HL2 Modding skittlz?

[Vicious Horizon]

Ohaithar.

I was just wondering, what sort of modding skills do we have as a community for the Source Engine? I was sort of thinking of a mod, I'd be on Concept art and storyline etc. and I was thinking of asking some people around here to help out, it's just a few ideas at the moment, but any help would be good. I may have a mapper, but he's quite new, and I'm not sure if he's the right guy for the job at the moment..

So, got skittlz?

[Chalex4]

I think we're all quite new to the modding scene really. I know Chazlene has made some maps before using hammer, and Vox has dabbled at creating models and such.

I've always wanted to have a stab, but never actually tried :p.

[Calneon]

Ohaithar.
I'd be on Concept art and storyline etc.
Yeah, i'd join you, i'll be the guy who has all the ideas and takes half the credit.

No but seriously, i've dabbed in modeling and Oblivion modding. I'm going to uni in the summer to study game design so i'll probably be more help then :D.

[Chazlene]

Yeah I've made a few maps, but haven't done much in a while. I can also give skinning a go.

[D_K_Head]

er, level design, minor mapping, and I was thinking of looking at animation...

Funny thing is, DP and myself were looking at modding a few weeks ago

[Target]

Well Chazlene has made some pretty goods maps for css and i seem to remember vox making some skins, i'm sure over the summer you might be able to sort some things out as ppl will hav more time :D

[Bloo]

I can make sarcastic comments and say you're doing it wrong!

Aside from that uhh, I've done some minor modding on the most cookie-cutter toolset ever to be created. So I'm not much use unless you need a creative advisor.

[Vicious Horizon]

Anything would be awesome, if I'm honest =D
I know this'll sound a bit odd, but I was sort of thinking of a mod based around Cloverfield, but obviously alot more action packed (It's Source fgs XD) and more awesome. I have some ideas floating around at the moment, any insight would be cool.

(I'm also thinking about multiplayer, if that's feasable =D)

[D_K_Head]

how would you do a camcorder style FPS where you never see the monster?

Unless you're thinking of a game based around escaping from a monster... Nothing creates tension like carrying an AK through a dark building knowing there's a huge monster outside that could smash through from the outside and block off an exit/try to kill you at any moment... and I can see some EPIC level plans for that sort of thing... sort of a really long, and slightly bigger version of blast pit.

[VoX]

2D artist here, can try and figure out stuff in terms of loading screens and if someone has any flash experience, it's probably quite easy to shove a menu together.

I may get into weapon textures, seems like texture guys are always needed.

DE has learnt/is learning some coding I think, and he mentioned learning source.

[D_K_Head]

How can a community have so many combined skills and still be as disfunctional as us?

[Trigger]

How can a community have so many combined skills and still be as disfunctional as us?


Reminds me of the British goverment :p

[Darkeagle]

Yh im literally just starting to learn source, will take a while, but should have a good grasp of it by summer, so i wouldnt mind helping you.

[Darkpidgeon]

Funny thing is, DP and myself were looking at modding a few weeks ago

woops...

anyway I know a bit about hammer but theirs still a lot to learn, so wouldn't mind helping around summer.

[Vicious Horizon]

Great, sounds like everyone is pretty willing to help out

DK, My thoughts exactly, I was thinking rather than cam-corder, FPS, and you're trying to.. sorry, GET TO DA CHOPPA! at the end. But you go through a load of shit to get there etc. I was thinking, first 5-10 minutes you have no weapons, and you get chased by some mini-ones, (for now we can use Antlions) then you get in a building, missile hits monster, all you see is it fall into building you're in, you are like OMG and running away. Find a load of people and you fall over, dude helps you up, stuff goes on.

I've got tonnes more ideas atm, cba to type 'em up right now though. XD

[Chalex4]

Awesome stuff, I had no idea we had so many skilled people "in the making".

In about 3 weeks time I'll have all the time in the world to experiment around with this sort of stuff, and I think I'm most likely to go the coding route right now. We can be partners DE :p.

Oh, and of course I'll be totally willing to sort out a site & download areas if we ever reach completion!

[Colonel Mitch]

Great, sounds like everyone is pretty willing to help out

DK, My thoughts exactly, I was thinking rather than cam-corder, FPS, and you're trying to.. sorry, GET TO DA CHOPPA! at the end. But you go through a load of shit to get there etc. I was thinking, first 5-10 minutes you have no weapons, and you get chased by some mini-ones, (for now we can use Antlions) then you get in a building, missile hits monster, all you see is it fall into building you're in, you are like OMG and running away. Find a load of people and you fall over, dude helps you up, stuff goes on.

I've got tonnes more ideas atm, cba to type 'em up right now though. XD

Okay this sounds great, and simple too.

Ill get fraps running and a huge memory pool for it to save to and then play Half-life 2 and record teh whole thing ;) job done :P

[Vicious Horizon]

Alright, nice going Chal, I'm about to do some brief looking around with my friendly pencil and come up with some moar plot etc.

Think we could make an invisible forum (like you did for Battlefield Heroes) that people involved can see? If we're going to go through with this we want to keep a little suspense, don't we? x3

I have a backstory for the character the player may be, I'll discuss some of this a little later, and some basic moments in the SP scripted out.

I'm thinking, is it possible to make it so that when the player gets to a certain part (i.e. running away from stuff), you can trigger a building falling down or something, to stop the things behind the player from killing them? (Thinking about the start of the game, a glorified opening cutscene)


Okay this sounds great, and simple too.

Ill get fraps running and a huge memory pool for it to save to and then play Half-life 2 and record teh whole thing ;) job done :P

>.<' There's more stuff which I haven't said which completely separate it from HL2. :P I'm not going to make this a rip off of another game, and everyone else will have input on storyline etc.

