Forum posts

If it was possible at all, the console would have to be modded. I don't think that it's possible even then, though.

Because Twister is primarily a displacement generator, it makes more sense when used that way. The power of the displacement is the number of triangles in the displacement.

tawnos, the game comes out in october, and they say that you're guaranteed to play the beta before it comes out, if you register by that date in september.

I just realised - can someone using a language that uses commas instead of decimal points test twister?

I see. Well if the beta period has started, it'll only be a matter of time before I get an invite.

/me waits

i have a beta key and have registered it, but i have recieved no notification. maybe it's because i'm from australia

great, potatis. when i get around to making a wiki, make sure you edit them in!

Here's a new screenshot of features to come:The random heightmap does exactly what it says: generates a random heightmap image based on the variables in the boxes.

The stats box will have information on brush and side counts for goldsource and brushwork mode, and stuff like triangle width and some other junk.

The convert tab on the bottom left will let you import a VMF file and convert every displacement in it to brushwork, and then save as a new file.

Soon you will also be able to embed your generated displacement directly into a VMF, so you don't even have to open the new map and copy/paste into the map you are working on.

well at least two of those tutorials have images
has anyone else got any saved verc tutorials with images?
don't post them if the images are missing, obviously.

Okay, the VERC revival is happening. I've grabbed all the articles from VERC via the wayback machine and imported them into a temporary database. You can view them all at http://twhl.co.za/articulator.php.

The next step is to make an editing system much like the wiki so people can edit it so that it'll work with TWHL's tutorial system. I'll start doing that soon. For now, if you want to start early, all the images have to be redone, so you can start remaking them if you want.

okay, i'll put null onto the bottoms of the brushes.

HLG: i'll look into texture alignment later. spheres are only for source because of the way that they are done, it is incompatible with brushwork methods. if you want a sphere you can combine two domes.

that would be a better idea. get a portable hard drive to transport your files and junk.

i know that you can make a computer like mine that will play everything, for under $1000. most decent gaming laptops cost at least $2.5k.

i recommend:
motherboard < $100
dual core AMD or cheap intel CPU (don't spend over $150, it's seriously unnecessary)
graphics 8800GT
ram 2GB DDR2 800
HDD 200GB
case, power supply, etc blah blah

if you shop around you should be able to make something like this yourself for under US$800 (i'm in australia and it'd cost me around AU$900, but our tech is overpriced)
EDIT: i just repriced that and it was under AU$800. also, just so you know, this rig can handle crysis on high settings at 1680x1050. monitor is not included in the price.

don't buy premade desktops, they are a waste of money. building it yourself is really easy and you save a bunch of cash.

getting a laptop for gaming is a stupid thing to do. you can't upgrade it, it costs three times as much as the equivalent desktop, you don't get any options in terms of hardware customisation, and most of the time the drives aren't up to speed, and you have a very small hard disk. unless you want to pay five times as much as the equivalent desktop.

laptops are for work. desktops are for gaming. (and work)

oops. I'll fix it next release. Not like it's important

Shutup >:(

After a year with no updates at all, I decided to redo Twister completely from scratch. Now it's smaller, faster, and better!

Better how?

• Spherical displacements! (because I could!)
• Brushwork displacements! (so you can make them into entities!)
• Goldsource displacements! (that's right!)

Note that you can't make spheres in brushwork or goldsource modes.

Download here! Don't use the autoupdate feature in previous versions, as a bug will make it download the wrong thing. Get it here.

Comments please! Read the bold below.

There will never be a "3D preview" or any kind of other preview in Twister. Ever. The 2D preview in the last version was dumb and pointless. If you want to preview something generated in Twister, download Nem's Crafty, which is a BSP, VMF, MAP, etc viewer. It shows the textured displacement (or brushwork) in 3D.

Next up on the to-do list is: import a displacement .VMF file and convert it to brushwork or goldsource!

HDD:- 7200RPM
Motherboard:- Maximum US$100, only one PCI express slot for graphics is needed.
RAM:- DDR2 800 mhz
Graphics:- NVIDIA 8800GT OR 9800GTX. Anything higher is not worth it. Buy an AMD video card and you will regret it.

ASUS is probably the most popular video card manufacturer.

but batman has no super powers like laser eyes or red underpants.

Don't double post. If you made the last post in a thread, click the edit button above your avatar to edit it. Editing also bumps the thread, so there's never any excuse to double post.

Replace double with quadruple. For shame, pepper.

This has been around since 2003 at least. And apparently it's still as bad as it was back then too.

Yeah, I've been tracking this game since it was announced a few weeks back. Looks amazingly refreshing.

Projects? yes.
Projects that I have abandoned? yes.
Cool projects that I have abandoned? no.
There's a reason that I abandoned them
The others are just on hiatus or something.

Read your last post again, specifically just after the "Edit3" line. Do you have the version numbers mixed up?

a toolkit is a great idea, i could pitch in some of my work too. i have a twister update coming and another tool in the works.

buy it.

yeah, it helps if your copy is not pirated.

People make typos on the internet?! OMG NO WAY. I never knew.
Thanks for pointing out that vital piece of information.

for a good reason - it sucks.

I did try to tell you to get Nvidia.

rim: that's only supposed to be seen from the fuzzy cameras in ep2

also i cheated at the end of HL1.

fixed. just missed some single quotes in my SQL query.

Ant if you agree with penguinboy's judgement, do you think my entry was crap too?

