Forum posts

Balls out Falls-out.

That subway platform reminds me of the beginning of Half-Life: Life's End. All it needs is the drunk, sleeping Barney on the bench.

The story to map:

The room was completely made of butts. The ceiling tiles were individual butt cheeks, and a giant, crystal butt illuminated the center of the room a spasm of different colors. There were pipes made of butts which were leaking butts onto the butt floor, making little butt puddles. In the corner of the room stood a giant butt with a broken broom handle stuck betwewen its cheeks, and the broom handle was made of butts.

Actually, I recommend use of an aiscripted_schedule, which is a much more efficient way of getting individual NPCs to be busy with doing things.

Malle's floor is pretty hard. I made it past the conveyor belt and I'm stuck at the button part. I've no clue whether or not the game expects me to dash through the door in the 2 seconds I have.

My favorite by far was the administrator floor.

Dark Souls
Sometimes, Dark Souls has a bad habit of breaking its own rules, even though it's acclaimed for "always having a consistent ruleset." The game gets to its most frustrating when you reach a bonfire, rest at it, and then run on and die, but then, for some reason, respawn at an entirely different bonfire on the opposite side of the level which doesn't even work anymore because its keeper is dead. So, if you want to fight that boss again, every time you do you have to run through the rafters of a cathedral and wait for a slow-ass moving elevator every single time.

All of the Final Fantasy Games
Level grinding. I like the idea that anybody can beat a game no matter how good/bad they are, but level grinding is just tedious and time-consuming.

DayZ
The bugs. God, this game would be so great if it weren't so buggy. So many beautiful runs through this game were ruined by connection problems and flat-out glitches and random deaths.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution -- The Director's Cut
Specifically the director's cut, because it chose to add the DLC (which took place somewhere in the middle of the game) into the middle of the game, which really wasn't a smart move. It means that out of nowhere, the plot had to get completely derailed so that Adam Jensen can run around a ship for 6 hours. And the worst part is, at the end of it you get your original Praxis points and all of the new Praxis points from the ship level, and you end up being OP as fuck.

Oooooh adds

Ehh, I'm not really feeling vehicles on this map. It's inspired by the Paris Cathedral level from Deus Ex 1, in both level design and aesthetic.

More work on my cathedral.

Added prediction: Adam Boyes comes out and embarrasses himself again on stage, and they do some bullshit involving "fan feedback," and possible appearance, again, of Tim Schafer so he can talk more about adventure games.

Say what you like about For Honor, their lead director is a badass.

Star Wars: Battlefront looks pretty great. I don't care if it has less than Battlefront 2, or if it's more of a carbon copy of Battlefield. It looks pretty impressive, and to have a smooth-running Battlefront game on PC is something we need.

I was in a Skype call with some friends of mine while we were watching E3, and I was equally as dubious about DOOM, but all of my friends were getting pumped for it.

The DOOM chainsaw preanimated takedowns just looked lazy, but the level design looked pretty inspired. I was, however, immediately disappointed with the game when the gun sound effects weren't half as cool as the ones in Brutal Doom.

Fallout 4 looks great, EXCEPT for the voice acted main character. I really don't like the Mass Effect-style dialog, which looks like it's going to turn every character into a deer-in-the-headlights Commander Shepard. I hope that the game comes with a way to play through the game silently.

There are some things I can't imagine the Fallout 4 protagonist saying that he would have said in previous games. "Your little bitch brother was, too." And let's say I wanted to roleplay as a cowboy, punk-ass raider, or something else, I really don't think that the game's voice actor is going to be able to do anything but damage the impression of the protagonist.

Well, my compile log mentions neither, and so far the only tool textures I've used are nodraw and the skybox.

On the map I've been working on, doing a full compile, I've been getting this very strange lighting error.I'm not sure what's causing the error, and the blocks of lighting do not particularly correspond with the in-editor brushes.I'm really not sure what's happening here, to be honest. Help me out, wouldja? Thanks!

I picked up Frozen Synapse: Prime, and it's pretty fun. It's a very experimental TBS game and is definitely worth picking up while it's still on sale for $4.

Sneak peak of a little project.

640hud4.spr and 640hud5.spr are where you can find each half of the title screen. (For some reason, the title screen is attached to two different hud elements and split in half.)

[EDIT]
HAHA GET IT IT'S HALF-LIFE HAHAHAHAH
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I do believe that there is a sprite you have to edit located in the game's data files.

Jump scares are horror mod cancer.

