Post your screenshots! WIP thread Created 17 years ago2007-12-16 00:58:58 UTC by doodle

I think that what´s the last thing in their priorities for people like Sookiller is to earn money with what they do with Gold Source.

undercut their GoldSource profits

These days the amount they make from Goldsource per year will probably be around what they make from CSGO in five minutes of in-game purchases.

At the end of the day, there's absolutely no motivation for Valve to care about any of this. They're loving and supportive of Goldsource modders, but why would they actively take steps to allow GS to stop being GS? All these Frankenstein's engines like Xash are just such a pointless endeavour. I get that it's fun to tinker with an old engine, but getting mad at Valve for not caring is daft.

If you want Source features, use Source - otherwise, you're better using an entirely open-source engine like Unity.

These days the amount they make from Goldsource per year will probably be around what they make from CSGO in five minutes of in-game purchases.

Hell, the amount they make from goldsource per year is probably less than I spend weekly on lunches.
Pretty much everyone who wants Half-Life/CS 1.6 has it, and even back when the engine was high tech there weren't many people lining up to license it.

It doesn't really make business sense for Valve to care about goldsource. Besides, if recent interviews are to be believed, they're actually making a new engine anyway.

@Crypt Haven't forgotten about the threading topology comparison, I'm just really slow. Sorry!

Quite happily surprised that I am not only able to return to this after a week of not doing anything with it, but being motivated enough to continue working on it with no problem. Finished the midsection and I'm almost finished the bottom plate.

The midsection was easily the most difficult piece to finish due to it's complexity, and my inexperience with high-poly subd topology. Once the bottom plate is finished, I only have 5 small pieces left which are going to be a cakewalk (knock on wood) compared to the rest of the mod. This is by far the most detailed model I have ever created.

If you want Source features, use Source - otherwise, you're better using an ?entirely open-source engine like Unity.

Wrong. Most of us don't care about fancy graphic bump and specular thingy, we want those stupid 1997 limits overriden, just that.

Have to agree with Archie here...
I don't think it can really be worded any better than he put it, but to reinforce the point: If you want a different engine--Use a different engine. Outside of this forum, I have never heard of anybody so demanding of the goldsource engine's source code.

Now I'm not even close to being a competent programmer, but I don't need to be to understand the implications of trying to bring an ancient engine in the modern world. Newer engines are designed to take advantage of the countless advancements in the computer world that have been made since the late 90s, even if you don't use "advanced features" such as bump mapping and specular mapping. (Shaders aren't exactly "advanced" features by the way...)
With the amount of band-aiding you're going to be doing to the goldsource engine to keep up with that, you might as well just use the open-source quake engine instead, or even better, use a modern engine if you want modern features.

I think it's great that people can still be passionate about a great game, and more specifically it's engine, but there is a point that you have to push past the nostalgia and accept that obsolescence is in fact real.

I think it's great that people can still be passionate about a great game, and more specifically it's engine, but there is a point that you have to push past the nostalgia and accept that obsolescence is in fact real.

Well. I think that it is not nostalgia, it is laziness. In my case, I don't want to spent more time learning HL2 coding, modelling (I think it is far different from HL1 because of physics, etc) and probably mapping I did struggle with GS coding, so you can imagine what will happen with me tryng to understand HL2 source, hahaha!,

And for Xash3D, we just need to develop mods under Xash3D publish them as to be used under GS but advising to use it under Xash3D or whatever engine. Advising to use something is not illegal... Oh, wait!, could it be something like encouraging to use pirated software?, unless there's some legal notification or someone condemned... could a clone engine be recommended of being used?

