Theoretical Disaster Created 14 years ago2010-10-23 14:18:40 UTC by Dimbeak

OP4 isn't really a mod. It's a standalone expansion created by an entire studio. You are one guy and there's no point in wasting time and energy on an aspect of the mod that nobody will play. Saw wasn't lying when he said very, very few people play any multiplayer goldsource games anymore.

I can name one easily: Sven Coop

Sven Co-op has existed since a time when people did play goldsource games online. It has an existing fanbase, and it's not just deathmatch with a few new player skins and guns.

counter stike

TFC

no TFC.
but u were wrong Crollo CS 1.6 is still playable

74,233 74,233 Counter-Strike: Source
66,007 66,404 Counter-Strike
51,180 51,534 Call of Duty Black Ops - Multiplayer
35,018 35,887 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - Multiplayer
34,624 34,624 Sid Meier's Civilization V
30,409 30,409 Football Manager 2011
28,782 28,782 Team Fortress 2
19,494 19,494 Left 4 Dead 2
16,485 17,605 Call of Duty Black Ops
15,793 15,793 Fallout New Vegas

I can't put all of my reading effort into following every Dimbark's post, but.. did he just say he wants to implement multiplayer on half-life 1 mod?

There is no need for wasting words here Dimbark. Look at this random screenshot taken from a modern multiplayer game:Remember, people get bored( sometimes really fast) of these kind of games too.

Now look at your mod:Dimbark, no one aside from mappers like us will want to play a shitty mod(don't get me wrong at this point). Even us don't have time for multiplayer. You will be lucky to get 100 persons to play your mod, in singleplayer. Yes, that is interesting for us- it's just our curiosity to see what you have done. We may be spending about 5 minutes on your mod. That's why I suggest you stop working on any other multiplayer maps.

In fact, I discourage you from continuing this mod. Instead of making quantity, try focusing on quality. Try learning new techniques, apply them in an experimental map, design a singleplayer map or something and then show it to us. Try to advance to the source engine. Making a mod isn't at all simple, you need dedication. You have it. But dedication without quality means nothing, so you better invest your effort into learning rather than wasting it on maps that follow the same damn story that I had enough of.

And btw, is that you in your avatar?

P.S. One more thing, when I am talking of these modern games I am not absolutely reffering to the graphics. It's just that half-life has been smoked.. a lot.

I can't map for HL2, source SDK has too many bugs. I literally can't, my hammer freezes every 5 seconds.

I have 3 years before highschool
don worry.

This explains a lot.
All this mapping must seem new and exciting right now, and you are no doubt overwhelmed by a plethora of ideas for new maps.
Just try your best to keep your ambitions realistically balanced. You don't have to make everything at once.

I can't map for HL2, source SDK has too many bugs

I don't know how it works for hl2, but for source 2009 hammer works just fine.

advance to the source engine.

What's that? I can't hear you over the loud, obnoxious mac updates.

head in hands
crollo, just shut up. Your avatar is that of a company who are widely considered to have the worst DRM in existence at the moment - a system which genuinely punishes people who buy their game - and you're bawwwing at Valve for expanding to more platforms? Don't be such a complete and utter tool, especially when it's not even remotely relevant to the topic at hand.

ninja defuse, saw already mentioned cs 1.6 in his post:

no one will play deathmatch. Goldsource MP is really down to CS 1.6, and then a little bit spread across HL DM, TFC, and DOD. It'd really just be a waste of time to try and implement DM.

cStriker, HL2 is now on the 2009 Source engine.

It's relevant to the uses of sourcesdk, which if you couldn't tell already, is completely broken, and has been broken for over 5 months now.

Hey, speaking of which, source mods themselves are broken as well, come to think of it.

(As far as I know the source engine is still broken, could have been fixed since the last time i checked, but judging by Dimbark's post, I'm assuming it's still broken.)

I also fail to see how any of this is relevant to the mod, let's not cause a shitstorm now.

Exactly: I can't map for source.

Uh...random Mac bashing?

It has nothing to do with the mac, it has to do with the updates, when valve started doing the mac updates, they completely forgot they even had a pc base, and just left everything broken as is, AFIAK everything is still broken but i haven't checked lately, either way source was left crippled for well over 5 months so it doesn't matter anyways.

