PQL, Issues... TWHL? Created 20 years ago2003-11-16 06:15:36 UTC by Andy

Anyone interested in submitting an .rmf of a simple map that has an entrance and exit and good stuff in the middle?
I think we have enought talent to put something together, I just need to know if it's worth doing?
Actually I think Kol suggested something like this a while ago.... but I spent today combining the Compo maps with simple level transitions and it aint half bad. (I will put the finished product in the Vault later near the end of the year)
So if you are interested, just comment here....

Uhhhh, what? An entrance and an exit? :

I don't gettit - don't all maps have something in?

Here is the concept....
Take a whole heap of random maps and string them together to make an HLSP.
That way everyone get's their map in the final production Mod...
What you put in your map, detail and architecture, is up to you...

Imagined that was what you meant
Sounds pretty good; I'd be up for it!

theres gonna b a twhl mod?

...hey, I said that!

NO NO NO NO NO NO

Oooh lets see how many of these I have watched fail, it must be about TEN now. Unless you have amazing organisation and mappers who aren't so muppety they include 300 cs wads.. it just never works imo.

The last combo HL SP map I saw was a horrible mess, I don't see the point :

Rules?
Only build on Half-Life original wads and some out pointed wads same with models and sprite.
I go for it, am in if somebody set up a structure fore it.

Me too, I'm in.

Me too, I'm willing to try it... What should I do?

LEMME BE PART OF IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Innit.

Me too ffs

To any doubters: ISSUES! > I?ve played the beta and its brilliant -
And I?m not being biased in the fact that one of my levels is in it

This is a great idea, and I?d love to be a part of it - maybe we should do what the issues team did: Sort out some team leaders, etc. a loose plot of some sort - to stop it from beeng just another mess of maps.
Work out a system of levels > i.e.: a hub, or teleports, or something else,
I wont go into what I think should and should not be allowed - it?s only a rough idea right now.

But, of course, I?m in!
After issues I?ll have nothing to do - apart form this

What I suggest you do now, if you want to contribute - is start thinking of your entry, what's in going to be? Etc.

I really hope this works out

Cant really thinking of and entry if you dont know the plot, the scenery, the sort(xen, hightech, darkages etc) and stuff.

I?d like to be in too... But I?m with Kol and Tlax... Some rules, some common themes, some random assignation of levels according to individual abilities, some difficult settings (increasing as maps grow :)) and so on.
Maybe we all should write togheter some kind of story, divide it into chapters and then maps. The rest is all organisation, map testing from all members of the team and a continuous flow of ideas and maps (mailing is a good thing :D)...
If we?re gonna get this thing started we should start with a cense of members, grouping them into small teams linked togheter with other teams and, of course, a plot, an objetive... Don?t you think?.
By the way, we should also try a little question chart with things like "Xen/Earth/Both", "Inside/Outside/Both", to see what we like about maps.

Great ideas, all! Keep posting your thoughts here. Andy is in transit right now, but I'm sure he will figure out a way to check in once in a while. I know he wants to keep the project limited to retail HL. There will be room for anyone who wants to join.

How big is this supposed to get?

Well i had a lot of ideas for this thing - One of them was not to follow the hl trend - to break away from Black mesa themes etc.. but not entirely, and use Spirit 1.1

I'll write up a full consept in the comming days and post it up

Spirit is my enemy! (i dont know why it jsut is)

Spirit is good, you retard! KILL THE SPIRIT HATER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yeah, I guess original HL is OK, but I really prefer spirit. You can edit monster voice pitches and give 'em dif'rent models so you can have several kinds of barney etc.!!!!!!!

I thought this might be a bit big but i'll give it a shot:

IF this happens and IF we get enough interest to start it, here's some concept I had in mind ever since this was mentioned somewhere in the forums:

You don't have to take everything out of this of course; this is just my idea of what it should be like:



Technicalities:

We should decide what we will do regarding the engine (spirit / original hl /op4 / other? / our own?), where the thing will be hosted*, what kind of communication the mod team will have (forums or mailing lists etc), what are we aiming at? - Quality, size, and time wise. And basically all of the practical things involved (aside from mapping)



*If the TWHL servers cannot handle forums and large files - I'm volunteering the space I have on my servers - you can do absolutely anything on them





Core development Team:

This is important, I learned a lot form issues - Without this, the mod will never survive, people will loose interest and drift away, change their mind half way through etc. what's required here is a small to medium sized group of mappers who will stick by this no matter what - so even if most of the contributors pull out (which is unlikely but possible) we will have something to work with and maybe get some new contributors in - which should not happen.





Story / Plot:

PQL was fine, and now Issues is taking the basic concept, I though that we should brake away from original hl and the standard disaster at black mesa plot - lets face it - an hl mod will not get as much hype as one created from scratch. But, lets not brake away entirely, rather, offer some kind of prequel or continuation or a parallel, or explanation of the events etc, a bit like op4 - very original and yet ties in with the game perfectly. This I think will appeal to many of the members as they are already mapping Half-Life/BM environments. Here's a rough storyline with random words and some suggestions

• Set somewhere far away from black mesa...