@Crollo
It always annoys me to hear people saying: you should move to another engine. Being told "you should accept that obsolescence" makes me feel like I'm consulting a psychologist. I don't need one (at least when it comes to my modding preferences, I guess I could use one for my odd exhibitionist disorder).
We know the age of the Goldsource engine and we're not sticking with it just because we're deliberately ignoring the reality unlike what you're saying. There are good reasons to stick with it, a good part has to do with personal preferences and also passion for the original game. But the Goldsource engine still remains relevant today for other reasons. It's got a distinct gameplay and graphical atmosphere, there is very extensive knowledge of the engine which has been accumulated and documented over the past 20 years, its modding experience is time-tested, and last and far from the least: it's got a huge legacy of content that would be unusable from another engine.
I'm not a Goldsource die-hard fan, but I don't think you should see people who stick and want to do more with the engine as closed-minded people who refuse to accept the reality.

@abbadon
I don't think laziness is a word that describes more than 10% of the Goldsource modders (<- percentage that is completely arbitrary, trust me!)

@Archie
Unity is closed-source, I believe.

We are not against GS we are referring to the clone engines, they add very little benefit but segregate the already shrinking community.
As a mapper i can't justify the use any of these "3rd" party engines because they are not as widely adopted as the version currently on Steam. The look and feel of the engine is there, was there and will be there in the form of the original engine.
GS was not meant for elaborate entity setups or huge open worlds, why do you need to change that ?

Ive looked at Xash or was it SOHL or whichever with all these graphical improvements and a map on them looked horribly lacking polish (props, lighting etc...). The thing with GS is that you can get away with using just CSG for your map keeping the look and feel authentic. That's why many never moved to Source because the level of detail needed to make a decent level is way higher.

The only thing that keeps this engine from going under is nostalgia. Valve pulled the other reason when they released csgo.

I don't think laziness is a word that describes more than 10% of the Goldsource modders

Haha, no, i was only describing myself!!

If you don't want to make maps that use newer features, you don't have to. If you want to play only mods that use the original engine that's your choice.
Why restrict people from doing what they want just because you don't feel like doing it yourself?

I agree with that. I don't understand what's up with that willingness in imposing a lethargy to others.

GS was not meant for elaborate entity setups or huge open worlds, why do you need to change that ?

We don't stick with GS for its lack of elaborate entity setups and huge open worlds, so why would we prevent it from getting these new features? (although, those two, especially open world, is far from being the reasons why we want to open-source the engine).

Also, I like the visual aspect of improved GS/Xash games like Paranoia 2 and Cof. Guess it depends on everyone's taste.

The only thing that keeps this engine from going under is nostalgia. Valve pulled the other reason when they released csgo.

For the nostalgia part, I explained in my previous part why I think it's wrong. Also, I would argue there is currently more CS1.6 / CZ mappers than other GS mappers.

I agree with that. I don't understand what's up with that willingness in imposing a lethargy to others.

GS was not meant for elaborate entity setups or huge open worlds, why do you need to change that ?

We don't stick with GS for its lack of elaborate entity setups and huge open worlds, so why would we prevent it from getting these new features? (although, those two, especially open world, is far from being the reasons why we want to open-source the engine).

Also, I like the visual aspect of improved GS/Xash games like Paranoia 2 and Cof. Guess it depends on everyone's taste.

The only thing that keeps this engine from going under is nostalgia. Valve pulled the other reason when they released csgo.

For the nostalgia part, I explained in my previous post why I think it's wrong. Also, I would argue there is currently more CS1.6 / CZ mappers than other GS mappers.

Plus, you have a problem moding for GS?, you have a zillion tutorials and threads on forums after 20 years of testing and fixing problems for modders. I am sure there are plenty less of that support for HL2 and Source modding. Maybe that's why there are so few total conversions for HL2, apart from map packs in the shape of a mod :/

I think I mentioned this already but I'll mention it again : some people prefer old engines (not specifically GS) because less technology means that there is less time to learn and master it. While modern engines open to the public try to be as friendly as possible (mentioning Unity and Unreal Engine 4), you still need a lot of time to learn them and master them. In other words, creating a level in DOOM 1 is much easier and faster than doing the same in Unreal Engine 4.

