Posts by m8nkey

Yesterday I made a pole and rope barrier and ran into a couple of issues.

According the the Valve Wiki, "Cable" is a valid shader but my material just appears black when I use it. "UnlitGeneric" works fine but I'm curious if there's a better way to do it. Also tried "LightmappedGeneric" which resulted in errors.

http://%7boption%7d

I'm also wondering if there's a way have player collision with ropes? I think it can only collide with world though.

Here's a WIP of my barrier

[Blocked Image: http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w57/m8nkey/interior0000.jpg]

I've narrowed down your major competition to these two 2d:

http://%7Boption%7D

Quote from Meotwister

thank you my sole reply-er on mapcore. yeah that fixtures been replaced.... I'd been having trouble with some env_glows not showing up or point_spotlights but that's been solved too.

and y'know.. im not sure if it is with hdr... I thought it was.. but I remember doing a fast compile just recently... so maybe it wasnt? But yeah thats good advice to add some more lights to spice up the color.

and yeah I hope my layout is that good.. I'm kinda proud of it.

vivi and I test it out 1 on 1 every couple of weeks.. but I'd like to set up a beta test of it soon.

lol, half decent feedback is hard to come by. Reckon Mapcore is far better than most though. I'm sure with Vivi helping you out it'll be a quality release.

Have you found a replacement willow tree? What about trying to model it yourself? I'd have a crack but I'm too busy. It would also be very cool if you used the alpha shadow rendering Robert Briscoe worked out http://%7boption%7d

2d Chris:

Looks cool. Reckon a decorative western style font for the "Yeehaw Mine Co." title would look more authentic. Here's the first one I came across from a google search

http://%7boption%7d

Dewdle:

Looks awesome man, great to see someone introduce a new colour pallete to TF. I lived on a ship for 3 years and can vouch for the water colour. I think it has to do with minerals or some shit in the water. I saw seawater that colour off the coast of Oman. Honestly looks just as vibrant.

http://%7Boption%7D[Blocked Image: https://farm1.staticflickr.com/37/101517924_dc82a5eb1d_z.jpg?zz=1]

I've had YouTube mapping tutorials running in the background all morning and fuck they are terrible. Talk about the blind leading the blind. I'm perversely entertained by them though.

Looks like it's progressing well Meo, particularly the interior areas.

In the third pic you have a naked lightbulb with a conical glow on it. I think a circular env_glow would be more appropriate.

Are all the pics with HDR? The lighting outside looks a bit flat again though it could simply be due to the subtle sunset lighting not producing much light range. Maybe introduce some more light fixtures outside to create some stronger shadows and variation in colour.

*edit: Judging by the top down pic, looks like a solid layout that should play well. I like the various ways you blocked the player within the gameplay area.

nice work dewdle. what's it for?

Quote from dissonance

Nice rickroll, ya got me.

same Solid portfolio site. Impressive body of work too.

As a fellow luddite I used to model all my hl1 and hl2 brushwork in Radiant then import it into Hammer. Purhaps you can simply use another app you're more familiar with and import it?

I played for around 12 months but gave up around 8 months ago (co-incidently started mapping again around then too). I had a lvl 70 warlock and a 60 warrior, both Horde. I definately don't miss it.

+ massive, persistant world with varied and interesting environments

+ co-ordinated, class based tactics within instances

+ No loading sequences (except instances/airtravel which is unavoidable/acceptable)

+ Rich mythology

- Completely unreasonable timesink. This game was designed soley to rob you of money and years. Every aspect of the game is bogged down with mindless grinding and farming. The amount of time you are required to play gradually increases with every level. If you want to experience end game say goodbye to any other hobbies you have and a large chunk of your social life.

- Generally Gear>Skill, typical to the RPG genre but a shame.

Overall I had a lot of fun exploring the world and doing instance runs but that was outweighed by the time spent farming and grinding.

I stumbled accross this site while I was looking for skyscraper references for a 3d skybox I'm making. It's a site for skyscraper diagrams to a scale of 1pixel:1meter. Some interesting stuff in the forums too if you're after some inspiration.

Solid start Quakis. I think a ceiling in the style of the second pic Insta posted could really suite the scene. Something else to start considering is types of wall, ceiling and floor light fixtures.

Quote from Pampers

i would have tried lowering the bloomscale before altering any textures... anyway screens of HDR maps are always relative since it only looks like that for a split-second

That's definately a good tip though personally I find darkening the textures effective too. HDR makes white glow even after the bloom effect has faded.

The mountains are looking much better.

Nice scene PaulH. I like the colours in the top pic more.

Quote from Thrik

It's nice Albatros, but the lighting does need a bit of work. It might seem all well and good having HDR like that at first, but when you think about it, have you ever seen lighting that's so insanely bright and makes the walls look like they're on fire? Or lighting that makes the snow on a mountain seem like it's as bright as the sun?HDR is a great tool, but people try to use it too obviously. Subtlety is the key to making good use of it.

I learnt to never use anything near pure white in textures, HDR goes nuts when you do. Making the colours slightly darker removes the exagerated bloom.

Quote from Wunderboy

I don't allow hot-linking on my site Go to the original article on Texturehub instead.

http://texturehub.net/forum/viewthread. ... read_id=80

Shit, my bad . Sorry Wunderboy

you're a machine SKDR

Thanks for the tip Minos. Tried a spec effect on the wallpaper but it didn't pay off. The floor and all the brass areas already have subtle specular effects so there's already a lot of shiny stuff.

Today I finished the last of the major world geometry. Time to go through the entire map and detail it.

Here's an ingame pic of a spiral staircase I recently modeled and textured. The collision model comprises of many parts due to the stairs and railing. I probably should of added a support structure underneath each stair but there's so much other stuff I need to do, dunno if I'll get around to it.

*edit: There's still plenty of prime space for mod advertising in the level by means of billboards, posters and destuctable 3d cardboard cutouts. Provide me with high res concept art, logos etc if you're interested.

*edit: sorry, the sharpen filters comparison was broken.

That stuff is completely different Minos, texture compression, sharpen and mipmap filters are all unique filters. Nem's presets do a fine job selecting the compression type appropriate for different materials. I think it's worthwhile playing around with mipmaps and sharpen filters when the default results are poor though.

Wunderboy was kind enough to produce this series of images comparing the different mipmap filters. As you can see the mipmap filter can have a dramatic effect on a texture at different ranges which is why box (Nem's default) doesn't always cut it. Definately worthwhile utilising different filters in some circumstances.

http://%7boption%7d

*edit: removed hotlinking