• Still the same black messa-ish-ness; maybe the company who '' went to some lengths to get it'' - the subject of the experiment in original hl

• We can (legally) use everything and or anything from all of the retail hl mods - HL, OP4, Blue Shift, which should be enough leeway for creative storylines

• The mod might follow the life of an average worker from the company and who gets tied up in the secrecy of the matter, some mishaps with the ''sample'' etc.

Now, how does this all tie in with the original concept? And how does this allow for total freedom in mapping?



Well basically - the ''specimen is so unstable, that during transport or drilling, it goes off, destroying most of itself and ripping the fabric of time/dimensions/ whatever you want... so you can see how this can be made into an incoherently coherent mod



At this point though, another possible story can be adopted: The search and recovery party member sent in to salvage what they can from the '' drilling/ transport/etc incident'' and the rest writes itself - big disaster that already ruptured space/time or something of the sort.





Mapping!

Yes, the mapping - the point of all this: Here's what I think should not happen: Members banging out a map or two in a month or so and then that's it - fun for about 5 mins... And it will be even less fun to play a thing that's been made like that...



We should strive for quality rather than quantity - We should set a standard of mapping and stick to it - if anyone fails to meat this standard, they will be dragged around the place behind a jeep and made to learn all of the things that they lack, and we will do our damnest to make sure that everyone is giving it 500% I disagree with some of the views on the forums that we should use the original hl code - I?d be inclined to go for spirit - but: do what issues did, make it optional, since spirit can run levels made for original hl without problems.



I suppose there are numerous limitations to take into account such as textures - well, not so much textures as they can be wadincluded, its more along the lines of number of maps per submission etc. those can be agreed on by the members, but personally i think we should restrict the texture and wpoly limits - to make the maps playable in software, also if we allow the use of custom models etc, we run the danger of some mappers going overboard with it - including hi-def models because the look nice etc..



Then there are issues with assembly distribution, publicity press releases that I don't think we need to worry about

Phew! I need to rest my poor fingertips after all that!



Well anyway, if you didn't fall asleep while reading all that, I?d like to hear what you have to say on all of this.

I'd like to volunteer as part of the Core.

So would I. I have bags of free time I'm just gonna waste if I don't do something productive and fun. As for custom models, they should be allowed if they are low def, since I love reskinning low def grunts. I agree that we use spirit and original hl, and also, won't people have started upgrading their computers for hl2 so high def models WILL work with most people? Still, better not to take risks. Besides, you have a bit more freedom when reskinning low def models, they have more textures to edit. Anyway, your plot ideas sound OK, but I have another suggestion (It was originally going to be a mod of my own but it could be this) : HL, but you play as a regular scientist with no HEV suit (You use spirit's start with HEV thing so you have the HUD). You are just going about some sort of simple research, office area maybe? Anyway, you are just doing basic research when the disaster strikes. Like my idea? And also, about the mapping, we need to make sure that everyone gives it 100%, how can we make them? Maybe we should have them reviewed in the MV and not accept anything that's rated 2 or 1? Maybe we should get atom to disable ratings for the person who submitted it. Anyway, those are my ideas. And, in case you just flicked through and didn't read all of this, I'll say it again:
I'd like to be a member of the Core.

Thanks for your cooperation and patience.

BTW, where will the finished product be available? http://hlcore.tk?
That would be good if you could cram it in, it would probably jam up TWHL.

Oh, yeah, like the Spirit idea v.m. Maybe someone different - how about Gus?

VM? WTF? GUS? And by someone different do you mean "Gus" instead of me? Grrr....

Vassy: the scientist role playing was the exact thing i was trying to get away from btw,

and just for the record there's an unintentional pun in the core team and http://www.hlcore.tk

I was thinking of more like 3/5 people working on 'main' maps - driving the story etc, while the rest are free to make their own maps concepts etc,

this is the whole point of pql-esque mods

I like the suggestions that are being made here. This is exactly the kind of thing that we need to do right now, get all the ideas out there and later we can pick and choose the best points from each suggestion. My only request is that we wait until Andy can participate before we make any firm decisions. So keep posting your thoughts and ideas and we can brainstorm until Andy gets back on-line.

I meant the construction guy instedda a scientist.

But spirit is a little restrictive for those who have not it, ain?t it???. I could download it but most people who don?t know a word about the issue will download the mod and fail to download it simply because they don?t know what Spirit is.
I personally think that the Standard HL engine is enough for our needs. A coder in the team could easyly fulfill our scrpting needs if he makes available the files with new stuff we need... I agree with Kol in most things (he has been here for ages :)) but I think the Spirit thing should be decided by votation.

well ok i think i might help in some way, and i think i can get my step brother involved, a few months ago he made a really good monorail start to his mod, like the on on hl1 but going over an ocean during dusk and passing stand alone mountains., i think we might be able to alter it for this idea, thats if he still as it?

