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!

Heyo,

So, to all the readers who are new and don't know what I do. I maintain the Counter-Strike Deleted Scenes FGD, Which has had a smallish update that was just pushed today. It has been a wild ride.

We left off from the last journal a few years ago. During that time I was in contact with a lot of cool dudes in the early 2000s game development scene. I had tracked down most of the staff from Ritual Entertainment, some of the Gearbox guys and a really cool dude that had left Valve, but still helped me out when making an approach. Made some new friends in the YouTube game and a rather outlier of a person that was fundamental in the rise of early mobile games.

Though all of the planning and searching, thinking and optimizing the path to the proper people. I got to talk to some guys from Gearbox, and a few enthusiastic members of Ritual Entertainment (Looking at you, Castle, Kevin and a bunch more). Then came the greatest, yet strangest contact that I had ever made. For anonymity purposes, I will call them JD. JD was something of an entrepreneur in the early 2000s, and made a large name for themselves with early mobile games. The popularity skyrocketed and made a lot of money, they then acquired Ritual Entertainment and moved the dev teams off of there internal projects and onto other mobile market focused projects.

I messaged my normal opener of who I was, what I do, what I intended to do and how JD could help. Their reply was…

“Can you tell me who told you to contact me?”

My response was “No one in particular, just a lot of my own investigation into who would become the default owner of the materials owned by Ritual.”

The next message I got would send shivers of joy down my spine.

“We recovered a lot of the files from the servers, I also have a lot of boxes with the old tapes and such that I have no idea what to do with.”

There it was. I was exhilarated by the thought of finally putting my hands on the treasure that I had been looking for, 3 years in the making and here I was. Looking at the X on the map and seeing it in front of me.

JD was a key person, a proverbial “Key to the City” of old assets and developer files. I had a back and forth conversation with JD for a few months and even went as far to confirm what was actually extracted from the older raid servers that had been long powered off. Finding not only SiN content, but also the original XBOX version of Counter-Strike. Which I thought was the greatest thing around, and meant that the Deleted Scenes were also bound to be there too.

At this time, I had also learnt that another company, Nightdive Studios, had been in contact with JD about the SiN franchise (Which resulted in a purchase). So, I knew that I was in the right place at the right time. But I would lose contact with JD after a while… The messages just stopped. I would occasionally check in, but no more came in after this.

“We are starting the process soon, I actually started to search through the code archives myself this past week.”

I followed up twice with a message, hoping for a stir… nothing came back.

I had lost contact with the one person that could have put an end to the chase I had started. I was absolutely devastated. Destroyed. Immobilized from the loss of the most amazing cave of treasure to ever have existed for this long. I still am partially dead on the inside from missing my chance. I truly have not gotten over my own disappointment in myself.

After that, I too just drifted away from mapping, modding and developing anything. I just… didn’t get it anymore. I still have trouble coming back to do things for the Deleted Scenes FGD, any of the drafted documents that I had made, or the mod ideas I wrote down so enthusiastically during my free time. I had failed and at the moment, I am still in the midst of understanding that failure. Was it my eagerness, or was it the simple fact that JD might not be an avid user of emails. Was it this or that, I am still unsure to this date. I might check in later to see if the case is the same, only time will tell.

I had failed my goal in the modding community, and real life is still kinda tough with losing my job this month, now the 5th time that has happened, which is a bummer. Not sure what life has in store for me, I still live in Japan, which is cool. I know I can’t do corporate anymore, I am quite lost in real life and in the modding life.

But I came back today, just for a little bit to add in what was done bit by bit throughout last year and this year. I am still in the Discord and still comment on the occasional thing here and there. It was nice to see all the talent again and the dudes making cool stuff in WIP chat. Although, when I look at that, I just think that my skills in everything I do in the past year have reduced. I don’t create as much anymore, and not to the detail that I used too.

Kinda tired nowadays.

Anyway, I hope y'all enjoyed the journal.

See ya.

Dreaming... of Deleted Scenes?

On the 3/3/2020, the first State Of Emergency was declared in Japan, where I currently reside. It lasted for 3 months.

During that time, I played video games to pass the time while ‘working’ from home. After a while, I came to Counter-Strike: Condition Zero Deleted Scenes and thought to myself that I should start it up and give it a solid playthrough, and that is exactly what I did.

Then, only after finishing it, did I do a little bit of searching around to read up about how it came to be that a cheesy, action game that had the CS name came to be. I became enthralled in the hardships and development hell that it had gone through. From Rouge Entertainment, to Gearbox, then to Ritual Entertainment, and finally to Turtle Rock Studios; It had been through so much and still came out somewhat well off.

Afterwards, I spent time researching how to mod GoldSource games with one goal: to mod CZDS and incorporate its unique gameplay elements into something tangible and well made. The only issue was that I was rather inexperienced with making things (and I still am to this day), so I gathered up as much information as I could and then realized something that I was missing. This thing was the editor file required by Hammer or JACK to be able to make anything.

The FGD Quest!

I looked on the Valve Developer Wiki for answers and found a version of the CZDS FGD. This was a fairly old version, but it would do. Later, I found that it was rather incomplete and did not have the very basic additions that would be key in fully setting up a living, breathing map of my own. Sure it had func_doors, func_buttons and all the func_breakables you could smash, but what was all that when I did not have the options to break said breakables?

Eventually, I discovered that some of the designers created a map pack with extra missions that were supposed to show the community how to mod the game. I dug up even more information from how they used certain entities and the extra data that was in the missions. Implemented them and moved to searching for more information.

I came across the old Ritual Entertainment forums. Where I found 2 old developers that shared some new features that I did not know how to use. trigger_zipline and trigger_changekeyvalue. I quickly and swiftly implemented what I had learnt from them.

On the next information finding session, I found a Chinese version of the FGD that was made by a lad named Dong on the VDW. Dong was the only other person at the time to have released a large mission set on a GameBanana. I found him on Steam and talked to him through google translate about the changes he had made. With his help, I translated his notes and learnt some extra stuff along the way.

But, the FGD was still incomplete. Data was missing. I searched everywhere I could on how to piece this broken mess back together. I learnt FGD syntax and how to format them well. I (diligently) learnt how to read and correct errors. I joined the TWHL community in hopes of assistance and found it in truckloads (Looking at you fellas in the #ProgrammingHelp area). I even contacted Tyler McVicker, who was kind enough to direct me to a fellow who, unfortunately for me, never responded to my message: which would be a recurring theme in my mod-file building adventure..

Now; I’ve managed to extract all the data that my little mind will let me. It’s nearly been a year since I started this journey… and it’s finally coming to a point where I have done as much as I can. I still need to update a few things before I release it. Fix up my notes and polish it a bit more. Soon, it will be in your hands and I really do hope you all can make some cool things with it!

Continuing the journey!

Currently, I’m working on understanding the .MAT, .SEQ and GUI systems within the game. Trying to find out how far I can push this game to be something to remember when talking about a CZDS mod.

Sorry for the wall of text, this is my first journal. Bye >:^>