The Official HRAFD Progress/Troubleshoot Created 9 years ago2015-06-09 18:46:11 UTC by Half-Rats

The Official "Half-Rats: A Fever Dream - please god help me, I'm stuck!" Mod thread!

Well, I knew it would be crazy getting back into Goldsource after not so much as mapping a floor in over a decade, and it has been a wild ride. My FIRST real mod has been underway since March and I've made some serious progress on it. It has not been without mind-wracking problems, though (As can be expected). I'd like a to take a moment to thank everyone here for being patient with my incessant questions...but...there are more to be asked yet! That's what this thread is for. It's part diary, part query - and hopefully it will help out future generations of GS modders! Not only that, but as I learn, I'll be able to pass the info on and help out more effectively.

Alright, current questions:

1. My Func_water is fullbright no matter what the lighting situation is - is this a render mode issue?

2. How can I get water to rise to a certain point to simulate flooding without making it a train or door? I have a working firebox that the player has to light, a working steam engine and rotating button and, a working pump - but now, how to get that water to rise!

3. How do I get the most out of Ickthyosaur AI in my maps?

Additional info can be found here: http://www.moddb.com/mods/half-rats-a-fever-dream

1. I believe, based on a question I had in the past, that water is always fullbright. Unless some solution to this has revealed itself since then, I don't think there's really a way to fix it.
Actually, a thought occurs. I'mma test something and get back to you about that.

2. If you look at the properties, you'll see func_water has a lot of parameters and flags in common with func_doors. I'm quite sure you can use them in pretty much the exact same way.

See, I was looking for a "Move distance"...but couldn't find it.

Use the lip parameter. By default, it'll move its height in distance; a positive lip decreases the distance, a negative one increases it. Of course, given the nature of water, you wouldn't want it to move up and leave empty air at the bottom of the water, so you may well have to extend the water below the area as far as you intend to move it up.

Also, I tested my theory; looks like all liquid textures are fullbright, so you can't surrogate the water like I was thinking.

Know that the water is scripted to move. From no water at all, to a VERY great depth.

Alright, try this. Make the water as it would be in the level when it's completely flooded. Set the angle to Down, and check the Starts Open flag. (I imagine you'd want the Toggle flag checked, too.) Trigger as per usual.

Worked! Thank you!

That was a creepy-trippy trailer. Your architecture seems a bit blocky, but i guess it's more about the story than visuals?

The only way i know so far to "darken/fade" water is to place another semi-opaque brush on top of it:

A func_illusionary in that screen, set to texture mode and enlarged about 150 times, FX 255. Texture is 16x16 pixel size, half blue-half black; blue being translucent.

Oof...that'll be a problem! Yeah, the footage in that trailer is a bit blocky. Most of my mod is quite blocky, haha. There are places that make up for it, though. I don't exactly have stellar screenshots up. You have to admit, though, the manor is cool.

Y'know, if your 1. question is referring to your rising water, the sort of thing Kaching suggests could be done. It would be a bit of a pain to rig up, but certainly doable.
(I think it would depend on whether you're using waves with that water though. If you were, it might spoil the effect.)

I can imagine the waves poking through it and looking very horrible. The waves...are necessary - a huge flooding room with placid water would look just as bad as glowing water. And, Kachito, what do you mean by half blue, half black?

Sorry if i sounded like an arsehat. I usually point out the weakest spots instead of "1 up-ing", more often then not forgetting to do the later; there's too much to type if i were to name all the things i like on some of the works around here.The texture above, half blue(RGB 0 0 255 on last index of the color palette) - half black :P, enlarged 100-200 times would give a fade to black effect; from what i know it is the only way to achieve it in gsc. It would look awkward with waves; btw, why do you want the waves for anyway?
And yes, it does look cool; the half rat playing the piano was a nice touch.

I don't think that works with transparency, or does it?

It's fine, Kachito. If you would have said, "This fucking sucks!" I would still be 100% okay. A lot of people try to be nice when it comes to games - a noble and cool thing to do, but harmful in the long run. There's a reason why I like Gordon Ramsay, hahaa.

