Forum posts

Might as well keep doing this!

E3 is happening! etcE3! Let's discuss!

Copypasta below:

What is E3?
The Electronic Entertainment Expo, known as E3, is an event that happens every year in Los Angeles. It's usually where the big companies announce new stuff (i.e. Microsoft, Sony, and to a lesser extent, Nintendo) like games, hardware, consoles, and really pretty much everything to do with games. Ubisoft and EA also make appearances, but interestingly enough, Activision do not (though they usually manage to get a Call of Duty trailer in there anyway).

Why is it cool?
If you're interested in gaming at all, E3 is the biggest dump of new information that happens every year. The keynotes almost always feature brand new trailers, gameplay, hardware, services, and of course, new games! It's always fun to hear new stuff to look forward to. E3 is focused on western gaming (Microsoft, Ubisoft, EA), but Nintendo and Sony usually inject some Japanese gaming influence in there as well, so there's always something interesting no matter what your gaming tastes are!

I'll post updates after each keynote with all the interesting stuff, but if you want to watch the conferences live, just visit any big gaming website (GameSpot, IGN, GameTrailers, etc) and find their E3 coverage.

Is anyone else excited about E3? Any predictions you would like to share? I'll be posting my own predictions before each keynote starts. I'm too lazy to post predictions.

PS: Before anyone suggests it: Half-Life 3 will NOT be announced this year. In fact, it will NEVER be announced at any E3, ever! (Though I would not mind if I was wrong about this)

End E3 copypasta

EA has already done their thing, but it was pretty crap unless you care about Battle[front|field].

We're going to do another run through on the weekend, but it might be on an Aussie server so we have decent pings.

Next week, likely.

Then do W3 with the wooden sword

This is one reason why I really want to put scripting support into Sledge. Wouldn't it be great if I could give you a few lines of Python code that you could paste in to do that automatically?

It's simple enough to implement something like that, but it would create invalid geometry most of the time unless you're working with simple cubes or tetrahedrons...

Thanks Archie, I'll look into it when I can.

Never tried installing it on Vista. Did you run it as admin?

And I'm actually building it into Sledge right now! More for my own sanity than anything else, because moving everything into plugins forces me to remove messy spaghetti code in the whole thing. But building plugins will be pretty easy in the next version of Sledge, and since all the bundled stuff will be plugins too, it should be fairly flexible.

Don't try to evangelise too hard though guys, it's one thing to mention that it exists but Sledge is (by far) not a solution to every problem. (yet?)

They can be very frustrating and punishing at times but that just makes it all the more satisfying when you make progress!

I've been playing Bloodborne! It's basically a faster paced version of Dark Souls. It's pretty good.

If you guys got 4 months then it's only fair that we do too

Nope, nothing new. I remember that VMF had some visgroup issues, try using RMF instead? Unless you want multiple visgroups, then you're out of luck.

I'm working on Sledge again now after a long break so keep an eye out! (doing a big rewrite of stuff though so don't hold your breath just yet)

Just checked, your link is working fine.

There's a lot of spam from you
I only take the most recent entry so no biggie.

Depends how you submitted it. If it's a link to the vault or a link you updated, then nope. If you uploaded the entry from the compo page, then yep. I'll download the entries after the compo closes so you have until then to make changes.

9 entries so far, which is pretty good! Get your entry in soon if anyone hasn't already submitted it!

Yep, that kind of quoting will be possible.

Jeez, I had a serious stick up my arse that day. I should rewrite those results :/

Wow there's some impressive stuff coming through. As a reward, have a 1 month extension!

How long should the extension be? 2 weeks? 1 month?

No for reals extensions are tradition, it will happen.

Sometimes I'm astonished by some of the nonsense you spout Stojke.

Don't worry, the deadline will be extended.

If you lived closer I would send you some of my old PC parts... I cleaned out my old computer stuff the other day and I have three working boards with CPUs that nobody wants because they're a few years old :/

Can't bring myself to throw them away, seems a waste. But I have no reason to keep them...

Should be a new map, otherwise you'd have an unfair advantage over the other entries because you would have more time to complete it. We can't really stop you from doing it anyway but please be fair to everyone else

We're talking design here, I don't care what powers the forums. I actually quite like the layout of the BM forum, looks pretty clean. Layout is similar to what's already there currently (borrowed from MapCore)

Guys keep the beta site secret please because there's a high possibility that the final result will look nothing like it and I don't want people to get the wrong idea. Not like it's too much of a secret or anything but I just want to keep the slate blank so to speak.

Thanks for the suggestions, keep 'em coming. Not much time to do much over the xmas period but I'm still thinking about designs!

@Shep: Looks similar to the generic marketing sites that are all over the place these days. I don't mind it and there's some good ideas to take from it, but there's too much whitespace going on for something with as much info as TWHL. I'm also not too keen on the full-width websites (on desktop, it's too wide).

Some good ideas regardless, keep 'em coming.

PS: no comic sans

It's a bit chunkier when using the site via a phone but normal sized on desktops.

Requesting help to finally finish TWHL4! The code in this site is really old and that's stopping me from doing stuff. One of the reasons compos were drying up is because creating/editing a compo in the back-end is just a big hassle. Things like MOTM and other stuff are in desperate need of a revamp as well.

I know I keep going on about TWHL4 and it's never coming and blah blah, but it's actually really close to being complete. There's just one problem: It looks crap. And I need your help to fix that!

I'm not a designer, and Ant, who kindly volunteered to help with design, has been really busy recently and I don't want to bother him with extra work. So I'm going to do the best alternative: steal borrow the design from other sites!

