Orange Box Mapping has arrived Created 16 years ago2007-11-07 16:10:26 UTC by Archie

Ladies and gentlemen of the Source mapping world
LOAD YOUR SOURCE SDK

Orange Box Mapping is here

It's better than Christmas!!!!!!!!!

Finnaly in 3D view some new interesting options

What error?

It loaded up perfectly (and fast) for me.

There's a little error message on boot.
And I can't open the map I was working on an hour ago because of some fatal error missing material editor/flatnocull.



Edit. None of my 3D views work at all right now.
Thanks Valve. Thanks a lot.

For those with similar problems:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=620867

works fine for meee

My Hammer only crashes when I try to turn on light preview with ray trace, or whatever it's called.

When I turn on lighting preview, nothing happens, though.

Yay!

I take that back. When I use dynamic lighting, lighting preview works. That's kinda useless, though, IMO.

/me wants lights to work.

yes but when you use it or compile do youu light levels change? I'm having an issue with that one - see my other post and let me know if it's happeing I put some screenshots there.

http://twhl.co.za/forums.php?pgt=1&action=viewthread&id=14627&pg=1

SDK is late and it breaks everything.

Yep, that's in accordance with Valve tradition!

Not everything... just anything useful.

lol, Source.

Yeah, none of the fancy new 3D views work.

But I still made my first Portal map tonight.

It's not worth releasing at this point.

i bet it is and you're just keeping it all to yourself, you evil man, satchmo.

Fuck, why cant they make it right!
It crashes for me too, when i try to load any map, gives me a fatal error.

this might be an ati specific error? its just that it works fine for me. (nv8800)

Ok, here's what I know about this release so far:

• The most important thing to realise at this point is that you all should now have two versions of Hammer (and the SDK for that matter) on your computer: one for Orange Box mapping and one for Episode One (and the rest) mapping.

• Make sure you Refresh SDK Contents before loading up any of the tools.

• The Orange Box version of Hammer seems to be ok at the moment (as in, it won't generate any fatal errors), but things like the 3D Ray Trace Lighting Preview are at a "Use at your own risk" stage at the moment: Valve themselves have stated that it's very unstable at the moment. The 3D Light Preview also doesn't function very well on some video hardware: my one basically looks the same as 3D Shaded Polygons.

• Trying to use the Orange Box version of Hammer to map for something like CS:S is impossible at the moment: a fair few errors will pop up, and the 3D view won't render at all (at least, not for me)

• Those who want to map for Episode One need to set the SDK to launch under the Episode One tools. To do this, right click the SDK, go to Properties, click launch options and add "-engine ep1". This isn't a final fix (I certainly hope not anyway), but it should help.

• Did I steal most of this information from here? Yes I did!

I love how Valve released something that's clearly not ready to be released. Why they didn't do a public beta of this is beyond my comprehension.

It was stated somewhere that they had no time to test it and that a fix would come soon enough. But yeah I can't be mad at them. They give it to us for free pretty much.

Godzilla brings pain and destruction for free too.

Anyone tried the info_particle_system entity yet? It says you can make your own particles using the particle editor. Now where the hell is the particle editor?

Did they fix that stupid displacement collision thing yet?

Muzzle: It isn't included with this release. Mike said he'll add it in the future. I expect cinematic physics uses it since if I recall in EP2 commentary they said forget it modders. You won't understand it and I heard the word particles in-between so hmm...

Right.

"Why they didn't do a public beta of this is beyond my comprehension."

Yep, sounds like valve - however - I do love the new look of the properties window when mapping for TF2 - very nice indeed.

My lighting window doesn't work either - I get a white screen - when using the other it takes a long time to load then I get a black screen - go figure...lol

You made it sound wrong Mooboi!
The ENTITy "info_particle_system" is included and works fine with the original particles.
But you can't make your own yet.

I've used the entity, and it appears to work fine, exept that instead of just being a purple box in hammer, it appears as the huge scary error sign. D:

Yes same here, moo.
Where are those particle files then?

In the gcf files. For portal, it's in "Portal content.gcf" in the folder called "particles" (duuh)

Oh and when you want a certail particle effect such as the field in portal which removes boxes and stuff ( particles/cleansers.pcf ) then you do not tell hammer the path to the particle effect file, but the name of the certain effect.
There are many effects in every particle file.

Example, the portal field things name is "portal_cleanser", so that's the information you give the entity.

All the names can be found in the GCF. portal/particles/particles/manifest.txt

Ok.

Anyone noticed that the mousecursor disappears when using the magnifier tool on the grid windows? Same goes for the brush handles that allows rotating a brush.

Pain in the butt.

Yeah, it's full of bugs at the moment, still usable though. I suspect a lot of these problems will be ironed out rather quickly though, given the rate of the updates TF2 got in it's initial weeks.

Madcow: can we expect any Orange Box examples from you? You've made some great examples recently, very handy stuff for beginners and long-time mappers. :>

Madcow: can we expect any Orange Box examples from you? You've made some great examples recently, very handy stuff for beginners and long-time mappers. :>

<3
Since you asked :>
Matter of fact I have the first one right here..
Uploading it tonight!

Edit: Done.

The portal map start elevator example can be found here:
http://www.twhl.co.za/mapvault_map.php?id=4863

And also, I am always open for requests.
It's not easy figguring out examples if I do not know what the community wants

Win.

Yes, indeed.

Madcow, show off as many new effects and stuff as you can. It's pretty clear that everyone loves your example maps!

