WIP in WIP, post your level screenshots!

    Quote from Bic-B@ll

    sounds reasonable considering you havent even read the back yet

    Well there's already a discription, I'm sure some form of this will make it on to the back.

    Quote

    Modding is the new craze that has taken the gaming world by storm. And Half-Life 2 provides the premier game engine that modders all around the world are using to enhance the highly popular Half-Life game and create exciting new custom game features. As many modders like to say, "The possibilities are endless." This unique book shows all Half-Life 2 fans everything they need to know to work with the powerful game engine and customize their own games using clever mapping, modding, and modeling techniques. With Mapping and Modding Half-Life 2 Complete, game fans will get a chance to progressively expand their skills at mapping and modding. This is a one-of-a-kind book, jam-packed with insider tips and techniques by a leading Half-Life 2 modding expert. Full Description

    Game engines are rapidly becoming more powerful and the practice of modding (customizing a game and its levels and other assets) to tailor the game to the player's desires is growing exponentially. Half-Life 2 provides an incredibly versatile game engine and modding tools that game players and developers can readily use to change the game itself by doing everything from tweaking parts of the game to creating entirely new games, 3D environments, and simulations. In Mapping and Modding Half Life 2, readers will learn how to create amazing mods using innovative techniques developed by the author. The book shows, step-by-step, how to create new maps, textures, characters, 3D objects, weapons, audio effects, game action, and much more. Readers will learn how to start out by creating new maps and models and then learn basic techniques of coding to create useful mods. The second part of the book features more advanced techniques as readers learn how to expand their skills and develop more sophisticated models and 3D action. The book also covers other important areas of mod development including creating and managing a mod development team, working with fans, and using skills to develop a professional career in game development.

    Anyway, whats holding up the book?

    Blaz, you have to up the light intensity a lot more (the 4th "Brightness" number) in Source a lot higher than what you had in HL1. I commonly have lights at 1500+ intensity depending on the size of the room. There's also lots of controls for light falloff and sharpness -

    "constant" dims the area around the light but brightens the spotlight target area. Valve used high constants (~2000+) for those Combine spotlights.

    "quadratic" brightens the area directly around the light, but decreases the distance the light will travel.

    "linear" dims all of the light.

    ... and that's it for my crash course in Source lighting. Refer to the better resource over here: http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Light

    Thanks cj. Ill look into that.

    I dont want to make the lighting contrasty but still the spots should be quite contrasty but its important it wont go pitch dark around them.

    Thats looking pretty good damn good already, even though it is very early. It will be easy to adjust the light environment so that the room is filled with light from the outside. Tinkering with the pitch and light angle should do it. Love the shape the room is taking

    With a light environment entity, be sure to enter your pitch in the seperate pitch field as opposed to the pitch section of the angles field - think the seperate pitch field takes presidence. Try something like -80 if you want something coming in through that skylight to hit the floor (or -90 if you want it straight down). If you want it to be quite signficant then bump the brightness up to around 200, or if you want it bright sunshine try something even higher like 500. Keep a fairly large difference between the brightness and the ambient brightness as well.

    If you want to fake there being bright light coming in through that hole while retaining a different environment light setting for the sky's general lighting, then shove a light_spot above it and make sure it has its angles wide enough so that the projected light entirely covers the hole (turn on the helpers in hammer to see a visual indicator of the projected light). The hole will then clip the projected light into the right shape. Make sure you've got the brightness up in the 1000's if you are gonna do this or you'll probably not get much of an effect.

    I think the problem is in the brightness, both ambient lighting and sun lighting are much brigher than the light bulbes but in your map it seems to be the opposite.

    Actually. I'm not quite sure yet.

    I don't even know where you change the sky in hammer

    It's just still strange the environment light doesn't seem to work very well..

    I got a pitch of -80 now and 250 in brightness. Still the floor turns out this dark.

    philK 250 as brightness is not enough.

    try these values i used in a testmap:

    light_environment:

    brightness: 223 217 198 600

    ambient: 113 133 157 400

    HDR values go each the same

    and -80 as pitch should work fine.

    i hope you will bring the map to an end de_morningstar was kickass

    Blaz, add some point lights next to the small lamps as well (use an intensity of 50 or something) so it will look more convincing. Also, add some glows. Put an env_sprite, set the glow scale to 2, render mode "World Space Glow" and intensity to 200. Your lighting will look a lot better

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