Journals

I Open "Half Life SDK on steam
I create a basic map after following a tutorial.
I have a problem and ask around
I get told to download J.A.C.K
I Get some weird thing called a "Leak"
Here I am

I made this to get my head around the structure of a BSP file and its lumps. Updates:

• 2023-12-20: now has data from all 15 lumps
• 2023-12-22: cleaned up. lump references explicitly marked, and implied to be index into lump struct

So basically, the highest level data is the models lump. Its items have indices into the BSP tree and to the faces that comprise the model. You can safely and completely bypass the BSP traversal by directly retrieving the faces, but that means you're drawing absolutely everything. The world is the first BSP model, and every brush entity is its own BSP model referenced by its index into this lump.

The BSP tree has a lot of academic literature so I'll just skip it.

One unique property BSP leaf is the contents, describing whether the volume is air, water, ladder, etc. The marksurfaces info translates to face entries. There doesn't seem to be an offset of leafs from the Model struct so tracking the sum of all previous models might be required.

A face defines a plane, its edges, texture information, and lighting style. There is only a pointer into the lightmap data; the exact shape and size of the data is inferred from the plane, its closest axial orientation, texinfo vectors, and the styles (non-255 value means there's 1 lightstyle of the calculated size, up to 4 lightmaps)

An entity can have the model reference the internal BSP model of a BSP file with the *N notation. Interestingly it can also reference external BSPs, in which case it'd load only model 0 of that BSP afaik.

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This is just tentative information as of writing. My end goal is to understand enough to be able to completely translate a BSP file into a 3D scene for rendering. I would update this page as I learn things as I go.

References

• https://hlbsp.sourceforge.net/index.php?content=bspdef
• https://www.gamers.org/dEngine/quake/spec/quake-spec34/qkspec_4.htm#CBSP0

First off, I'd like to say that this is my first journal that I am posting to both TWHL and SoFurry. I'd also like to add the disclaimer that I am not encouraging anybody reading this on TWHL to seek out the SoFurry platform, as that would violate the site's rules. In fact, I'm going to say that if you're not there already, you're not the kind of person who should go there. Anyway, onto the journal.
So I recently started drinking coffee, which is of course much higher caffeine than my previous go-to, Dr. Pepper. Well, last night I drank two coffees and failed to fall asleep at all. It's now five in the afternoon and I'm still not "tired." Which means I see a high likelihood of this becoming a recurring problem...
Why do I keep doing this shit to myself? I'm easily the most self-destructive person I know. I'm going to end up working myself to death, or lazing myself into morbid obesity. I can't find a middle ground in anything. I like to say that I don't think in black and white, but I can't seem to find the gray...

Hey there,

Finally another journal, and it is of the lighter kind this time around. I have finally got the courage to start moving the information about Deleted Scenes towards the TWHL wiki!

This is pretty big for me as generally I don't feel very comfortable writing things up in the proper, professional way. I feel as if I am not good at structuring things. But, I do understand that this needs to happen eventually, even if it is just one wiki entry a week or a tutorial a month on the weird stuff that Deleted Scenes can do.

I started with the special items in Deleted Scenes, like the "Tools" and the brush entity that is required to use them, that being "trigger_usetool". I hope that I can stick with this for a bit and migrate all the knowledge that I have in my head to a more stable and helpful place, which is in the TWHL entity guides section.

Anyway, that was all I wanted to write about.

See ya later!

(I know that it's suppose to be on the 6th of November, but there's a high chance that I'll forgot about it tomorrow, so I'm posting about it now)

I kinda forgot that I have this account until someone on Discord mentioned seeing me in the Shoutbox. So I decided to change up my account a bit so that it isn't looking like it was made by a 5 year old and then I suddenly realized that it's 2 years of me having this account.
So uhhhhhh, happy anniversary or something, idk I don't celebrate things.

