Xen lighting Created 15 years ago2009-11-09 20:16:43 UTC by zeeba-G

Can anyone help me find out exactly how to reproduce this light used in the xen levels?I've tryed before but it didn't look the same. And im trying right now but maybe someone else can tell exactly what they used. Right now im messing with some x and z beams and x smoke with high texture scroll rate and around 15 noise. All I need is the jet part, the rest is simple. It may also have something to do with the plasma sprite.

hmm.. maybe.. decompile the .bsp (err.. shit.. can you get those fresh off the disc?)

find the xen .rmf online and look over it in editor?

i always thought those were just well textured triangle func_illusions.. then again i've only played the half-life single player game on software video mode

Yeah, extract the BSP of the map it's in and decompile. You'll need to remake the fixture, but the beam should stay the same.

Cool, thats what I did. I just downloaded WinBSP v1.4. I didn't think it would be so easy!

Edit: Lol I just totally copied it and pasted it into my map. Life is good!

Im finding out so much by decompiling maps! Does anyone think it would be ok to decompile a map and turn it into a deathmatch map for the server? Ill prolly do this with the first xen map...

No, don't decompile maps unless you need to learn stuff. If it's just taking someone else's work, you'd be better off recreating it from scratch and adding your own ideas/details.

I'm going to be honest:
I probably wouldn't host a decompiled map unless it went through a serious overall.

Yea well im learning its not even worth it anyways. The half life team maps in such a weird way and there maps are all fulllll of bugs and invalid_solid_structures. And when they make a map they drag every outer surface shape of the maps outward to form a giant cube. Its really strange but I guess it saves space. Ive learned a lot of cool things so far. I should have done this a long long time ago.

Nah, that's just what happens when you decompile.
Brushes change in ways that Hammer wouldn't be able to deal with when you compile a map (like all those split faces for example). Often you'll end up with problems after decompiling because of these changes when Hammer tries to compensate.

That's why it's always better to rebuild decompiled maps brush by brush if you plan to use them in a serious project.

Oh ok I was going to say the halflife team has a really strange way of mapping.

Decompiling wrecks a map, but is useful for finding out entity setups.

The decompiler uses a whole brush for every face often, so you get some funny stuff and often bugged ones too