Competition 32 Created 12 years ago2011-12-16 17:02:11 UTC by Daubster

If cs_747 was cs_A380, you could at least have two different paths through the plane, what with A380's having two levels and all.

So much whining about Source. Are your guys' computers really old or something? The tools work just as well as they always have (there have been points in time where they were buggy but I've been working in CSS config for weeks with 0 problems. I work in the licensed version of Portal2 engine at work all day and we have more issues with that than we do the free SourceSDK)

Hammer crashes constantly and always has...especially if your hardware is old(er). Set autosave to 1 minute and hope for the best...

Saying goldsrc > src is just laughable....yeah, you arent having any crashes because you're working with an engine that's over ten years old Compare the features of Source to Goldsrc as well and you can see why there are more problems - because there are plenty of additional entities, engine features, etc....Not saying the engine is without it's problems, far from it, but you need to work with it for a while and learn WHY it sucks before calling it horrendously broken or inferior

Regarding the competition I'm a little confused on how much I can deviate from the theme. I've tried to maintain some of the original theming of the map, but what exactly are 'coherent deviations' that remain within the contest rules? In terms of theme are you looking for a remake maintaining the same color scheme, visual elements etc, or are you looking for a remake that doesn't necessarily maintain the same color scheme, but is still generally recognizable as being themed around the original map.

(Basically, I've tried to maintain some of the same thematic elements and the feel of some areas from the original map, but have tried to tie them all together, to make the map feel more 'real') - I guess what I'm trying to figure out is what 'defines' the theme of the map and should be retained to stay within the boundaries of the competition?

I'm making a cs_backalley remake if it helps - as an example one thing I've changed is avoiding the use of red bricks everywhere and using different colors to help distinguish different areas of the map (compounding the layout problems in the original was that every exterior part of the map looks the same...)

EDIT: Cs_a380 isnt a bad idea if you're going to base the map around the entire plane. I was thinking of doing a cs727 remake as well (note 727 so it focuses more on the airport as opposed to multi-level plane) but making a good-looking plane in Source, not to mention all the other assets required, is a lot of work....

Source sdk has been running flawlessly for me lately, it never crashes anymore like it used to.

DiscoTsu/Skals: Source SDK is superior to hammer 3.x in just about every way, most important for me is debugging is WAY easier since you get way less compile errors compared to goldsource mapping. Not to mention, u have almost no resource limits compared to GS mapping.

Once you get accustomed to hammer 4, it will be very difficult to go back to 3.x, cuz it's just sooo much better.

Strider/tsu: are you using source sdk on an old laptop or good/beast setups?

Don't forget that 4.x remembers the dimensions of the last brush you selected, which allows you to make things like matching walls and floors much faster than in 3.x, thus making the overall creation process much more efficient.

I've poked at source but the only reason I left it behind was because of long compile times. But that was on an old machine. Gs compiles in minutes if that. How are compile times in source for you guys along the map?

I've had compiles take maybe 10 minutes at the most in goldsource but this was with completed maps on old rigs.

Rabid, i'm sure changing the brick color is fine. Especially because of your valid argument that it will make the layout stronger recognizably.

Edit: http://www.playlist.com/playlist/22927035403

Another playlist from playlist.com for those of you interested in music during mappage. Apparently the site is crumbling beneath my feet. Songs dissapear from it daily.

How are compile times in source for you guys along the map?

My secret santa map, which was quite sizable only took 10 minutes with a full HDR compile. It really depends on your cpu and ram.

And if you are optimizing correctly. I pretty much change anything not a visblocker to func_detail and propper as much shit as can. There are loads of other things you can do to optimize as well.

zaeba: compile times are much better in source pound for pound, and you can pack in way more detail. At least, that's been my experience. Not to mention you can do things that would be simply impossible to do well in goldsource.

most important for me is debugging is WAY easier since you get way less compile errors compared to goldsource mapping

What compile errors? If you create everything well then you won't get any.

Well my laptop also runs hot when I play source but other than that I guess I should give it a poke again.

Haha, I was playing my cs map with 20 bots, it made me realize it's a little large. Guess i'll scale it down before "making" it. It was cool because it was playable yet extremely ugly bc it is just a bunch of blocks for scale references.

Source's lightmaps are higher resolution than GS too so baking rad can take longer on older PCs especially if you have a big, open map or lots of surfaces which catch light. Other than that they should be faster across the board than stock GS tools. The BSP process is sped up and combined with CSG so you only have to run one process before actually crunching the complicated stuff (vis and rad)

@CT: My rig is 7 years old this year. Got it in early 2005. It's a P4 @2.4GHz / 1.5GB RAM. It's good and it does everything I need it to do.

By the way, I didn't say GS > Source. Only said that got a lot of crashes in just a few hours. I don't think I'll use it for the compo only because I have to LEARN source mapping first.

donate that thing to the rerirement home or your own granmother, and spring for a new beast gaming notebook. They so cheap now!

And yeah it's pretty hard learning a newengine and trying to compete in a contest at the same time. I'm pretty m in that boat too for most-things source.

Wedding photographers don't make that much. Plus I'm saving up for a new lens.

Competitions for counterstrike don't work for me. Everytime i'm logged into steam playtesting my map I hop, skip and jump into a server and play until I forget my name. I'll try to get this done in time if I can just resist counterstrike's yummy temptations.

What maps/servers u playin on zeeba? i'd love to hit up some counter-strike! =)

I'm no longer mapping for the competition. Something much...much better has come up and I'm so happy to be working on it again.

