Posts by the0rthopaedicsurgeon

i think the lights work well, since it makes it look alive but there's nobody around, like everything just stopped all of a sudden. i'm not really happy with the lighting as it is now though so something's going to change eventually.

anyway, some more progress, mostly on the ramen stall alleyway, and some more buildings on the high street:

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the size looks ok for a snooker table, but i do think the scale is off just because the pockets look big enough to fit your head in.

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I've used an MX518 for years too, it's comfortable and has the extra buttons in the right place instead of on the wheel or in a secret compartment like some. I'm on my 3rd one though, the right button on the last two wouldn't register sometimes and just kept getting worse but this one hasn't had any problems besides the clear coat on the black plastic parts peeling off in bits.

fog will also make any map instantly look 10x more realistic, it doesn't look like there's any at all in those screens so far. match it to the skybox to get the same haze effect as the 2d buildings in the background.

I always do this out of habit, but I also only ever create one brush in any map, the rest are all copy and pasted then edited to whatever I need, so if I need a mitred corner wall I copy and paste one I've already made. I also spend hours nodrawing hidden faces, ie inside a mitred join or flush with another face, which looking at Valve's maps and what other people have said I don't think is necessary? I've never heard a proper answer either way on that.

i've spent about the last week working almost nonstop on making new textures and props for the city map, i've started getting t-junction errors already though so i think i might have some problems fairly soon.

don quixote, a megastore that sells practically everything

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labi, a huge electronics store. the original plan was to have the players moving up floor by floor as a crescendo, turning on the power to open the shutters on each floor, then taking a fire escape out the back but i realised that would take far too much time/custom props.

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the actual building you escape through, a sushi restraunt

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happy burger

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other buildings:

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Quote from SpicyTanuki

Below is the original texture followed by a mod I did. I Just ran a burn brush towards the areas I thought would be generally mor shadowy. I tried using a gradient and overlay but it turned out a little contrasty for my taste. I think part of the problem is my foliage doesnt protrude from the trunk. I modeled a pine cluster and copied it around on the branches.

I think this would also look better if there was less saturation/dead, brown branches towards the middle as well. the leaves inside usually dry up or die when the tree grows but at the moment the whole thing is the same shade of green which looks off when you have a whole forest of them like on the last page.

the signs fixed on the walls are brushes (Valve actually switched from props to brushes for a lot of things like this in L4D too), just because I already have about 25 textures for them and I can have more variation in size with brushes.

i'm going to try making a .rad file anyway, i'm just not sure if all the lights it creates count towards the entity limit or what effect it has on performance.

i've been trying to find out the best way to do that. VERC says you can make a .rad file but all that does it put a light entity next to the brush when it compiles which is no good for bigger signs. can you make them emit light with a certain render mode or are light entities the only way?

i finally got some work done on the first map last week, mostly finishing off the layout and making some sign textures but i've started detailing a couple of buildings too. these screens are of the red light/bar district, there's also a high street section at the end with designer stores and skyscrapers but that's still all dev textures.

survivors start on a rooftop, go through the red light district, cut through a host bar onto the high street and then there'll be a crescendo through an eletronics store leading to the ambulance i posted a while back in an alleyway.

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Quote from Thrik

Removing the hardware is how they managed to drop the price so much, incidentally. I'm guessing this slim version and lower price is just as much a delayed consequence of no longer needing to squeeze a 'PS2' in there as it is the ability to make the hardware fit in a smaller area.

Have they ever said that? I always thought the PS2 parts needed for BC would cost a few dollars per unit these days, and that the actual reason they dropped it was to keep on selling more PS2s where they make a far bigger profit than the PS3 for every console sold. Which is why I'm fairly sure it will come back once PS2 sales drop off completely, or when they stop supporting it (next year if they keep to the 10-year lifecycle).

I might edit the Lightbox script so the background is darker when the images pop-up, I don't think the dark-light contrast is so much of a problem with the thumbnails though.

I see what you mean about the screens on the main page, I put them there so you don't have to browse away to bring up the screens. I'm working on 2 other maps that aren't on there yet though, plus a couple more I'm planning to start soon so once all those are on there I'll probably have to leave in just the one main image to save space.

Quote from sock

It feels far too bright and the images are not connected to the page in anyway. You need some borders, a background, an image friendly colour scheme so you can place different screenshot styles on the same page. Also talk about yourself in some way, thoughts, musings, ideas, sketches, tell us why you created certain levels, why did creating them, what happening during, any problems, things you fixed, etc

It actually doubles up as a place to host my maps when I release them (should I create separate pages for that to save including stuff like install info on this one?) which is why there isn't too much info like you talked about. I'll keep all that in mind for when I do eventually update it though.

I started on this a few months ago when I released l4d_abattoir, aside from a notepad-created page of screenshots it's the first website I've ever made so I thought I'd play to my strengths and keep it as simple as possible. I need to get round to making the root directory link to the main page, I also don't have any textures/models up on there yet and might eventually add a section for music too.

http://www.scorchingcraniums.com/portfolio/levels.html

Is it too simple? I'm thinking it might look too much like it was done in notepad in 15 minutes because of the minimalist style and colours, I'm also not sure if people can work out that clicking on the main screen for each map takes you to more info.

it was still valve's decision to give EA the port and presumably they at least tried it before letting them release it. the ps3 version was inferior and valve still put their name to it, no port at all would've probably been preferable for most people.

i like the look of the slim though, except maybe the psx, sony's machines always looked unique while the rest looked like 'just another console' if that makes sense. i was really hoping they'd give a date for GT5 though with this rumour it'll be out in 2009, it's meant to be at gamescom so maybe they'll announce it yet.

anything by avengers in sci fi, who sing in engrish about dancing to sci fi music all night:

and my lunar boots by tuna laguna:

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also some CD-Rs

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sega haven't released an english version so i'll have to rely on gamefaqs. i was going to import yakuza 3 too but the story/characters are my favourite part of the series, and it costs £50-80.

I also got ENFJ

but to those who think the description perfectly matches them, read any of the others and they're probably the same, as demonstrated here:

http://www.funny-videos.co.uk/videoderr ... trick.html

i've already seen audition and [rec] recently but i felt like spending some more money:

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