There used to be a +50 page thread (!!!) on the steam forums but it was deleted by a local moderator, for no apparent reason i guess, and valves excellent customer support kicked in by copyapasting from the FAQ several times, but the sourcesdk still remained broken for many many people.

they completely forgot they even had a pc base

head in hands x2

The SDK has always worked for me. The times it hasn't; it's been a simple fix.

Well as i said, there was a +50 page thread for hundred's of people who it clearly didn't work for, so you're in the minority there.

Unfortunately I have no basis to back up apon because valve simply deleted it.

Just because there was a +50 page thread doesn't mean I'm in the minority. Considering the number of people who use the SDK on a daily basis, I'd say that's a pretty small number actually.

I am friends with a lot of source mappers and none of them have problems with the SDK. I'm also a regular at Interlopers and nobody there has problems with the SDK.

Problems being to the extent of not being able to map, I mean. Obviously a few minor niggles pop up here and there, but like I said - simple fixes.

Well I don't know then, several people i talked to said the source sdk was busted for them as well, and even Strider says it was broken for several months (Not to put him on the spot or to 'gang up' with him in any way, mind you.), if you look in the competition thread you'll even see references to the broken sourcesdk, from other twhl members.

If you weren't affected, then I'm just going to assume that you've disabled updating or something, because even though it may seem minor, hundreds of people themselves had contributed to a +50 page thread begging valve for some kind of support, and no support was given, nothing was fixed, and AFIAK the sourcesdk is still broken for a lot of people.

Either way it's a pointless discussion, it either works or doesn't work, since sourcesdk is broken for dimbark it's pointless to suggest to him to 'upgrade' to source.

EDIT: Wait a minute, how can you even CREATE a source mod if the only engine that's still running is source 2009, but there isn't even source code for 2009 yet? Or is it available now?

Can I plox stick to goldsource?

And one question: If I found a way to compile GCF files and put all HL content + my content and make it into a real game?

It's not possible to make or modify GCF files. If you actually made some serious progress on the level and if it was even good enough to be accepted into steamworks as a mod, then you could work towards making it into a game, otherwise don't bother chasing it.

I think I am with Soup Miner and Striker on this one Dimbark.

I have been mapping since Hammer first came out. That's a long time ago...

I had big aspirations for making an awesome game or even a finished mod...

What was that word that was used...."vaporware"?

I got about 200-300 misc maps that are NOT necessarily done. It really takes a whole team and ALOT of work to pull off these epic games.

Take Strikers advice and just enjoy the experience, you don't have to make it all in one day. By the looks of it you really need a little work to overcome certain obstacles in your mapping. One of which are your measurements. Again, very important..something I overlook and took for granted in the beginning and I have alot of "error" maps to prove it.

Vaporware!

Offtopic slightly but the mac updates did NOTHING to break the Source SDK. Why would an update to a game break a toolset which isn't even released on the Mac? hurr durr...

If the SDK was broken for you then it could have been for a plethora of reasons (many of such 'broken' instances are often problems on the user's end and have nothing to do with the software) but certainly not the Mac updates for any of the games. People who beg for support from Valve for a toolset which is already greatly supported (far more than any other SDK available) are wasting their time; it's stated many places that the SDK is provided unsupported which many people seem to ignore.

Also, Source09 code is available for modding (as well as newer code through aswarm)

In order to maximize compatibility for macs (Because say, every macbook of a certain type has the same hardware), they did something you'd normally see on a console, they made every source game update to one specific engine, instead of being scaled over several, and without bothering to fix any errors that may arise in the sourcesdk or source 2009 itself, they just simply updated everything and it broke everything. For well over 6 months now, they did nothing and instead just repeatedly pushed out more and more content for mac, neglecting the obvious gaping holes in using 2009, disregarding several topics that spanned for tens of pages for well over 4 months, and simply deleted them as they popped up, and when their 'volunteer staff' popped a response, they simply quoted the FAQ, which had absolutely NO helpful information whatsoever.

You want some sort of source that it was actually broken? Ask Strider, or anyone else it was broken for, for that matter, I would have a more valid source myself, if the threads hadn't been locked and removed left to right, now all that remains is a couple 3 page threads, which of course is little more then 10 people, and that isn't much of a source.

All of this information would have been available right from the start, but instead i posted a witty response which i figured most people would have gotton, but i guess not.