Okay...next, very pressing question...Can I script ammo to spawn? There's a part where I want Mr. Trask to "Hand" Half-Rats ammo from behind the counter of the general store...Can this be done?

monstermaker => Monster Type: ammo_*. Configure as necessary.
Easy peasy.

@ Kachito: Couldn't a similar effect be doable with just a plain colour brush and a certain Render Mode: Texture value? Seems like the Black texture would work fine. (Have not tested. Probably won't.)

That would work for covering the whole brush; my suggestion was in case they wanted a fade effect.
Now that i think of it, i remember Vluzacn saying something that he might fiddle with zhlt_embedlight in the next update for water/scroll/animated, so we could get the water textures to render properly after all.

You'd think that valve would have fixed that problem. I mean, the scrolling water doesn't act like that for me, just the standing water textures - I am using the version of hammer that comes with the Half-Life SDK on Steam, by the way.

Now, in my situation, the water is in pitch darkness - so it looks silly...but on the other hand it does serve the purpose of showing the player that it is safe to jump finally and that the archaic water pumps they had to get started did their job and their work paid off. Thinking of it...this mod is going to be so short, haha. So close to completing it. I can taste it. Just a few more maps to goooo...and then some crazy scripting.

As a funny aside (And since this is also a diary of sorts):

It's coincident - given the name of the mod, but I've actually had several fevers during its development...Once from a tetanus shot, once from a sinus infection and, once from eating a bad hot dog...I kept going through all of it - determined to get this puppy finished.

Is it possible to make a repeating background cycle forever? Like the opposing force intro, but on steroids? I was thinking of making the scenery a func_train and having it on a constant loop like tank treads, while the middle of my map is stationary.

Sure you can make the background move like that. You don't need to have it loop, func_trains can teleport. So once out of the player's view, the chunk of scenery teleports from the last path_corner back to the first path_corner and repeats its path.

Thank you! The end of this game will benefit from this knowledge! Excellent!

Uh oh, getting a bad surface extents error upon. Also, when I check for problems, it says there is an empty Func_Wall. It takes me to the origin of my map when I click "Go to error".

Empty ents shouldn't cause much of an issue, but to get rid of them, after clicking "Go to error", close the Problems dialogue box and hit the delete key. That should remove it.

Bad surface extents is usually always hiding a texture axis perpendicular to face error caused during clipping, carving or in rare cases, VM.
Select any suspect brushes and align their textures to 'world' in the Face Editor. This can be done en-masse.

Thank you!

Still getting the error...

Here's a report:

qrad.exe v 1.5 (Apr 6 2000)
--- Radiosity --
4 threads
[Reading texlights from 'C:\PROGRA~2\Steam\STEAMA~1\common\HALF-L~1\HAMMER~1\tools\lights.rad']
[1 texlights parsed from 'C:\PROGRA~2\Steam\STEAMA~1\common\HALF-L~1\HAMMER~1\tools\lights.rad']

No vis information, direct lighting only.
4080 faces
143665 square feet [20687804.00 square inches]
15042 patches after subdivision
9 direct lights
BuildFacelights: 0...1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8...9...
********** ERROR **********
Bad surface extents

Do you have any faces with textures scaled <0.1 or >10.0?

I checked every texture I have...Still getting that error...half of the brushes are now deleted...Good god. Cranky bastard Hammer.

Bad surface extents is usually always...

It can also be caused by a water brush (or similar) having a non-water texture on one side.

No vis information, direct lighting only.

Also, by that little piece of compile log, it says you're not running vis for some reason.

Investigate the Vis part of the compile further. Post the whole log if you're still having issues

Well, I decided to trigger a map change TO this map. The game crashed, and it gave me some coordinates! -1939, 2520, -39.

How do I lock onto this position?

In Sledge, it would be View -> Go to Coordinates. Don't quote me on it, but i don't think Goldsource Hammer has this feature, been a while since i've used it.
Have you tried compiling with Vluzacn Tools? You`re using the really old stuff.