Thing is, TWHL is a pretty unique site in that it's all custom code. We don't use PHPBB or other third party packages, and everything is integrated into one system. It's nice because everything fits together nicely, but it's difficult to find other sites that have as much content as we do.

So I would like to ask everyone to help out if they have some inspiration. I don't want you to do any big work (though you're more than welcome to if you want!), I just want to see any cool reference material you might have:

• Websites that display content in a cool and nice-looking way (screenshots for sites that require logins please)
• Mockups or photoshop if you want to pitch some new ideas
• Suggestions or anything else! Everything is welcome!
• Please help! I really want to finish this thing and start adding cool improvements to the site

If you've seen the beta website, please ignore it! I expect the new design might be very different.

The biggest things I need are:

• General style - ways things are displayed, colours, layout, spacing, font size, pictures, that kind of thing. Stuff that looks nice and clean.
• Layout - especially of the front page! There's lots of info to display on the front page and it looks really cluttered and messy no matter what I do. On the front page I want: recent+top maps, wiki edits, forum posts, journals, news, and a poll.
• Once I have some general layout stuff I think the other pages will be easier, since they generally only show one type of content, so that's less important. If you know a good idea for forums/vault/whatever, post it anyway though!
• Square logo. I'm happy to keep with the orange lambda, but it's a bit generic. Any ideas for a TWHL logo?

Important things to keep in mind about TWHL4:

• Modern design. None of this old school stuff! Sorry if you prefer the style of TWHL as it currently is, but it's awful for non-desktop devices and needs to be modernised.
• Looks almost NOTHING like the current TWHL. Content will be the same, though.
• Mobile friendly website, but NOT an app style. If there's an app, it'll be a separate thing. The website will be a similar style on all devices.
• No galleries or big image slideshows on the front page, I went through a phase where I liked them, but I'm not a fan anymore. (Vault pages have an image gallery, don't worry)
• Only maps have thumbnail images, we have a lot of text-heavy content that needs to look good (journals, forums, etc)
• Looking at three main colours in the primary layout: white, dark grey/black, and orange. Other colours for highlights of buttons and stuff.
• Tutorials, VERC archive, and wiki/entity guides are all combined into the wiki.
• All usernames will have an avatar next to them (tiny inline avatars are possible)
• No other new features or screens (for now)

Basically, if you have any websites that have a nice style and you think would be a cool idea for TWHL4, please post it in here! Feel free to discuss any and all ideas. I really want to get this thing finished by the first quarter of next year.

I want to avoid showing the current beta right now, because I want to start from a clean slate. What do you imagine TWHL4 looking like?

TL;DR: I'm stealing designs from other websites for the new TWHL. Feed me websites!

Couldn't have said it better myself. Anybody is welcome to enter no matter what they want to make.

Make sure you post it as an entry to the competition! Click here

Nope. If you need custom sound/models/etc, then either give us a folder structure that we can copy into the valve folder, or make a mini-mod if you have a lot of custom stuff.

Let's keep it to the official maps in the final game only.

The '<name>T.mdl' file contains texture data for the models. The texture data can be optionally be included in the main model file instead of the separate T file, which is why you might recompile a model and get only one file instead of two.

I'll put the compo up to start on December 1st. Same rules except BS and OP4 will be listed as options to take the base map from.

Yep, you could make an entry for CSGO if you wanted. Just the map you choose to remake must be from HL1 but the entry can be for whatever game.

I was thinking HL1 only but I'll allow it

Before I post something official have a look at this and let me know if it's okay:

Competition 34 - Half-Life Re-imagined

Choose a map from Half-Life 1 and remix it in an interesting way. Your entry must resemble the original map in an obvious way - whether it be in aesthetics, gameplay or design.

The key is to create a map that feels like the original version, without simply cloning it. We're looking for a new spin on the maps that we all know and love.

Examples:

• Choose a singleplayer chapter and make a new level for it with the same ambience and style
• Use the layout of a multiplayer map and texture it in a unique way
• Turn a singleplayer map into a multiplayer map, or vice-versa
• Take the major gameplay elements from a map and make a new map that uses those same elements
• Use your imagination! Surprise us!

Rules:

You must include a readme in your entry!

A readme is a text file (usually named readme.txt) containing your TWHL username, the name of your entry, the game the entry is for (not just the game engine, the game as well), and any additional information you want to add.

Please also tell us which map you are remaking, and include some screenshots or a link to a video of the original map to make judging easier.

1. Your entry can be for the Steam version of any Valve Source or Goldsource game. The judges have them all!
2. The judges realize the limitations of the GoldSource and Source engines. Entries from different engines will be judged fairly.
3. Custom content is allowed, but custom code is not.
4. Any custom content should be included with the entry in the correct folder structure, or embedded into the BSP file itself. A mini-mod package is also permitted.
5. Entries must be zipped. Do not upload the uncompressed .bsp file.
6. An entry must run without error! We will not chase authors if an entry doesn't work.

Time limit: 100 years 3 months plus a billion extensions

Prizes:
1st: Archie's soul and some Steam games or something I guess
2nd: Ant's soul and a telegram from the queen
3rd: Urby's soul and a miniature cheese

Strider and I am able to judge the compo if Jessie wants to enter.

If you like, you guys can come up with the compo theme and I'll make it into an official one.

Instead of replaying Skyrim-with-three-extra-bushes perhaps you should play The Witcher 3 instead

Not a bad list, I have made some revisions:

[quote]

• Admins are lazy and unmotivated
• Waiting until TWHL4 (but: see above)

[/quote]

@Jessie: Same here! I love the Rhythm Heaven games.

As long as you have permission from the original author, Bruce.