[WIP] Codename "CITY"

[Netrogor]

Find some old concept art setups or something from a variety of games & have somebody (like Vomica or FER) make an in-between elven model, that way it'll hold many video game characteristics to make itself semi-original 8)

 

[Gurluas]

I have two from FER that are definitely ripped from WoW, but I'm getting seriously desperate.

But that dunna look like an elven town in anyway in anycase.

make sure they are not the new bloodelfs models,
its safer to use the unused highelf models(all highelfs got a bloodelf reskin with blue eyes)

 

[Cernobylsky]

OH finnaly i progressed this map,
I added lighthouse (i know big tower in map, but anyways say how bad is it , its based on romanic architecture style lighthouse)

http://www.gamca.sk/~cernobylsky/blbosti/msc/viewfromlighthouse.jpg
http://www.gamca.sk/~cernobylsky/blbosti/msc/harbourdistrictNEW_lighthouse.jpg
Now im gonna add some houses...

EDITED:
Here are houses (just 2of them im working at more + needs windows):
http://www.gamca.sk/~cernobylsky/blbosti/msc/houseWIP.jpg
http://www.gamca.sk/~cernobylsky/blbosti/msc/houseWIP2.jpg

 

[Cernobylsky]

Sry for doublepost but,
I have one question: How use entities from halflife.fgd ? because f.e. if i wanna make glass, breakable i have to use hl.fgd but i added hl.fgd and also some ms.fgd and it doesnt work so what to do ? :roll:

 

[Thothie]

You should be able to use the half-life.fgd and the ms1.4.fgd just together, lest one or the other of them is screwed up. It's intended you use both in their entirety, not parts of each.

func_breakable is the entity ye be lookin for. I wouldn't make glass breakable without a reason though, for one, it eats entities, and for two, most medieval tech glass doesn't break all that easily, being several inches thick, bumpy, and made up of very small panels.

 

[Cernobylsky]

Sure i consult all things with my friend (we are both doing HIGH SCHOOL gradue from HISTORY ) anyways u know ENTITY limit ? (number of maximum entities (until my map became HELENA 2 (that old from ms 1.3)))

 

[Thothie]

Entity limit is not predictable, as various kinds of entities take up different amounts of edict space, and, with this game, you never know how many entities the players are going to drag into the game with them or generate via spells and such.

Suffice to say, less is better. MS_Snow, Calruin2, and Thornlands/Nightmare_Thornlands are all a tad over the limit, and thus get smacked with the no free edict errors more often than most.

Try to consolidate where you can. If you got a ton of transparent windows, or solid rendered bushes, join them all into one entity insomuch as you can (ie. when the rendering properties match, and the like).

 

[Cernobylsky]

Ok so if isnt something special or brakable i could join all nice transparent windows to one entity thats good anyways i cant still run that 2fgds (i use one halflife.fgd from hammer and i downloaded ms.fgd (dont know for wich version but i think its newes)) anyways i could run just one at the time.... isnt it bug in hammer ? i use that hammer testbuild 4

 

[Thothie]

The latest MS FGD is supplied in the DEV folder of your MSC install. ("ms1.4.fgd") - it's missing an entry for ms_npcscript, but I think other than that, it's good to go. (Albeit, it could use some editing, but it’s the best we got.)

Hammer 3.5 and some other useful stuff can be grabbed here:
http://www.slackiller.com/hlprograms.htm

I *think* this is the latest FGD:
http://www.thothie.com/msc_dev1/halflife.fgd
...or at least, that is the one I am using, and it's larger, and dated later, than the closest thing to an official link I can find, over here.

You can, in theory, use versions of hammer later than 3.5 to edit HL1 maps, but it requires tweaking, and I seem to have lost my link with the guide to that. Some say that it is problematic as well. (But what does J-M know, when was the last time he submitted a new map?)

In any case, if the version of hammer you are using only lets you use one FGD at a time, that *is* problematic. You may have to take notepad and merge the two FGD's together. But neither one is written for versions of Hammer later than 3.5, so no promises it will work.

Some people (I think Crow maybe amongst them) prefer to work with no FGD at all, and just depend on knowing or being able to look up entity properties. You can open FGD's with a text editor and use them for reference.

 

[Cernobylsky]

Its ok i could change FGD when im working with MS entities because i cant run both (i downloaded your new hl and google says its newest so...)

