Forum posts

I: Ichthyosaur

http://www.twhl.co.za/tutorial.php?id=29

Edit: Does anyone here know why those stupid ">" symbols pop up underneath TWHL links?

No matter whether you're using the textures in it or not, if it's loaded into Hammer when you compile, it's going to ask the map for it when it runs. The easiest solution to this is just to -wadinclude that WAD, and since no textures have been used from it, none will be included.

MEGASIGH

Guys, this is incredibly old news. Are you telling me that nobody here knew about this?

I've been thinking of implementing them into my FUBAR mod, since they have the same AI as grunts... it could make an interesting chapter.

So wait, this is from an OLD version of German Half-Life? Later on they changed it to humans? Typical censorship.

No, they're still around. And yeah, they speak like robots.

Somebody's door is sideways...

Oh, right, you could just use a monster_generic entity then... or else DoD has its own model entity, I don't know. It is based on Spirit, so it's probably more advanced than Half-Life.

Right-o, epic thread closed then?

Hey, it was intentional.

hellfiredod: Can you elaborate a bit? Are you saying you want to be abe to view models in the 3D view in Hammer, or what?

HEY I SAW IT FIRST!!

It's not always crucial to design the map around the lighting, but it can help a lot. You might just want to keep things like the angle of the light in mind while making the brushwork.

Hi, and... what?

lolwut? Did you entirely miss the point of it?

Keep in mind that the instructions I gave aren't the end-all solution to this problem, but it helps considerably to do this. You also might want to try the "-cliptype precise" parameter for CSG, but I heard that it can deform brushes, and it's messed up my lighting in the past. Bevel has always seemed much more precise a technique to me, yet it never left beta testing before the final version of ZHLT was released.

P.S.
It's also the same reason that you get stuck on round corners.

u see this method for the river i used witch ppl said was 'unusual'
lets me bend the triangles as high/low i want :P.

Okay, I just had to call you out on this. Your method isn't unusual at all - it's the same way everyone else makes terrain for Half-Life. It's quite ordinary, actually.

Anyway, I have a suggestion that would probably improve the terrain a whole lot, and reduce the chance of getting any collision problems (they're not really errors BTW, and they don't show up in the compile process. It'll be more like a random invisible wall that shows up.) First, select every single one of the brushes used for the terrain, then open the texture application tool. hold control and deselect all the top faces of the terrain. This way, all the unseen faces are now selected. Now, go and choose the BEVEL texture (you'll have this if you have zhlt.wad loaded) and apply it. This will cover all the unseen faces of the terrain with the texture.

The BEVEL texture, it's quite a handy little thing, especially for terrain. Most of the problems I was talking about earlier stem from little clipping errors. Even though faces that are hidden against brushes are culled out during the compile process, it seems that CSG still counts them, and thus, the clipping for those faces protrude upward a tiny bit, and you end up running into them. You'll notice what I'm talking about in any map where you've done something similar to this:This is a little ramp, as you can clearly see. At the point where the angled brush ends, and new brush begins, there's two vertical faces. These won't be rendered at all, but if you compiled this map and ran up the ramp, you would notice a very subtle jolt as your character jumped up over a tiny protruding wall of sorts. The BEVEL texture takes care of this problem, because it basically tells HLCSG that there is no face there, and thus there is no clipping plane generated for it.

Well, that was more long winded than it needed to be, but you get my point now. Try using this technique, and you'll see how smooth everything is. It actually feels strange how you glide over stuff, because most people are so used to the jerky way you normally hop over ridges.

Zen? ZEN? HAHAHAHAHA! You idiot!

zdanman, your logic here is seriously flawed. Why would you decompile a map and delete everything in it? It's just a .map that you'll recompile anyway, there's no point in not starting from scratch. Maybe in some other games it works the way you described, but not in the GoldSrc engine. You can't just "edit" a map, so to speak. You'd have to decompile it (which totally messes the map up BTW) change whatever you wanted, and then recompile it... but it's not going to be the same map.

Or you could use Winamp, since it supports external devices like Mp3 players now.

Nobody except Dave would even think of buying a Vista computer without 2GB of RAM. You'd be crazy to settle for anything less.

I could compile too if you want. It would take about five or ten minutes for a compile on full settings with my computer, so you could just MSN or AIM me whenever you need.

