Posts by the0rthopaedicsurgeon

Quote from Jenn0_Bing

I think it would be attatched, i would'nt want to hold that thing with one arm. Other than that handle it looks very cool, going to be something like the lawnmower in Blood Harvest?

it's meant to just be lying around, the map is actually set in a slaughterhouse so i need some tools like this to be left about. but that did give me an idea for this bandsaw i've just finished for the same map:

[Blocked Image: http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/514/bandsaw01.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/8564/bandsaw02.jpg]

the one touching the blade? it's supposed to be on the end of that cord, which is meant to be wrapped around with that part just resting on the blade while it's stored or whatever. maybe it's just the angle but i'll rotate it some more so it's not as perfectly aligned.

here's the reference i used, although looking at it now, i think the 2nd handle is actually attached instead of being loose:

http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/8105/e24ldrop.jpg

a foot-chopper-off-er made for a l4d map. 1620 faces but i still need to do some optimising. unfortunately it wont be useable.

[Blocked Image: http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/759/footchopper.jpg]

next up is a bandsaw and some rotting carcasses.

did you just follow the official l4d tutorial to get the zombies working? i've tried dozens of times and i get a nav mesh and zombies spawn, but i still get the 'map is unplayable' error and every time i load the map after that there are no zombies again, although survivor bots and zombies i manually spawn still move around fine.

I've more or less finished the middle ropeway station area, but I've run into a problem. I've made it sort of like an island, on top of some cliffs so that I can have the players get on at A, not move in the empty middle part to make the journey seem longer, then get off here once A is blocked out by the fog behind them. The fog is set at 1500 units, and the cliffs around this 'island' go down ~1800 units from the cablecar, the idea being that they should fade into the skybox colour and it just seems like you're above a huge drop. But ingame, there doesn't seem to be any vertical fog, if I look down from where the cablecar would be, it's like being in a tube of fog with nothing at either end. Is the vertical height just a lot higher than the horizontal distance, or is there some setting I can use to get this to work? Otherwise I'll need to put a floor beneath the cliffs which is just going to drain performance more and eat up the entity limit which I'm already worried about hitting.

Looking down from the height of the carriage:

http://img185.imageshack.us/img185/6259/fog1.jpg

Without fog:

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/8902/fog2.jpg

Are you using Bob's Track Builder? I downloaded the trial and tried to make Mika Hakkinen's ideal circuit from an old Mclaren magazine I inexplicably own but I got the scale wrong and made it about 50 miles long with no way to fix it.

small update, been working on the crescendo setting/saferoom for map 2. the ropeway stops halfway up the mountain and everyone has to climb down to reach this maintenance station. the door to the control room/saferoom is locked from the other side so you have to take a lift and go through the tunnels to get to it, but the lift only takes one person's weight. assuming i can stop zombies spawning down there and i can come up with a backup plan incase that player dies/quits/griefs, the other 3 have to stay up top and fight off the hoard, before the other player unlocks the door and they all get into the saferoom.

anyway, this area is still wip, including the lighting and colour correction. the SDK should be out next tuesday too so i can figure out then how this whole area is going to work and what entities i can use.

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also, does anyone know why i'm getting seams in the skybox in l4d? they didn't appear when i used the skybox in css, but in this game i get them along the edges of each side, you can just see one in the clouds in the 1st screen above the skybox pylon

some of the kanji are backwards too, the white and brown banners on the left, and the white and red ones on the right.

Quote from Sa74n

great work. i guess just a little bit more color wouldn't have hurt though

Map 2 should be more colourful with all the temple buildings, and if I can find some custom props or mdldecompiler is updated for L4D so I can edit the standard trees, there should also be a lot more green foliage instead of the dead trees Valve are obsessed with. Everything from map 3 onwards is based on real places that have been derelict for 30 or 40 years, so after a silent cablecar journey up from the temple complex, everything is suddenly brown and dusty, I wanted to make it feel like you're further from civilisation and everything's dead and decaying as you get to the top of the mountain.

This is an old screen from CSS, but this is how the first maps should look:

http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/5688/y ... le0019.jpg

I thought I'd start a new thread for this campaign instead of posting in the WIP thread since it's getting further along now. The campaign is set on a mountain outside Tokyo, almost entirely based on real places around that area (using references from this site), starting in a tourist centre/hiking trail near the bottom, through a temple complex, up to a derelict mining village via a cablecar ride, and then a spa and mountain-top hotel. I've got a lot of prefabs for maps 2, 4 and 5, but 3 is the furthest along and is almost finished apart from some connecting routes and the saferoom. The finale will be on the roof of the Maya Kanko hotel, which I've actually found a video of, and has some really interesting '30s architecture.

Anyways, here's some screens of the third map. They're all sharpened in PS because they're resized from 1920x1200, the colour correction also might change but I can't open the editor ingame, I might have to wait for the SDK.

[Blocked Image: http://www.scorchingcraniums.com/images/yama/screens01/001.jpg]

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And my favourite building in the map, the main shrine from map 2:

[Blocked Image: http://www.scorchingcraniums.com/images/yama/screens01/yamatemple0014.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://www.scorchingcraniums.com/images/yama/screens01/yamatemple0016.jpg]

there are ways to reduce your brushcount without changing the way the map looks, if you've got a row or windows or doors along a single wall you can cut the brushes like in the bottom picture instead of the top, which saves you 2 brushes just from those two windows:

[Blocked Image: http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/3375/windows.jpg]

on a building in a map i'm making now, i went from 13 to 7 brushes on a wall with 4 windows. you can also make steps 12 units high instead of 8, convert railings into props, check your cuts are efficient, etc.

Quote from Warby

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and next on my to-buy list is a rear passenger light and bumper on account of my driving into a cast-iron lamppost.

I spent an inordinate amount of time making this tower for my L4D map earlier, it's a watch tower type thing, but depending on the view distance the players probably wont be able to climb it.

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Quote from Hipshot

I was just going to ask - where'd all the colors go?

The colour correction is temporary, L4D always has correction on top of the user settings depending on what's happening in the game. The console says you need to run the game with '-tools' to edit it ingame, but the game doesn't run if I do that. So for now I've got to use the last settings I made using CSS months ago.

This level is supposed to be desaturated though, there's more colour in some of the other maps but this village has been deserted for 40 years so I wanted a dusty, old look. If you've ever seen or played

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Jason Becker's new cd:

[Blocked Image: http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/8485/61iynfrlslss500ut7.jpg]

i based the height on the player height against a person standing by the church in a photo, so it's not precise but i think it's close enough, i at least have the right number of pillar things on each side.

i'm planning on making the statue eventually, but i spent hours doing the stand, clock and window, so a horse will have to do for now.

i've started planning another l4d campaign while i wait for the sdk, this is one of the main landmarks of the 4th map and is all i have so far. it's hallgrimskirkja, the tallest building in iceland, and after going through fishing villages and glaciers, the players get to reykjavik and need to get to the port to escape.

[Blocked Image: http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/2174/hallgrimskirkja20008tv7.jpg]

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if you keep them in the same relative folder (.../dods/models/x from .../ep2/models/x) then you don't need to recompile, but that directory is included in the model itself so if you move it somewhere else it wont load.

the orange box also uses updated texture and model formats, so you'll need a conversion tool (someone made one for TF2 before the sdk was updated) if you want to use ep2 content in a non-OB game like CSS or most mods.

Update on l4d_yama, I've been working on a small, derelict village for the final map. Not sure on the layout for this area yet but I need to come up with something to try and draw it out for a few minutes.

[Blocked Image: http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/9154/ropeway0011yj1.jpg]

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