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In the SDK sample content there's a copy of d1_trainstation01, which has the breencast setup in it; It's a prefab Valve used so it ought to be consistent across all the different choreo scenes.

As for actually extracting stuff from scenes.image, I have no idea if it's possible. You might have to track down an older build of the game from before that system existed when the vcds were all loose files (Or it might be in one of the SDK bases? I can't recall)

Works for me, I still need to figure out if what I wanna make is a feasible workload and do the preprod on it.

Now that we have a Release Candidate, are you feeling confident enough to greenlight modders beginning work using the SDK, provided they update to 1.0.0 once it's fully tested and released? I recently started getting the urge to play around with HL1 mapping again and I'd love to use the functionality you've added.

Ooooh love it.

I'mma vote for A), just to be a basic bitch.

Yeah I'll go with C as well.

I missed doing these!!

What would the rules on multiple entries be? Would a team be allowed to make multiple floors, either together or one as a team and another individually?

Yep, it can in fact be done 'just like that'!

Adding an entity, a keybind, and a HUD overlay should be fairly manageable for someone with pre-existing skills. There are a few things you'll probably want to read up on to understand specifically how the engine handles stuff, and there are some...questionable decisions in the codebase, but Valve has the latest version of the Client and Server DLL files' source code up on github. You generally don't need a licensing deal from Valve to make mods, unless you specifically plan to sell it commercially or need to make sweeping changes to the engine itself.

Wow, this is some really good work, even for you! The synthetic entities would allow people to make some really cool stuff per-map, I'd imagine... Kind of makes me want to reinstall JACK or Hammer 3.5!

I have been re-reading the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan (And finished by Brandon Sanderson). Currently on book 11. After I'm done that I've got a Stephen King novel lined up that was recommended by my mom.

Valve primarily used Max for Half-Life, Softimage XSI for Half-Life 2, and I think they went back to Max for modelling after Softimage stopped being made, though I expect their animators probably use Maya as well since it's generally regarded as having better animation tools. (I've also heard some references to Valve devs occasionally using Blender in the "Modern era")

You can use any software you want as long as it has a SMD import/export plugin, so it's really a matter of what you're most comfortable using. You can find various Maya plugins here, Max ones here, and for Blender here. If you're using less common software like Cinema4D, kHED, Modo etc, you can still find plugins, check their respective pages on the Valve Developer Wiki.

Lets see...

There was USS Bravo, a mod that was supposed to be like USS Darkstar but with brighter maps. I made a dorm room, a few corridors, and a bridge where the plot development would happen, complete with a fully-functional elevator. That lasted for a day or two before I dropped it and deleted the source files outright to save disk space.

After that, I switched to a mod with a name I can't remember that was going to be set during the Seven Hour War, but in a universe where Half-Life the game existed as well as Half-Life the events, so the player character had a big crate with a fully-functional HEV suit replica and a poster of Alyx in their apartment. They would then attempt to use the elevator in their apartment complex, only for it to literally break apart and drop them into the sewers, which they would have to navigate to get into the basement of the office building across the street. That's where I ran out of ideas and dropped the project, though IIRC a partial backup of that (single map) mod made it into Castle Disposed.

Once I dropped that, I started a brand new mod that I called USS Bravo, originally based off of USS Darkstar. If anything I got even less far than my first attempt, but the maps were much better looking and featured Otis as well as Barney as guards (IIRC I just grabbed the model from Blue Shift and plopped it on a monster_generic, as this was before I started using Spirit of Half-Life)

Speaking of Spirit, I downloaded some unofficial mongrel build of Spirit that called itself 1.7 and had features that the base mod didn't such as a suppressor for the pistol and a system that changed what arms the player had based on whether or not the had the HEV suit (neither of these was configurable or could be disabled) and tried to make a prison breakout mod that I think was set after the Black Mesa incident, like you had been kidnapped by the Black Ops guys? All I really remember from that is that I had a security camera you could use.

Then, I started yet another mod, this time set directly during the black mesa incident, where you played as a janitor (Unbeknownst to me that had apparently been done). This is another one that didn't make it past 1 or 2 maps because I had done literally zero planning, but, like the 7-hour war mod, a partial version of the first map ended up in Castle Disposed, albeit with the Blue Shift and Opposing Force BMRF propaganda posters I used replaced with somewhat tasteless demotivational posters by Tetsu0.

