Forum posts

Hey, I was wondering what kind of knowledge there was regarding setting up sew-friendly brushes for reasonably complicated geometry.

In my various experiments and tribulations with displacement maps I've discovered a number of little methods and tricks for achieving the geometry that I want that also ensures all necessary faces are quadrilateral and have shared edges.

Does anyone else find it a battle to do these things? I might post what I know later on if people are interested, kind of too tired at the moment.

sorry, they gotta be similar if they are regular smileys. only completely different smileys, i.e. the combine one, can be that different.

What about replacing all of the existing ones?

Thought I'd have a shot at this;

template:

Maybe have trigger_push's that push you up the half pipe?

I'm about 2/3rds done with my entry!

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Vrad

Apparently it says on here the default is 100 bounces. But either way you can still try playing with it. Looks like the command is:
-bounce 120
or whatever number you want.

Ok...I read it. It's 4:30am, and my eyes feel like they're sandpaper, but I read it. Could turn it into a flier or brochure or something. Hand it out at parties and whatnot. Surefire way to gettin' some.

Yeah I really hate the direction lego has taken. Seriously, they're basically just toys/action figures now? Wtf? I remember spending hours building huge castles and seige equipment, and then breaking it all apart and making a space ship out of the same bricks.

The danish need to buy Lego back off america and amend the crimes that have been performed on it.

LONG LIVE DENMARK!!!!

Going through information like this is a full time job. What do you hope to do this information?

Oh yeah, Worms and GTA1 were some serious time eaters. Ah good old train stations in GTA...

Oh wow. I feel old reading some of the posts here, heh. I've for the most part been a real RTS nut. Mainly because of the map editors

First game I played was Super Mario Bros on a NES we borrowed off a friend of my dad's. I still remember the night he brought it home and it took us HOURS to tune it into the stupid tv. Such anticipation!

Then I pretty much played it non-stop until they pried the controller out of my little white-knuckled hands about a week later.

Some time later my parents asked me which console I would like for my birthday, and showed me a catalogue. I had nfi about any of them. I glanced over the menacing, black, sleek Sega Megadrive. And then I picked the one with the colourful buttons (SNES. In Australia the SNES had blue, green, yellow and red buttons).

So we went into the shops to get the pack that had the SNES, 2 controllers and Super Mario World. And we also went into the games section to get an additional game. I picked a game with cool looking box art. Which was this weird game:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperZone

It's the only SNES cartridge I have left. The rest were sold under order of my mother. How sad. (Heh, noone wanted HyperZone. Incidently, I frickin' love the game, and can play it forever without dying. Level 6 is impossible if you are 7 years old).

I got about 13 games all up for my SNES. All of them pretty random.
Mortal Kombat 3, Donkey Kong Country 1 & 3, Stunt Race FX, Killer Instinct, Krusty's Super Fun House, and I don't remember any others. No Zelda, no Metroid. I really missed out!

Then my neighbour got a PC. With WarCraft: Orcs and Humans. I watched him playing, totally immersed. Not long after, the big one: C&C Red Alert. I was TOTALLY blown away. I nagged my mother ridiculously for a PC. And I ended up getting a 486 66MHz 8mb RAM clunk-o-tron. It couldn't run Red Alert. I was pretty horrified. But I played heaps of shareware DOS games on it, including Quake, Tyrian (I spent endless hours on this game. Its amazing, and lets you make your own ships. Like, draw them), Duke Nukem 3D, Baryon, Cyberdogs, Stunt 2 (track editor!), Duke Nukem 1 & 2, Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, DOOM I & II (too scary though), Death Rally.

Then after even more nagging I got a new computer. Just so I could play Red Alert. And eventually I got a Pentium 133MHz 32MB (16 MB of SDRAM and 16MB of EDORAM, wtf??). And Red Alert. This spurred a long run of RTS titles, including WarCraft: Orcs and Humans, Total Annihilation (I still play this game), Dark Reign (way better map editor than Red Alert), and the big daddy of all RTSs: StarCraft. The amount of time I've spent, and still spend playing StarCraft could probably be considered horrific.

Anyway at some point in this mix of RTS mapping I got a PC Magazine that had on its demo disc WorldCraft 1.5, and QOOLE. I was immediately hooked on making levels for Quake I and II. My computer had a hard time compiling and viewing the 3D viewport, though, so I could only work on really small, simple maps (I was probably being bloody aweful with my brushes).

I had that p133 for a long long time. My neighbour always was getting his computer upgraded and playing the latest games. So I'd often go over and check them out. So then Half-Life came out. The first I ever heard of HL was this guy at school telling me stories about what he'd been playing in the Uplink demo. And I was amazed, I didn't even think stuff like marines fighting aliens completely independent of the player was even possible.

But yeah, my neighbour got it pretty quick smart. And as we all know, HL came with WorldCraft 2.0. I think it took me about 0.3 seconds to ask if I could borrow the CD. My computer literally took 20 hours to compile some of my horrible, skyboxed brush-nightmares. So I often snuck over to my neighbours place when he was at work and compiled them on his machine. Evil!

