Lord Ned

It's a demo release, and not the full game, stop bitching. Valve is being nice and actually allow you to play the game before it's released.

I meant the advert/teaser was crap.

Additionally, they're not being nice. You can play the demo if you have bought the game...sort of defeats the idea of try before you buy.

There's a public demo...

I think companies are approaching the whole Anti-Piracy thing wrong.

This is a perfect example of what not to do.

When it was first announced I was psyched. The SP looked great, and I didn't really care about MP. (COD + Mp = Not for me)

I was going to buy it because I supported the company... Now that they've made a bunch of crap decisions and every news bit I hear gets worse... I'm hesitant to buy it/get it at all.

":2115qh5i]

So yeah, as you can see if you have a good high poly, is pretty much just another map to bake.

You can also extract a heightmap from a normal map generated from crazybump for example, to use on terrain or those rock walls shown on that vid, but the artist got to be very careful with the artfcats, and try to get a very smooth heightmap and avoid abrupt transitions.

If you look at the Uniengine demo, the Dragon's spines curve as they grow out of his chest. How does that work with a 2d map?

There's really no incentive for me to buy this anymore... They wrecked MP and every announcement I hear further just ruins it a little more.

i dont know if it was in your mind but i like the idea of seperating both sides with full snow and only a bit snow on the ground keep it up

It's actually me playing with the snow... I kind of like the one i did better (Far side) but it's not very realistic... The closer side is from Viaduct (A Valve map) and it looks bad imo... Maybe I'll mix them together.

I'm really tempted to try a Assassins Creed cityscape in Source.

that would be 2 easy?

Well what I'm trying to do is spend an entire month on one project, and nothing else.

I want to take an idea, block it out, model stuff for it, texture it, etc, and completely flesh it out into a final detailed portfolio piece.

Every time I've tried it before I've gotten something half decent and then given up. So I want to try and combat that by spending an entire month on exactly one project, and nothing else.

And it would require quite a few models for what i was thinking about which is good practice.

sounds pretty cool for practice but I'm sure something you invented yourself would make a better impression on a portfolio....

True. I didn't mean an exact copy but the same style buildings I guess? I dunno I'd have to sketch it out and think about it.

More updates of my Crysis project:

Been playing with the weather and lighting but that's not final.

I'm currently making a second pass through the whole thing, to add AI nodes, fill the zones that were too empty with cover and obstacles, and script it all. I'll then go through it one more time to tweak the vegetation itself and add the final touches like cut-scenes, custom signs, polished models etc.

That last shot could almost use a hair bit of volumetric fog/smoke... The setting looks right for it I think.

Little something I haven't shown around here... Funny story really. As I was getting geared up for my month of only working on one thing I ended up trying to finish this the day before I start my month.

Fog and skybox need some work.

I'm really tempted to try a Assassins Creed cityscape in Source.

that would be 2 easy?

Well what I'm trying to do is spend an entire month on one project, and nothing else.

I want to take an idea, block it out, model stuff for it, texture it, etc, and completely flesh it out into a final detailed portfolio piece.

Every time I've tried it before I've gotten something half decent and then given up. So I want to try and combat that by spending an entire month on exactly one project, and nothing else.

And it would require quite a few models for what i was thinking about which is good practice.

I'm really tempted to try a Assassins Creed cityscape in Source.

Just to spend an entire month on one project, create custom models and materials for it, and push it through.

I'm confused wasn't there already a thread?

*tips hat before strolling onto the next thread*

I did this before... Trying to remember the fix...

Ah!

Go to common\left 4 dead\sdk(tools?)\bin, and find Hammer.exe. In the same folder look for "hammer.vdf". Delete (rename) this file. Restart SDK and Hammer.

LordNed - you and your guys seriously need to get a life. There's nothing wrong with anticipating a game but it seems you're going a little bit over the top. Screw a girl or two in the meantime and when you're done the game should be released as well...

Wait where are you getting "your guys". I'm just posting what's in the chat room. I don't know any of them and think their all a bunch of dicks for going so low as insulting valve through their own service.

I'm not any bit angry over this.

Also: Another hour "overdue".

Annnnd 1k users in chat, Steam maximum.

Another hour delay.

Edit:

Add another hour.

The chat room has 884 people in it (Steam is so not built for this) and not a single word is being said... (Officer mode only)

FUCK YOU VALVE GIVE US OUR DEMO.

Delayed for 14 hours.

Demo was at 4pm PST for the 27th... XBox got it early.

Hour and a half until we see if Valve's on the ball.

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.

There's an IRC channel?

link doesnt work

http://www.filip.coulianos.se/files/dm_ ... e_beta.rar

Took me one guess as to what the link was supposed to say.

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.

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

I thought it did adjust itself automatically :X

I 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)

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.

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.

As to the earlier comments: I wasn't going to fill it with just technical stuff, but more like Briscoe's work. Just not so impressive.

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.

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)?