Forum posts

I've had the same issue with Windows 7 recently. It worked for almost a year past the official EOL, but not since about a week ago. When I start Steam, it freezes, and my computer with it.

I'm guessing some recent update probably created for the first time an actual technical dependency on Windows 10 and it stopped working for good on older OS. Mine still works on Linux. If yours does too, then it's probably just the OS.

The latest Steam update finally seems to have bricked the Windows 7 machine I keep around for things that require Windows. Now, HL2 etc run fine on Linux, but I'm not so sure about Hammer and all the other modding tools. They're not even included in the Linux build of HL2, so Valve clearly didn't bother porting written-for-Windows-95 software to SteamOS.

Anyone have experience emulating Hammer and the rest of Source SDK on Linux? I've never messed with WINE or the likes, but I will probably have to, and I'll be grateful for any help.

It appears Source just ignores the ending cue point. At the end of the file, it correctly loops back to the start cue, so I suppose that's something.

No idea how to make any sort of "wind down" now though, if it's impossible to loop the middle and later play the end...

This is for music, btw; I've tried a different solution where I rendered intro and looping part of a song separately and played them by repeatedly triggering the PlaySound input of the ambient_generic, but even with precise timings, there was a noticable gap in there, so that didn't work either.

I've consulted the VDC article on this (Looping a sound) and tried two of the programs there, LoopAuditioneer and Goldwave.

LoopAuditioneer lets me create loop points, for which I can input precise sample numbers, but which Source just straight up doesn't pick up on. The entire file loops. It also lets me create cue points, which I can only create by vaguely clicking into the waveform with the mouse without any sort of sample precision.

Goldwave lets me create cue points by inputting specific timecodes, so that's what I did. I used their online version, since I didn't want to bother with the trialware. I named them as the wiki shows (start_cue and end_cue) and saved the file.

The entire file just loops from start to finish as well.

My files are 44.1 kHz 16-bit PCM WAV files, which is within the specifications the VDC wiki outlines ("Source supports uncompressed 8-bit and 16-bit PCM"). I used a hex editor to verify the appropriate "cue" chunk has been written into the file by Goldwave.

I'm a little out of my depth here and at my wits' end; I've followed the tutorials letter for letter and it still doesn't work. What am I doing wrong?

Oh sweet! Thanks!

Thank you! It'd still be interesting to figure out scenes.image some day, but for the time being, the SDK sources have helped me already (it's an env_microphone at Breen's mouth and an info_target at the screen).

I'm trying to get a choreographed scene from HL2 working in my own map, but I have no idea what target entity is which. So I figured, fire up faceposer real quick and look at the scene. No such luck, it's all packaged into the scenes.image, which I have no idea how to get the scenes out of to inspect them with faceposer.

The faceposer documentation on the Valve wiki is nonexistent (it literally redirects to Category:Choreography), so I'm all out of ideas. Any advice would be much appreciated.

(More specifically, I'm trying to get Breencasts working; I can make Breen read the lines (he's target 1), but I can't get the audio output with the reverb that's loud enough to be heard across the map working)

P.S: I've tried decompiling some HL2 maps to find out, but bspsrc crashes with an index out of bounds error IMMEDIATELY.

To be more specific, I wanted to make a thread about combat and arena design in the Half-Life games, both GoldSrc and Source, and I have no idea what forum that would go into. It doesn't seem misc enough to into General Discussion, not engine-specific enough for the Source/GoldSrc forums, and Maps and Mods forbids mapping questions... what's a gal to do? Flip a coin and pick an engine subforum?

Oh yeah, I miss that. The last time I did a lot of mapping was when RTSL ran competitions regularly (I wasn't on TWHL then), that always helps get over writers block (mappers block?).

I remember running into this a few times before, years ago, but I just ran into it again, recently and today, and it's been driving me nuts.

