Journals

Tetsu014 years ago2009-08-04 08:10:41 UTC 15 comments
WEll.. I just ended a 3 year relationship over the internet. Wtf.
I had every intention of doing it face to face, but i was waiting for the right time to do so. Guess i waited too long and missed that opportunity on friday, when it should've been done. So go the hell ahead and ridicule me. What's done is done, and she's still alive...
I do feel terrible for dragging on so long.
Life lessons learned; speak up now, or pay later.

As for me, i'll be fine in another day or so, i have some items to return and i'll probably have to explain myself to her family. Fun.
Tetsu014 years ago2009-07-09 23:23:00 UTC 7 comments
Just dropped $650 UDS on this bad boy : BUGERA!

Omfg is it sexy. It's like upgrading from a crappy 4 cyl car to a Corvette.
The clean is bright and crisp (Imaging December by collective soul)
Yet the distortion can shread your face off (Imagine Metalocopalse, and the death that follows each gig)
Also hits every single tine in-between. If my old crappy one lasted 5 years, i should get 20 outta this thing :)

We got a show coming up next saturday. There will be video mose likely, so you'll get to hear it in action!
Tetsu014 years ago2009-07-06 07:58:24 UTC 20 comments
Project Source Development Week 4:

Fuck.

I think I may have to do a complete Re-work of my map. I really don't want to do that either.

I'm way behind schedule. WAY WAY WAY behind schedule. It just seems the source engine is more picky than goldsource.
Can't get my lighting to work (Might be a result of the "too many leaves" error)
Can't fix that damn leaf-saw error
Models that say they're prop static ARENT. So i have to manually change each individually to prop Physics (TAKES FOREVER and i don't know why i can't select a bunch and change the entity type. It just erases the model name)
Even tho the map seems big, it's smaller than i would've hoped. It doesn't take any time at all to run through the map. I'm going to have a hard time making this a good combat map.
I still have to learn scripts. They don't work for me and i'm just starting to get pissed.

This is one of the most frustrating experiences i've ever had with mapping. Ever.
In other news: Turns out the drummer in my band indirectly knows the bassist from Shinedown. We're getting studio time in South Carolina with the company that they themselves record with. We're doing a full-length album, re-mastering all of our old songs, and putting in all of our new ones. It's going to be a week-long ordeal sometime during winter. I don't know the exact date yet, but we may get a record deal out of it..
I'm crossing my fingers on this one, it's going to be almost a $10,000 investment.

Hopefully It'll all be worth it someday.
and if anybody reads this, i scrapped my entry. Starting over in goldsource.
Tetsu014 years ago2009-07-01 13:51:05 UTC 17 comments
This is your 4000th login

Yay.

And i just had a thought.
To upload a bunch of my unfinished maps with weapons and enemies and no storyline, but when you get to the end of one, you teleport to another..
Take all my unfinished / experiment maps, and make a stupid little mod out of them.

Of course i'll polish them a bit and add SOME detail and lighting elements, and i'll make the stop point just.. wierd.

Idk could make for an interesting mod? No?
Tetsu0's Castle

What do you think?
User posted image
This was the first compile.
I still need to fix the draw distanc..
Then add in all the rooms.
I'm having trouble finding my graveyard maps... i might have purged them.
Tell you what.

Send me a graveyard map and i'll throw it in there. Credit goes to author.

The mario picture - world teleport will be your avatar.

So give me a 128x128 vers of that too.
Tetsu014 years ago2009-06-27 12:13:14 UTC 2 comments
Project Source Development: Week 3

Well i have the bulk of the terrain detail finished, Now i just have to work out the kinks and get everything looking how i want. I can almost sit back and work on entity work alone. Which would be a good thing. I'll have a full 2 weeks just to work out gameplay and lighting. But that's still going to take a long ass time to do.

Every time i look at the map i just wonder how i'm gonna finish it all.
One area at a time... one area at a time.

So progress is good. And it's speeding up at last. Maybe i'll actually be satisfied with a map this time around!
In other news:

That half life 2 RPG is on hold until the compo is over. I'm still open to ideas.
Tetsu014 years ago2009-06-23 06:24:46 UTC 18 comments
Just ordered myself a new mouse:

Logitech G9

For today only it's $20 after the mail-in, $30 Rebate

Not sure if they ship out of country (Apologies to 90% of the members)
But it's a great deal for a great mouse!
Tetsu014 years ago2009-06-21 20:42:18 UTC 3 comments
Project Source Development: Week 2

Week 2 got off to a stronger start than week one.
I actually had time to work on the map! yay.
Anyway! I have the map laid out the way i want it.
I have half the story (beginning / ending) scribbled out on paper (plot to come soon)

I have the intro camera sequence about halfway done. I'm having troubles with some scripted sequences, but those can wait until i have everything else done.

First: priorities:

As i have the map mapped, I picked the hardest area to do first: Thus i am becoming extremely frustrated, and half the times i start up hammer, i close it because i just don't feel the want to get into it anymore. I'll have to wait until i have motivation.