(EG: For biased people who say ati sucks and nvidia is the best, I often post "What's that? I can't hear you over my fried Nvidia card, I made the fatal mistake of installing the latest drivers, whoops!", or people who prefer xp over windows 7: "What's that? I can't hear you over my DirectX 11", you get the idea.)

Well, I find joy in mapping for Goldsource. All the props in the game are the ones I design, not from a list of props from "City 17" or "Labs".

Well, this thread is about his mod, he is comfortable with goldsource, so let him use goldsource. Let's leave it at that.

Umm...I'm fairly certain that Source for Mac is an entirely separate engine built to render with OpenGL. I've read that they're completely independent of each other, which makes sense considering the Windows version is DirectX only.

The older Source games were moved onto the new engine so they would have the features of the new engine, not so they would run on macs. :/
HDR and dynamic flashlights in HL2, SSbumps and particles in CSS.. Really, I don't see where you're drawing your conspiracy theory from.

Would you really believe it was me if i didn't come up with a bullshit conspiracy theory to back up a non backed statement about something unrelated the topic at hand which would ultimately start a massive controversy or possibly even a shitstorm?

tl;dr: Striker recommended him to go to the source engine, I failed at attempting to make a witty response that would reference the fact that source engine is broken and unusable, shit happened, can we move on?

Dimbark, as said before, you really shouldn't aim for a full on game, try focusing on one large map, release it to the community, get some criticism, keep improving it, then when it's complete enough, make another map, and continue and so forth, you really cannot dive headfirst into the gaming industry like that.

I realise that I'm probably just fueling the fire here, but Crollo did raise a legitimate point about the state of the SDK. The Mac update being the source of it is wrong, but he made a good point regardless.

There is a noticeable annoyance with the SDK. And that's not even going into the ridiculously outdated methods in practice.

It's true that it's free, and sometimes it is well supported, but that doesn't stop the fact that there are problems with it that are steadily becoming more and more offputting to users. If you're lucky enough to have it problem free recently, then good for you, many other people have suffered from constant crashing, glitchy, unusable views, artifacts in the 3D view, etc.

I'm seeing more and more people move to the UDK (which I'll add has itself been updated monthly since first release), or simply dropping the SDK. People are fed up and I don't blame them.

There is a real frustration with SDK users here, don't just brush it off because of how he said it.

I'll agree with that. I opened the SDK yesterday after probably a year or more of inactivity and I was astounded at how buggy Hammer still was.

what bugz?

I have been mapping with Source since it was available and I really haven't had all that many problems. Yes, it crashes from time to time but I can get alot of crashes making a movie as well. Let's not blame the software and put some of the blame on the drivers and computers that we run source with/on.

If you want to use some ancient software then fine but don't do it because it's error proof. A few errors shouldn't get you out of your comfort zone that easily. Is that all people know here, Gold Source? Anyone do anything else? 2D mapping, other engines....jeeeez.....

Well, I find joy in mapping for Goldsource. All the props in the game are the ones I design, not from a list of props from "City 17" or "Labs".

I used to like HL1 as well, because yes, it was nice and safe and fuzzy but trust me you really don't know what the piss you are talking about. I have hundreds of models for HL1 (non-valve) and I have plenty of models for source (non-valve). Resources are resources dude! You can make models for any engine you know? There's a little plug-in called propper that allows you to make models right in hammer. Wow!

Do that in Gold Source!

Have ya looked at the textures and models for Left4Dead? Insane!

Oh yeah, you can't even figure out HL1....

UDK is going to be my next step up the engine ladder, already got it it's just soooo much information to learn, plus i hate learning UIs

edit: since thread has already left the orbit of the planet relevant, anyone here have a favorite/the best UDK tut site? TWUDK?

It's true that it's free, and sometimes it is well supported, but that doesn't stop the fact that there are problems with it that are steadily becoming more and more offputting to users. If you're lucky enough to have it problem free recently, then good for you, many other people have suffered from constant crashing, glitchy, unusable views, artifacts in the 3D view, etc.

Welcome to Hammer. You get used to the constant crashes, driver glitches, and artifacting. If you don't, well, I suppose you move onto another toolset. Nobody's forcing anyone to work with the SDK, but most will find that the positives outweigh the negatives/occasional bugginess. If it's too tedious for you or too frustrating then maybe you should work in another toolset or stop modding altogether. I think it has more to do with one's computer and specs, though, as mentioned. I run hammer at least 8 hours every day during the week and my computer still works fine and I still manage to make maps. Sure, it crashes sometimes, but there's an autosave feature to handle that (unlike other softwares...photoshop, anyone?)

