INFO Download and Play MSS mod now! (Okay not really...)

[Thothie]

Wait, really! (Well, kinda sorta...)

What we do have here, is, in fact, a downloadable Source mod, containing the WIP versions and sources of various MSS maps, that you can walk through and explore at your leisure.

DOWNLOAD (~90MB self installing exec)

Keys:
Ye standard Half-Life 2 setup plus:
Z - Activate Cheats + God mode (gives you your flashlight, but keeps your hud and viewmodel hidden for screenshot friendliness/immersion.)
X - Toggle no clip

This mod requires Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode 1, and Half-Life 2: Episode 2 (or Orangebox). *might* Run with less, but you'll be missing textures and models and have to tweak up the gameinfo.txt. (I actually took a shot at making this a mod that only required HL2, but kept getting errors, regardless of what I put in the gameinfo.txt. So it may require map recompiling too.)

The mod should appear in your library as "Master Sword: Source - Map Showcase"

Includes WIP versions of:
Edana (by Rickler)
CalrianRuins (by Crazyghost)
Daragoth (very WIP, by Supersoup)
Sfor (by Crazyghost)
Thornlands (by Rickler)
Thornspidercaves (Fragment by Rickler)

Each map is setup as its own chapter. (Mind you, the chapter thumbs show up as Half-Life episode thumbs, but meh, tis about the only bug, aside from some missing models and overflow warnings.)

Mind you, there's no code here - it's just a map showcase. So, gameplay wise, this should not reflect on the final product.

Map sauces are included, and should compile on Orangebox or Source SDK 2007 or later.

“BUT THOTHIE, I DON'T HAVE ALL THOSE HALF-LIFE 2 GAMES!”

Click on Library, and select Tools. If you see "Source SDK" download it, as well as "Source SDK Base 2007". That might cut it - but if you don't see them there you're probably SOL until you buy a Half-Life 2 product, at the very least.

While I can't promise that the final version of MSS won't require that, but you can still watch videos yonder:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4vVcZmKIP8
And if that video's too fuzzy, you can download a higher quality one yonder:
http://www.rkszone.com/downloads/msc/ms ... mplete.mp4 (326MB)
^ Prob should right click and "Save As.." for that last one, doubt it's stream-friendly.

Also, screen shots in next post...

 

[Thothie]

This set is alphabetical, rather than by quality or area, or any other sensical order, so bare with us...
(Click Images to Enlarge)


The Calrian Ruins - by Crazyghost. It's rather WIP and has some issues. Might be easier to remake from scratch than to fix these overflow issues manually. I spent quite some time on trying to fix it, and patching a thousand little leaks.


The Calrian Ruins - Seems you were originally intended to spawn outside, and find a secret entrance underneath the bridge, but the overflow makes it a poor spawn start, which might explain why it starts you here.


The Calrian Ruins - Skull racks.


The Calrian Ruins - Grand hall. There were some sprites in the torches here, but I had to axe them, as they kept rendering HUD style, regardless of what I set them for. Shoulda probably replaced them with something else though.


The Calrian Ruins - Grand hall loft, with nifty railing.


The Calrian Ruins - Prison cookery. With Lord Calrian and his brother booted out, who knows what new debauchery is taking place around here.


The Calrian Ruins - Imprisoned green shrooms.


The Calrian Ruins - The torches light in this room when you enter. Boo!


The Calrian Ruins - Not sure who runs this place now, but I'm guessing it's not necromancers anymore. Seems beheading would be counter productive for necromancy.


The Plains of Daragoth - By Supersoup, maybe? (Not sure) This is very sparse and very whip.


The Plains of Daragoth - Yet more hills.


The Plains of Daragoth - Overview.


Edana by Rickler - The Temple of Urdual, spawn point.


Edana - The Temple of Urdual, center path.


Edana - The Temple of Urdual, center path, further in. These sconces are largely responsible for breaking the brush limit - may have to do something about them.


Edana - The Temple of Urdual, front entrance.


Edana - A hut along The Adventurer's Path. There's a near mile long path from the temple to the village, I'm thinking maybe the intent was to populate it with trainers, to let you learn and round out your character options as you travel along it.


Edana - Village entrance.


Edana - Apparently the town's main export is now pumpkins. ^_^


Edana - Village Tower of Error. Some of the buildings here can be entered.


Edana - Overview. I cannot express how effing huge this map is. Hope the mod has some horses - or a teleporter gets stuck in here somewhere... Even at full spectator speed, it takes longer to get from the village to the temple, or visa versa, than I'd feel comfortable with.


Sfor by Crazyghost - Undmael's been defeated for quite some time now, so it isn't necessarily perpetual night here anymore. Who knows what new problems have moved in, however.


Sfor - Moar spookie trees.


Sfor - The all too familiar water fall of "test your jumping skillz".