There's a bunch of props which are supposedly suitable for prop_static (as in, the model browser lists them as such), that apparently aren't. When I place them in the world as prop_static, they straight up don't appear in the game. Neither the compile log nor the in-game console show any errors, they prop simply doesn't show up.

Affected models are, among others:

• models/props_wasteland/controlroom_filecabinet002a.mdl
• models/props_c17/lockers001a.mdl
• models/props_junk/trashdumpster01a.mdl
• models/props_wasteland/kitchen_shelf001a.mdl

So far, all models I've seen this happen with are models that are listed as physics and static props in the model browser, and they're all official Valve models shipped with and used in the games.

For each of them, I have to use prop_physics with all the flags that make it as static as possible, or prop_dynamic_override, both of which are computationally less efficient than prop_static and just irritating workarounds. Furthermore, the only thing I've found about this on the web is this Reddit post, which does suggest a solution, but a complicated one (using a different compiler from a different game), and which I'm not sure is even applicable, considering EP2 already runs the Source 2013 branch of the engine.

If anyone has an easier workaround, or can tell me why this is happening in the first place, I'd be very grateful.

Well said.

The logic_auto entity has an "OnMapTransition" output that you can fire to trigger an entity every time the map is entered, I think that should do the trick.

Huh. Like I said, I've been out of it for a while, so I'm not sure, sorry. If I can find the time, I might quickly test it myself in Hammer, but I can't make promises.

I'm too young to feel this old, but when did this pivot to Discord happen? I feel like Discord was new five years ago and at some point suddenly everything was on Discord and now the web is full of defunct Discord links where there used to be forums. And yeah, the forum does feel pretty inactive.

(TWHL, never disappear, please)

I've been out of Source mapping for a while, so this might be all wrong, but here's my idea.

Make a second trigger (I will call this the "wall trigger"), identical to the first (the "player trigger"), and make both into trigger_multiple. Set up a filter_activator_name to make the wall trigger react only to your wall info_target. Create a logic_relay.

Set up your player trigger to trigger the logic_relay when it detects the player, and set this up with a small delay – say, 0.1 seconds. Then set up your wall trigger to disable the logic_relay when it detects the wall, without any delay. Lastly, set up the logic_relay to perform whatever actions should be performed when the player is detected, and to disable or delete both triggers.

What's happening is this: the logic_relay does nothing but forward the "player detected" impulse from the player trigger. Think of it as a road or water pipe, stuff just gets funnelled through it. The wall trigger detects if the soldier is looking at a wall and disables the relay if so, meaning if the soldier "sees" the player "through" a wall, the pipe that passes that information on is closed and no alarm is triggered / hostile action initiated / whatever you have planned. And since the player trigger has a slight delay before it fires at the logic_relay, the wall trigger can disable it before that happens. Due to the two trigger nature, your trigger_once has to become a trigger_multiple, as it will repeatedly "see" the player through walls, and the "only once" nature is instead taken over by the logic_relay's "deleted or disable both triggers once the player is detected" output.

A simpler version of this would be to skip the relay and just make the wall trigger disable the player trigger, but I'm not sure how that could be made to work, since both could detect the player and wall simultaneously and the "player detected" output might be fired before it's disabled.

Again, I haven't done any Source mapping for years until recently, so this might be completely wrong, but that's how I would try it. If anyone has a better idea, forget I said anything.

I've got a skeleton here (prop_ragdoll, /models/skeleton/skeleton_whole.mdl/, and I'd like to hang it up by its head. I've tried a phys_ballsocket and a phys_ragdollconstraint; the first led to the thing glitching around weirdly, the second mostly worked but just hung it by its pelvis.

I've tried using attachments as target names, i.e. "skeleton1_prop,eyes" (also tried "head"), but that didn't seem to work.

If anyone can help me here, that would be much appreciated.

P.S: while I'm at it, this isn't worth making a new thread for: I'd love to get npc_citizen to stop referring to the player as Doctor Freeman, setting "Gordon pre-criminal" didn't do much to get the Point Insertion treatment, any ideas? All of this is in EP2 btw.

