ns_machina

I thought I'd throw some more fuel on the fire...

I did a forum search for 'stereoscopic' and nothing came up, so let me introduce you to the wonderful world of eye strain!

Basically, by relaxing and slightly crossing your eyes so that the two images below appear on top of each other, you should be able to see a 3D image of the picture. This is best done from a distance of about 2ft, and then you can move your head nearer once it is in focus to get a better view.

I do not take any responsibility for eye damage, do this at your own risk! Your eyes may feel a little sore if you move in too close, but it's nothing worse than all those stupid faces you made as a kid...

[Blocked Image: http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/4624/02sp2.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://img112.imageshack.us/img112/8611/03sa4.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://img111.imageshack.us/img111/7299/07xo4.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/6204/08an9.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/5263/09cm8.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://img54.imageshack.us/img54/4544/06av9.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/589/11wa7.jpg]

Do you see the sailboat? (if you don't understand that, then don't worry.)

These screenshots were taken using a simple Half-Life script:

chase_active 1, chase_back -30

and then bind a key to: "chase_right 10; wait;snapshot;wait;chase_right -10;wait;snapshot;wait;chase_right 0"

Then, the image taken from the right-hand eye view goes on the left, and the image taken from the left goes on the right. Then: eyestrain!

Hi Belgarion :] It could easily have been two years...I checked the creation date of the first RMF I had saved of this map, and it was something like 750 days ago. I was working on the map for a long period of time, BUT I also was not working on the map for a long period of time also. Basically I was at university and so only worked on it when I happened to have HL installed and was bored enough to give it another bit of attention.

So the map is kinda pieced together from bits made over 2 years ago, and also bits made at intermittent times inbetween. It also had a LOT of stuff thrown away in that time; I probably have enough cut material to start a whole new map.

This is what the 'chasm' (and the laser) looked like at first:

[Blocked Image: http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/1452/nsmachinaabyss02ll5.th.jpg]

But at some point I decided it just wasn't cool enough, so I deleted that and made the huge big chasm that is in Machina today. Of course it wasn't -quite- like that; at first I built the chasm and then tried to link it to that above area somehow. Then I decided that just wasn't going to work for gameplay reasons and pulled the above out completely, replacing it with a simple roof-mounted laser that pointed straight downward. That laser stayed in the map for a long time, but ultimately I felt it looked way too Half-Lifey and also somewhat phallic, so right near the end of development I switched it over with the blue laser seen at the start of this thread, that has tons more style and also looks like it can be rotated back and forth, which was something I was scratching my head about when trying to figure out how to make the previous laser look like it can do that.

[i hate it when what seems like a short thing to edit in turns into a bloody essay. Anyway, back to the thread...]

The creation of the chasm was actually kinda a rebellious move against the claustrophobic nature of NS maps; one of my driving forces in making machina was that most NS maps don't really offer much that is new, perhaps through mapper's fear of being adventurous and risking it not being an official map as a result. So, being an NS developer I was free to pretty much do whatever I wanted and have it an official map regardless, so long as the gameplay wasn't terrible. And thankfully it seems the gameplay isn't actually bad at all! It's struck a chord with the playerbase who are after more interesting immserive NS experiences than the gameplay-solid (ie, predictable and easy) competetive style maps.

Hi Ben I don't think anyone has even attempted to play a competetive game on this map, but in its current state the marines might walk over the aliens anyway due to an abundance of res nodes in their quarter.

I've been working on a folio website the past few days and I have the machina section done (and hera). I'm only posting this here to make this reply somewhat related to the topic.

What's new:

Most of the images have the ambient sound in that area playing, to give a better sense of the atmosphere.

Some of the images are 360 degree panoramics (these pictures are indicated in their thumbnail).

http://www.archwolf.net/merkaba/html/machina.php

It's my first serious website and I'm very happy with it so far Except for the spelling, which is in need of some spellchecks.