Sfor - There's a few sets of spider caves in Sfor. Currently, you'll need to noclip to get into them.


Sfor - Yet moar spookie trees.


Sfor - One of the caves scattered throughout the forest.


Thornlands by Rickler - Spawn point. This *might* be Olaf's hut - or perhaps one of his descendant's. Seems far too fancy and clean, aside from the traditional latrine, and no longer small enough to qualify as a hut. Maybe it's a ranger station of some sort? Could contain some quest NPCs to come back to and/or guides for hire.


Thornlands - View from the second floor of the lodge.


Thornlands - Lakeside shot.


Thornlands - Aerial shot. That's right folks, actual functioning 3D sky boxes!


Thornlands - Overview. Like Edana and Sfor, quite large.


Thornlands Spidercaves - Think also by Rickler, this WIP map fragment is no doubt intended to be merged with the main Thornlands map.


Thornlands Spidercaves - Interior waterfall

 

[Regorty]

It all looks so very preeetty, but sadly that means I am gonna have to make a HL2 recreation of my maps as well or just ditch HL1 maps altogether and run over to HL2 mapping and maybe map for some other mods as well! I am sure Oyster can finish my map series for me.

Nah! I'm sticking to HL1 mapping, I like its simplicity and nostalgia of it bringing back childhood memories. I still got 4-5 maps to start working on too! Btw, Thothie? Is there a way to port HL1 maps directly over to HL2?

 

[Thothie]

Yeaaah... Although the end result tends to be fugly as hell. You're likely best off just importing the geometry, replacing the textures, deleting any natural cliff/cave walls you made, and replacing them with displacements (tis one of the nice things about HL2 maps - terrain deforms be easy, in addition to looking a lot nicer.)

On the downside, not only does Source Hammer need to authenticate to Steam, but so does the compiler... If you compile repeatedly (such as often the case when hunting down leaks and stuff), it tends to lock you out of Steam, forcing you to restart before you can compile again. (Turned a simple, maybe half-hour task on Calrianruins into a four hour mission. ><)

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

This makes me want to believe in MSS so much.

 

[Thothie]

For my next trick, I'll bring you some Half-Life Episode 3 models.

(Don't laugh - I actually got my hands on some Duke Nukem Forever models back in 2004. )

 

[Supercoke]

Very nice work so far you guys! I'm so proud of seeing progress even if I didn't help at all! Thanks for all your work so far. I'll be on the look out for more update is the future. I really hope this gets off the ground soon!

 

[zeus9860]

Thornlands and Calrian looked best.

Edana is good, didn't like much the town part tbh.

Daragoth seemed to be good from what i saw except it's missing alot.

Sfor is confusing like hell and i didn't like it that much.

Spidercave looked a little bit "meh".

 

[Orochi]

Oh don't worry, once I can wrangle Visual Studio 2010 into working order I'll be working on MS:S more. Source SDK 2013 requires VS2010, so I can't work on it with the tools I have been, or I would. They're keeping the SDK entirely on github too, so whenever they update for engine reasons, we get said updates. All in all, a better system than the shitty SDK launcher.

Also, Thothie, how come Supersoup's Edana improvements aren't in that pack? After Rickler bailed, he started touching up Edana, his version is the most current.

 

[Thothie]

I used the latest one in the set (edanav0m.vmf in the supersoup folder). There were a lot of missing models, so it maybe ya didn't get me everything. (Hence Tower of Error, and lack of stalls, etc.)

That one went over the brush limit, and required some editing. If there's a newer one with even more stuff... Well... I kinda wondered if he tried compiling it. But I dun see any newer VMF here.

Sfor is confusing like hell and i didn't like it that much.

Awww, that was my favorite... Especially in the video... It was so creepy it at least explained why my hand was so damned shaky filming that thing...

I'm thinking maybe I shouldn't have included the spidercave map fragment though. It was pretty clear it hadn't been polished yet.

 

[MrJohnson]

It's beautiful. I can see myself sitting infront of the pc this evening, walking through those maps and pretending to play the real thing. Don't judge me!

 

[Bordoga]

It's beautiful. I can see myself sitting infront of the pc this evening, walking through those maps and pretending to play the real thing. Don't judge me!

As of now you at least could pretend to play Slenderman MSS style with the flashlight 'n Stuph

 

[MrJohnson]

Slender MSS sounds good to me

 

[Thothie]

Don't give me ideas.

I've added this to the downloads page... It might be wise for me to make a news post as well (since the server relocs are in the FN readme anyways).

Also would be good if someone added the video and mod download to the MSS IMDB page. Intrigue those Source modders!

Hrmm... Thar be pictures of The Dangerous Pass (aka. Keledrosprelude) there... Wonder what happened to that map source. :\

PS. Also, as promised, Half-Life 3!