I really think you should consider toning down that terrain. It just doesn't need to be that detailed, and it's probably gonna come up with a ton of collision and problems when it's done, right along with choppy lighting that cuts off along the edges of the brush - but that's just speculation. I only say those things because they've always been a problem for me, but then again you use a slightly different technique than I, with the uniform triangles.

Who are these purists? Because I think that's a load of crap. The story for both of the expansions was written by Marc Laidlaw, just like the original was, and I don't think he would have just added in a whole other race "because he could".

@Rimrook: It's already a mod, you know?

E: Enough of this lame thread.

Nice ones ghetto! Teach me how to make that cool terrain!

He doesn't need to, TWHL already has a tutorial on it...

I'm kinda surprised at people's reactions to the terrain. Sure, it's nice and all, but it's pretty damn hard to screw up with the kind of layout he's got there. It's no big feat. I'm sure most people on TWHL have seen way better than this before, why the big positive reaction?

alexb, if that's as big as I think it is, he's going to want to have the dirt textures stretched like that. It's already way too detailed for such a thing, but to then scale the textures down, that's just irresponsible.

Ghetto: How about you just make some custom textures for it yourself and put together a simple brush based one?

I could detail every mistake, but "cinda" has been sticking out for a while now, and it's bugging me.

P.S.

Refraining from calling your own map cool so much might make you sound less boastful... I doubt that you're trying to be, but that's how it comes off as.

Looking good, although I wish you had some bigger screens to link to... I don't really get much out of the ones right now. You sure have improved quickly, but don't let that terrain get out of hand, or your r_speeds will as well. is the riverbed going to have water in it? If so, there's not much point in making it extremely detailed.

One little nitpick though: If nothing else, please start saying "kinda" instead of "cinda".

So the Unreal screens are actually unreal? How incredibly ironic.

Yeah, that's kinda what I thought. Great minds think alike I guess.

Strideh might be on to something here...

Learn? What's this thing you speak of?

... !?!?!!?

You forgot about the AIM icon... people who use that program are obviously idiots.

EDIT: And the little sticky thing with the words "lol" on it!!!

So then it isn't good.

[quote]Ant, what do you do when you want to:

• Play Half-Life and other games?
• Build your own computer/ buy one at a reasonable price?
• Change the look of the GUI?
• Install 99% of software on the market?
• Upgrade?
• Right-click?[/quote]

I dislike Macs myself, but I have to say that they can do everything on that list except points two and four.

Caboose: Not only that, she fails for using IE... but what girl doesn't?

True... but it's almost all he ever talks about.

then why are we talking about a new comp then?

We aren't.

No, it uses its own DLL actually.

are there any SP, player made mods like opposing force? (where you play as a grunt).

Yes.

P.S.

Why are you so obsessed with Opposing Force?

I did understand the Calvin and Hobbs reference, actually...

Since you aren't in a position of power, I don't think you should be trying to make these kinds of decisions on your own. I don't believe we've ever been told what a competition will be before it's released, so stop trying to get your way. If you want, you could try and get people to vote on this, but not everyone thinks your idea is as great as you do.

If you're this intent on it, you should just start a minicompo. If as many people are interested as you believe, you'll know. Otherwise, you'll know you were wrong.

The point is, there's more people than you out there, and we all have our opinions too. Hope this post didn't sound too harsh.

If all else fails, link to the Wiki page, so you don't seem so lazy to others. You might have thought to do this on the first post, you know.

Oh, good explanation. Hell, I know the whole friggin' game now. :

Troll harder.

I've had this happen before I think, but it's only in really complex maps where there's a lot of detailed objects visible at once. let me guess, all the offending objects are brush based entities?

This same thing happens on some brushes that have strange angles (there's several rocks in single player Half-Life that do this), but I don't think this is the problem you're having. It's only happened to me when I'm using a lot of complex triangle based terrain.

P.S.

You said something about coding... have you done any? I suppose this might affect it somehow, but I'm not sure.

lolwut

Yeah, I probably should have asked that too.

FileFront is monumentally slow for anyone outside the US, which is why it's lovely for me.

Tetsu0, I thought you were the one who couldn't get the 3D textured view in Hammer 3.5 to work, and wanted to switch back because it didn't have sufficiant OpenGL support?

Also, it should be noted that everything in any retail OS was actualy first in a Linux distro before it was released, Microsoft isn't the only company that steals ideas and such.

Fixed

You do indeed, but it doesn't seem like you've been too active here until recently, amirite?

You're welcome.

You can read about what the -sparse command does here.