Posts by biXen

Quote from laminutederire

3 hours ago, laminutederire said: You can feel the difference but you can still play okay on 60Hz monitor

But some people play on low resolution because pros play with those... but pros play with those only because they are used to it. That's a really dumb thing to mimic in my opinion but hey, fanboy love doing it.

I kind of felt like that at first, but especially if you don't sit glued to your screen (I have a pretty big desk but a two screen setup) it's actually pretty nice to run the game at 1024x768 stretched. It's just easier to see stuff.

So that Cache update. Is that automatically taken into the game version, or can they decide they don't want it, how does that work?

I just spent $800 on a Howl so who am I to say it sounds like a bad move to put money into this. But they have really tried hard to make those CV's look better than they actually are, this doesn't seem very tempting or even interesting. I don't even understand why people are so eager to make more generic FPS games. Doesn't really seem like a moneytree anymore.

No but if I have to point it out they should change jobs imo cause I'm a bloody amateur A lot of the stuff looks really good, don't get me wrong, but in the flow of the game it's just in the way. The most obvious is the railings on A, but in general a lot of the outside area has way too many objects. It doesn't need to be to make it balanced, it used to be a simple map, and I think people love Dust 2 because it's simple, same with previous Nuke. (the other half hated it because it was too simple, so there's a balance).

Maybe I'll go and point out each and every thing, but overall I would just call it visual clutter. Detail for details sake and at the same time it looks like they just made a new object for every possible place someone would stand to shoot at someone. If you compare it to e.g. Season I think Season is a beautifully detailed map, but isn't cluttered with objects and details that impair view.

Still not feeling the love of the new Nuke. If someone on mapcore made it I'd tell them to get rid of some clutter Even if it was CT-sided I loved the simplicity of the old one.

Do hope they update Inferno properly though, I like that map too.

Epic have some pretty good walkthroughs of how they made their assets for one of their presentation levels (mountainous balloon thing, can't remember which version). Check out their Youtube. There's also tutorials at for instance fxphd that are very in-depth.

I think you are referring to the art of negative space, which is quite common topic for designers.

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020169/T…f-Nothing-Using

Nuke has been my favourite map since I started playing this game, only tried the new one once (and on a shitty computer with a shitty mouse as I'm in LA unfortunately for my CS enjoyment ), but it seems REALLY busy and overdesigned imo. Don't know what you guys think of it, but it seems really cluttered to me. Maybe it just takes getting used to though.

Cool, will be helpful!

This original post is something I have personally battled with a lot, but lately I have completely separated work and hobby, and found all the motivation I have lost again. I have so many friends in the games industry and I talk to people in the VFX industry and I have lost the faith in the "perfect" job in those industries. I am a person that want to create my own stories, and creating a mod/level or using photography/short film projects allows this in a way that can never be done if you work in a big firm on a big project. So full time job is development, hobby is 3D stuff. I'm at a happy place with it now.

I do however have time management issues, and still don't always learn to say no to people wanting me to make something for them. Even if it's paid I don't want it, I want to focus on my hobby projects. But man it's hard, because I like to help people, and I get so easily distracted when my todo list increases.

I am trying to make a clean cut for February, no to everything, this is the year of me. The new selfish man has risen

If someone starts collaborating on a VR UE4 project I'd be interested (after I finish my other stuff)

Quote from clankill3r

Nice tutorial. I will check out your others soon.
About the question for models, instead of 3DMax, Blender could be used which is free and heading in a good direction.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/fi…s/?id=436454108

Nice. Have used Maya for years and learned to import from there to CS:GO, but if there's actually a usable Blender pipeline I might have to consider changing to that finally since I don't have a Maya license now. Learning another program though....

Quote from capslock

Hi everyone this is my first entry on mapcore community.
I started to make maps 2 months ago and this is my first try.
I am a huge fan of max payne series so ı decided to put max payne's iconic chapters into hammer.
Started with The million dollar question chapter.
This is very small map but the map ı am currently workin on would be much more bigger.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/fi…s/?id=601058400

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The content cannot be displayed because it is no longer available.

As an owner of a Max Payne fan site for 15 years I approve I see familiarity, even if you can add a lot more detail, though the scarcety of detail makes it remind even more of Max Payne 1

Simple debugging really, create a temporary file where you delete 20 things, recompile and check. Delete 20 more things, recompile and check. If it suddenly works, take back the last 20 things and delete 5 of them, recompile and check etc. until you get to the one thing that's causing the problem.

Usually results in finding the problem. Unless you've really screwed up something

But make all details func_detail the sooner the better, it's insane how much time is wasted in the compile until you do.

A good level is a good level. But I personally think if you want to stand out you should make something else than Dust (dusty desert) or Cache (industrial). Simply because people that want more of the same will just play Dust and Cache. These people most likely can't be swayed as easily to the new maps over the long term.