Hi everyone,

Just thought it would be impolite not to share some auto-pro… website you could be interested in!*

With a few (or rather a lot of) months in the making, behold Mapping-Fusion! As you expect the site is centered around GoldSource and Sven Co-op modding. Its aim is very modest, it is just to share our thoughts (Neophus and I) on the mods and maps we play, but also to try to promote and encourage GoldSource mods and modding in the French-speaking community. So far we’ve posted a few tutorials as well as some unbiased reviews of randomly selected maps cough.

Apart from reviews and similar articles, we make sure that anything we create is already present on more widely known websites, so to avoid contributing to the scattering of GoldSource resources.

I’ve also taken some care in implementing microdata. I have the vague hope that at some point, an extensive database of annotated GoldSource resources could really help put some order and help people find what they need as well as new interesting stuff (mods, maps, tutorials…). Not sure how this could materialise though, and it’s obviously a long way from here.

Feel free to share your thoughts! (Either on the website or on anything else if nothing comes to mind)

*: Oh, did I mention, it’s better if you speak, or at least read, French. Here’s a tutorial.

EDIT: We did it! Scroll to the bottom to for the final result!

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We're two Mappers who haven't released a map for a while and have left many of projects to collect dust, especially our joint projects. Though we have learned a lot from our failures, we still have a lot to learn from successes too, and that is why we're here today.

Oxofemple and I, Chimz, have decided to bring to you a new Sven Co-op map in just 2 weeks! That's right, just 2 weeks.

Why are we telling you this? Well that's because we're counting on you! Not for support and having an audience (though we would appreciate it) but we're asking you to hold us accountable!

We have started work on our project today and are scheduled to release our map on the 10th of November. There will be no delays, no date changes or anything. Come hell or high water, we will release our map in whatever state that is, and to keep our dignity we will do our best with what little time we have and release it.

If we miss our mark, well then, we're asking you to yell at us until we release it in whatever state it is.

So tell us, can we count on you?

Track No. 4

What the hell

For US residents: What kinda zombies do you think we'll turn into later today after the announcement test? I'm hoping I'll be a Return of the Living Dead style zombie. That'd be so cool!!
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Also it just so happens to be my birthday.

There are quite a few people on this website who use these journals as a way of venting their problems, as well as getting some support from the community. I myself have done this on a small scale... Sorry for keeping this entry to that same convention.

I've been having full-blown existential crises on a weekly basis, sometimes more often. Usually, these happen around midnight (guess when I'm writing this), as for some reason it's when I'm desperately trying to sleep that I do the most thinking. This isn't always a bad thing. Many of my best ideas have come to me during the 2:00 AM caffeine overdose. But so have most of my mental health issues. I can't seem to figure out who I am, really. Over the years, I've built up a facade of sorts that has changed with the political climate, so as to shield myself as effectively as possible. This has been ongoing for so long that it's basically replaced my personality. I don't know who I am outside of my own self-deception, and that is terrifying. Furthermore, I identify as a furry, and I believe I am, but I seem to be more... hardcore (if that's the right word) about it than the rest of the fandom. I truly feel like I should not be what I am, even though there is no existing alternative. I actually care about the politics of the situation, as opposed to the rest of the fandom, which doesn't even seem to care that there is a group of literal domestic terrorists directly and personally opposing them. I mean, are they okay with continuing to be the bottom of the barrel? I soon came to realize that hate can never be dispelled, not completely. Only moved from target to target in the name of "progress." And not seeing this, we think it really is progress. I suppose it's better than letting it stagnate upon one target though. That's when it is allowed to grow.

I recently met a Therian (my brain always thinks theremin first, even though that is not the right word), and they helped put some of this into perspective for me, a little bit at least. I didn't have a very good understanding of what Therians were prior to that, and although the person I talked to seemed to be having a hard time explaining it, from what I can tell, I think I'm something of a mix. I hold some interests related to the furry fandom, and in other ways, I'm more like a Therian. Something of an undecied middle ground.