Lately I've been thinking of perhaps reviving a mod I started and promptly abandoned a few years ago. Among other things, I remember being quite disappointed that while Portal contains virtually all of HL2's assets and entities "under the hood", most/many of them are nonfunctional, such as weapons missing sounds and dealing no damage.

Since both their code has since been published by Valve and source mods, such as the whatsitcalled map base something mod (the one RTSL use for their contests) are A Thing™ now, I wondered: is there any mod that properly reintegrates HL2 code with Portal, to be used as an improved and up-to-date basis for Portal mods? I googled around but could find no such thing.

If anyone has some pointers, I'd be most grateful.

Guess I'll have to learn how to set up Mapbase at last... something I've resisted for ages. Oh well. I hope I'll contribute a floor to this xD

No major modifications, what I have in mind is basically stock EP2 with an extra entity and associated HUD stuff. I've tried a vanilla EP2 solution, but it's limited by working with the entities available.

Thanks, I'll look at what I have to read and see if I can manage!

I have an idea for a small mod I would like to try creating at some point. The concept could be implemented as a content-only mod, but with limitations. As far as I'm aware, the Source source code is available somewhere, and can be modified. I've done the occasional small project in C#, but I'm by no means a full-time coder, so my question is this:

Can a mod (I understand Source Base 2013 is usually used for such purposes?) be created from modified Source 'just like that', or does it require licensing from Valve? (Assuming you'd still need HL2/EP2/S2013 to run it)

Is adding one entity, a keybind, and a HUD overlay something that'll take a lot of effort or something that is manageable with some pre-existing programming skills and a lot of googling?

Cheers and thanks for any and all advice <3

Went thru Google and the VDC wiki but couldn't really find a satisfying answer. Basically, I need to attach a ragdoll to multiple points. Basically, the way you can nail Combine soldiers' limbs to the ground with the crossbow in hl2, but done in-editor. Not exactly a Jesus-on-the-cross pose but close enough. I found the pages about the various phys_ constraint entities, but none seemed to offer the option to only constrain specific attachment points or parts of a prop, only the root bone. Any clues how to do this?

Quick question for clarification, if I want to, for instance, start the map in a known environment from the games, can I (similar to RTSL's DoorVille challenges) copy one room from an official map and take a different path from there?

Hoping this belongs here, since BM:S is a Source Engine game... eitherhow: I decided I wanna give BM:S mapping a try again and wondered whether there was some sort of style guide for the game? As in, info on which chapter uses which textures and models, etc etc, say, "Office Complex uses texture x, y and z for floors, these colours for lights, door model that skin this" etc etc? BM:S used to ship the source files for their maps with the game but pulled them a while ago citing something about game not done, Xen, yadda yadda and I don't feel like decompiling a few dozen maps...

Kinda offtopic question but I felt it didn't warrant its own thread... is Half-Life: Source's I/O the same as Half-Life's? Cause I'm really into the whole lo fi looks of Half-Life maps but GoldSrc I/O drives me crazy and not the good kind...

I'll probably take the time to make some gifs later (I'm writing this in between school and band practice)...

In no particular order (for now):

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Serval AMR-7
Pretty much MGS5's Barrett M82 equivalent and it kicks some serious ass. I unlocked the customizing stuff as soon as the option was available and with a silencer and bigger mag added, this bad boy kills just about everything. Course it doesn't live up to its real-life counterpart as far as range is concerned, but this thing lets me snipe a gunship out of the air over some 400m, blow up tanks, it's just awesome. And few things are as satisfying as blowing heavy infantry - the bane of my existence, before - to bits with it.