Here is some progress:
PHARMACY + "Harbour" street
http://www.gamca.sk/~cernobylsky/blbosti/msc/PharmacyWIP.jpg
http://www.gamca.sk/~cernobylsky/blbosti/msc/StreetWIP.jpg

 

[Thothie]

Large, wide, open areas like that = bad. Those buildings aren't going to block VIS either. Map will be t3h lagz0rz if you don't come up with a new layout for that town.

If it doesn't go from floor to ceiling, or if you can easily bounce a line through it, or around it, it won't block VIS, and the HL1 engine will attempt to render everything beyond it, every frame. This is what makes HL1 outdoor mapping so difficult.


If you can't configure your Hammer thusly, you are working with Source Hammer or some such. You may get some very strange issues if you have not converted it for use with HL1.

Switching FGD's back and forth is not a good option, as they'll have different 'offsets' and the point entities will get moved around due to the different boundry sizes. (Had this issue converting Crow's Underkeep, since it was made on the MS 1.35 h4xed FGD - new one burried all his NPC's waste deep.)

 

[Cernobylsky]

So there will have to be some BIG buildings which block it ? but could it be something like transparent texture wich would block rendering ?

 

[The Man In Black]

Why would a transparent texture block rendering? The engine has to figure out what's behind it to make it transparent. (Except if you're using it as a ceiling - player clip ceilings on open maps are good, I think, that's what's on Bloodrose)

 

[Cernobylsky]

I ment something like in thorlands ? i think there is something like that isnt ?

I UPDATED FIRST POST (MAP INFO ETC.)

 

[Thothie]

So there will have to be some BIG buildings which block it ? but could it be something like transparent texture wich would block rendering ?

It'd have to be a huge, solid building, that goes from floor to ceiling, and there'd have to be lots of them.

Generally the solution to this sort of thing, is to turn your town into a maze of sorts, where the streets are surrounded by buildings that go from floor to ceiling, most of which are solid boxes, but a few of which you can enter or have rendered windows. You see this sort of design in a lot of old DOD / CS maps. (In fact, I highly suggest finding an HL1 DOD map you like, and laying your town out accordingly)

I ment something like in thorlands ? i think there is something like that isnt ?

Thornlands rendering is blocked, insomuch as it is, by tall mesas that go from floor to ceiling, and by a painfully low clipping view distance (the latter of which, doesn't actually help that much).

 

[evilsquirrel]

hmmm...another problem...that idea seems really big :O

probably good on source, but hl1 might not like it too well, just because its so big. (knows from experience)

 

[Cernobylsky]

Maybe but i saw really big map in one hl1 mod, syndicate black operations there is one map called sbo_city (wtf ?! same name as my map, lol) anyways this map can be similar than my idea (ok its modern map but same size) :? I will see what i could do with that "huge buildings" and u mean from floor to skybox ? or just too high ?

 

[Thothie]

Floor to sky brush. Some 1337 mappers say, "to a brush behind the sky brush", as they say skybrushes do not block VIS proper sometimes. Still, others say you can bring the skybrush down to the building top and be okay (via a protrusion the same size as the building top, coming down from your max skybrush height). Either way, if light can bounce past it, HL1 will try to render whatever's around it, no matter how tall it is. Remember, regardless of how low towards the ground your sky brushes are, they still look as far away as... The sky... So keep them as low as you possibly can, without bumping the player's heads.

I wish I had the source of a good DOD city map to demonstrate with.
Edit: Here's one:
http://www.thothie.com/msc_dev1/DOD_map_tutorial.rar

You can view that in HL1 or MSC, the way I've set it up (I've taken out the DOD models and stuck in faint glow rings in their place). You'll need to add the included wad to view it in Hammer. It's an old itallian villa that could almost pass for an MSC map with some heavy retexturing. If you hit r_speeds 1, you'll see the wpoly stays below 800 pretty much anywhere you look (that being, the nazi limit - in MSC, I'll settle for under 2000). epoly is high mostly due to the insane stuff MSC is doing. The remaining epoly's are just caused by the glow sprites, ms_lildude 0 and r_drawviewmodel 0, and you'll see it drop to just about ziltch. You might get stuck on some invisible objects due to the missing DOD models.

This map uses the "bring skybrushes down to roof level" method, and it seems to work well, in this case.

I say "sky brush", rather than "skybox", as skybox gives new mapper's this misnomer that they are supposed to surround their map with a box of sky brushes, which leads to no end of pain.

 

[Crow]

*giggle*

 

[Cernobylsky]

wow thanks man ! :

 

[evilsquirrel]

*yoink*

 

[Littlefrodo]

Howz it goin?