Nicely done. Good luck to the contestants, I decided to skip it as I'm still in playtesting phase, shit takes forever .)

I noticed this in the wiki for the func instance:

Quote

Replace <string $variable> <string value>
This is a replacement parameter. Any usage of $variable inside the instance will be replaced with value.
Example: $color 255 0 0

Does that mean you can use variables to only define light color once for all lights in an area in Hammer? Or is this for something different?

Quote from jackophant

Maybe ask @Squad how the light-through-water effect was achieved in the mid/B connector?

Also, I've jsut realised you are saying coloured shadows from coloured glass... Do you just mean coloured light that has been filtered by the glass, or the ambient light colour for shadows as well?

I have to check out his map to see what you are referring to.
No you were correct the first time, just bad wording from me, I meant coloured light casted onto the floor. In regards to your suggestion about the spots, it might actually work if I could make an invisible frame that would block and allow light through in a certain pattern while itself being invisible to the player and not block or cast shadows. Might have to experiment more, surely not the most important part of my work now, but would be a key identifiable area.

Quote from Evert

@biXen https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Func_instance

It's pretty much a vmf inside a vmf so yeah it's exactly what you're describing. They can be handy for organizing levels, but can also make stuff a become a hierarchic mess I just found them very handy for seperating the skybox from the level, it's a matter of preference I guess.

Thanks, didn't actually know this, might come in handy like jack describes too. Any downsides to it? Except hierarchy mess if you overdo it.

Quote from Evert

Regarding the skybox question:

I've always found 3d-skyboxes to be cumbersome to iterate on, but now with the instances support in CS:GO I've noticed a pretty decent work flow.

It requires a few steps to set up BUT once it's been done it should be smooth sailing.
1. Place a dummy entity in the origin of the world. Select that and fly around and select the most important geometry from your level, like the extents of the playable area, or where the framing of the 3dskybox is the most important or whatever.
2. Paste that stuff into a new 3dskybox instance and place the sky camera on that dummy entity.
3. Scale it all and align it as closely to the grid as possible (the ref geometry will not be compiled so it doesn't necessary have to be on grid, but I usually make sure that the ref dummy is in the origin here)
4. Put the reference geometry in it's own vis-group so that you can easily disable the it before compiling.
5. Place the skybox func_instance anywhere in your level.

I've found this to be as close to building around the level, but without having to constantly select and re-scale stuff when aligning stuff.

I am not familiar with the instances, but this is essentially making the skybox in another file, and the func_instance is referencing the content of that file's compiled result? Or how does it work exactly?

Quote from jackophant

1) Could you use coloured light_spots to crudely mimic the colour of the light coming through? It's a bit hacky, but it could work?

2) Historically I've always built around the map and shrunk after finishing like you suggest. My skyboxes are often quite simple so I've not bothered moving them into a new file, but dont forget there are the "_skybox" props which are super tiny as well you can use.

3) When starting a map for the first time, the game looks for an associated nav file and if none is found it would proceed to generate one, but only if bots are present. If you run the command "bot_kick" before you choose your team, the bots will never connect and you won't need to build the nav mesh. The file is stored in the same directory as the bsp, and the workshop uploader will automatically package it for you when submitting to the workshop if it exists.

Cubemaps are automatically saved into the bsp when "buildcubemaps" is run. Make sure you upload the right version of the bsp with the cubemaps inside when uploading to workshop! (and turn mat_specular 0 on when generating and preferably keep cubemaps for players at a height of 64 units to best reflect head height reflections, if you don't know already)

Thanks, useful info.

1) I thought about doing something like that, it might work, but I it doesn't work exactly like I want to I Think. I was actually even thinking about recreating the scene, lighting and baking in a 3d program and making a decal of the result. But it's a bit over the top

Hi,

Soon time to enter my map into the competition and for playtesting (obviously won't be detailed and proper finished for deadline, but still). I have a couple of questions.

1) Is there any way to get coloured shadows from coloured glass? In the Valve docs I see that projections are disabled because you can only have one in a level, but is there an easy way to fake it with baking or something?

2) When making a 3D skybox, my thinking is that if I build the 3d skybox around the map, select it and export it to a new map file. Work on it there, and then I can import it back into my level and make it smaller and that will be an easy workflow for updating it later too. Have I missed something or is there an easier way? (do you guys actually work on it in 1/16 scale or do you always scale it down?)

3) When I start my map for the first time it generates a lot of extra data, paths for bots etc. , is that something that is then packaged into the same file I distribute? Or is there some process I am not doing that I should do? This also goes for "buildcubemaps".

I might have more questions, but that was what I had right now.

Nice looking map, I'll give it a run-around next time I'm in-game. But do yourself a favour and create a bit more interesting description and post some screenshots here. Make it easy for people to see what makes your map good, there are so many lazy submissions here imo.

Looking fresh, looking forward to trying it out.