In about 1999 or something my neighbour sold me his old computer, because he was doing a full upgrade. So now I had something like a P3 466MHz 64MB SDRAM TNT2 32MB gfx card. Bam! Now I could play Quake 3. And more importantly, I could make bigger maps. I did mapping for HL and Quake 3 for a long time.

In 2003 I got a new laptop computer in preparation for university. It's a Celeron 2GHz 512MB 32MB onboard gfx. It goes alright. That kept me going for a long time. Lots of WarCraft 3.

And then this year I bought myself a sweet new comp (hooray for having an actual job). So I've finally been able to sink my teeth into Source, Supreme Commander, Quake 4, WarCraft 3 with an actual framerate, Dawn of War (though I don't like it very much), and such.

Oh and I got a Wii. The only games I have for it are the GCN port of Ikaruga, and the Metal Slug Anthology (horrible port, btw. It has loading screens and basically NO useful control customisation. If you can overlook these things, then it's alright. I mean, you get all 7 Metal Slug titles. Which is unarguably tasty.)

I'm pretty sure sometime between now and the end of time some more sumptuous titles will be out for the Wii. Until then I'll stick to headshotting Combine.

So there's the cliff's notes of my gaming history. I thought I'd spare you guys the long version...

otherwise all this effort will seem pointless.

Not if you win!!! Does anyone know what the deal is with these glowing leaves? They're really bugging me.

Thanks Blitz. Your shots are looking solid. It yearns for some girders and trim on the ground, I reckon. It looks more playable than mine I think; nice tight shotgun alleys...damn!

I cant believe so many of you are givin away all yalls ideas. I like being surprised.

Heh, I was waiting for someone to say that! I've been withholding alot of shots to leave something for people to explore.

Of course the bigger you go the less detail there is.

I just found out about the +Showbudget command. Was wondering how to get something like r_speeds in Source. And some parts of my map are hitting 20fps...ewww. I kind of went overboard with props in one room.

I'm working in an iterative detailing cycle. Layout the whole map with dev textures, texture and mold the map, then refine detail over and over until I'm satisfied that it's 'polished'. That way if I run out of time at any point in the development I still have a completely functional, completely laid out and consistently detailed map.

But you've motivated me more, nonetheless...
EDIT: Ok, I got focused on the bridge crane, kind of contradicting everything else I've said in this post. Oh well, I'm very happy with how it turned out.

@Masta Killa: Ah fair enough. It'd be fun making these:
http://www.splashoccasions.com.au/Web%20pictures/Oriental%20lantern.JPG

@Ghetto: Looking nice and sterile (it's a hospital, isn't it?). But I agree with srry, you've got some serious blockiness going on with the details. Maybe flick through the prop_statics and see if you can't find some nice railings. I'm pretty sure there's entire staircases in there.

Also maybe experiment with some trim textures to accentuate the spaces, since the floors, walls and ceilings are all white at the moment.

Wow really? My pointfiles are always just a plain red line. That fading thing sounds much more useful.

Aye, the crates are ridiculous. I actually plan to lower them alot and have a bridge crane in there.

I believe it usually only depends on the color of the glass.

It depends on the gas inside the light the most, I believe. But yeah, you can pretty much pick any colour you want. Though blues-greens-yellows-oranges are most appropriate. Purple? Seems kind of weird to me.

I think those energy efficient lights product white light. Not sure though. As far as I know most fluorescent lights I've seen produce green light. Most of the lights in my map are green or orange at this point. With the exception of these warehouse lights. I suppose I'll play with the colours.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_halide_lamp
Apparently these types of lights, which are used in industrial settings, emit a close-to-white light. Or it can be more red to more blue. So I think I'll just give my lamps a slight red tint.

As for filling it up, most definitely. Still just texturing the brushes that make up the layout itself. Once I've done that I'll be filling it up much more. There's alot going to be going on in that warehouse area.

Masta Killa: It's just that the rest of the flooring is wooden, just seems out of place going into a patterned tile floor like that. Maybe have a wooden landing, or something? Just throwing the idea out there.

@Masta Killa: I think it could use a different floor texture. Otherwise its stylin'. It's going to involve zombies, isn't it?

@Snpbond: I vote multiplayer.

EDIT:
I'm...I'm a crate whore Oh and that forklift model I was talking about, its a CSS model. So it doesn't show up in the models list when I'm editing under HL2DM.

Yeah I can't wait to see what other's look like.Looking towards bottom right of map. Btw there's a sweet forklift model in CSS that I'd like to chuck in. Do I need any programs or anything to port it over to HL2DM?

Cool. Very different to how I'm interpreting the layout, that's for sure.

This is a cool comp! Here's what I've got going with the map, wondering if my changes to the layout keep it admissible or not;

I'm having a bash at making a gum tree. Thought I'd start with something relatively simple, but useful, since I don't really know anything about 3DS Max.The poly count is like...1800...may be a bit ridiculous for a tree.

EDIT: Skinning!

