Posts by m8nkey

nice, installing DoD:S just to checkit out

Not a bad effort for a school project m0ppen. Some areas that could quickly and easily be improved:

The world geometry is very flat. The buildings could do with some variation in brushwork and height.

The pile of rubble (1st pic) and the dirt/grass (2nd pic) could be made into displacements.

Replace or remove the grass sprite in second pic.

Lighting looks very flat. Since it's overcast you could have light emitting from inside buildings or add some light fixtures to buildings to create more variation in light.

Quote from m8nkey

I'd say the map is about %40 complete though progressing much faster now.

Interiors coming along nicely (so much easier than outside), Should have some pics in a week or two.

Great stuff SKDR, it's coming along very nicely. Love the composition of the scene in the first screen, the planet looks believable now. I love the Blue Cafeteria too. You've done a nice job giving the different areas a distinct purpose.

Only crit is I think the buildings in the final pic look a bit primitive, I think the brushwork could be more interesting though retain the geometric, industrial look of the Blues.

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":2wdbrw40]Lesson #1 no not let a women thouch you'r puter!Lesson #2 do not use vista.

Lesson #3 backup your shit to another HDD or DVD's now and then...

lol, so true, particularly #1 though I don't think it had anything to do with it on this occasion. I keep several backups of anything really important though this was one of my backup drives so lost a bit too.

Quote from Cybbe

m8nkey, I had something similar happen to me, so before you do something, try to re-import the drive in your disk management. It worked for me.I didn't need to reformat it, either. It was simply stated as an unknown drive, and when I imported it(or whatever it was I did. Can't remembe rwhat it's called), it worked fine again.

Worth a shot, I guess

I had to do that when I initially installed the drive, didn't think of checking it when this problem arose though. I've already re-formatted it too. If the drive dies again and I can't work out why I'll just turf it.

I'll look into Spinrite KT, thanks

looking good michi. Is much of that custom content? Doesn't look like most of the Crysis based stuff I've seen though I haven't actually played it.

Due to the fact I made some significant layout changes and have worked on this map for over 16months, I started the brushwork again from scratch. I'd say the map is about %40 complete though progressing much faster now. My current goal is to get the interior to the same stage as outdoors before detailing the map.

I know progress on this map has been slow and it's taken me longer than most to achieve. I'm not in any hurry though and I'm learning as I go (and working a demanding/shit job too).

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Aren't his pre-requisites somewhat hipocritical? Sure it's pretty easy to read a book, provided you've spent years in educational intitutions and are literate. Games are far more culturally relavant and accessible than literature, any clown can mash some buttons and move a joystick or mouse with little to no training.

Not that it really matters how people classify it, for some reason it makes me angry when people suggest games aren't a valid artform :ssj:

I returned from 2 weeks interstate to discover Vista no longer recognised my brand new secondary hard drive. When I tried to access the drive it simply told me it wasn't formatted. I couldn't access it through other computers on my home network either.

I have no idea how my hard drive was erased. My girlfriend used it while I was gone but it's unlikely she inadvertantly erased it. When I returned the drive wasn't even formatted, just completely fucked.

I read that a recent Vista update has caused hard drive problems in "unique circumstances" so that's a possible cause. In the mean time I'm suspicious of the drive and not relying on it to store anything important.

Anyone know of some good data recovery software?

I partially agree with your point Hessi but disagree with your figures. The release of HL2 coincided with me living and working on a boat for 3 years. When I wasn't at sea I was getting drunk and chasing women. As a result I became completely out of touch with game engines and didn't even checkout HL2 till several years after its release.

Fist thing I did when I got a deskjob in late 06 was checkout the Source scene, downloading as many maps as I could. I was amazed that the thriving hl1 community had shrivelled up and died. Of the dozens (possibly hundreds) of talented mappers, few seemed to progress to the Source engine. I'd struggle to name 10 high quality CSS maps whereas I could name 100 for CS off the top of my head (I'm not into DoD:S though it might have a more active Source community than CSS). I'm now of the opinion that with the release of every new game engine, the entry level skills required to develop content raises. It's quickly moving out of the realm of a hobby, very soon the only people who do this sort of thing will be people trying to get into the industry.

I'm also sceptical that custom content equates to money saved or adds to a games longevity for the average user. Browsing the server list, 90% of the servers are running a dust map 24/7, 8% office with only 2% miscellaneous (figures pulled out my ass). Custom content and continually higher resolution textures results in gargantuan file sizes, a single map can easily exceed 100mb and there's no chance of streaming that to clients through the server as things are now.

