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Well, more than one week after last update!
There were no news, I worked much on a CSS map to get into Hammer. I found it pretty easy, if compared to modeling softwares, so things went on much well and I learned much about it.
I felt I couldn't continue to build on the base map at the know-how level I was one week ago.
And of course, Half Life 2 was released so I HAD TO complete it before anything else!
Now, I can go back and work again on the base map for ALIEN'S PET.
I know now how to make displacements (the Half Life 2 unlocking also corrected many bugs in the editor...), alpha blending, setting Outputs to turn on and off lights and change skins and I got more know how on entities, physics and all.
The CSS map, name CS_SURROUNDED, will be professional made.
I thought that at first my first life map had to be a bunch of boxes, but then when I saw how easy it is to make one, I built up more and more and now I got a map that I think is damn good.
It's cleaner than Cobble, in example, though, for now, there is not much detail, but it will come.
Soon I will release it as beta and ask some server owner to set it up so I can test it in game (damn Valve, when they will release bots???).
During this week I also got some contacts with boys for coding and also one over 20 and one over 30 but they were not convinced about the project.
Instead, a musician joined the team and soon we could have some chuncks of the tracks in the files section.
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I started the base map for the mod, just to see how the dimensions will look and if particular problems will come up.
The source looks to handle well this wide open space, my fps remained between 160 and 200. Sure there are really little polygon but after the compiling the result is more than 9000 triangles...
I have put 3 screen in the media section.
The far orange little vertical rectangle that you see in the first 2 screens is a 72 inch tall box, I use to keep proportions during map building. You can see this box in the third screen.
I couldn't manage to find a decent glass texture, they all look no much transparent... strange because the glasses in cs_office map look more transparent. I hope this is not a rendering issue of the engine...
The texture is the last I tried, I couldn't find anything good. I started with some kind of grey/green stone like the one you can still see on the top (the alien will go sleep there up) just to put there something but then I found this metallic look... It's not bad but all the game will have its own textures so what is on the screen is only a really bland representation, mostly a test for me and just to see the proportions and how this immense room will look like.
I will have to find some excuse to add some detail here and there because the empty walls like that ok, they give big impression of deepness but it's not enough. I thought I will put one or 3 "floors" half covering the space. This should give much more measure to the distance.
Now the temptation is to build a little 3D labyrinth, just to test the playability and show who don't believe in the game concept that this can live alone without big additions.
Well the temptation was satisfied: WOOHOO!!! We got the first file here in the site! A cubic map 5x5x5 pretty much representative of what a maze level will be!
Of course there are not many riddles inside, it's pretty basic only with ladders and walls.
I also tested it with all the walls glassy and the Source seemed to don't suffer at all. It looked great and I think one of the mazes will be made of glass.
So if you want to watch and solve the maze (reach the top of the cube) just go to the files section and download it!
Some lines about technical problems:
- the texture window to realign the textures was extremely slow when I selected one block and popped it up. I think this is due to the high number of polygons, but I am not sure, they are not too many... I think in the demo map Cobble there are many more polygons but I must control yet. After all in this map there are no props at all! Only many simple blocks.
- compiling time: the labyrinth must put the VIS compiler in trouble because it took almost an hour to make the leafs. Yeah, it's that complex... Anyway, the positive note is that I don't need to run the VIS at each test, and without that the compile time shrinks to just a bunch of seconds.. For now, that the scene is almost completely black...
- maze levels will have to be planned quite well before starting the build. This problems of the slowish texture window is a major issue in the building of a maze so it's better to build one perfect block before starting with the big job.
- the replace texture, at least, runs smoothly and fast. Good, because I worked with a wood texture (not much good for our plot...) and then I replaced it with a metallic (fake) one. For the ladders I used the de_aztec map glyphs.
Obviously the map is not over. Much more must be done, all the texture in the game will be brand new so they will be replaced. Alien numbers on the walls must be added (floor or some thing of logic). Lamps are not there, for now only lightsources are present.
More, in this map there are no tricks at all... it will be one of the most simple.
A player with no sense of orientation could need 10-20 minutes to complete it.
A skilled player can get it done under a minute if he got some luck.