Contract Wars

OTs-33 Pernach
This is probably a bit of an obscure one.... ages ago, teenage-me played a by now defunct online F2P shooter called "Contract Wars". It had the usual P2W going on, with real-world currency money buying premium coins that wiped the floor with the non-premium stuff, etc. And of course to get you addicted, they gave you small bits of premium currency when you started out. Now on one of my accounts, I saved all that stuff and bought a premium weapon - the OTs-33 Pernach. And that thing was awesome. Ammo somewhere in the neighbourhood of 30 rounds per mag and just my favourite sidearm ever. It just had it all - felt good, recoil-wise, pretty good stats, very useable iron sights and a horribly satisfying sound.

IZH-43
Out of all the incarnations of double barrel shotguns throughout several games, I think this was my favourite. Super loud, super fast ("Jakobs: fires as fast as you can pull the trigger"), almost instant reload speed. This was the one tier 1 non-premium gun you kept seeing people use, no matter their level. That thing was my default weapon for deathmatches and it may as well have been named Onekill-43 instead. I'm not a shotgun person, usually, but this one is the exception to prove the rule.

Garry's Mod or rather, TTT

Deagle
Nuff said. Awful weapon for people who are too incompetend to use it (me), loud, recoil, headshots, boom.

Took a chance and bought it, might fuck around and try to do a let's play or something, should I actually follow thru on my recent urge to try my hand at being on youtube. Good job getting your game out there, either way!

Should give you an idea of the kind of tone the series would go for.

The kinda world that makes you glad you'll be long dead when the future happens? xD

Now I'm blissfully unaware of how much effort creating an NPC and a model etc may or may not be, but considering the options at hand, I thought it might be kinda cool to have a protagonist from an earlier installment re-appear later... a space Barney, if you will. Say, Vol. 1 protagonist's story ends going into cryo stasis after being stranded or left behind, and Vol. 2 protagonist is someone completely different, no mention of #1, and Vol. 3 protagonist encounters a group of people led by #1 dude who was, while the player was busy being other people, rescued and is regarded somewhat of a hero.... yknow? Similar to how in Blue Shift, Barney is a no name gun for hire security staff dude and in Half-Life², he's all rebel brass...

So far, in order to make NPCs speak, I looked up the sound file under sounds/vo/..... and had an ambient_generic play that, with the NPC in question as source entity. But I'm pretty sure that's not the way to go, seeing as it doesn't account for localised versions of the games, etc etc. I tried googling it but couldn't find out what the proper way is, except for stuff referencing Faceposer (which I hope isn't necessary because that stuff, afaik, only works on a mod scale but not a map scale).

Sooooo..... what is it I'm looking for?

Yet unsure whether I'll try to enter, but there's an idea I based a map on before that was awfully half-assed... might make a new map from scratch with a similar premise to do the thing justice.

Isn't basically any Portal map a teleportation map?

(obv it doesn't count but that was my first thought upon reading the brief)

Now that's a well-deserved winner if I've ever seen one! Congratz yall, guess I can head to bed now

You're going to be up for a long time, because the results are manually published after some reviews are written up.

Awww shucks...

Guess who's gonna stay up till the result.... c'est moi.

but it might be a good idea to add a game selector when you post a competition entry too so it's easier to spot.

I strongly second that, I had to guess which game one of the entries was for.

I missed the stream too, but I found this video on her Twitch page

Just watched it... seems I'll have to fix some stuff in the map. There was some I/O in place that was supposed to force the rebel off the turret and subsequently disable it but it seems it didn't work... might take a weekend to fix some stuff in the future, implement the ending I had planned at first, alter the final onslaught...

Sure, please do post a link if / once you have one! I would love to watch it.

I kinda think it's funny the reason displayed by the website about why I'm not eligible to vote is that my account was created after the competition started... is the backend not able to link submission entries and user profiles and realise the far more important reason why I'm not to vote is because I authored one of the entries?

I'm going to check out the submissions at the start of my stream tomorrow

Ohhhhhhh fffff I knew I forgot something.... @ Jessie there wouldn't happen to be a recording of said stream?

Phillip always used to include a "don't post your entry anyplace else for a month following the contest" rule, does anything similar apply here?