I would also like to make a note that is very dear to me when it comes "to fancy graphics inside Gold Source mods": please, don't mistake mods that features enhancements (ARRANGEMENT, Cry of Fear, PARANOIA, Trinity to quote the most populars) as engines (Gold Source, Xash) because they aren't. To clarify, these kind of stuff are built in the client binary (client.dll) by "querying and extending the existing", if it was done inside the engine, others binaries would have been touched ("hw.dll" for Steam, "xash.dll" for Xash) and it would have impacted all games running on that engine.

Switch to Source ? It seems that Valve also abandoned it as well. Just look at the Source SDK 2013 GitHub repository, same hell as the Half-Life 1 one.

I'm not a "pro-Gold Source" kind of person, I did mess around with Unity, Unreal Engine 3/4 and a little bit of Source too. But I refuse to throw away 10 (almost 15 for some people) years of hard work (ARRANGEMENT) just to migrate everything to Unreal Engine 4 and repeat the same history as Duke Nukem: Forever which is the "let's switch to this modern engine because it's so cool".

@Loulimi : Unity is closed source unless you buy the "Pro" or "Enterprise" license IIRC.

Amen.

the Goldsource engine still remains relevant today for other reasons. It's got a distinct gameplay and graphical atmosphere

Which these mods remove. Nobody here is anti-goldsource, nor are we blind purists trying to ruin other people's fun. Just simply part of Goldsource's charm and its continued appeal is its simplicity and style.
Once you add refractive water and normal maps, etc, all of a sudden you've just got a horrible mismatch of style and it looks awful.

The argument is not against Goldsource.

That's your opinion. Yet again, the Goldsource engine has got a very pleasant visual feel. That doesn't mean everything is perfect with it. The flashlight is horrible, so is the water and the low-quality textures. Yet I still like its simple visual layout. Blocks' edges are neatly, precisely, roughly (by that I'm trying to say that the scale is big) and brutally cut. There is no, or very few, smoothing effect. I cannot express all the reasons why I still like its visual appearance, that's just personal preferences and that's very hard to describe comprehensively.
You find it awful, I love the visual appearance of graphically-improved Goldsource mods such as Cof or PS2 (or Arrangment winks at Shepard), more so than Goldsource's original visual aspect. I still find Source graphics absolutely awful though.
The whole debate is about whether it is worth it to open-source the Goldsource engine in order to improve it (and also apparently whether people should tell other people what engine they think they should mod for). I take it you think it's not worth it. I'm convinced it is for a load of reasons, some I've already mentioned (bug fixing, optimisation, better modding experience), some I've not mentioned yet (custom menu, updated dependencies), and also for the reason of improving its visual appearance: making it look better while only sticking with what makes it look good, even compared to more modern engines. It would be easy to make new visual features only come as an option I believe.
I don't see the point of engines such as Xash which are buggy and illegal though.

I'm all for people doing interesting things with the GoldSource engine, but I'm a sucker for the classic style and even the original Low-Def models.

I tend to follow most that have that classic look. I don't mean set in black mesa specifically. Original mods that favour brushwork prefabs over models. A prime example would be They Hunger

Somewhat ironic considering The Core uses a lot of prop models...

Once you add refractive water and normal maps, etc, all of a sudden you've just got a horrible mismatch of style and it looks awful.

Nobody's saying we should do that. For some reason, every time i talk about dealing with OpenGL performance issues people think i'm talking about refractions, reflections, bump mapping, HDR, etc, when all i mean is to eliminate the performance issues caused by immediate mode and poorly written graphics code.

Take a look at this:This is rendering a map using shaders, yet it looks the same as in-game. That's because the shaders are identical to the immediate mode version.

A well designed implementation will have the capacity to have those fancy effects, but that is not what i intend, and i doubt anyone else would force it on others.

I don't know about you, but if i uncap the framerate i get ~1,5-2k fps running trempler's or bruce's huge experimental maps. Where are these performance issues you speak of?
Everything runs fine for me on w10. Granted not everyone has a top of the line i7 or a gtx1080, but i guarantee any 10 year old system can push a decent 400fps and if you are running that maybe its time for an upgrade? I get that there are some outdated methods used in the rendering pipeline, but it still works fine on most stuff. Unless its remade for convenience sake, but then we are back into the whole modifying thing...

