Posts by Lord Ned

  • Shattered Horizon

    Those jetpack flames got on my nerves. It looks like it was directly linked to the players keypress (the effect) and had no dampening or "half" setting... So it was full on full off, and really got on my nerves as they flickered... More realistic yes, more annoying too.

  • WIP in WIP, post your level screenshots!

    Quote from SpicyTanuki

    I'm afraid it does load them all, even if you don't use them. There was a discussion somewhere a while back... might be on the hlcoders mailing archive.

    oh man seriously? This could mean I have an entire weekend of prop recompilation ahead of me

    Eh not really. Just take the qc, copy, change it's name to a letter different, strip the skinfamiles, etc.

    Then open CMD and do "cd %sourcesdk%\bin\orangebox\bin" (Or Ep1?), and do "studiomdl.exe "%sourcesdk%\..\sourcesdk_content\mymod\modelsrc\tree\tree01_a.qc" and then let it compile, hit up, change it to b, etc.

    Or see if there's actually a preformance hit/use the skins

  • Rick D - Zombie Slayer

    Quote from Rick_D

    I thought it did adjust itself automatically :XI will have to look into that. Out of interest, what resolution are you running at, 1024 wide seems incredibly small?

    1024x768 still holds the majorty of the internet users market, so most sites get designed in that, or they use CSS or whatever to adjust for width. (Like forums)

  • The first DirectX 11 benchmark

    Quote from Zacker

    Potentially it could get most of the data from the normal map?

    You could get a protruding horn but it would protude based on the surface normals... There'd be no way to make it curve.

    However: I could see the tessellation being done via normal maps on the rocks and the ground and the window ledges and stuff, because it's straight out. I think it's basically taking the normal map data and turning it into real 3d geometry, which keeps the visible 3d effect even when you get next to it which normal maps do not.

    I dunno, will be interesting to see where this goes.

  • Forum feature request

    I just think a "Thanks" button would be good. You don't even need to track them on the user page (Just have it on a per-post basis and not have them count towards anything).

    That way you can give a Thanks to good advice, or something funny or a way of complementing the post.

  • WIP in WIP, post your level screenshots!

    Quote from SpicyTanuki

    Next up is derailed, I made many of the lighting changes mentioned earlier, added for etc. I have to step back and do a bit of optimization. Anyone happen to know if the source engine loads all skins on a prop model or not? I'm hoping it doesn't (have a few props with 6+ textures on them).

    I'm afraid it does load them all, even if you don't use them. There was a discussion somewhere a while back... might be on the hlcoders mailing archive.

  • The first DirectX 11 benchmark

    Quote from Minotauro

    I wonder what impact automatic tessellation will have in our workflows. Do the assets need to be prepared in special ways to get it to work? Anyone here familiar with it could give us more info?

    I'd assume it would require some sort of higher-poly mesh for some things. If you looked at the Dragon, when they turned the tessellation on his spines grew out and curved... Where would it get the data for that (+the curve)?

  • Development Blogs - What when and where?

    Quote from Taylor

    In your articles consider using words like "diegetic narrative" for no reason, write as if rank is a modern innovation with the "AI director" and force references to it, ask that token game mechanics be removed for being unrealistic or old without any real justification other than "it's about time...", muse over a game you played 5 minutes ago with some youtube research for comparisons, suggest we remove "barriers" so games play on one context sensitive button, reach no conclusions under any circumstances, and champion post-game emotional art synergy.

    Maybe because i'm tired and my eyes are blurring... but that made no sense to me.

    Quote from Thrik

    The media handling functionality was dramatically upgraded about a year ago in WordPress. Have you used it since then? I personally think the way it handles media is fantastic, able to auto-generate galleries and whatnot. I use them all the time on my WordPress site. You can even easily get per-image comments.

    There's no upper limit on image resolution, to clarify. It'll always leave your original image as the largest size, and then auto-generate three smaller sizes for you that you can specify.

    Yeah I've been using it for a college class (As a photoblog) and man... The make new page box is horrid with media. There's no sense of formatting in the box, and you import an image inbetween paragraphs... and it shows up on the side of the paragraphs in the editor and then in the right space on the actual blog.