The only notable HL mod I canceled aside from all that garbage was Colony 42, a mod that was just, once again, USS Darkstar with more lights, but this time on a space station instead of a ship, but which still somehow saw the light of day and was apparently finished enough that Urby wants to remake it, though I did at one point briefly consider also making a full campaign addon or mod for They Hunger where you played as a person who was not at all having a good recovery in a convalescent home.

Do you still have your navigation mesh in both maps? IIRC they have to be properly set up with the interior of the checkpoint room flagged as such in order for it to function.

That was an amazing mod, I gotta say. I somewhat regret not digging out Hammer or J.A.C.K to contribute to this but I would have been severely outclassed!

I'm still stuck trying to figure out Ogdred implemented that keypad in the Von Braun floor. Noclipping let me find the visuals but I can't place how the actual logic for it would work in stock SOHL and something like that would have been amazing back when I actively made HL maps.

You'll probably want to decompile the map to get the exact speed values and relative sequence positions, but all you should need is a func_door named "push" made to look like a car and a scripted_sequence that makes the garg run up to the car and play the "pushcar" animation.

For anything else similar where an NPC interacts with the world during a scripted sequence you'll have to open a version of Half-Life Model Viewer and see what events are being called; If it's event 1003, then the Options field is the targetname of the entity to trigger on that frame. It's a pretty simple way to do stuff, though it does limit each sequence to being used once per map because there's no way to set the targetname to be anything else short of editing the model to have a duplicate of the animation.

In general, or when the savegame is one that was made previous to the compile?

When I was first starting out I read some tutorial somewhere that recommended using a "realistic" thickness for walls, which was probably meant as "Don't make them paper thin, and don't make internal walls 64 units thick!" but which I interpreted as "eyeball it, just do what looks right to you"
Because that tutorial didn't also emphasize the importance of staying on the grid, I didn't. As a standard, I made every wall 6 units thick, rather than 8 or 16, meaning every level I made during my goldsource days was severely off-grid. I only learned that this was a horrible, terrible mistake from working on the BM Hazard Course mod, because we were making the maps in sections, rather than having each level designer be assigned to a specific bsp.

It's been a while since I've dusted off my Goldsource hat, but I seem to recall HLCSG sometimes throws the "outside world" error for invalid (usually concave) solids rather than things too far off the grid. Hammer 3.x might not have this (I don't recall when it was added) but see if you can use View>Go to Brush Number to find Brush 34 and check it, or otherwise use Map>Check for Problems to see if Hammer has detected an invalid solid.

I'm glad we haven't had any incidents with this before, but yeah, given recent events in the Valve community, probably a good idea to have a code of conduct in place before it becomes an issue.

I'm happy with the current proposal!

Literally the only reason I'm not super excited for this is because I can't personally afford (or have physical space for) a VR setup right now. I'm gonna be late to the party by a few years so I'm trying to not get hyped up.

But it looks gorgeous, gameplay looks exciting, and they're gonna be releasing tools again. This is a net positive for Valve, for fans, and for the industry because this'll sell a lot of Indexes and other VR headsets, opening up the market for even more VR games.

For the past 8 years I thought Valve had lost their touch but it looks like no, they've still got it.

Same with bunnyhopping, the hardcore HLDM players have chosen it as the hill to die on and keep attacking the BMS devs for not re-implementing it after Valve patched it in the engine.

Oh, she's beautiful!
I really miss living with cats. Grew up my entire life without them but I lived with a roommate who had three of them one year and it was really nice to have them around.

There's one cat I keep seeing across the street when I'm outside tossing stuff in the dumpsters or handling beer bottle returns at work but I'm always busy and usually have dirty hands so I can't go over and pet them.

Yeah, photosourcing is an invaluable resource! Anything I do that isn't done procedurally in Substance Painter is done with photosourced layers in it. Sometimes even the procedural stuff gets extra layers and detail from it.

Generally I'd recommend hand painting solid colours then grabbing some stuff either from photos you've taken or from a resource like textures.com, making them grayscale (or very desaturated, depending on the look you want) and using the overlay or multiply blend modes in your photo editor of choice, adjusting the opacity until you're satisfied with that section of material, repeating for all the different surface types on the texture. You can also do it in the opposite order, blending solid colours on top of the 'texture' layers, but I generally go for the former technique.