Custom content was popular in the past because it was easy to generate and small enough to distribute. The only way I can see custom content being popular in the future is with the support of the developers. If they were to pick the best maps of the community and release it in an update patch it would increase the games longevity and negate the lazy/stupid gamer who couldn't be bothered downloading and installing custom content. This isn't going to happen but it would be sweet.

As a mapper, Source is my chosen SDK for the moment and I'm fairly happy with it. The instability of the SDK can be very painful, as are innumerable aspects of Steam. Admittedly I'm simply an enthusiast and don't delve very deeply into anything more than generating my own content and putting it in a map. Source does allow me to do what I want, fairly easily, for the time being.

Quote from robert.briscoe

Another disappointment was when they announced Steamworks for ‘developers’ At first I thought this would finally the be the solution to supporting mods via Steam, but it seems its for commercial purposes only. After all these years they still have no interest ... sad!

I'm suprised by this too, it's fucked you can't download mods directly through Steam and have it maintain an up to date local version.

There's a handful of mods which I'd consider to be of a proffesional quality (Dystopia and Insurgency are well polished) with more on the way (can't wait for Nuclear Dawn and Off-Limits, FoF is coming along nicely too). Maybe it could be construed by some marketing retard that these are in direct competition with commercial games if they were distributed on the same system?

I haven't touched the Orange Box SDK but I did read a thread on a forum where someone had this error and simply compiled the model for -ep1 instead and it worked fine in TF2. I can't verify if this is true or not but it may be worth trying as a temporary work around.

You have a solid body of work Bluestrike and a proven ability to work collaboratively in the mod community. I have no doubt you'll find work in your chosen field.

All Kleinluka's suggestions were spot on. Get rid of all the subjective/negative comments, providing only the facts and be more confident in your own ability.

Looking good HP. I think the rock arch structure looks a bit odd. Maybe make it thinner in the middle or a bit more angular. You could even add a peak at the other end of the foundation to make it a bit less cliche.

http://%7boption%7d

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(Different types of rock obviously but a more interesting looking shapes)

I've actually seen majority of Uwe Boll's movies and at one point I even thought he was getting better. House Of the Dead was by far the worst followed closely by Alone in the Dark but I thought Bloodrayne 1 was a respectable b-grade movie. I thought Bloodrayne 2 was terrible then the final dialog redeemed the entire film "Life is like a penis: When it's hard your screwed but when it's soft you can't beat it".

Some really nice looking work. No downloadable maps though?

Quote from JeanPaul

Brutal honesty: Your worst map, by far as it lacks contrast and pizazz. I want the quality as seen here:

I'm interstate, using a crap computer at a net cafe, but judging from the screenshots it looks very dark and emtpy. It doesn't appear to be to your usual high standard.

Has this map actually been released? I haven't checked out 1.2 yet.

I'll provide some more constructive comments after I've had a chance to check it out in game. I'm looking forward to seeing the atmospheric effects you implimented.

Work has been busy as hell but I'm still slowly making progress on this thing. I've reconstructed and optimised a lot of the street area, reducing brushwork and doubling the size of footpaths to allow for street furniture. I've almost finalised most of the building brushwork with only a couple of buildings requiring additional detailing.

kan3, a mapper/modeler/skinner whose skills well and truely exceed my own, has lightened the workload by helping me make all the custom assets I need. Also, Spine from Texturehub http://%7boption%7d has contributed some awesome parody building signage.

Between kan3 and I we have all the models sorted, however, having a dedicated skin/texture artist would significantly reduce production time. As I've said before, my texturing skills suck balls.

No additional screenshots yet but hopefully soon.

Quote from dux

Yeah, it's the same principle, brushes, etc. But the interface of Radiant makes em want to scream then cut off my fingers and plunge my bloody stumps into acid. Hammer is an ancient pile of shit, but I just love it's interface for too much.

Radiant is the king of quake-esque editors!!!111 I love it and still use it for quickly roughing out layouts and more complex brushwork before importing it into hammer. In more recent versions of QERadiant it's even possible to merge brushes. Comes in handy after breaking a brush into triangles for vertex manipulation for unconventional shapes. Even though most details are done using models this is still useful.

I also find the single viewport and the fact you don't have to select different modes to access all the tools more intuiative than Hammer.

If they fully integrated Source support into it, it would be my editor of choice hands down.

Of course this is all purely subjective and general consensus says otherwise. You should definately keep playing with it D3ads, would suite your style nicely and it is a rad editor.

Thanks for the info guys, something for me to look into next week. I'm currently interstate doing a shit course for work.

Quote from Seldoon182

Could you link us the texture you are talking about m8nkey plz ?

I'm not talking about a specific texture. I've just been making my textures without surfaceprops with the intention of adding them later. Over the weekend I started adding them to materials and wasn't sure what my options were for multiple surfaceprops.