Valve doesn't make money from supporting and releasing the SDK - quite the contrary, they are running at a loss when they pay their developers to update the SDK which is released as a free product. People may be getting fed up but it's entirely their own fault for expecting support for something that's unsupported. If I buy you a free ice cream cone, are you going to be thankful for having free ice cream, or will you be angry because it's vanilla and your favorite flavor is chocolate? The people getting outraged over how tedious Source is to work with are in the latter category

I'm sorry for dragging another thread OT but really, this is outrageous. Either map for Source or don't, but don't knock Valve for releasing some tools that are abit buggy. There are plenty of other people out there willing to brave the bugs in order to create maps and mods.

To be completely honest, most of the time the minor problems of Hammer can be solved by asking questions or trial-and-error instead of complaints (ie 'why does hammer crash when I do this', 'maybe changing the viewport rendering mode will stop my display driver crashes' instead of 'valve sucks they broke the tools')

Just because you gave somebody something for free, why does that make it perfectly ok to give them somethings shit\broken?

Your logic is at a loss here, free or not, I don't see how that makes it ok for valve to drop support for it at any time, and then just go around and say "OH WELL IT'S FREE, DEAL WITH IT", that's like giving somebody a super high end machine, and then going "Oh and by the way you'll have to buy a 900$ motherboard, sucks to be you".

Welcome to Hammer. You get used to the constant crashes, driver glitches, and artifacting.

Huh, for a second there I thought you were saying it was entirely on the end users machine, not hammers end. Heh, wonder how i got that idea.

My point still stands. It's FREE. Are you so spoiled that you complain IRL when someone gives you a gift that's FREE just because it was shit or you didn't like the way it worked?

It's Valve's software so they can do whatever they want, whether that means supporting it, not supporting it, running it into the ground or making it the most comprehensive set of mod tools available.

Most of it is on the end user's machine. I updated my display drivers yesterday and immediately ceased to experience any graphical glitches in Hammer. Remember that Valve uses the same toolset to dev their games. If it was crashing every 2 seconds on their machines they'd probably fix it. If it's crashing every few seconds on a machine that's near minimum spec for Source they probably don't even care.

Very succinctly put.

Crollo, Valve aren't forcing you to download their toolset, they're merely offering it to customers. If you think it's extremely broken, then why would you download it and complain about them offering something free that works fine on computers that aren't five or more years old?
As Rabid pointed out, they use the same toolset. If the tools are broken on the machines that they use, then they'll fix them. If the tools aren't broken on the machines they use, then they have no need to.

Funny that you say that because one of Valves best selling points is it's scalability, nowadays it seems it's more like "Low end machine? Buy a better one you cheap bastard.", like every other modern company nowadays.

Why is this about me, exactly? Somebody explain this to me.

I don't give 2 fucks about what valve does with their SDK, i don't use it, i dislike source, and I don't work with the engine, I'm pointing out that it's a broken mess, period, not just for myself.

It's not just about minor graphical errors, for hundreds of people, the sourcesdk was BROKEN. Through and through. Faceposer would instantly crash, unusable, hammer would crash also, game configurations were corrupted and failed to reset, if you actually DID get hammer to not crash, you couldn't do anything because of blank viewports and extreme graphical glitches.

Why is this about you? Because you're the one going on about how much the engine sucks. It's obvious that you don't work with the engine because of all the nonsense you keep bringing up. If you don't like it, and don't use it, then fine, but keep your mouth shut then.

Scalabality really isn't as big of deal anymore as it was when Source was first released in 2004. It's 2011 now and most companies making demanding computer games expect that gamers have a machine commensurate with the specifications of their games, and most serious (and even casual gamers) have machines in that range.

Stop comprehending my posts badly so you can just ramble on with more of your nonsense, at no point did i say the engine is bad, I'm saying the engine is Broken, give me one instance where i said source was a bad engine, it's a unusable engine in it's current state, there would be no point in moving to it. Maybe there's people that it works perfectly fine for, that's good for you, but for people who've been using the engine for years, and they download a update, and it suddenly breaks their toolkit? And you're response is that they don't meet minimum requirements? Then you contradict yourself by saying 'get used to it, it's hammer', and finally you're resorting to saying that it's free.