I'm used to being a shade of gray. I suppose I find some comfort in not being a perfect fit for a hole, because it at least means I'll be unique enough to stand out (I mean, I have a fox fursona who's not a femboy, and I'm still an interesting person!) But in being different in ways nobody talks about, I have no reference point. How am I supposed to know if I'm a one-in-a-million, or if I'm part of a silent majority, if it's silent? Nobody talks about this stuff, whether because there's some social stigma about it or if it's just boring to many people. I mean, I have many issues. I put some forward, and I keep others close to my chest. Like, for instance, how many of yall knew that I'm autistic? My deviancy isn't news to anyone, but my neurodivergency is. And when it's the high-functioning autism like I have, you can rarely ever tell. I never realized how common it really is until me and two friends were sitting in the same group in math class a year ago, and we realized that we all had it (someone overheard this, and it became the autism table. We leaned into it). Considering my neurodivergency, I have even less to compare myself too, because I can't even assume that basic human psychology always applies. Often it does, but sometimes it doesn't. I'm basically just floating in a void.

Sounds fun to think about constantly, huh? I'm probably not gonna get any more than about two or three hours of sleep tonight, because my alarm goes off at 6:30 and I'm still caffienated. Ugh.

找工作有点难……

I just want to point out that although it wasn't Half-Life 3, Half-Life: Alyx released in 2020, only two years prior to my outlandish estimation.

This journal describes my journey in trying to bring an old map back to life.

For whatever reason, it seems like my time in the Counter-Strike/TFC mapping community was formative to me, and it’s a memory I keep coming back to. Something about the feeling of creative empowerment – the ability to create my own worlds – was intoxicating for me as an adolescent. I think I started mapping in 1999, when I was 14. I stuck with it as an active community participant until maybe 2002, but when you’re that age a few years can feel like a long time.

The mapping community was quite large in those days, with CS and TFC being two of the most widely played online games at the time. I went by the name of questionable.ethics, and mostly hung out on the Counter-Strike.net mapping forum; I was even a moderator for a time (the easter egg in this map shouts some of my mapping forum buddies from the era). I am new to TWHL, and actually I think it opened after I had already started to move on from mapping and texturing. I love seeing people still working with these tools and making such great content. Truly some of the work here blows my mind.

Despite this being apparently such a big part of my life, I finished and released surprisingly few maps. I was actually making a lot more textures in those days.

The map is called tf_autocrat and would have been made some time between 2001-2002, in the twilight years of TFC as a widely played game. In making this map, I was fascinated by the way that stock TFC maps seemed to be set nowhere in particular. They were vaguely military or industrial, but primarily they were just non-specific battle arenas. Architectural embellishments were rare in the stock maps. The really nice user-created maps, on the other hand, were often set in urban or middle-eastern environments, the latter because the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were on the news constantly.

In tf_autocrat, I wanted to maintain the vaguely industrial look of the stock TFC maps, but with a much higher level of detail. The overall terrain is still non-sensical and doesn’t correspond to any real-world locations. I never got the TFC entities working. Worse still, I had lost the most recent compiled version of the map and just had all the source material.

Back in 2020, around 20 years after I had started the map, I took advantage of the COVID-19 lockdowns to bring it back. I haven’t used a PC in years, but I was able to get all the tools working on my work computer. Using Worldcraft (or Hammer, as it’s called now) is a skill that never goes away. I added a new underwater pipe route through the tunnels, re-created the lights.rad and other missing files, and recompiled the map. It’s amazing how much faster this process is than it was in 2001.

Anyhow, here it is. It’s just a ghostly, empty map from a long time ago that I had the chance to explore again. There’s something very unique to the feeling of walking through a virtual space you haven’t set foot in for decades. I’m sure others here can relate. I hope you take the time to explore, and I hope you enjoy it. The custom textures in the map are all my own creations, so please feel free to use anything from the .wad you like.

I have uploaded this to the TWHL vault, the link is here.

The vault entry is filled with screenshots, but I'll repost a few here: