Forum posts

Make a model in 3D milkshape - that really helped me learn how to use the VM tool really nice. It's kind of like "conditioning" yourself.

A crowbar to the head always helped me deal with the scientists.

I think we (America) need to get our fingers out of everyone elses' business. It is up to the people being ruled to overthrow their own government, otherwise they can just deal.

Invalid brushes I take it? Basically when working with a brush, if there is any point you can draw a line through it and you hit more than 2 sides, you'll get an error. Break your geometry up a little more with the clipping tool.

I had the same problem after I reloaded WinXP on my PC. But, it fixed itself the next day....

Isn't it funny how a simple "do it over" fixes everything with windows?

I see no maps in your profile.

Does your ambient_generic have the [ ] Start Silent box ticked? I think this may clear it up - when the map loads I bet your sound plays once outside of your hearing radius, so when you die and the map loads up again, you hear the sound again, but this time you are within the hearing radius.

Hey Hunter - where are the other 2 guys who are working on this? I have only heard from you, MuzzleFlash, and myself.

Thanks MuzzleFlash, I'll make sure to do that.

Okay, I have my beginning transition figured out. Whoever works on Chapter 2 will have to please try and make it match, or at least make sense. Here goes:

(end of chapter 2)

Gordon (and probably Barney) will have to end by boarding a cargo truck that is enroute (on the way) to the military lab. Why a cargo truck? Well, what's one thing that is essential to every lab? A shipping/recieving area where materials are shipped in and out. Gordon and Barney will need to find a way to sneak aboard this truck.

(start chapter 3)

My map will fade in to Gordon (and probably Barney) in the back of this cargo truck (func_train), making its way down a series of tunnels and carved underground rock. I'm busy building these tunnels right now to look like they were actually carved, but will have some structural support and tunnels visible.

Gordon will ride this for maybe 45 seconds - 2 minutes total, where he will have a few options of leaving:

(1) You ride the truck all the way into some sort of station, where you will be able to obtain ammo on exit, and may possibly have Grunts to deal with.
(for those who like to blast their way through)

(2) You can jump out the back early, and try to sneak your way in from an earlier point.
(for those who like mild fighting, with some sneaking)

(3) There is a way to exit the truck through the bottom inside the canopy area, where resourceful players will notice a manhole exit when the truck stops at the security checkpoint. It will lead to a small section of sewers, will players will be able to then climb up into the actual level, totally unnoticed.
(for those who like complete stealth, with as little attention to themselves as possible)

I'd just like to point out that when working on your levels, make sure to talk to those with chapters preceding and following yours - make sure your transitions match up!

What do you guys think? I have an excellent cargo truck prefab I got off the snarkpit (it was exactly what I was looking for) and the guy says anyone can use it as long as they credit him. My first order is to get this section of the map running smoothly. I have part of a cliff wall completed, with the structural support to come next. My plan is to have a few different stretches of tunnel, and then connect them together sort of like legos.

I think I will, but isn't a lot of information lost after decompilation? I know there's a huge loss in precision after decompiling code.....

Actually, you can just buy a small USB cable (for about $2) and wire it up yourself. I did it to my XBox controller so I could play Half-Life 2 with it, but I don't recommend it (not nearly as easy to control).

It was as easy as matching the same colors. Or if that doesn't work, plug it in normally and check the voltage of each one with a potentiometer.

3.5K wpoly.....whoa. Will it be playable? Without hindering slowdown?

momentary_rot_button isn't going to do what I want it to, I think. Does anyone know how they did that microwave thing in the beginning of Half-Life?

Decals, good idea. I was originally thinking of toggling (or scrolling?) textures that I could activate.

As for the buttons, I was going to try using momentary_rot_button somehow. I'm not sure what they used in Half-Life, but remember in the beginning when you could turn the power up on the microwave and explode that guy's lunch? Something like that, but have it reset after a few seconds.

Heh, maybe it's just on my machine, but the grunts shoot the floor when I push the button.

Agreed with the textures. Nice work though, with some fine tuning it will be quite the machine.

I really want to have a custom wad!!!! While sitting in Physics class today, I came up with pretty cool idea for a mini-puzzle. I want to add a machine that generates sound waves, and increases/decreases the pitch as the player pushes buttons on the console. Maybe I'll have it set up where you can define different decibel's (3 buttons, each with varying degrees of "on"), and when the player hits the right frequency, the windows in the room toggle a "cracked" texture, maybe I'll have a few in the cycle that shows the cracks spider webbing throughout the pane, and then finally shatters.

Maybe I'll make it so that's the only way to bust through some glass to advance through that section of the map. Whatcha think?

That's hot. I will be all over Spirit, but I want to get more experience mapping first. I understand about 90% of the entities and how they are used, but I just haven't used anymore than 40% of them yet.

I don't want to get ahead of myself. I have zero maps I've released, I want to get some tangible work done.

Are you using a monster_generic? I remember reading that gun models won't show up on those.

So the entity system is different in Spirit? Is it recognizable if you're comfortable with the normal HL entity system?

Sweet, we have a little bit of coding talent in the group. I personally know C++ moderately well - got up to Data Structures II (about as far as searching/sorting algorithms, and the STL that C++ has) so I could do some minor coding here and there as well. I'm familiar with pointers, dynamic memory allocation (including dynamic 3D arrays), almost all the main control structures, a few of the cool data structures like stacks, BSP trees, queues, etc etc, and operator overloading.

I just found a tutorial about the skill.cfg file, so I can change monster health/strength there - which is exactly what I wanted so I could have Barney/Otis/whoever tag along for good portions of the map, and not die within 2 mins. That was the main reason I wanted to use Spirit, but now that I see there are other ways - I'm completely OK with normal HL.

Oh yeah, just a side note. I'm learning Java this semester, and by the end I should be able to come up with some pretty cool applets for menus and whatnot - I'll see what I can do! If we want a snazzy website of our own, that is.

Cool with me.

Why am I the only member of that board still? I don't know whether to post my ideas here, or on the board. I have a few ideas cooking for the chapter I want to work on, and I always like input.

It sounds like you are mistaking the logic of how NPC's open doors. The door itself will only be opened by a trigger of some kind (probably a multimanager). What you will need to do is place another trigger that the player will activate (hitting a button, walking within a certain proximity of the door, it's up to you), which then calls your multimanager which plays the scripted sequence of the barney walking up to the retinal scanner, plays the desired animation, which then in turn triggers the door.

Ah I see. I was under the impression it was the same, but with some additional features added.

You might have more luck in the Maps 'n Mods section.

Yeah, silly me - NightWatch. No Spirit? Any particular reason why? I haven't mapped with it yet, but it looks really cool.

Heck yeah! This is going to be so...funnnnn.

Well after spending 2 hours finding decent data recovery software, I spent another 8 hours retrieving my music and reorganizing it - all my old Half-Life maps are GONE though. I'm not spending $200 on software that will actually extract my data for me - I can only open it with what I have. So I'm going through all my pictures, music, etc, opening it in Media Player, Photoshop, etc and resaving it on my secondary hard drive. Man, so slow - but things have never been so organized!

Great thing is, I just started school again, and that means fat financial aid check. Seems there was a mistake with money last semester, so I have an extra $5000 laying around for ... drum roll ... A SHINY NEW TOP OF THE LINE COMPUTA!!!

Shopping ThinkEgg and TigerDirect now, piecing it together. My old PC will be up and running in a few days, I've already thought of a few ideas for my portion.

I vote we use Spirit for this, so that way some of the features we want to include will be a little bit easier, and I want to be able to add Barney as a sidekick to tag along and help in a few of these chapters.

Glad to have ya' aboard MuzzleFlash. I was checking out some of the level designs for Nightshift (that HL1 mod that's been in development for....ever) and holy crap. That's where I'm going to aim level of quality in my mapping.

Well I have a few ideas for my portion, I'm going to start writing down ideas and get a rough draft made - I'll post them as soon as they are completed.

My room mate accidentally departitioned my hard drive thinking it was my secondary, so it will take me awhile to get my system reloaded and back up and running how I like it.

Please join, as long as a few of us are determined, we can make something pretty cool.

@mulleboy - Why? Leave us some constructive criticism.

Wow, hit by a car. That sucks.

Wow, I just downloaded Spirit, and I only have one thing to say:

Sex-eh!!

Thanks habboi, I can't wait to get started. I realize 99% of these mods never even get started/finished, and I hope this isn't one of them. I am ready to start brainstorming!

Saco: Heh yeah, that's where I noticed the "life" readout, and when me and my roommate were playing through the single player story, I noticed all the barneys and scientists only had about 40 - 50 life. Not enough for a formidable sidekick.

Ministeve: Thank you! I've heard much about Spirit of Half-Life. I guess it's time I check it out.

Hmmm. It's probably possible in the code, now that the SDK is released - I googled it a few times, but I couldn't get the hits I wanted. My google skills are not leet.

It's not going to be throughout the whole mod, just a certain chapter - I was hoping to give him something like 700 health so he'll at least last a good chunk of the chapter, unless you are very, very stupid.

Can anyone point me in a direction? I checked wavelength, but all the sites nowadays seems to be very HL2 oriented.

Can you increase (or decrease) the life of monsters? I want a barney sidekick who doesn't die easily.

Heh, I'll take that as a compliment.

THIS TIME.

We will see how my first collaboration works out - I'm giving Half Life: Hostage Situation a go! :thumbs up:

This is great, I am very excited. I'm all registered - and I think Chapter 3 sounds like "me".

Tell you what, just so I don't ruin your SP mod - I will be as involved as I can, but if my mapping skills aren't up to the standard you'd like, feel free to remove me from the team. I don't have any big projects done, lately I've been searching for that "cool idea".

When you say ideas, do you mean as to gameplay, level layouts, puzzles, etc etd?

May I offer my services? I am not the most experienced mapper, but I am anal when it comes to details, layout, and flow.

I would love to start working with other people, but I'm in the same boat as kol - no HL2 mapping. My PC can't handle it.

I think I have to modify my idea, rather than having individual lights light up each small section, I'm grouping the lights into each room / hallway.

The logic behind the lights is that there's pressure sensors in the floors so only an area with people in it are on. But as I was thinking, if I were to design something like this (in real life), I wouldn't divide the system up into each light - I would group them into main areas, such as a stretch of hallway, or an entire room. (Like I said, I go for realism.)

Well thanks for the suggestions. I'm downloading Poke646 (this is the first I've heard of it) just to see what you are talking about kol, and I'm going to keep trying to get this to work.

Heh, what's funny is that site is listed in his errors. It's right here, after the bit about if anything is clipping the hulls:

"You can also look at http://www.slackiller.com/tommy14/errors
.htm to see a more comprehensive listing"

Hmmm, ok I understand why I can't do it. Perhaps I don't quite grasp how "light" works in maps. It's just an illusion, right? If something is dark, then the textures in the area are darkened. So I could just create some toggling textures (like how switches toggle, the ones with the ones that start with +) that cycle?

I'm not so sure how to do that, or how I would create shadows and whatnot so that things look realistic. That's one thing I always go for when mapping - things must make sense, and look real.

Maybe I didn't explain what I'm trying to do well enough.

You have a hallway, we'll divide the hallway into sections - A,B,C,D.

The hallway is straight. Kind of looks like this:

| | --> section A
| | --> section B
| | --> section C
| | --> section D

When player is in section A, only the light in section A is lit up, all the rest are dark. When player advances into section B, the lights in section A turn off and only the light in section B turns on. Same goes for C and D.

1. "Fatal: Entity xxx, Brush xxx, Side x: has a coplanar plane at (xxxx,xxxx,xxxx)"

Due to vertex manipulation- 3 or more vertices (points) lying on the same vertex (line), when the limit is 2.
?Check your map for problems, and fix all instances of 'texture axis perpendicular to face' errors
?Go to the relevant brush/entity number (CTRL+SHIFT+G) and use the clip tool on it

"Fatal: Entity xx, Brush xxx: outside world(+/-4096): (xxxx,xxxx,xxxx)-(xxxx,xxxx,xxxx)"
You may have an invalid brush, see if you get a max_leaf_faceserror message. Values near +/-4000 mean that you have brushes that are extending off the edge of the editable region
?Make sure that all solids are within the confines of the editable region. If you can't see any doing this, save as . MAP and open Values near +/-9000 indicate an invalid brush which must be fixed:
?Check for errors and fix any illegal solids.
?Export your map to MAP format, close the map, and open the MAP. Delete any solids that extend across the map and off the editable region. Save as RMF and recompile

(taken from the Snark Pit)

1. "Fatal: Entity xxx, Brush xxx, Side x: has a coplanar plane at (xxxx,xxxx,xxxx)"

Due to vertex manipulation- 3 or more vertices (points) lying on the same vertex (line), when the limit is 2.
?Check your map for problems, and fix all instances of 'texture axis perpendicular to face' errors
?Go to the relevant brush/entity number (CTRL+SHIFT+G) and use the clip tool on it

"Fatal: Entity xx, Brush xxx: outside world(+/-4096): (xxxx,xxxx,xxxx)-(xxxx,xxxx,xxxx)"
You may have an invalid brush, see if you get a max_leaf_faceserror message. Values near +/-4000 mean that you have brushes that are extending off the edge of the editable region
?Make sure that all solids are within the confines of the editable region. If you can't see any doing this, save as . MAP and open Values near +/-9000 indicate an invalid brush which must be fixed:
?Check for errors and fix any illegal solids.
?Export your map to MAP format, close the map, and open the MAP. Delete any solids that extend across the map and off the editable region. Save as RMF and recompile

(taken from the Snark Pit)

(taken from an error reference at the Snark Pit)

WARNING: Too many light styles on a face (X,X,X)
As the error suggests, there are either too many named lights lighting an area, or too many different light appearance types. Reduce the complexity of your lighting in the area of the co-ordinates given.

Hey, I'm trying to make a hallway where the lights turn on when you get inside a certain proximity, and turn off when you leave the area - kind of like "smart lights" that only turn on when you are near them.

Problem is, the method I'm using isn't working. Apparently, you can only have 4-5 named lights on the same brush, and I get some crazy errors. I have triggers that turn lights on when you come near, and turn them off when you leave the radius, but I have to name all my lights, and I want more than 3 lights.

Is there anyway to turn lighted textures on and off other than using a wall toggle? I don't want the lighted wall to disappear, that just doesn't make sense. Any ideas?