Now I just wait the feedback. I must advertise this map in the forums!
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Well, yesterday late afternoon I wanted to play a bit with Hammer.
I started, one block here and one block there I am on the way to build a map for CSS. What is really nice is that I learned to use it in a while.
I can already texture perfectly, use the point edit, split faces, skybox and many other things.
In a large square surrounded by walls (at the moment, later I will make it more various) there is a building in the center, with entrances on 3 sides, one large on the back for big loads, one average on one side for common crates and one in the front for the offices, which occupy all the front face of the building and the top floor. In one corner of the square there is a little garden, only ground with a tree inside, for now. I want to add a covered parking on one side of the square (to give CTs some cover), many crates on another side fo the square, for the same motivation, and maybe on another side I will cut the wall and will put a building or something different, but having 4 sides all with the same bricks is really lame.
I worked without pause up to now: 6 in the morning.
My eyes burn but I am happy. I know I will master Hammer in one week so then I will start mapping for ALIEN'S PET without problems
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By the way, just for completeness... name of the map: Surrounded.
It will be a hostages map. CTs will spawn all around the Ts point (they are closed in a office/repository palace) surrounding them at the beginning of the match.
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Today I have put down the map of the alien's room.
It will be based on hexagonal angles, not square.
There will be a window, an entrance and, a new thing that came to my mind during draw, a transparent panel right on one side of the pet's cage, so the player can always have a look at outside and this can give some more curiosity through the maps, to see the environment changes (seasons, rain, sun, clouds...). This is really just a little graphic touch more, nothing to do with the game itself.
The entrance of the room will be positioned high. We deal with spiders, so they have no problems at all to reach it, but for the player it will not be so easy.
I still have to decide how much high will be the room.
It's already something like 150 meters large, so I am thinking between 100 and 300 meters.
The main target to achieve in this case is something alien but still believable. I think that these kind of choices will be better defined during mapping. So I am there for the 200-300 meters, we'll see.
I also thought to a tricky first solution of the game. Obviously I will not post this here.
Added the page to subscribe to the mailing list in the site.
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I was playing with MilkShape and just popping up many ballz to see the reaction times of the 3D view when another idea for a map came up to my mind.
There could be a cube, fullfilled with balls, dispersed, levitating and fixed. Gravity inside the cube should be little less than normal.
The player has a "simple" task: go from a corner of the cube, to another corner, where the food is.
A first map could be less densely filled, and the player can see where the food is, we can give him some indication, he must jump from ball to ball and reach the food.
Another map, more intriguing, could be with a so high density of balls that the cube transforms into a labyrinth. In this case the player will have to understand where he can pass and where he cannot.
If the engine speed allows this, the balls may be transparent, but I doubt.
Another idea is a labyrinth made of tubes... Don't know if there will be too many polygons at a time on the screen, so probably, like also the map full of transparent balls, it should be left apart, but I will try.
I changed the index welcome text in something a bit less naive:
Hi, welcome to the website of one of the most original mods on the scene.
We are just at the beginning but you can get a rough idea of the concept of the game
and see some sketches in the media section.
Enjoy!
I also submitted the mod in the MODDB site. I added also their logo with link in the news section under the voice "partners".
Hope they will agreen on it.
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Yesterday I thought tho another annying thing to put in the game: strobo lights.
Especially in labyrinth rounds this may be some kind of challenge.
I just decided I will put in separate pages the posts I put on forums because the thing is taking up simply too much space.
Oh, and because I hate the word BLOG and it's big mode right now, I just replaced it with a more traditional and quiet DIARY :)
I would like to use XSI, the free version for HL2 content, to develop the mod, but the bastard is not running. To tell the truth, on the Softimage forums they opened a standing topic because MANY users reported the fact that the software is not even starting up.
I hope they will fix this soon. For now, I downloaded the Foundation 30 days evaluation version but guess? At the first install I got much similar behave: freeze at startup.
I saw that I installed it with the antivirus active. I am going to try again today with all defences down...
Today I managed to make a really weird media section. I made icons posterized and both icons and images are simply negativized. This is as fast as effective for the eye.
Nothing special of course but it looks damn good for me, it is the right "weirdy" look that match the kind of game.
