play Arkham Asylum, but most of the story from the first game can be picked up here and there in the second.