Can anyone tell me where I can find those little glowing bars in Portal that lead from buttons and doors and tell when you've triggered something? I can't find any sort of texture or model for them anywhere.

They're an overlay texture - "indicator_lights_floor", and you use an env_texturetoggle to change it from blue to orange, or vice versa.

Thanks

Anyone else have a screwed up 3D view when mapping for CS:S under the Orange Box SDK?

ok so i edited the properties of sdk to -game ep1 and yes i can map for css now, but now when i load any of my older maps, this is what happens:

Ghetto, the fix is "-engine ep1"

not "-game ep1"

To map for the original Source games (before Orange box) you currently need to use this fix. Unfortunately it breaks the model viewer in Hammer too -- lets hope Valve fixes this soon.

When you load the SDK and change the whole configuration to EP2 mode (and the above fix is NOT applied) everything seems to work fine.

Except that all the paths have changed, so you'll have missing textures and models etc in your old maps. Which is slightly irritating.

WARNING MIGHT CONTAIN SPOILERS

I've been experimenting around with Episode 2 now, and I'm quite dissapointed at some things.

It would seem as if the advisors had in the earlier stages of Ep2 it's own AI and were like bosses.
They could pick up things and throw them at the player.
All that is removed.

If you place an npc_advisor in your map it will just hang there with it's silly idle animation.
I also tried to trigger a row of outputs directed at the advisor.
Turns out they have been removed too, and so they did nothing.
So Im guessing that everything the advisors did in Ep2 was scripted, there were no dynamics involved at all.

The strange thing is that I did not find the tounge animations of the advisor.
I thought that maybe the tounge was a separate model but I could not find it.
I also found some other advisor models but they had pretty much the same animations.

Another thing which is strange is that Gman still has his little suitcase.
I placed him out in a map and compiled and there it was.
I found no settings which removed the suitcase.
Maybe Valve hasn't put that in yet, OR, it is done in another way, I didn't try very much.
(And yes, the suitcase is there when he animates too)

I also noticed that most of the houses exploading were not dynamic either, they are animated.

HAX!

Anyway, new Portal example map by me: http://twhl.co.za/mapvault_map.php?id=4866

I've been experimenting around with Episode 2 now, and I'm quite dissapointed at some things.

It would seem as if the advisors had in the earlier stages of Ep2 it's own AI and were like bosses.
They could pick up things and throw them at the player.
All that is removed.

If you place an npc_advisor in your map it will just hang there with it's silly idle animation.
I also tried to trigger a row of outputs directed at the advisor.
Turns out they have been removed too, and so they did nothing.
So Im guessing that everything the advisors did in Ep2 was scripted, there were no dynamics involved at all.

Well of course all their moments in Ep 2 were scripted. =P

I hope you realise they're building them up to be battled in Ep 3 (according to the commentary), so expect all that AI and dynamic shiz to be re-implemented or upgraded.

I also noticed that most of the houses exploading were not dynamic either, they are animated.

That's how the cinematic physics work - pre-animated to take the least possible toll on your computer, and because doing it with HL2's physics would be engine-suicide.

In other news, here's some screens of a map I'm working on:

http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/5475/strchamber010026tu9.jpg

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/1238/strchamber010028hj4.jpg

I'm kind of experimenting with the lighting atm.

EDIT: Woo, another example map. downloads

Yeah, so much for dynamic cinematic effects. :<

At least the bridge was dynamic.

Good example there Muzzymoo

I thought the bridge was pre-animated too?

EDIT: I think with their cinematic physics they actually run their structures through some kind of physics simulator to get the most accurate results. I personally think they're a good idea that's both cost effective, and great eye-candy.

the dynamic cinematic effects are done in its own variant of the source engine, their not some giant animated object, or how would the pieces react with the world? but they havnt put in the dynamic effects engine bcause its to complicated for us mere modders to handle.

Strider: Sure that is possible, but the bridge was infact totally dynamic.
The houses.. could have been done the way you say.

And fearian.
When they make animations of things exploading and shit flying everywere, they know how the map looks, and that is why the gibbs appear to be physical, if that's what you ment.

I don't think there was a need for the advisors to have any A.I. in Episode 2 anyway. Let's face it, all their sequences were story pushing points, and the player wasn't in control during any of their scenes. Would've been a waste to have A.I. in 'em.

How do those cinematic physics work anyway? Are they confined to pre-built models with fracture points or something?

From Wikipedia:

[quote]The system appears to add the following features to Source's physics simulator:

• Deforming objects ? before, physics models could not be modified except through animation
• Dynamic crumbling of brush geometry ? before, lines of separation had to be specified by the mapper

Cinematic Physics supports a keyframe system, [7] but its exact nature is currently unclear. It could be that an animator creates a largely complete but low-detail sequence which then sees details added by the physics system, or it could be that an animator creates a handful of single-frame states which are then used as motion targets for the ensuing simulation (in a manner not dissimilar to the Endorphin NaturalMotion technology).[/quote]

Every time I've seen a cinematic physics effect in Episode Two, it's been the same (as far as I can tell, at least) and the player can't collide with any of the pieces resulting from the effect, so I doubt that there's any real-time calculations being used in them.

I seen some of that deforming objects thing. I wonder if it has to be specially triggered though, I've never seen the player able to do it. But I thought it was odd when I seen that happen to a barrel i think it was...

Whoa, you mean that deforming barrel in Episode Two was dynamic?? Crap, I thought it was pre-animated or something...