"but i guarantee any 10 year old system can push a decent 400fps"

My laptop is almost 10 years old, and I am confident that your statement does not apply on my end.
Even in 640x480!

AMD users beg to differ. It's a driver issue, not an implementation issue, but you have to switch to shaders to bypass the problems.

Never owned an AMD/ATI card so can't comment there. I have one at work though so i might test and see what i get compared to Nvidia.

Don't forget to turn on the flashlight, that's a major cause of FPS drops.

I am sure that what many modders are asking for is to increase engine limits, just that, nothing about fancy graphics.

In my personal case I am just more than happy if the game don't crash because of the max edicts issue, or the max entities in visible packet list. Probably Xash has its issues, but with it my mod did never crash because of those problems.

I am ager to see what Solokiller will do now that, as I think I read, he will start to study how to improve the engine (if not, it will be like a bucket of ice thrown on we all modder's back!, hahaha ).

@Trempler keeps nagging me to make a Xen map. I hate Xen textures and architecture though so you're gonna get this instead and you're gonna like it.

Love the waterfall

Wow, gibs hit the func_rotating. Didn't think people care SO much about engine.
As far as I know, some parts of Xash3D are taken from HL2 SDK, and some really deep creepy shitty parts were probably reverse-engineered from [dis]assembly code. And for the stability part, well...
In my opinion, as a professional programmer, who also worked on a HL mod for more than 10 years, the real lego-work is GoldSource. But you cannot notice it unless you try doing something with it. And if you do, "PREPARE FOR UNFORESEEN CONSEQUENCES". One example: once in a while HL kept crashing after level change for no apparent reason. It took a year to find out (and not without help of Xash3D and rehlds because retards at VALVe even encrypt HL DLLs) that HL engine crumbles when singleplayer maps have upper/mixed case names. My maps are named like CO_MapName01, 02, etc. And there are LOTS of things like this. While I, as a modmaker, was spending 90% of my time dealing with things like that, imagine what Xash3D devs had to go through!
And yes, there's a lot of Quake code in both HL and Xash3D. MDL loading code is available in studiomdl sources, same with BSP and SPR. I don't see much reason for VALVe to be so butthurt about their 19 years old stuff.

And HL limits are killing me. I have a big (but still inside 8192 block) and vey nice unfinished map which even does compile, but crashes HL client just because there's no enough memory.

Victor-933 +1 about xen stuff
Map looks nice but could benefit from increasing BSP polycout a little IMHO.

I tend to follow most that have that classic look. I don't mean set in black mesa specifically. Original mods that favour brushwork prefabs over models.

again, +1

i heard that linux hl binaries have a lot of debug information in them making it almost possible to decompile, didnt xash make use of it?

Haven't had time to make anything competition related, so once I've got an occasion I decided to continue working on one of my projects. Using Darkplaces engine (Quake engine deriative), it was time to decide which map format I'll use (it supports a few).

Made a simple area in Trenchbroom and saved it as .map, which opened flawlessly in Sledge (made a new wad for GS to use the same textures).

Quake bsp compiled with Tyrutils:HL bsp compiled with VHLT (running under Darkplaces):Same in Half-Life:There's also Quake 3 bsp (probably most advanced of supported by the engine) to test, though I'm not familiar with mapping tools for it.

Darn, that inspires me to make a Quake map in J.A.C.K.

With stock Quake it'll look worse than on my screenshots, a lot has been modified in Darkplaces. And then, I haven't used any of it's advanced features there. I just made a map with basic Quake entities, textured it and compiled.

What I'm doing is starting with a Quake mod, then making it work as standalone pack working with engine. Once I reach that point, I can compile the engine and get my project with it's own executable.

I think people should make new "separate games" built on Xash3d instead of making goldsource mods. Because there are a lot of limitations in goldsource and you can not make a modern and optimized game with it. But with Xash3d you can even modify the engine or make your game playable on phone.

But the thing is I do not know if it is legal to use HL1 sdk as a base to use with Xash3d.