Add some hand-painted edge highlights (white with a low opacity and the screen blend mode is usually best I find), shadows as needed (Black with multiply, mix shadows and highlights as needed to get surface height definitions newer engines would do with a normal map or more polygons) and multiply on a baked AO (Make sure it's normalized so the non-shadowed areas are pure white) to really make it pop, and you've got yourself a nice looking diffuse texture!

It takes some practice to get good at it but with those tips in mind you should be able to get yourself making good quality textures relatively quickly.

I've always modded my Bethesda games pretty heavily after the first playthrough, but I always make sure to go with lore-friendly stuff. No tank engines in my Skyrim or modern weapons in my Fallout (Unless it's one that appeared in Fallout 1 and 2!)

Yeah, I feel like a small taste will just ruin the full meal when it's time.
I'll probably check out the earthbound chapters real quick to see if a couple outstanding bugs have been fixed yet but otherwise just keep thinking about what to do next on the map I'm working on.

I dunno, I kind of have to agree with that point. Since their goal is to have everything feel like Half-Life 2 they're spending a lot of time reinventing the wheel to replicate what Source does out of the box (down to the physics bugs in the locomotion) which is taking a lot of time away from them actually making improvements.

Boreal Alyph is on Source and while they're also in a very early stage being on Source means their time has been spent on updating the engine and making the gameplay feel better rather than doing stuff like trying to replicate HL2's (kind of dull) gunplay.You could easily make the valid argument that once the core stuff is finished Project Borealis' team will have an easier time making new content because they're not bogged down by Source's clunky pipeline, but until they're done with that there's not a whole lot they can work on gameplay-wise. Some of the stuff PB has shown off looks very promising but they're devoting far too many resources on stuff that's already been done in Source.

BOTW sequel, new Luigi's Mansion, Banjo and Kazooie are coming to Smash, a few new details about Animal Crossing, and Pokemon Sword & Shield looks good, all wrapped in a no-BS presentation...
Yeah I think Nintendo 'won' E3 this year.
...I need a Switch.

So I missed this reveal, but uh,This is something I'm very much looking forward to.

I haven't really been paying attention to E3 this year, to the point where I didn't realize it was this week. Can't think of anything I'm overly excited for this year, and I doubt we'll get any surprise announcements of anything cool.

'Blasters' of some kind, I assume, since Urby mentioned wanting to get rid of hitscan weapons so the player can dodge fire (A scientifically accurate laser would be even more of a hitscan weapon than a firearm, though that's maybe being a bit pedantic for a video game)

Depending on how many 'advancements' are being added maybe mirrors could be implemented that show a player model? Probably too much work for so little gain but I seem to recall seeing a few mods years ago that implemented realtime reflective surfaces.

Don't count this as a vote, because I participated in the Twitter poll too, but I like the Same Protagonist (Nobody) option. Having the same protagonist helps keep a connection going between the player and the character they're playing as, IMO, and I quite prefer the way, as an example, HL1 treated you over the way HL2 did. People are counting on you, some appreciate your actions, but most don't really know who you are and nobody treats you like some kind of god.

The bad omen idea is also pretty interesting, though... Perhaps you could have a deuteragonist system going where there are a couple/few player characters whose paths never directly cross but whose previous actions impact what's going on in the current episode? That could also play into the stranded/killed endings eventually... Maybe you often play as someone entirely new but occasionally end up back in the boots of someone who survived their episode(s)?

You caught me... I forgot to list inspiration, but that's in there in some respects.

I'm actually honoured that anyone would find anything to be inspiring in that old hunk of junk, so no worries there!
Of course, most of what I did USS Darkstar did first, but...

1970s, so think Alien's Nostromo

Sold.

I would like the player to be able to avoid all incoming attacks by moving around.

Sold.

At this stage I think I will be sticking with GoldSource modding.

Sol...okiller is still making that Sharplife source-port/addon that ups the limits right? I guess Goldsource could work?

now I need to finish The Core.