Hotdog just received a contract by Valve in the mail.

Noah!

Maybe you can give up some wip screens?! Would love to see what you did sir.

Well, the map itself was very unfinished and still had mostly dev textures. But I might upload the plane as a prefab. I was quite happy with that.

Hotdog just received a contract by Valve in the mail.

Lol, I wish.

Captain, my steam name is m_chumchal. If you add me as friend you can join the servers i'm in. Wanna play for a little bit tonight? I have a lot of homework but I wanna play for a little bit. Lemme KNOOOWWWWWWWW!

Hotdog how dare you, shame. Nothing touches a twhl competition.

Skals, you are doing many of the same things I am with your map. I feel that you have a strong chance this time, well bc I haven't touched mine besides layout so far anyways. Atleast you are providing me with inspiration. Congrats on the sexy map so far.

I tried using env_sound for my map, but it's way too buggy. Sometimes they are failing to activate, which isn't that bad, but it's extremely annoying when the one that's supposed to turn the env_sound room type off fails to activate, I'm forced to walk around with the room type effect outdoors, doesn't sound good.

Yea, env_sound is something to avoid unless you don't mind it playing through out the entire map or not working sometimes.

I've been working on my counter terrorist base alone for two days straight. Hope to finish it today and start on the terrorist base.

I've finished mine and been testing it on a large public server. All I've got to do is add more sound and fix some bugs, thanks to the testing they've helped me remake some areas in the map that are bad gameplay wise and fix a lot of bugs.

Congrats on getting it done so fast! I wonder if i'll have time to playtest mine. The best i've done so far is with bots...

I spent extra time working on the map because I know that after march 3rd, I'll be playing ff13-2 and soulcalibur 5 and not getting off it for a few weeks. I'll release / upload my map before march 3rd for that reason.

I'm pretty stalled on this :/

I found working ona different project is really helping me regain interest in finishing C32. Sometimes you just need a break.

I wish I could go back in time and pick another map besides 747. That fffing plane is ruining my map, its just too big... =P

What are you making Zeeba?

Can you guess? I would have done aztec but I already did one.

Got t and ct base about finished. Now to do everything in between. Well first I better get on some homework, I can't "completely" forget about school.

de_dust?

Im guessing cs_office or de_train, cause zeeba likes BIG n cool maps.

de_movingtrain? If nobody's made that, someone should.

I started to make, a while ago, a CS remake of UT99 train map. But i am worried about the scrolling texture and the game crashing.

Sounds like fun to make, albeit difficult. It may be easier to do in Source.

You'd just need an animated skybox model simulating the countryside flying past. I've seen a similar thing in a UT2004 assault map. A touch of fog and you could do it without giving the track any curve.

I've played with this idea before. It's pretty simple in Source to use trigger_vphysics_motion to simulate air resistance and the ground moving below you. Unfortunately the entity doesn't exist in MP, and trigger_push doesn't do a very good job (ignores some physics classes like ragdolls and debris).

Source has func_conveyor, doesn't it? That could work for anything that's hit the ground.

I still think there's a problem with making a handful of textures scroll at a different speed each to make the different depths of scenery. Could be done with a shitload of prop_dynamics attached to func_trains but I don't think that would be very resource efficient.

That idea sounds awesome, reminds me of 007 I think.

Skals is correct though I concidered de_train. Running into some issues though, like why would a terrorist bomb a mosque .

the mosque is a front for the russian mafia. They're hoarding the United State's old captured MRE's and selling hacked UAV's that kamakaze Iran activated. People don't go there to pray, they go there to buy old food and useless electronics.
Its a proverbial boil in an otherwise peaceful war-village.

My bomb spots are a government officials estate and a famous restaurant owned by the same government official; with the idea being that the terrorists who are Cuban revolutionaries want to cause fear amongst the Cuban government. My map will be called de_revolution, it's basically set in Cuba-Havana, during their revolution.
I included a sort of channel on one side of the map, I wanted some kind of water in my map so I researched Havana on google, finding out that the city does in fact have quite a few rivers, channels, and a port, so I put that in my map :).

Sounds atmospheric! Can't wait to play some of these.

Funny, I did the same thing as skals. But for other reasons. Very good tet, it's just crazy enough to work

Havana theme on Italy?

That looks really nice Moaby. Nicer than the original italy anyways :P.

Does anyone know the easiest way to make a realistic stain-glass effect texture like the one in lost coast?

Doodle:

Your VMT should be something like this:
[quote]"Refract"
{

"$refracttinttexture" 	"blah/tinttexture"
"$normalmap" 		"blah/normalmap"
"$surfaceprop" 		"glass"

"$refractamount" 	".02"
"$bluramount" 		"5"

"$envmap" 		"env_cubemap"
"$envmapcontrast" 	"1"
"$envmapsaturation" 	"0.5"
"$envmaptint" 		"[.8 .8 .8]"

"<dx90"
{
"$fallbackmaterial" 	"blah/texturename_dx8"
}

}[/quote]

Made these textures like that a while ago. You'll want to tweak the refract amount and envmap brightness to your liking. For reference, the textures look like this outside of the game.

Thanks Strid

It'd be nice if someone had a server. Maybe I can try to temp. host one. May not have time for it to be worth it though.

I would but I lost my slave machine and my Internet isn't reliable anymore.

Anyone know why condition zero freezes when I try to play my map with bots? It does so when they are "analyzing the map". It worked when it was only a fleshed out version but now it is fairly complex.