I no no how use all those wacky tools. Actually, I was trying to go purist. But if it comes down to it, i may use some of those tools. Will it affect things? Will i have to recompile all of my previously compiled maps with the new tools? Will it maybe fix my stupid level change issue?

It won't fix entity issues, but it will improve your lighting and probably the performance of your map. You'd need to recompile your maps to see those benefits, but the compile would probably run a lot faster using the updated tools. You don't have to recompile all your maps, but after you notice the benefits you will probably want to.

There's absolutely no reason to "go purist" when it comes to the compile tools. The updated ones are better in every possible way, and you don't need to do anything special to get them to work - just point Hammer at the new executables and it works exactly the same.

They are up-to-date versions of what you're currently using. Quality of life improvements, faster compile time, etc...
Fire up Sledge/configure it with Vluzacn tools and give it a go with the coordinates. In a couple of hours you won't be missing Hammer anymore.

Link me! Also, I was wondering if anyone could help me out or point me in the direction of some scrolling textures. Scrolling railroad tracks...scrolling dirt...

Surely you could take any old texture and add "SCROLL" to the start of it. Just boot up Wally and rename some copies.

If you don't have Wally, I'm sure someone can drop a link in.

http://twhl.info/forums.php?thread=18410 - Sledge.

http://forums.svencoop.com/forumdisplay.php/217-Vluzacn-s-Map-Compile-Tools - Vluzacn Tools.

http://cs.gamebanana.com/tools/4774 - Wally. Check out gamebanana.com for textures ready to use for Half Life 1, if you don't want to make your own.

http://www.slackiller.com/tommy14/errors.htm - Compiling errors.

I fixed the problem...I put 28, 32-sided, hollowed cylinders intersecting a giant spike and it compiled like a dream.

NOT!

Thank you for the links! Ummm, I'm looking for scrolling railroad tracks, too...

Shows up as purple checkers!

That just means you didn't copy the wad file to the proper folder.

The only time I've encountered purple checkers in goldsource at all (which was this morning, actually) was when I opened up m' map in Sledge using the wrong profile, one which did not have the .wad I was using whitelisted.
Fun fact.

Hmmm...I modified the wad that was already in the correct folder, though! Yikes!

I guess you'd best take us step-by-step through what you did. I can't think of any reason why you'd end up with checkers.

I launched Wally, opened halflife.wad from the Half-Life SDK folder titled "Texture Wad Files". Then, I found the Generic52 texture, copied it, pasted it and renamed the copy "scroll_gravel". I then removed the Wad files from from the list in Hammer, re-added them from their proper locations, applied the change, then exited out of Hammer. I restarted Hammer and my new texture showed up nicely. I added it into the map, compiled. Playtested the map and the bastard shows up as checkers. Now, I have to ask...since I modified the original halflife.wad, do I include the modified version in my mod's directory?

Create a new .wad file and name it something unique. The game will be referencing its vanilla halflife.wad from the pack files which is not the .wad you modified.

You don't need to copy any of the half-life textures into the new wad. Simply have your new wad and halflife.wad both added in Hammer.

As a general rule, try to be as non-destructive to original files as possible when it comes to modding (i.e. don't overwrite halflife.wad). This also means that when it comes to distributing your mod, you only need to include a 250kb .wad instead of the ~450MB halflife.wad for the sake of one texture.

Thank you!

Getting a warning that it couldn't open the wad.

Where, in the game?

Make sure all the wads you are using are in your mod folder or the valve folder.

For example, the following are all correct:

steamapps \common\Half-Life\thecore\core2.wad

steamapps \common\Half-Life\valve\zhlt.wad

steamapps \common\Half-Life\valve\decals.wad

So all your wads should be in whatever you mod's folder is, except official half-life wads which can be in the valve folder.
These are what Hammer should be pointing to as well.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Still not working...Good god. Did everything by the book. Crashes upon loading the map via the console - after firing the game up from my steam game's list.