 

[FER]

Is there any chance this could work as a TF2 mod?

 

[zeus9860]

Is there any chance this could work as a TF2 mod?

viewtopic.php?f=34&t=1496&p=146004#p146004

!

 

[Thothie]

Is there any chance this could work as a TF2 mod?

No clue... If it did, it'd likely be missing a bunch of textures and models, same as a HL2 raw. You could just take the maps, models, and materials folders, drop them in the TF2 folder, and try to load them up with the map command.

It might work better as a Black Mesa Source mod (also free) the same way.

Tell me the results of this, if you try it. (Could test it here, but it'd be a pain, as I'd have to rig it up on a separate system.)

Oh, and I think he's on about that potted plant / skull mace thingie you didn't want me to release. Not that we really need it at the moment. I'm still kinda iffy on what to do with Ceriux's winning hammer.

 

[zeus9860]

You can never have enough blunt. NEVER!

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

I'm still kinda iffy on what to do with Ceriux's winning hammer.

I've had my fingers crossed it could be used as a forge item at underkeep, given the consistency of the visual theme.

 

[Thothie]

Would be nice to have it in before Half-Life 3 came out. I suppose we can make a deluxe version later...

Granted, I wasn't going to do forge items, but work up a smith enhancement system instead... Granted, I thought the forge was in Caluminium's map... Granted, I dunno when I'll ever get around to working out eight maps consecutively.

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

Granted, I wasn't going to do forge items, but work up a smith enhancement system instead...

Oh? Care to explain how this feature might work?

Granted, I wasn't going to do forge items, but work up a smith enhancement system instead... Granted, I thought the forge was in Caluminium's map...

Cal wanted some kind of 'dark forge' in his map that only evil players could use effectively.

Granted, with the way things are going with my trying to reduce alloc_block, there may not actually be room for a forge in underkeep. And even if there is room, it's probably not going to look unique or special.

 

[Thothie]

Oh? Care to explain how this feature might work

I was hoping to take advantage of the fact that the Quality attribute saves with item data, and make a series of flags to indicate the item has been modified in one or more ways. It's a number, but I think I could convert the number to a string, and have a separate modification tied to each number placing, scaling from 0-9. So, that'd be maybe seven stackable modifications, each leveled 0-9 (the script system only handles two decimal places). Such modifications might include various bonuses against undead, orcs, additional elemental damage of various types, maybe speed, accuracy, vampyric, etc.

I was going to have the smith describe a unique item that would have a chance to be found on any monster with over a certain amount of hp (based on the player's hp), once the player had talked to him and taken up the quest. These would be used as tokens to allow the smith to modify weapons, each modification beyond the first requiring an increasing number of the craft item.

The bonuses would be fairly mild, but add up quickly, especially when the right modifications were used with the right weapon.

with the way things are going with my trying to reduce alloc_block, there may not actually be room for a forge in underkeep

A lot of the maps are close to the alloc_block, and just don't know it, as they were compiled with earlier tools that didn't track it, and most of these maps fairly stable. As long as you aren't actually going over the limit, it shouldn't be a problem (several maps seem to be running fine at 63/64).

That being said, the easiest way to reduce the alloc_blocks is to reduce the number of large rooms, lower ceilings, lower sky brushes, and, more importantly, when compiling with VHLT, using the parameter "-maxnodesize 2048" in the hlbsp phase. VHLT's non standard 1024 max node size tends to increase the number of alloc_blocks used.

 

[Orochi]

Is there any chance this could work as a TF2 mod?

Why would we put the maps in TF2? It's totally unnecessary, especially with the advent of both HL2DM and Source SDK Base 2007 and 2013. If you mean so you can use the maps in TF2, you're welcome to try but you'll have to ghetto-rig it yourself. And no, you can't just drop the mod folder into the TF2 folder and have it work, that will cause all sorts of problems. This is a Source SDK Base 2013 standalone mod.

 

[Thothie]

Think he's just wondering if he can, just to view the maps, due to not having the required HL2 games. And yeah, already explained he'd need to do it manually. Shouldn't cause any problems with TF2, but like I said, likely purple checkers and "ERROR" models galore, if it works at all.

Am curious if it'll work though... More curious if it'll work with just HL2, or HL2DM, which I've similarly not tried, save for a stab or two at it as a full mod (which failed, despite my efforts with the gameinfo.txt). It'd be nice if I could mod up the package to be more widely accessible.

It is asking a lot for people to have all three of those games, especially with Half-Life's declining popularity. I dunno how you're going to pull the final game as stand alone though.

But more importantly, and bumped a page - do you have access to your ModDB page?

 

[FER]

I was saying because TF2 is free.

And i forgot the part where i didnt have a fking clue about HL2DM and Source SDK Base 2007 and 2013. Just a while ago we were going to need the goddamn orange box.