Anyway, i've been mapping out the cave section of my map. It basically consists of 90% displacement.
The other 10% is water.
I've become quite adept at displacements now. Learning the proper use of subdivison and all that.
I'm quite pleased with my progress this week. Just the sheer amount of displacement editing im going to have to do is mind-boggling, but i like to say i made a good dent in it over the week.

So when im bored in work i guess i'll have to sketch out ideas for the other portions of the map, as well as the storyline and plot events that take place.

Trying to make a logical storyline fit a cookie-cutter map layout is tough. Expecially when you're in a new engine, and only have a month.

I just need more inspiration.. maybe i should fire up episode 2 again...
Tetsu014 years ago2009-06-11 21:17:09 UTC 3 comments
Project Source Development: Week 1

Week one of the Source development is off to a rough start.
As soon as i got news of the new compo i started sketching ideas and outlines and plots and battles etc etc on paper. I was at work when i found out about it so i was powerless to do anything but brainstorm. I did get a lot of ideas down and i have the barebones skeletal-layout of the map completed on paper.
I just forgot how involved source really was.
Aside from actually mapping, i had to re-learn a whole new I/O system. i have been experimenting (lucky) the whole week prior so i have a good foundation with that, but i also need to learn many other things.

Aside from the learning part, i now feel sub-par as a mapper.
Never in my life have i completed a map to my liking. It's always been at around 80% I feel that due to that i won't get this map done either. The scale that i have set for myself is huge.

I tried doing what strider did- apply the map as a texture in hammer. I build walls around the map surrounding the white, and decided that i did not want to do that. I felt that a lot of people were going to do that, and i did not want to follow the crowd. curse my quest for uniqueness
I Then decided i'd flesh out one room at a time.
Build the room out of dev-textures, set all the entities, basic lighting, and move on.
Well the way i have my storyline set out, that's impossible to do, and today i realized i needed to flesh out the whole map and then start with the entities.

Again i was wrong.

How does one start a project this large-with an unfamiliar engine and a deadline?

-Carefully

I basically scrapped my map 4 times in this last week. Wasting 20+ hours of time i could've spent better had i planned this all out. Again, that's where my lack of mapping experience comes in.

So i find myself starting over-again. Mapping the baselines, adding minor terrain detail before i do the entities.
After i have the minor terrain detail i think i'll work on the details (displacements, water, fog, areaportals) lighting, and the more advanced entitiy set-ups.

Plus my personal life took a spin into hell... Almost forcing me to lose motivation. But if i dont work on this at least once a day, it won't get done. This is one map of mine that CANT wait til last minute. Hopefully i'll keep my sanity long enough to see it through to the end.
Tetsu014 years ago2009-06-07 18:19:45 UTC 5 comments
OMFG! After 3 days (Probably totaling about 15 hours) I finally got the camera-rigging in my map working properly!
So I now have the foundation for my first SP source map layed out.
It will be a Zelda-Like map. The old-skool zeldas Where you can explore a screen only so far, then once you reach the edge of the screen, the camera scrolls to the next screen/room so on and so forth.

I can't beleive how simple it was. Let me tell you guys how i accomplished this:

So the way my test map is layed out, i have 9 rooms each numbered with a room number just like it is on a keypad:

X-direction: 1-2-3
Y-direction: 1-4-7

I have a func_movelinear set on the X-direction with it's origin in line with the middle of room 1. I have the max distance set to 1408, because that's the distance from room 1 to room 3. I have another func_movelinear set up similar for the Y-direction. If you can't see that, here's a visual:
User posted image
So when you move from room 1 to room 2, the camera is parented to "screen_x" and the "SetPosition" of "screen_x" is set to .5. Since room 2 is half the distance to room 3, "screen_x" (and the parented viewcontrol [Camera] ) move to room 2.
Say if you wanted to move to room 5 from room 2, the camea is then parented to the "screen_Y" entity, and then it's setposition is set to .5 as well.

Every time you parent the camera to another object it stays in the same position while being parented.

I was trying to move the parented object the whole time while i only needed to move the camera...

Anyway. Now i can focus on the mind-games within the game instead of the mechanics. Which i have functioning!
Here's a screenshot
User posted image
Don't pester me about the lighting, that'll come later. I wanted to get the mechanics down before i messed with looks.
Tetsu014 years ago2009-05-24 11:16:36 UTC 6 comments
Well i'm downloading the XSI mod tool for source. I might as well start to make custom models for my maps seeing as how i don't map like valve, and therefore can't use any of their models. It'll be a tough learning process to model for source, but i'll get through it i'm sure.

Then i'll slowly transition into source mapping. Trying to utilize the models I've made.

My first project: Age of empires II Inspired HL2DM map
Small little castle village, plenty of open room. Some hallways and corridors.

I need custom models for this because... well I'm not making every little detail out of brushes. Screw that.

I'm also downloading the Artist's Guide to XSI. It's a bunch of video tutorials (Totaling 1.7 GIG) Showing how to use a lot of the tools and such.
Can't tell you how much i'm looking forward to this.