Steam does not allow xash3d but what about itch.io for example ? Would gaben sue us even if it would be free ?

For GoldSrc "games", yes. But for usual mods, it's 50/50. If your GoldSrc mod is just a simple level pack with 2 new weapons, then it doesn't need Xash3D. Though, you're right about the limitations.

I mean, I was barely able to fit my school map into a 4096^3 space. All entities were inside the space, while some brushwork did slip off into the outer space. ts_untergrund is enormous, and suffers from its size on some locations, too.

Working on a reimagining of the first DM map I released.Compare to:

Victor-933 BM sublevels? I've played it a few days ago
New version looks less like BM here.

fuzun

I think people should make new "separate games" built on Xash3d instead of making goldsource mods. Because there are a lot of limitations in goldsource and

That's a point, yes. But I think Xash3D API is not yet estabilished outside of GS API to be used widely. That's if you want your game to be portable between different engine versions. But if you're doing a complete stand-alone with lots of engine modifications, you pretty much stick to one version.
I personally chose the hardest way of making a mod that is compatible with everything from WON HL 1110 to Steam HL 1122 and Xash3D. Just to let players run it on whatever they like most.

Admer456
Yeah, map size limitation is a very silly one. HL could technically handle double XYZ even back then.
But much worse is texture memory limit. And HL also does not clean texture memory on level change, so when you play lots of different DM maps with custom textures, HL WILL crash. Or maybe it will crash becasue of AllocString before that

@xawari yeah, which is why I called it a "reimagining". Doesn't even follow the same layout (which is great IMO because the original layout was just a bunch of open hallways)... Looks a bit like DM_Crystalline, although to be fair they all share the same inspiration -- Caverns 1 from Doom 3:

Hey, what about a DM-Fractal port for Half-Life?

More fun with entity setups. Proof of concept was proven tonight.

Care to elaborate?

Working on laying the groundwork for an idea i had.
Without giving too much away, the silvery shape to the right is a 'ship' and the gray boxes are phys_thrusters to allow the ship to steer, and env_smokestacks simulate the fuel leaving the ship thrusters.

Simple steering was accomplished using the 4 black buttons that are arranged as a D-pad.

So even though there's gravity in that box, the ship acts as though there is none, and floats around 'weightlessly'.

I started some Quake mapping:The 2nd floor hallway......after getting swept through.This is where the teleport leads to.So, I've realised that mapping for Quake = GoldSrc × 0.5. So yeah, that means that half of the features are gone etc. but that's why it's simpler.

Big thanks to Snehk for inspiring me to actually start Quaking.

I really need to get Quake. But the mapping looks really good. I especially enjoy those hallways.

Here's some DM-Fractal progress:

Great work Admer! That outdoor map looks especially good. You could also add some high wall to make it look more like Quake-styled keep. If you know QuakeC enough (or know where to look, Quake community most probably published code on one of their forums long ago), you can bring entities from Half-Life to Quake with recompiling svqc.

Been working with Quake 3 .bsp, but compiler crashed every time I tried to compile a map, so I'm going to stick with Quake 1 .bsp (or bsp2). Today I've been testing how height maps and high res skies work in Darkplaces engine. Made some wacky, placeholder, test height maps and got high res pack from QuakeOne forum.(I know that this groundcover looks horrible...)

But adding new entites would basically be a new mod, right?
Hmm, that could actually be interesting. Imagine a Quake mod which brings HL:DM into Quake. xD

Anyway, I heard of QuakeC but I have no experience in it, nor in C, only typing code from a tutorial into a .cpp file.

And Quake seriously lacks func_breakable, or I'm blind...

And Quake seriously lacks func_breakable, or I'm blind...

It's been a few years since I played it, but I don't believe Quake did breakable objects.

That's right, no func_breakable, func_door_rotating or even transparent surfaces without additions to progs.dat

Getting stuff from tutorials working in QC is not harder than following C++ tuts. Might be easier in some cases. Copy-pasting still largely works, and there's more QC reference and scripts on the web than Half-Life coding tutorials.