How's it going? I'm wondering if any real custom content is around for Source. You know, like custom prop models, skins, and textures? I mean, compared to GoldSrc it's completely dead.

I for one am kind of bored of seeing the same old textures and whatnot in Source maps. Is it because its harder to make content for Source? Doesn't seem to difficult to me. Not that I've really tried yet.

I was playing Halo coop with my mate, we'd been playing for hours and were up to one of the bridges in assault on the control room. He starts punching asleep grunts, but I just ran out, mucking around, shooting needler shots randomly.

So all the grunts woke up, I'm dancing around, jumping. I cop a fully charged plasma pistol shot, my friend is yelling at me, and then I accidently jump off the bridge.

So there's this swarm of enemies coming towards my friend, he whips out his pistol, zooms and caps a grunt between the eyes as it's going to throw a grenade. The grenade goes vertical, coming back down and landing on another grunt. That grunt starts running around going "Noooo!" towards an elite.

The elite dives to the side...off the bridge as the 'nade goes off, triggering other 'nades on the ground to make this big-arse explosion. My friend just paused the game and was silent. We were both in complete awe.

Looking savvy thumbs up

Yes, but boomerangs aren't actually supposed to come back to you. Proper hunting ones are designed to just hook a little bit and smack something in the head so you can eat it.
It's only specialist tourist ones that were developed just for fun that actually swing so much they come back to you.

Nice tits followed by grotesque gastropods confuses my boner :

You cant deny that alot of yobbo aussies love spending their time slagging americans, though.

There's a lot of great things about this country, but there's certainly a lot of things that could be improved. Been to the Gold Coast lately? What a cultural black hole...

Good for them, is all I can say.

Indeed. I hope to introduce custom models, and reskin the trees and stuff maybe. Maybe search around for some custom textures, or make my own. All depends on how much time I've got.

It'd be nice to replace the truck with an old 30s one or something too...

I really hope SC2 doesn't have hero units like War3 does. It wouldn't suit the game, imo.

This looks mad! I'll definitely have to give it a go...

(Wtf...I swear I posted in here...)

I thoroughly enjoyed the books. Must have taken quite a while to get this package together, thanks a lot!

But how can they...if they don't have a gun?

Guns are for country people to shoot kangaroos, everyone knows that.

Thanks. The interior is just sort of roughed in for the moment. I want to make models of old band saws and bench clamps and stuff like that to fill that space in, so its not just bare benches. Might replace the light bulbs in there with hanging bulbs with shades, too.

EDIT: Doing more blocking in and looked at it for a second and thought it looked just like graffiti tag, check it out;

Mmmm caves. I'm getting close to having all the blocking in done now...the map is insanely huge, or at least looks it. I think it's going to take alot of balancing to get it even remotely good.

EDIT: Blocking all done. Not looking forward to the obscene amount of displacement geo-painting I'm going to have to do...o well

Personally I think it looks orgasmic. Have you read anything about what theyve done with protoss? Its not rehash.

I worked on blocking alot more of the level out...it was pretty complicated. Who said caves are a good idea?

I'm hoping to block the whole level out, then work in the rest of the details, let's see how long I can restrain myself...

Not as of yet. In the mean time I've uploaded the BSP for some charitable individual to give building the cubemaps a lash. Or for anyone to just have a look around
Check it out

Thanks :). When I try to build the cubemaps it says "Could not load vtex.dll". And I scratch my head. I did a bit of a scour on the net to find a solution, but there doesn't seem to be any info on the problem. :

This is a map I've been working on between my ridiculous workload for uni. It's the second Source map I've ever made, and I'm still getting used to alot of things.

The lighting is somewhat off because I can't build the cubemaps, but it's still looking pretty good, imo. It's a bomb defusal map, and it's probably going to end up being way too huge to be properly playable, who knows. I've only got the middle section of the map done so far, here's how it's looking:

Btw, is this any good:

http://www.countermap2.com/Mapster/index.html

?

I'll try churning out a BSP for you when you've had a look over those probs. BTW how much RAM do you have?

Oh sweet, I was so annoyed by bleeding models too, I'll keep this in mind in future.

Oh right, thanks. I'm actually even 1 step behind that, in that I realised I had to run "buildcubemaps" when I loaded the map up...didn't know that, heh...

But when I type that in, I get an error message in the console that says "Can't load vtex.dll". I've searched on a bunch of sites and can't find anything on this problem?

Every time I compile my map with HDR ticked, most of the prop_static models get absurdly uber bright, including gordon's hands, like this:

Also, as I walk around the map, all the light levels go haywire, with the floor and walls suddenly jumping to different levels of brightness. Anyone know how to stop it?

Howdy, I've been dabbling with some CS:S mapping after a long time, and so I put together a map with a T spawn, CT spawn, hostage, hostage rescue, buyzones. Compiles fine. I go to load the map and I get this popping up:"48/ - func_hostage_rescue: UTIL_SetModel: not precached: *2"

And hl2.exe crashes... :S. Anyone know whats up with this?