Jump scares are cheap, but that's not a bad thing. When you go on spooky haunted Hallowwen rides that pop out and scare you, do you do it before you want to be HORRIFIED or just for the horror cheap thrills?

There's nothing wrong with cheap thrills. The more unpredictable they are, the more fun they are. A jumpscare is only bad if it falls flat, or if the mod tries to be MORE than just a string of jumpscares.

[Solved, like, immediately. Huh. CHECK IT OUT!]

So, I've started work on a little project, and an idea popped in my head: movie cutscenes. Are they possible to do with Source?

By movie cutscenes, I mean pre-rendered video files that the game plays, not in-game, in-engine cutscenes. I've been told the only way to do this would be to have an animated texture that plays every single individual frame, and a camera aimed directly at it, but I don't like this solution.

Basically, I'm trying to find a way to stream .mp4 or .avi files separate of the game altogether. I already know that the engine has some support for this, because the Valve logo is a separate movie file, and Half-Life 2: Episode 2 has an opening pre-rendered cutscene which plays after beginning a new game.

I'll look more into this in the meantime and tell you guys if I find anything of value, but this will probably take the work of a coder. If you guys could help me out with this endeavor, that'd be great!

Some initial poking around stuff:

I was looking at the opening chapter files, and I found this immediate difference between the first chapter and the second chapter.So I went looking in Episode 2's media folders and came across ep1_recap.mov, which matches the command in the earlier chapter.It's watchable, but there doesn't seem to be any audio. I also found some more information located in its pak file, where I'm searching for the location of the video audio.I'm still currently looking for where the video audio is located. Once I find that, hopefully it's just a matter of replicating these steps so that I can achieve having multiple videos like this.

[EDIT]

Well, that was a quick journey! I suppose use this for reference if you want to use cutscenes in your games.

There is no external location where the audio has to be located. As far as I know, you can put ANY .mov file at the beginning of any chapter, and it'll use that .mov file's audio. This was way easier than I thought it would be.

I'm surprised that there aren't a lot of people who have found this when it's actually quite easy. Use this as reference, I suppose.

Alright, here's what to do to get the PROPER scare factor from a nice and good jump scare.

Step 1. You need to have a very quiet environment. Keep it mostly ambient, like the quiet humming of building electronics or the buzzing of lights. Try and give as little forewarning as you can for the maximum effect.

Step 2. Occasionally, as the player walks, set up triggers to an ambient_generic which will play some sound in the distance. It'll probably scare the shit out of the player and keep them more and more tense for when the jumpscare is going to happen. I would recommend using the sound of a train whistle for maximum horror factor.

Step 3. Make a tunnel or hallway that the player has to walk through. Try to establish that the hallway is located deep within some building, in some underground tunnel, or anywhere, really, as long as it's somewhere you wouldn't expect a train to appear.

Step 4. Set up a trigger_once which will cause every wall at one point in the hallway to suddenly explode, and have an ambient_generic blast this song at maximum volume to the point that it's nearly deafening. Then make a func_tracktrain which will blare past the player and blow up everything.

But in all seriousness, all that making jumpscares would take is some crafty enemy placement and some forethought on where your player is. And sudden loud noises will always make a player jump. Jumpscares are fun.

Good.

But in the CYBER FUTURE, they'll have touch screens plastered onto everything.

God, that movie. My (sophomore high school class) science teacher made us watch it. It was abysmal.

(4). I wanna join in on this one, I need a new project.

But, I vote to extend it to 2005, because a lot of early 3d was kind of shit, and I really want to do a level based off of Deus Ex (2001) or Max Payne (2001) or Thief 2 (2000).

Ohhhh nooooo.

Would it have to be for HL1DM, or could it be done for other games?

Hey guys I'm back in.

What the hell is the time?

I won't be able to make it.

How much is enough, then?

That's still not fair. You say I don't see it, but I've played enough CSGO competitive to tell you that playing against an AWP is no big deal. The AWP should be 1 ticket, like every other weapon. You might as well make it 0 tickets for the M4 and AK because they're overpowered in close range.

It's stupid that I can't use a gun that's expensive as all hell and gives me an advantage in long-ranged situations and basically nothing else.

I don't know, I've played enough CSGO competitive to tell you that an AWP's not useful for anything other than watching mid or long.

-AWP kills grant you a -1 ticket

Why? This is a stupid rule.

SON OF A BITCH.

I WILL NOT BE CAPABLE OF PARTICIPATING.

I will be quite busy on the day of the CSGO tournament. Hopefully I'll be able to make it for the end of it.