Please do. ^_^

My goldsource days are long done, and after Peer Review I plan on jumping ship on Source as well, to the greener pastures of Unreal where I can easily script things instead of having to struggle with C++ compilers and don't have to worry about max_map_brushsides or other limitations, but I miiiiight be convinced to come back to contribute some art or something for a project like this when the time comes. A few elements are reminiscent of some of the things I regretted not doing with Colony 42 back in the day, as well. (Also don't think I didn't notice you going back to look at that for some reason - you left a comment! :P)

I wholeheartedly endorse you finishing The Core and moving to, if not a new engine (although...) then at least having the freedom to use whatever story, setting, and mechanics you want to.

Getting away from Valve's IPs is something I still haven't quite managed to do myself...

"Compo 36: Rob a bank!"

The rest of PSR and I have been working for quite a while on a remake for Half-Life: Decay, the PS2 Co-op campaign.
As you're probably aware, Crowbar Collective has remade Half-Life with Black Mesa, and Tripmine are working on Operation Black Mesa and Guard Duty, the remakes of Opposing Force and Blue Shift. But despite many attempts by the community, there hasn't really been a long-lived Decay remake - So we decided to change this.

We're currently in a very early alpha state, and looking for more manpower to help us increase the speed at which we work, as well as the quality of some of our assets. If you're interested in becoming part of the team, you can browse currently-open jobs here.This project has been a long time coming for us, and we hope that you like what you see!

Mine fell completely by the wayside and there's no way I'd be able to finish it before the deadline, so I guess I'm out.
Everyone else's stuff is looking great so far, though!

Assuming you mean the female assassins and the male assassins are fighting each other, the reason is the faction set-up - the Black Ops fighting the standard Grunts was something that didn't get introduced until Op4, so Valve just set the female assassins to be the same faction as the hgrunts - Human Military. Op4's male assassins use their own faction that's hostile to Human Military, IIRC. I seem to recall they also changed the female assassins to that same faction in Op4 as well, which is what I would recommend doing.

If that's not the issue, it's probably still an issue with the factions, so double-check those.

I always wondered why Valve didn't release more of their prefabs, like the vehicles. There's no way they actually had every level designer make a new SUV or Tank from scratch every time they wanted to use one.

I'm not usually one for LEDs, but those are some nice colour accents when the room is dim like that.

I don't think they were ever used, no. I was mainly just making a joke because you were calling Urby a "rebel" for making geometry not directly present in the original game.

Oooh, you have a physical copy! What version number is that?

Golly gosh urby I dont recall there being square pot plants in original HL campaign you rebel

Compo 36: Literally Just Decompile a HL1 map

Getting a "Spirit Ultimate" codebase up and running sounds tempting, but coding is the one thing I can't seem to get any kind of grasp on.
I hadn't realized the core gameplay of HL had changed so drastically since launch - learn something new every day!

Actually, check that download out anyway, I just downloaded it and it looks like it has a fully functional Spirit implementation as well as the OP4 recreation source code. Will investigate further.
EDIT: Yeah, it's not entirely without bugs, and a couple of the weapon behaviors are changed (viewsway, and the game actually plays both the holster and draw animations when swapping weapons) but it seems to be exactly what you're looking for. Where was this 10 years ago when I actually did goldsource modding?

If you want to use Op4 weapons and enemies but have the HEV suit HUD, you're going to have to recode them from scratch. There have been some mods that attempted to remake all the Op4 content so mappers could use them, but I don't know if any of them are still available these days.
EDIT: I remember 2muchvideogames making a mod that brought in a bunch of Op4 content and other new stuff, if I'm remembering correctly I did a couple model hacks for it. That was years ago and it never released, but maybe he still has the code lying around?

Oh, vents, that's what I need!
...Should probably start on a layout first though... Starting very prelim work on an idea. Should probably install Sledge.

I don't have any specific ideas yet, but since we have 3 months I might be able to come up with something.
Two questions: Are we allowed to submit multiple bsp files, and will this be judged using the original models, or the HD pack? Need to know whether or not I'd be able to use beta animations that the HD pack removed.

Oh boy. That was a ride.
I have to say, this mod is the first time Half-Life has scared me since the first time I played the original a decade ago - there are a lot of tense moments in there that really got my blood pumping. Everything is fine-tuned, balance-wise - I only died a couple times, mainly due to my own stupidity, but there were a lot of encounters I came really close (and then was immediately rewarded with a healthkit or two!)

Really excellent work, definitely among the top 3 Black Mesa Incident-based mods of all time.