    Maybe it's because I'm using a domain.wordpress.com one?

  • Left4Dead 2

    Quote from Rick_D

    i wish the game played like the trailer, rather than running between areas and hiding in small rooms shooting through walls.

    That tactic among others are totally demolished.

    Valve took some great L4D players, stuck them in L4D2. Utterly helpless. Every single tactic that worked in L4D1 has been smashed.

    As for the actual content:

    This is why I'm proud of Source.

    On other forums and previously I've seen a bunch of comments "Probably done by some specialized company" and "Pre-rendered"*, etc. This is true source right here. It can look just as amazing compared to other engines, but Valve chooses not to. I imagine in the future when 16x cores and 32gb of ram is the standard (Not to long I imagine ), Source will look like this in real time.

    Anyways: Valve's done a great job with it. They've introduced the characters, given them character, introduced weapons, shown off some events, taught players a little bit of tactics (Thrown gas cans, shooting SI, Nade launching the tank, etc) and wrapped it all up in one great cinematic box.

    [Blocked Image: http://www.majhost.com/gallery/DanElHombre/smilies/clapping.gif]

    *

    Quote

    Pre-rendered as in made in an external application. Eg. 3ds Max and After Effects.

  • Development Blogs - What when and where?

    I'm kinda feeling like creating a development blog for the stuff I do. Not to have things like "So today this funny thing happened, right?", but to have stuff like "Here's revision one of my map. Here's revision two of my map. Here's what worked, here's what didn't, here's why I changed things. Here's a technique I used here. Here's why I used it".

    I want to use it to first off: Share knowledge with other people, what techniques work where, what can you do, etc, and secondly to show off my work, get my name out there, etc.

    So. When to start? Do I just go out there and register something at wordpress or blogspot and start using it? Pretend there's people out there actually reading it and act like their there in hopes that someone will see a recent blog post, get interested and read backwards?

    Does the hosting site, name, or design really matter?

    Thanks.

  • Creating Curved Sloped Roads? [Help]

    I'm not too worried about texturing. I don't know if L4D implemented $seamless_scale but I think it has. Using this technology it reverts the Displacements from having their own UV map... Basically attemps to eliminate streaching as much as possible.

    I'll do the stripes with overlays. Source's overlays are neat because they support "vertex editing" of the 2d plane basically. (Place an overlay, then click the overlay tool again and grab a white corner). I used this some in my LoZ map that I never finished. <-- Just realized this is what you were talking about.

    Quote

    If Pericosolo looks in this thread he can explain it better. He made such a slope in one of his never released Insurgency maps.

    Can you point me to some contact information for him or point him towards this thread? Thanks.

    Quote from Evert

    Can't you place temporary disp-brushes "inside" all the curves that you skew, and use subdivide to get the base done?That's how I would do it I think.

    I'm not quite sure what you mean, but it sounds like it would eliminate the ability to sew. For brushes to sew in Source their vertex's have to line up.

  • Creating Curved Sloped Roads? [Help]

    I've sat. I've looked. I've mulled. I've experimented. I just can't come up with the right way to produce this effect:

    [Blocked Image: http://i35.tinypic.com/2v2jvx5.jpg]

    That is what I wish to create. I want to create a curved slope like that that remains a valid solid and displaceable geometry.

    The only way I can see this is to convert each curve into a brush that looks like this:

    [Blocked Image: http://i33.tinypic.com/2s142s0.jpg]

    As you can see, this would allow me to drop height, however it creates a triangle and becomes un-displaceable.

    I could make each curve flat and make the straight sections in between drop height, but that would look a little odd, because you would have a series of flat/drop/flat/drop's.

    [Blocked Image: http://i34.tinypic.com/2chvyir.jpg]

    I really don't think this would create the effect I want. Does anyone have some suggestions about how I could create this effect? I'm not worried about the cliffs in the background, I can manage that . I don't want to use a model and a displacement generated with Twister would have stretched textures on displacements.