Why is it a lovely trend to contradict yourself in a attempt to make your point more valid? It doesn't, at least not when somebody with a IQ over 20 realizes this and points it out.

Unity is also offered as free without support, yet it's a excellent toolset and works for pretty much anyone who passes requirements, UDK is a free toolset also, and it receives monthly updates and again, is extremely bug free. You see, just because somethings free and is unsupported, doesn't mean it's perfectly acceptable for it to break at any time just because of that.

In all honesty though, I think it'd be best if a staff member came in and forcibly removed both of us from the thread, we're destined to do this forever.

How is adding more comments to an argument that don't contradict with eachother at all mean he's contradicting himself?

If Source is such an unusable engine, then how are the many, many mods and commercial games that use the engine in active development?

Personal attacks really make your argument that much more valid. If you want to get into semantics, I wasn't implying that you said it was BAD either, but you did imply (and explicitly say, do I need to quote you?) that it was shit and you keep going on about how it's broken. Broken in the software development world usually implies 'bad'.

I also fail to see how I'm contradicting myself, my statements are pretty independent of themselves. A lot of people complaining about the SDK or other Source problems don't meet minspec and if they do then they're running outdated drivers or have other PC problems that aren't even related to the SDK. Just because a piece of software doesn't run on someone's machine doesn't mean the software is broken and if you actually did any work with computers or software for a living then you'd already know that. Hammer is notoriously buggy and if you've been working with the toolset for years then that's something you'll also know. It's common knowledge, you're not the first person to notice how bugged of a program it is. And lastly, it IS free, so people shouldn't be complaining at all.

Yes, at one point the SDK was so completely fucked that no mods would run, tools didn't work, and everyone's mods basically just shut down for a period of time. Even on the mods I worked on, with several people trying to map and mod looking for workarounds, nothing would work. We waited a few days and things got fixed while everyone was raging on SPUF forums about how terrible Valve is. When you have so many updates like Source and the SDK recieve it's inevitable to get some bugs thrown into the mix once in a while, making games is a buggy business.

The engine is certainly not unusable, that's just outlandish and it's obvious how little you know about the subject when you say things like that. Either learn more about the toolset, software, and the engine, or don't, I don't care, but if you're not going to do the former, than please, shut up. I'm tired of seeing source-bashing from you in almost every thread especially because by your own admission you don't even use it and clearly don't know anything about it.

I fail to see how people who could run UDK fail to meet minspec for sourcesdk, that's anti logical. If you'd known anything about computers you'd realize that also.

Just because you can run something doesn't mean you meet spec for it. You also seemed to miss half of my statement where I mentioned that those that do meet spec often have other problems with their computer which are independent of the software.

I'd like to think I know a little bit about computers, I have to work with them every day

"at one point the SDK was so completely fucked that no mods would run, tools didn't work, and everyone's mods basically just shut down for a period of time."

Really, because I thought this was a non-existant fact, at least, up until i had some sort of source that something actually did break, right?

You fail to remember strider's reference to many people moving onto UDK, it's anti logical if they don't meet minspec (for sourcesdk) that they would even be able to get past install phase, let alone come even close to using it, they wouldn't be able to run the engine, let alone the editor.

Argh, I'm gonna have to get some kind of a grammar checker instead of just a spelling checker. "something actually did broke" (Ironic considering I'm considered a grammar nazi to other people.)

I've never said that the toolset was never broken or perfect. You seem to be under the impression that I'm arguing against that...

No, I've been modding for some time and have seen instances of the SDK being broken throughout the years. Most of these problems occured when they implemented major changes to the toolset (SDK base for mods, seperate engine selection in the SDK launcher etc).

Also going to stick to my previous point here.

Just because you can run something doesn't mean you meet spec for it.

Same goes for installs. Just because your computer will let you install something doesn't mean you can play it. I can install all manner of modern applications on old win98 machines but that doesn't mean they can run the programs with any degree of usefulness.

it's anti logical if they don't meet minspec [For sourcesdk] that they would even be able to get past install phase [For installing UDK], let alone come even close to using it, they wouldn't be able to run the engine, let alone the editor.

Try reading a little harder.

Or maybe i didn't clarify that correctly, sorry, added UDK part.