In Deus Ex, I usually play as Tittydick Denton.Somehow, he's capable of paying attention to no-one and knowing everything (possibly because he's lived through the same events in previous lives of his) and his morality waffles depending on what he hasn't done in previous runthroughs of the game.

He manages to get through every espionage situation without murdering a single enemy, but he has a terrible habit of violently murdering hookers and bums without remorse. He has also single-handedly murdered literally every single human being in Hong Kong (except for Gordon Quick and Tracer Tong because they're invincible.)

I get the feeling that the tournament will look something like this.

I'll hopefully be there.

Could we change it to the 14th of March? I feel like a Saturday would be a lot more convenient for us yanks, and I wouldn't be able to make it otherwise because of my drama club which keeps me after school 3-4 hours.

de_deception
aim_berlin
de_victorian
hijack
de_twostorey
de_rock

Can't wait for this one! I can actually PLAY this game!

I'm gonna have to go with the wrench with blue shift.

The heavy attack makes headcrabs EXPLODE!

I figured I might as well update my list with information since that's what everyone is doing.

5. Gravelord Nito (Dark Souls)This boss was really cool, and REALLY difficult. The Lord of the Dead is a collection of skeletons, floating around with a haze of black humanity around it, with a giant-ass sword and an army of undying skeletons serving him. This guy took me at least 10 tries to kill, just because his skeletons kept ganging up on me!

Eventually, you'll find that the strategy to this boss is try and get behind him at every change possible, and if the skeletons try and gang up on you, get them close to him and then run away when he begins to do his AoE spell which will hit all of the skeletons and give you a clean 10 seconds to attack him unhindered.

4. Ninhilath (Half-Life)
*See TJB

3. Gwyn, Lord of Cinder (Dark Souls)This was the final boss in all of Dark Souls, and it was really enthralling. Not only do you have to pass through the Fallen Land of the First Kiln which had turned to cinder and ash, but then when you face him, he isn't big, or humongous, or anything you'd really expect a Dark Souls fight to be.

He's relatively human-sized. And most things human-sized get thrashed quite easily, but not Gwyn. At this point in the game, you've murdered his sons and daughters, his friends and enemies alike, you've claimed his kingdom and you've every Lord he's ever associated with until he's the only God left.

And when you walk in, there's no grace, no opening cutscene like in other bosses, just Gwyn, running at you with a burning sword, to a song which feels like the boss has some meaning.

2. Beatrix (Final Fantasy 9)I just really like FF9.
And you never win against Beatrix, ever. She's too good.

Accurate music to how this boss plays out.

1. Ornstein & Smough (Dark Souls)Perhaps the most difficult boss in all of Dark Souls. It's 2 on 1, first of all, and this is really the point of the game where you either stop sleeping and spend your nights trying to deduce the best route of attack, or give up and live a life of eternal shame.

This is the most foreign-looking boss in all of Dark Souls. You battle a Dragon Slayer with an electric spear named Ornstein, and a large executioner with a big hammer named Smough. They've been given the quest of protecting Princess Gwynevere, and are the last battle which stands in the way between the Chosen Undead and the Lordvessel.

Their attack pattern is insane. Ornstein will run at you as fast as he can and try and slice you in half with his spear, while Smough lags behind and rushes at you with his absurdly large hammer and flies into the air to try and land on you and crush you. And when you kill one of them, the other will finish him off and absorb his power, so you end up fighting either a giant Ornstein or an electric Smough, whose kills will pretty much destroy you in one hit.

This boss fight took me quite literally 40 tries. I ran out of humanity trying to spend it on fighting them. At this point I was playing a piece of meat in a pile of metal armor, and I had to learn what clothes would help me roll faster and dodge their attacks better. This boss fight was perhaps the most rewarding boss fight I've ever fought in a video game.

Oh, and the theme song completely matches my feelings during the boss fight.

Expect lotsa' Dark Souls.

5. Gravelord Nito (Dark Souls)
4. Ninhilath (Half-Life)
3. Gwyn of Cinder (Dark Souls)
2. Beatrix (Final Fantasy 9)
1. Ornstein & Smough (Dark Souls)

God I really don't want to try to name all the bullshit mods I worked on when I was in middle school.

Is the Core ACTUALLY soon to release?

Can you believe it? Black Mesa Source, Duke Nukem Forever, Freeman's Mind, and soon the CORE will all be finished before HL3 comes out!

Lajron, I honestly think that what you're making has a good chance of getting put into the next operation!