No, it's your content - it belongs to you and you can do whatever you like with it.

Yup, what the penguin said. We're pretty chill like that.

Coolio! I emailed the map to Don a day or so after contest submissions closed and they posted it to RTSL a few hours ago.

Same here, ep2 map. One of my playtesters had issues with their ep2 install so I tried to play it in ep1 for the lulz... checkerboard textures galore.

A while ago (the first stuff I posted to ModDB was in 2015, whoa) I was going to make a Portal mod... several projects have promised to re-tell Doug Ratman's story from his perspective and I wanted to be one of those. I'd never really taken a liking to Portal 2 and it being it's own game, engine, SKD, rather than sharing 90% of its code and assets with Half-Life², made it hard to mod, so I picked Portal to base my mod off.

Premise
I decided to pick up the story where Portal: Prelude left off, on the day of GLaDOS' activation, with a long intro going through the day, a few puzzles but mostly storytelling, quite similar to Half-Life's. Next up should be several years of Doug's enduring test chambers and slowly managing to somewhat escape GLaDOS' supervision and wander through Aperture, followed by his observing Chell's journey and ultimate self-sacrifice to save her.

Progress
Very little, actually... I made a big, fancy logo, hexed a hl2 citizen model to impersonate Cave Johnson, made a very basic 3D model that could have been done in-Hammer with brush entities, wrote up a basic plot and built a few proof-of-concept maps.

What happened?
Equal parts hybris, life and technical difficulties... teenage-me vastly overestimated her abilities and underestimated the effort required to complete this. I knew very little people in the Source community and thus failed to recruit any co-conspirators on my quest to make the Next Big Thing and between everyday life and school, there wasn't really enough time nor motivation to properly get things done. On top of that, I still have to figure out how to tame Portal's Hammer... I never learned what config I messed up when I set up the game configs, but usually, Hammer would either refuse to compile, citing a lack of rights to access things; would compile without any lighting, with models missing; would seemingly compile but the map would not update, or other stuff... I even mailed Nicolas from the Portal: Prelude team to ask about their Hammer configs (he was unable to help me) and eventually gave up and all but forgot about it... the mod is still on ModDB, with disappointed comments about the project once again bein MIA after my last "oh nevermind i'm not dead" post years back...

I hope at some point I can actually get back working on this... most of the Ratman mods I've seen in the meantime are Portal 2-based (and, as Source modding dies out, are dead themselves)... not in the foreseeable future though.

Since two of the maps are for ep2, you'll want to place them in the ep2/maps folder and play them with Episode 2, that should work

I am loading the maps now.
Are they all Source maps?

Yup! 1x Portal, 2x EP2 (pretty sure "Crystalline" is for EP2)

I recently cleaned out my Steam Library and uninstalled lots of games... good thing I only ditched Portal 2 and not Portal because whoa Emergence sure rocked! I had to refresh my thinking-with-portals skills a bit because I got utterly stuck at first but once my mind was back in Aperture mode, it was a pretty awesome map, certainly en par with stock maps! If I was eligible to vote, BoxFigs would get my vote.

Crystalline was visually breathtaking but I'm afraid my platformer skills are a wee bit rusty and I got frustrated enough to noclip past most of the puzzles - pretty cool item puzzle tho was the elevator supposed to despawn at the end?

As for my own map.... after having played the other entries, I feel like I proudly upgraded from drawing stick figures to creating sketches, only to find I was competing against Michelangelo. Still, I'm happy with how it turned out, in comparison to my older stuff, it was a nice step forward for me and it appears I did a good enough job staging the combat encounters.

@ Instant Mix, what game's your map for? Thumbnail makes me guess ep2, that right?

Entry's a go! There goes a huge load off my mind.

Three hours and counting down and here I am laying the last finishing touches unto my map before submitting... holy f...

EDIT: never mind i talked utter bullshit

Timer says "1 day, 3 hours" for me... does it close in 3 hours or in 27 hours, then?