I'm in but I just very recently began mapping seriosly and changing to spirit, which sounds very complicated and full of stuff I've never seen before. So unless someone can point out a good place full of spirit tutorials then I recommend we don't use it. A good mod should rely on the number of available entities if you know what I mean.

:

Sorry about repeating but, does it really have to be for Spirit??. You know, I can download it and learn how to do some stupid things with it but it may reduce the number of potential users... By the way, have you noticed how this thing is evolving from a bunch of maps linked together to something we will call a mod???.

me and vassy can b the spirit experts here. why not u make maps and we spirit em. just say what u want done with spirit and we'll fix it up. THEN u dont hav 2 get spirit, and we still get the best resutls. period.

Would it be possible to have some sort of ideas forum? Because I reckon all the people that members who dont generally do that much mapping may have really cool insights for set pieces etc, or because they just end up with prohibitively high poly counts in their levels (ahem..cough..)

also, I reckon coding a mod would be ten times better than just hoping people have got spirit

exactly. a mod. its not much, we just put the maps together and give the things u get in a mod. simple.

ok, i think people are beeng misslead here, once any gets back we can all compile a list of suggestions and hard facts for all of you to ponder over

I?m with High Voltage, let?s code!!!. By the way ministeve... Yes, we could send maps and then you will spirit them but, will they work on people with just HL installed???. We have to think in those people who just bought the game and never cared about ports or mapping :).
The ideas forum would be ideal too!!!.. I also thought about something... If we are going to make a mod (let?s choose a leader, Andy has the power!!!!!) we should need some resources (using normal HL textures for a non HL environment could be a little annoying)... We could make a resource library (just post the textures to someone who puts them together in a wad file with wally... This someone posts it in the site each week with possible actualizations for all to use it... We could even limit the number of textures per member so we have to be more creative in order to get right results)... But first of it all comes if it will be a mod, if will have any plot or will be just a bunch of maps linked together.

Look, the spirit code will be included in the final release if we use it,
therefore people will activate the mod from their custom game mnu and it will work, no seperate downloads etc, any map made for spirit will work on spirit but not hl, maps made for hl will work with spirit code : end.

You don't need spirit to run a spirit mod. Just include spirit's spirit.dll and client.dll with the mod.

spirit is my enemy!

I?m beginning to understand... Still I love original HL :D... Anyway, let?s wait for this to get a little bit of organisation and then we?ll see :). I?m going to map.

Vassy, that's exactly what i said,
and quit flaming spirit because you don't like it - NO ONE CARES

Please post relevent ideas, concepts etc..

Hmmm... I will post an idea of something to discuss... And about spirits... No one cares doesn?t seem to be a polite way to express something but let?s leave it that way, if it works, it works .
Something to discuss:
-Are we going to make a bunch of unconnected maps or are we going to work as a team on a concept?.
-In case affirmative, will this concept be related to the HL plot or will it require of intense retexturing, remodelling and voice acting?.
-And about voice acting, if we need it, why don?t start searching on our own site?. Once the moment comes we could all send a lo-fi wav file with some of our acting, for all to choose the ones who fit better.

About spirit (I'm repeating what others have said but no-one seems to have picked it up) : NORMAL HL MAPS ARE COMPATIBLE WITH SPIRIT! So if anyone who knows or has spirit makes them for spirit, and people without or who don't get it use normal HL, then the spirit users can piece the lot together!

and quit flaming spirit because you don't like it - NO ONE CARES

. Sure!!! To hell with Democracy and other's opinions. it seems like you already made up your mind so don't let us come in your way. if this is the way it's going to be, then I'm out.

It's not spirit that's wrong here. Some of us just haven't got enough experience with Spirit and if we use it, this might just become something the expert mappers are mapping for. the rest of us more regular mappers might just not make the grade. I wan't everone who is interested in this project to be able to add their part.

I just said you don't have to use it, 'cos original hl maps will run with spirit! So you can make maps for original hl!

i said u make maps in hl and me and vass old buddyoldpal turn em in2 spirit maps and add in any special stuff with spirit. right. voice acting i got a mic and i can get sum of my friends 2 throw thier voice. or we could do it professionaly. but b4 we start we need every1 assigned to thier role. me and vassy are the spirit ppl, and if u want andy can b the leader. which means thay if he is the leader then i dont actually tell ppl what 2 do so me and vass might actually end up doin diddlysquit with spirit, his choice.

I like your ideas ministeve! Kol has spirit as well, so us 3 could do the spiriting. Actually, with spirit, we don't need voice actors, you can edit the voice pitch of NPCs with spirit, although higher pitches speed up the speech, and lower pitches slow it down.