Just thought to another thing to use hardly for a puzzle: friction.
If Source will have good behave with this factor 3 or 4 maps may be based heavily on friction.
I just found this document, I think it is an important resource for the coder, especially if we will need more than one.
I can't run XSI EXP for HL2 at all and XSI Foundation 4 30 days trial is not working either.
So I am going to install a brand new system on another partition and see how it goes... I hope they will fix these bugs soon, it is not much funny to deal with 2 OS just for one project.
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The game has now a sketch for a logo. I will or will not follow this as the official logo, it depends if through time I will find this ugly or boring or nice or if I will make one better.
For now it's good to have it here in the site.
I also photographed some of the sketches and put them in the media section.
For now no popup windows, just all the pictures on the same page... faster to do and there is not so much material to organize.
Yesterday evening I've also put down one of the creatures that the player will have to group: wormy. I'm satisfied with it, but I must admit that I stolen the idea of semi-transparent wormy creature from the game GunBound. I liked it, and for this kind of animal it's perfect.
I also thought to another couple of weirdnesses to insert in the game... low gravity zones in example, and if the engine supports buoyancy in good way also some good use of it in the small lake that it's inside the cage.
And a block which has 98% of elasticity? That could make a player crazy to reach it until it stops somewhere. Could be funny.
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This night I couldn't sleep, ideas for maps came to my mind continuously so I had to put 'em down.
I did this in a presentable way so some of the sketches will reach the site soon.
For now I think I will put a couple of sketches of map examples (obviously not the "best stuff") and also the sketches of some simple kind of blocks I drawn yesterday evening.
While drawing this stuff, many ideas came up to my mind, to setup weird situations that the player will have to solve.
I have put down the layout for the *** labyrinth, that will be one of the weirdest kind of rounds.
I don't want to spoil much more... this is the only surprise about I will talk during the developing of the game. I hope I will be able to shut down my mouth later!
Less intriguing (?) but still worth the draw, the "climb the tower" type of round, the planar traditional labyrinth and a "find the way" cube.
I've also put down a map that will be all based on a little trick from the player, if the player uses his brain a bit and experiments he will do it in 10 seconds. If not... it's a little bastard but nowhere is written that all the rounds must be finished. The player can always jump a round, especially in the beginning of the game there will not be big consequences.
It's great to drop ideas on paper, they develop more and more ideas while you draw, they reproduce.
I already know some of these ideas will have to be kicked off because of engine limitations or excess of work, but maybe, if the game will be a success, they will be recovered for a sequel.
It was some time that I was not drawing and not writing much... damn computer.
So my hand was anymore used to hold the pencil!
I had to re-learn a bit how to draw, I felt kind of stupid but after a couple of hours I could run again at my traditional speed.
I was also thinking to the ALIEN'S PET game logo, but up to now in my brain I can visualize only up to "alie" so I didn't put anything on paper.
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Just thought to a couple of modifications to the project, last night.
These should be not difficult to fit in the game, but should give a couple of step in originality to the game.
First of the player will have the chance to escape the cage at the end of every round. That is, after the round, will he complete it or not, the alien will leave the most of the blocks and things inside the cage. The player at this point must decide if to try to use them and escape or just point the bed and sleep.
This bring in another factor: sleep time.
Time will be compressed during the night "rounds", let's say something like 1 minute of game = 15 real minutes. This gives a 8 hours night match something like 32 minutes of game to try to escape, and, if the player succeed to go out of the cage, to explore the room and find a way out.
Half doubling again the total game time? ;)
Another modification could be... a PET?
We may fit in the cage with the player a dog? Or another little alien pet, with trumpet nose, funny, cute and big like an average dog?
Possibly this will be hard to program... as an alien pet, if there, should help the player in certain tasks, so it should be coded in a hard way.
OK, this may fit better in the sequel of this game.
Also last night I thought that the aliens will be giant spiders or something similar. If possible they will often take the player up with their "hands".
People usually hate spiders (me too), so this should be a plus to the bad and weird atmosphere.
Another thing, I found that the green simple flat background was really too much funky look for the game site, so for now this scratched-metal-like one will be good.
Also added the blobby thing on the left.
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