Can you point out where I said that your entry was crap?

It had some nice brushwork, but it was not very enjoyable from a gameplay perspective. You can spend weeks making a map that looks good and it can still be bad if you don't focus on gameplay. A terrible-looking map can still be good if it is fun to play. Gameplay is much more important than graphics.

In your entry, there are several gameplay problems. The ship is too hard to enter, it took me about ten minutes to get in. The ship ride is much too long, it is boring and I thought that was the end of the entry for a while. Then the crashed ship is too hard to exit. If you're going to make a hard-to-get-out-of hole, don't put the player in toxic water that is slowly killing them.

When I died, the complete lack of autosave points meant that I was taken all the way back to my last Half-Life autosave, which would mean that I would have to play from the start again. Since, by then, I was frustrated and was not having any fun at all, I closed the game because it was obvious that the gameplay was not up to scratch.

Before you go on about the winning entry having no gameplay, it got first because it is not about gameplay at all. But, since your map is not only eye-candy, but gameplay too, that is included in the judgement.

Remember that the competition isn't just about making the entry look exactly like the game. It's about re-tailoring the level to suit the engine you are working with. I don't think I've played the metroid game you remade, because I've only played Prime for the Gamecube, but I'm sure that it looks similar to what it's meant to be.

I acknowledge the fact that you worked hard on getting the brushwork right, but you can't expect that none of the other entrants didn't work hard too. Deathan's entry is outstanding, I've said that before - and Tetsu0's entry shows probably the most effort of all the entries simply because of scale and creativity in improvisation. Captain terror's brush Starcraft models and use of sounds and the little extras show great skill and dedication. If there was a fourth place, your entry would have definitely got it for the good brushwork, but there are only three places for each engine.

well i can't do two official competitions at the same time, so i think that the next one will be a source compo and the one after will be goldsource. joint competitions are kinda unfair to the judges and entrants.

i highly doubt that 70% of active twhl members don't have portal.

i've already said that the next compo will be for portal.

zeeba you are describing Deathan's map, which has some of the best lighting and ambience I've seen in goldsource. It was by far the best map entered. TheGrimReafer's map was pong, which has some of the best entity work I've ever encountered upon.

you do that.

haha, harsh. I don't need to be "good at mapping" to judge the compo. I know what to judge, and I know what I'm judging.

You can't expect to get a place just because you entered a map. If your entry was for source you probably would have got 3rd.

me. it's a portal map compo!

depends on what you want to do. a mod can range from a map pack to a total conversion. if you just want to add maps, you can do it yourself. if you want to add weapons, you'll need a modeller and a coder (or at least someone to add weapons). if you want to make a total conversion (example: counterstrike), you'll need experienced modellers and a very good programmer, at least.

i'm actually typing up the results right this very second.

R_speeds topped at 1338

too high!

turn settings down, delete client registry.blob, run memtest, get a video card, delete local files and redownload the game, reinstall steam, format your computer, buy a new computer.

Words cannot express how incredibly old this is.

who's getting angry? i was just stating the facts, not screaming swears like a rampant fanboy.

rebuttals to your counterarguments (which really stink, they really just deny the facts)

1. You have a slow computer.
No. no, i don't. in fact, i can almost guarantee that it's much better than yours.

2. Get new hardware.
why should people ditch their perfectly functional hardware because of a new operating system? that should INCREASE compability, not decrease it.

3. old games can be played but I'm not so sure about really old games.
see above. "old games" and "really old games". great. hammer's 3d view might not be a game, but it's a perfect example of why some older games will break in vista.

4. I take it that you didn't actualy use Vista if you didn't know how to turn that off.
the fact that it's there in the first place is universally annoying. what about on computers with limited access? you can't turn it off then. even then the option is probably buried in some obscure place. it should be a toggable option when you install.

5. So what?
do you even know what DRM is?

you'll find that people don't have vista because they've tried it and know it's crap, not because "they can't afford it". what a stupid thing to say. personally i have tried vista and i have a legitimate copy of it, and from testing it, i personally have come to the following conclusions:

1. it's slow
2. it has driver incompatibilities and screws up a lot of older hardware
3. the openGL support is balls. many older games can't be played. (neither can hammer)
4. ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO OPEN THE CONTROL PANEL? ARE YOU REALLY REALLY SURE? REALLY? PLEASE CONFIRM YOU ARE NOT AN INTRUDER BY PRESSING YOUR FACE AGAINST THE SCREEN.
5. it's full of DRM

these are not the only reasons, but they are a few i can think of off the top of my head. if you want to know more reasons, look it up.

DirectX 10 is not a reason to use vista, before someone says it. dx10 is BS in it's entirety. the differences are minute and the performance cost is significant. and yes, i have tested DX10 as well.

It's no so much as "XP fanboy". the real reason for the XP support is because vista is so universally terrible. if you don't understand that then you are an idiot.

While there may not be any noticeable speed difference between Firefox and IE6, you fail to understand the problems that it has with rendering websites. IE fails to adhere to the W3C standards and is therefore ruining the internet. look on most modern websites and you'll see conditional comments with a specific stylesheet only for IE, because the fixes are needed to make IE behave like a proper browser.

oh, that is a common problem with hammer. just go to
view > go to co-ordinates
(i think it's the view menu)
and enter in "0 0 0" without quotes.

if you're still having performance issues, it's probably just hammer doing its usual thing.

check your 3d view is set to 3d textured and not ray traced lighting or anything like that.