I vote we codename the project, too.

[Darkeagle]

Yh, looking at the way source code works, i think if the mapper makes a invisible entity, i could trigger it to make a building fall, etc.

[Vicious Horizon]

Great, I was thinking about character running away, almost as soon as the things are on them, Clover smashes a building and owns a load of the little things, and maybe a couple of humans..

(PS. think of little antlions from HL2 when I talk about little monster things, mini-clovers) x3

[Darkeagle]

ok, i think its about time to set this forum up now, um i liked the name

Codename: The fall

[Vicious Horizon]

Sounds cool, suggestive and mysterious too.

With or without "Codename:" in front? I like it with =D

Codename: The Fall

[Chalex4]

Do we want a forum that only registered forum members can see, or just a select number of people?

Personally, I think the former would help get more people involved, and would stop the search bots from finding out :).

[Vicious Horizon]

Hm, A majority open to registered members, but maybe a sub-forum or two that only a select few can see, that way we can stop randomers from getting our 1337 secrets. xD

[Darkeagle]

No, only a selected few, tbh we want to keep it secret, that way it will be a better finished output.

[Calneon]

I'll be working for Valve before you guys complete a mod xD. But you are entitled to try none the less.

[D_K_Head]

Is it bad that I read that as "The Fail" for the first few times, without questioning it?


er, level design would have to be a lot more substantial than "a couple of rooms."

[Vicious Horizon]

I think I realised that, I'll work a little on some level design too.

I'm out for the night, cya.

[VoX]

For the forums, add a forum subsection with several forms inside it (Subsection as in how we have "General" etc.) such as Dev journal, news, discussion, and then at the top have a private forum that all involved have access and mod to, with that split up into the different sections involved (2D Work, Modelling, Mapping, Navmeshing etc) and get tasks etc done that way. (Is it obvious I'm not new to modding? lol)


(This is a long read but is worth it)

VH, I hate to burst a bubble but a simple into scene will take several months to create, there's a LOT more going on that you can see:


All mapping needs to be done in Hammer, which is unlcear and nearly as bad as the BF2 Editor when it comes to crashes. DP will be able to give more info.
With a new map, comes new statics. These can be made roughly in Hammer, but they would be limited to basic shapes and Valve textures. If these were to be made in a program such as 3DS Max, they would be detailed and take about a week of solid work to do.
After the model comes the texture. These can take longer the model as you have to unwrap the model itself, arrange everything into a TexMap, fill in the base colours etc and add all the details. You then port the texture back into Max and hope it all works well.
The model and texture then need to be exported, this can take time and if theres one small problem in the model, it can corrupt. If there are too many verts/polys, you're going to cause a lot of lag for some people, thankfully source allows a weapon to have bits missing on the side you don't see to keep the counts down.
Rinse and repeat the above with a less detailed model for the 3P views.



Ok, that's just getting custom statics/weapons into the mod as well as the basic map. But for the map to work properly, a lot of entities are needed such as spawn points, physics models etc etc. These take time and are entered one by one, they are also the most common thing to mess up in Hammer. Oh, cut-scenes and location triggered events use a lot of entities.


Maps also need to be compiled and light mapped, the more trees the longer it takes (A PR forest map was done on an OCed system (Editor only uses one core) with 8GB of RAM, it took about 5 days to LM on "Med" settings, they still haven't done "High" to this day. Oh, this also needs to be done for statics and weapons separately.)


After you have the rough map going, you test that everything works as expected. You will be running around on your own, unless you are making a multi-player mod. If it's single player or involves NPCs, you then commence writing the AI Files including the navmesh (I have a feeling source Meshes itself, well at least custom CSS maps do.) If a mesh is needed, then you load up the map in Maya/Max and make a "model" that covers the ground, get an angle slightly wrong and the bots will get stuck (Trust me, I do stuff for PR Single Player, the meshes are THE most moaned about thing) or run around in circles.

When the mesh is made, you need to "cook" the mesh, a guy who does this for PRSP is on a OCed Core i7 system with 6GB of RAM, it takes over a day to cook the mesh, and these go wrong very often, meaning you have to hunt through the mesh and find the problem, then cook it again. Oh, you'll need one of these for infantry an another for any vehicles that use AI. Any fixed movements are even more entities.



You then get into the testing phase with the AI, any problems, your back changing the mesh/map and cooking/rendering it again, so more time.





Can you see why I'm slightly sceptical about how this will turn out?



EDIT: Forgot to say, all new weapons will need to be animated in a way that seems "real"

[D_K_Head]

speaking of meshes, don't bots, to this day, still have to jump around at the snowy parts of cs_office? Not sure if they ever fixed it...

[Vicious Horizon]

Haha, I believe they do, AWP ftw.

Talked with VoX, We've agreed to go for MP before any sort of SP stuff, that way we can use the base for the SP side of things.

Was there anything else, Vox?


Oh, and I also want to take note, this is going to take a long time. A looooong time and I hope everyone who wants to get involved has the stamina to dedicate to this.
Gather your things, men. We're going to the mountains.

[VoX]

Nope, there was nothing else really.


If Chalex gets the forum set up soon we can get a idea of where we're going and get a plan laid out, then we'll start on getting it going after exams (Although there is no rush on the forum, take time with exams etc, nothing major will happen soon.)

[Vicious Horizon]

Does it take longer to make forums in vBulletin than PHPBB? (A little off-topic I know XD)

[VoX]

Nope, vB it's a 2 second job, but that's not including setting permissions etc which can take a while.

[Vicious Horizon]

Guess so. Much like phpbb then.