Forum posts

Actually yeah, now that I think about it, back in the early days, using the D3D renderer in Half-Life caused some immense input lag.

So much so that playing Sven Coop with my brother-in-law, he ragequit after dropping into a pit while trying to adjust his falling trajectory. He tried five times and overcompensated every single time because the input lag was about half a second. He was maaad.

Also, what's with using "Penguins" as a slur against Linux users?

OOOH! Ok. Glad you clarified. I thought the manufacturing of OpenGL based hardware was legit harmful to penguins...

Why are you not using hardware that supports OpenGL?

Quadmer is actually easier to say than Admer in my opinion. I have to say "Adam-er"

Motherfucker straight up ran past the door though.

This, right here, is why Fallout 4 was nothing compared to Fallout: New Vegas.

Knowing what your skills are, seeing that they're not high enough to convince a character, then choosing the option anyway just to see the reaction.Also, the mandatory low intelligence play through.

"Are you a maker of war, or peace?"
1. Pizza.
2. Warm.
3. Huh?

Congratulations to MistaX88 for being the first to get his map submitted. Just ran through it and had a blast. Well done.

I really enjoyed DOOM4. I would only play in small bursts though. Like, literally once I finished a chapter I would quit and do something else for a while.

I definitely liked it more than Doom 3. That's on my personal worst games of all time list.

Just finished DOOM (2016). I had a blast, but I immediately uninstalled because the file size is ridiculous, considering all the DLC is for the subpar multiplayer portion. I don't need it on my hard drive anymore.

TWHL POCKETS will be fully "defreemanised" before release.

Suit charge is up to the mapper really. There is no way to strip it in vanilla goldsource, so the player may well enter your map with full suit charge already.

Intercoursey

Shit yes!

Reverend
Spigotflaps
toss
gesticulating
hats
brown thing
green things
crumpet
flap
flap
trifle
defenstrated (a perfectly cromulent word)
The Walrus Massacre of '83

---

technical
discombobulater
toes
extract
replicate
oneself
expunge

---

Professor at Butt-Nugget University
seething hatred
grandfathers
reverberating
stop
big, shiny crystal
snot globules

That was very fulfilling to fill out in full... Phil

Yeah, not a smart move at all. What do people expect to come of this? I forsee tension between Valve and Laidlaw and restrictions on / removal of the public review system.

I'm planning to download Destiny 2 during the open beta this week. Thing is, it's running from today (Tues 29th) to Thursday the 31st... The middle of the week.

DUMB!

Not only have we just come out of a three day weekend here in the UK, my understanding is that there is a long weekend in the US this coming weekend as well... Why run an open beta in the middle of the week!?

So, I'll be downloading tonight, maybe playing Wednesday and Thursday if nothing else takes my fancy. My understanding is it's a game that is better with friends... but that's out the window now.

Seriously... middle of the week for an open beta?

EDIT

Ok... so I'm kind of annoyed that I really enjoyed Destiny 2's beta... The opening at least. The rest of the beta is multiplayer and none of my friends are playing it!

Huh? Why not?

And here we are. I spoke of my return to this shore. It has been a circuitous path to lands I once knew, and surprising to see how much the terrain has changed. Enough time has passed that few remember me, or what I was saying when last I spoke, or what precisely we hoped to accomplish. At this point, the resistance will have failed or succeeded, no thanks to me. Old friends have been silenced, or fallen by the wayside. I no longer know or recognize most members of the research team, though I believe the spirit of rebellion still persists. I expect you know better than I the appropriate course of action, and I leave you to it. Expect no further correspondence from me regarding these matters; this is my final epistle.

It's this paragraph that makes me think that development of the Half-Life series is perhaps being actively suppressed by Gabe and the other senior staff at Valve. I know they say that developers work on what they want and there is no hierarchy, which is a nice idea, but I think it's utter bullshit. There are definitely Project Leads that distribute work. There are people that handle the company accounts, that advise which projects prove more profitable (the likes of DOTA2 and CSGO). There has to be an individual who handles the hiring and firing of each individual working for the company, and that person will no doubt have a position of seniority, taking on people with skills that are relevant to the company's goals.

And here we are. I spoke of my return to this shore. It has been a circuitous path to lands I once knew, and surprising to see how much the terrain has changed.

I believe this is Marc saying that it has been a long time since he wrote anything for Valve, specifically for the Half-Life series, continuing on to say that the overall focus of the company as a whole has changed.

Enough time has passed that few remember me, or what I was saying when last I spoke, or what precisely we hoped to accomplish.