EDIT

The Artist Guide is highly recommended!! Get it if you want to do anything with XSI
Tetsu014 years ago2009-05-21 19:06:23 UTC 7 comments
FINALLY!
This semester is over.
The hardest thing was my physics 2 test. Which all of us in the class got together before class and it still took 5 hours to complete. (It was a take-home test)
I also got the highest grade in the class on my Circuits II Exam.
Second highest in Electronics, and i don't care in Calculus so long as i passed.

Now i can party all weekend, then i start working at the power company on Tuesday!
Woot woot.
Tetsu015 years ago2009-04-15 10:29:29 UTC 13 comments
Why did i do this to myself? Seriously.

Let me throw some facts your way. Here's my usual week.

Monday - Wake up at 9:30AM, shower, eat breakfast, drive 30 minutes to school for 11:00, Do homework and study until 1:00, go to class until 4:30, drive another 30 minutes home (Or to my apartment, which i really don't consider home) 5:00 - Wonder why i did not eat lunch. 5:30 - get some dinner. 6:00 - Do some more homework. I force myself to work until 8:00, or whenever something happens to distract me (usually my girlfriend coming home and telling me she's bored and wants to do something, but she obviously can't see that i'm busy trying not to fail) 8:00 - take a break from studies, pack my stuff for tomorrow, chill out/ watch TV, go to bed.

Tuesday - 9:30Am -wake up, shower, eat breakfast, drive 30 minutes to school for 11:00. Physics II class at 11:00-12:30. 12:30 - Hit up the computer lab to study some more and do some homework - 3:20 -6:50 (no, i'm not kidding, it's straight 3+1/2 hours of class) i have electronics with the most hated professor at my school.. YAY!! 7:00 - Calculus 9:10 - Drive my 30 minutes home. 9:40 - Exhausted from the day, i'll eat whatever i can before passing out to wake up the next morning.

Wednesday - Wake up at 9:30AM, shower, eat breakfast, drive 30 minutes to school for 11:00, Do homework and study until 1:00, go to class until 2:30, then hang out in the computer lab for however long it takes to do my assignments. (Every monday and tuesday, there's assigned lab-reports. Each have to be roughly 8 pages long, and take around 2-3 hours to complete. Not to mention the daily homework of about 10-25 problems. Each with parts a-d. Now take 25 and multiply it by 4, and you get 100. Then multiply each problem by how long it takes to actually complete them, and you will soon find out there's plenty of time on wednesday to get everything done.)
BUT WAIT!!! My manager finds out that i get home earlier on wednesday than i do on monday. So what does she do?
She schedules me to come in at 4:00 and close the restaurant. And if anyone has ever been to an Applebee's before, they know they close at 11:00. Wonderful. There goes my wednesday

Thursday - (Panic starts settling in as i couldnt complete anything from yesterday) 9:30Am -wake up, shower, eat breakfast, drive 30 minutes to school for 11:00. Physics II class at 11:00-2:30. 2:30 - Hit up the computer lab to study some more and do some homework which i did not complete the day before, which leaves me pretty much wanting to kill myself. - 5:30 -6:50 Electronics class 7:00 - Calculus 9:10 - Drive my 30 minutes home. 9:40 - Exhausted from the day, i'll eat whatever i can before passing out to wake up the next morning.

Ohhh the weekend is here

Friday - I usually open the restaurant. So i have to wake up, once again at 9:30, get in by 10:30, work until 3:00, get a break, come back on the floor at 4:00, and work until about 9:00. Now anybody in their right mind is nuking futz to go home and study after being at work for 11 hours. So thats when i relax, or try to relax because there's always a fucking party at mi-casa every damn friday and saturday night.

Saturday / Sunday - Same exact schedule as friday, i do not lie.

So that's my week. Hectic, long, frustrating, exhausting. And somehow i still find time to describe it to you right here, right now. There's literally not enough time in my week to do everything i need.
Which makes it all worse is that i'm losing 4 hours a week of my life sitting on my ass traveling 74MPH down interstate 84 to and from my school.
that 4 hours can be put forth to mapping, or playing guitar, or maybe doing some work that i didn't have time for earlier..

It's hard to keep in mind that all this will be worth it someday. I just don't see it yet.
Tetsu015 years ago2008-12-27 18:23:39 UTC 2 comments
Just finished updating my new computer!
My god this thing is a beast compared to what i had previously.
First test ran portal at full settings with 130fps
/happy

Now i can start mapping for source more seriously.
Tetsu015 years ago2008-11-21 18:15:15 UTC 7 comments
Hmm..
I've told myself countless times that i will start mapping for source as soon as competition 'so and so' is over.
Well that never happens.
Ever.
I can't wait until i get the rest of my computer built (it's gonna run vista) so i can actually have an excuse to map for source only.
Apparently Vista hates Hammer 3.4 + 3.5
I'm overjoyed.
Tetsu015 years ago2008-09-28 02:49:52 UTC 13 comments
Hey fellas. I'm at a party right now. I just wanna let you know; because i'm extremely inebriated right now, that you guys, especially zeeba, rimrook, hlhotdog and strider, in particular, have been so much of an inspiration to me.
That's all.
/End drunken slur