Marc hasn't had any creative input within Valve for a long time, possibly even years before he finally retired. This is confirmed by his next sentence, where he states it would be "no thanks to me."

At this point, the resistance will have failed or succeeded, no thanks to me.

The 'resistance' I think refers to Valve.

Old friends have been silenced, or fallen by the wayside. I no longer know or recognize most members of the research team, though I believe the spirit of rebellion still persists

Old friends being silenced or falling by the wayside? This is why I think that Valve was actively dismissing ideas or pitches regarding Episode 3. The company has changed, people have come and gone, but there are a handful of people who want to work on the kinds of games that once made Valve great.

I expect you know better than I the appropriate course of action, and I leave you to it. Expect no further correspondence from me regarding these matters; this is my final epistle

To Gabe: You've clearly made your decision about how Valve should operate from here on. Marc hasn't written anything for the company in a long time, and should they return to form and work on story driven adventures again, he wants no part of it. He is done.

Bottom line, Valve has changed significantly, and has become a company where writers are no longer important.

I'm pushing the initial deadline back. Good news for any of you who have not yet started or even if you're just struggling... such as me. I'm cheating, ok?

Updated the initial post.

On the one hand, a massive weight has been lifted.

On the other... I'd really like to play this.

I wonder if Crowbar Collective could pick this up after they release Xen.

The map itself can be as big as you like. If the player can't get up there, you get a pass.

...I have no idea what is happening.

Is this mod gonna be ld or hd

I'm going LD, but it's essentially up to the mapper for custom models and then ultimately the player for everything else.

How is everyone getting on? I've not been able to invest much time in this yet, so the deadline is very likely to get extended to include my week off in September.

I've seen a few screenshots, but only from a couple of the people who signed up? Any progress reports from anyone else?

Didn't even notice you weren't in the list SSB. You have been added

I honestly think that an official TWHL Discord would be useful for when we organise games and so on.

The downside is, it would require a dedicated moderator or team of moderators to stop it becoming a meme filled mess. Run Think Shoot Live had a discord, but it quickly went to shit without Phillip at the helm and I left because I just could not hack the number of memes.

Probably about right.

EDIT: It seems our TeamSpeak server is dead... or I just don't remember the password... Not sure why it has randomly cleared it though. Not cool

In other news, Fallout New Vegas is still kickass. Here I am posing at the Nipton massacre in NCR combat gear. HI MOM! [waves]

@Windawz: Constant Glow worked like a charm. Thanks.

Done a little bit more this weekend, but I'm still only on the basement. This is the last area before the player advances up to the next floor however.One thing I wasn't sure about. Is there a way to prevent these sprites clipping into the brushwork like that? I know I can use the 'glow' option, but that doesn't look right at all from a distance.

My workflow is usually: make sound in audacity - export - add cue points in goldwave - done. Takes about 30 seconds in goldwave.

This

Audacity makes it work, Goldwave makes it loop.

If we're talking about MODs then I'll throw mine in here as well...

THE MODS
Skywind and Skyblivion
I was a little late to the Elder Scrolls party and as such I never played Morrowind and could not get into Oblivion when I tried, likely because of how dated it looked. I know there are mods are available to improve the graphics, but I'd also get hung up on the gameplay mechanics.

Skywind and Skyblivion are going to be my way of properly getting into these older titles and I just cannot wait to sink my teeth into them. Hopefully they remain somewhat faithful to the originals, but with the gameplay improvements that came with Skyrim.

Fallout 4 New Vegas
This is little more than a blip on the radar at the minute, but if it takes off I will be obsessed! Fallout New Vegas was one of the best Fallout games of recent years (especially in terms of the RPG aspect) and to see it rebuilt in the Fallout 4 engine will be awesome! As far as I know, it's only being worked on by one guy and a couple of his friends at the moment, so I'm not going to get properly hyped until it's got a decent sized team behind it.

Oh boy, we need to stop; no more tips and tricks... They're gonna iterate the core for the 500th freakin time.

So I saw this in the TWHL POCKETS thread and it made me laugh.

Is no secret that we've returned to some of our completed maps and altered them based on things that we've learned. Of course, that's a never ending cycle.

I have had to accept that WHEN the Core does come out, there will definitely be sections that I'm not completely happy with.

Dropbox is fine...

Progress. Been using that func_detail trick a lot

Hey, you're right! That's a cool trick! Saves carving up the wall or adding clip brushes around signs.

I wonder if there is any negative impact... I can't imagine so.

Looking good

I think the character's height is generally fine, but the torso/leg ratio is off. Lengthen the legs, squash the torso.

Well, tis the weekend Jessicat! I say we get on that shit. Hell, if anyone else is up for a third person squad game, I'm still up for that too. Hit me up on Steam later (GMT hours).

Yeah, we do the same with TeamSpeak. There's a much greater tactical advantage to communicating in that game. We're all constantly calling targets and compass directions like actors in an E3 stage demo.

Update: PUBG First Person - First impressions!
Played a SOLO FPP today. I'm not going to lie. There was a lot of pooing in trousers. It was bloody awful. It was terrifying. It was disorienting.

...and I loved it!!

Yeah, that's a missing face. At least I know what you're talking about now.

I just prefer to not play with randoms

Yup, that's what I found too.

I've been meaning to check those out, so yes, I'll take a look.

And yeah, I think I'd prefer the RMF/JMF files so that I can make adjustments to the level changes / effects in the airlock as and when needed.

I would very much like to get my hands on a Switch at some point in the near future. I think it would be a good choice for Ivory's first games console.

Mount and Blade seems to pop up daily on ModDB and it's getting to the point that I can't keep ignoring it. I will likely see what M&B2 is going to offer later on, and most likely add it to my list.

I believe there are plans to add a warfare mode featuring two teams of fifty. That would make things easier and quite fun in a big organised squad. Saying that, a possible mode of six player squads would be ideal. I'm so God damn popular that four players simply isn't enough!

I've not played in a few weeks now, but I very much like the idea of the first person servers coming later this week. Shame it's only Solo and Duo modes, but I can accept that they need to work a few more things out first.

I've played mostly Solo, which is terrifying, or Squad, which is just crazy fun. I also played a couple of Duo games with Archie, but once your friend is down you suddenly find yourself in a Solo game... A very very short Solo game

But why are you merging all the custom textures into a single wad? It seems like unnecessary work - people can just embed their custom textures - that way you don't have to worry about renaming textures or merging wad files.

As with TWHL Tower, I would need to compile the maps on my end in order to link up the level changes, so I would need the custom textures. I then merge them into one wad file to keep things tidy. I guess I could compile the maps with the textures embedded however, but I would still need the custom wads people are using.

Using a sub directory like that is fine. That's what I'm doing.

We play the shit out of some PUBG

I chop and change with the way I develop a map. Sometimes I find it easier to have a specific idea in my head and I build the whole area, with textures and all. The opening area to my map is the bathroom area. There's no combat and I knew what the room was going to be, so I've made the whole thing.

Everything beyond the door however is dev textured, but with an idea of what the rooms are going to be.

We've got 'Now Gaming' and even a 'Just Finished Gaming' thread, but what about upcoming titles? What upcoming games are you excited about and why? My current list:

THE AAA
Far Cry 5
As generic as the games can be, Far Cry 3 and 4 were my go to stupid action game in their respective release years. Far Cry 5 offers character customisation and will apparently have a strong coop focus. Win win on both points.

Destiny 2 (PC)
Interesting that they are bringing this to PC after the console exclusive originally. I'm not particularly looking forward to this one as I know very little about the whole thing. However, with an upcoming open beta, I am definitely going to try it out and see how I feel afterwards.

THE INDY
Pillars of Eternity 2
Though I never had the money to back their crowdfunding campaign, after falling in love with the classic RPG style of the original, as well as Tyranny, the game developed with the earnings from PoE, PoE2 seems to just pile on more of the RPG stuff that I love about the original. Meaningful choices, branching story missions and plenty of customisation, all set in a world that's genuinely interesting to explore.

I do secretly wish Obsidian would just make another Fallout game, but Bethesda isn't likely to allow it.

Sui Generis
Probably even more obscure this one. An open world isometric RPG with physics driven content and permadeath. I bought the tech demo they released 'Exanima,' which gives you a singleplayer dungeon crawl mode, and a career Arena mode which lets you build up a set of champions to fight in the arena. These champions can die from a single fatal blow, which is always a real punch to the gut when you've invested hours into levelling one guy.

The developers have gone quiet since February however, with no more updates to Examina since. This either means they're simply knuckling down to get the main game Sui Generis done, or... They may have gone under.

I spend a large portion of my time last night recycling textures from past doomed projects and low res Core stuff that is now out of date. Got a lot to work with now and I've pretty much settled on an aesthetic. I will block out the layout and gameplay over the next few days.