Valve didn't screw it up much. Most of the problems over the last month had simple workarounds that took about 5 seconds to fix up.
good to see you did end up using my idea
I vote option 3.
Also, overlord 2 ftw.
Sounds like a lot of fun. I can't wait to play.
Also, 3 sounds awesome.
Option 3 sounds best.
[QUOTE=RAYHALO;15901293]good to see you did end up using my idea[/QUOTE]
No, you wanted small pods and large pods and assault pods and seige pods, and everyone was supposed to be different :P
Anyway, I'm glad that for once, ALL of you agree with each other - it makes it much easier for me cause it means I don't have to make the decision at all! Number 3 it is.
YAYYAYYAYYAYYAYYAYYAYYAY!!! Anyways, hows stuff coming along for you guys? I mean, I don't know if you all are working on things, but if so, how are they coming along? I'm learning to use blender so I can help with the SBEP group, I had a 3 month long attempt at Hammer and got nowhere, so if you need someone to make models, I might be able to do it pretty soon.
I'm not sure how you mean by 'you guys'. The dev group has pretty much dropped to me and Portal cake. Dlaor does the occasional model, and Ray throws a load of textures at me every so often, but that's about it. Portal hasn't worked on it in a month or two, but that was mainly because I had completely stopped as well I think. I'm sure that once things are ready I can get him to work again.
As for me, I said most of it in my last two posts. I had planned to work on it today, but I didn't get too far. All I've done is work out roughly how the new bunker pods will work and where they will be positioned on the ship. If it works out the way I hope, they will help make the exterior look nicer, as well as looking pretty cool themselves without using too many brushes. Having said that, if we had a suitable model for a drop pod which would work as a model on its own (hint hint) then each pod would need a single model and nothing more, so I could keep them in as well.
Also, I've updated the OP. Obsessive people may notice that the utility section has actually gone down about 10%. This is because I decided to remake most of it. Thinking about it, having models for the cargo containers would be VERY useful. They must be taking up a lot of brushes at the moment.
NO WAIT! I change to #1 [img]http://d2k5.com/sa_emots/emot-v.gif[/img]
Just kidding.
Aside from a free trip to the cinema on Monday, I've now finished college! Woohoo! That means something around 3-4 months of holiday. Aka complete boredom. I would be amazed if I don't end up mapping a lot. I got a bit more done on the bunker pods. The basic design is finished, but no doubt I will be adding more. So far it's pretty basic. Single large room, holds 6 pods but in theory you can actually stand in it normally and not die, so it can probably hold about 20 people standing (if they are very friendly). The walls are twice as thick as interior Planetfall walls, with a nice solid door as well.
The descent/ascent is controlled by two rotating drive pods, starting at horizontal for launching from the ship, and rotating as it descends. After landing, the front section of the pod extends to provide an extra 50% space inside. I considered putting in some windows with blast-door covers, but I couldn't think of a way to make them look nice without using lots of brushes.
Then don't have them look nice, just have holes without panes, and a blast door that goes over it. Like the bunkers in Halo 3's Standoff map. Except have them be able to open AND close. Thats the only thing I didn't like about standoff. You can only open the windows.
One of my main objectives in PFv2 is specifically to make it look as nice as possible without wasting too much time making a map which looks nice but isn't useful/fun. One thing which I've learnt while mapping:
Plain square/rectangular windows with no frame look HIDIOUS and should never be used for anything. At the very least they need a little frame around them. But then lets think about that. Assume you have a single wall which you want to put one basic window in. The wall on its own counts as 1 brush, 6 faces and 8 vertices. You then have to cut it 4 times to make the initial hole for the window. Thats now 4 brushes, 24 faces and 32 vertices. Add in a basic frame, which doubles all those values. Then a blast door. Even if this was a simple rectangular blast door, that would be another 1 brush, 6 faces and 8 vertices, not to mention the extra entity memory.
Therefore, just to add ONE blast door'ed window to ONE bunker pod would cost a total of:
9 brushes, 54 faces, 72 vertices and a little entity memory.
Is it REALLY worth it? :P
Probably not. Particularly as you said earlier that you were strapped for brushes. To have one window in each wall in a boring old cube would take, in total: 38 brushes, 228 faces and 304 vertices.
Working: Multiplied window requirements by 4, one for each wall, added requirements for a basic wall X2
Tell me if I went wrong anywhere.
Also, yes I am bored enough to do maths in my summer holiday.
Okay, not going into details, a crazy frenchman wants to make a machinima (however you spell it) movie type thing on planetfall. Because of this, I wanted to compile the latest version (with the wreck) with lights. However, it appears that compiling with lights needs even fewer brushes than compiling normally does. Now I'm not talking just a few here and there. First I optimized brushes as much as I could, and it wouldn't work. Then I tried making pretty things look ugly (less brushes used), and that didn't help either. Finally, just to see if it was remotely possible to compile with lights AND the wreck, I removed the outer wall from the ground base AND the main shield from the ship - still nothing.
So here's the big question. Should I put everything back to the way it was a month ago (no wreck), add in what I can to make it more planetfally and then release it, or should I do what I did with PFv1, forget about the lights and just make the map itself as awesome as possible?
Of course, its a pretty weighted question and I have very little doubt what your answers will be, but I figured I should make sure.
Leave the lights in, I believe that there's a hack to make it able to compile.
Leave the lights out for now, or get rid of the wreck. [offtopic] Aw fuck, the asshole of a landlord for these apartments is riding around on his 300 horsepower lawnmower again. Damn.[/offtopic]
Remove the wreck. Make it awesome.
The wreck is to make it awesome, but there aren't enough brushes left to have lights too. I say take out the individual lights and have the hole map on fullbright for now.
get rid of the lights the wreck is needed more
A few years ago, I would have said the lights aren't important, but now, having seen the difference between PFv1 AND PFv2 with/without lights, I'm just not so sure. Yes, it's important to have lots of awesome stuff, but if your walking through a creepy, falling apart ship wreck with alien goo growing everywhere, it kinda spoils the effect when you can see pefectly into every little corner.
Thinking about it, there may be a lua way around it. I will have to talk to portal about it... If you compile in full bright then disable full bright in-game, the map is completely dark. If you then added all the lights in gmod, it PROBABLY wouldn't crash. Obviously, it would suck adding all those lights every time, so what if you got a lua script to add them for you? Definitely worth asking him about.
Also:
[quote=nardix]Leave the lights in, I believe that there's a hack to make it able to compile.[/quote]
Any chance you could comfirm/find that? Even if I do decide to continue without lights, I won't actually remove them all, just not run VRAD when I compile it, so there's no real rush.
Whats VRAD?
sorry been away so long whats new?
[QUOTE=rookieroo24;16060364]Whats VRAD?[/QUOTE]
VRAD is the command-line tool that compiles a map's lightmaps and per-leaf ambient lighting. It gives parts of the map, called patches, a certain amount of brightness depending on how much light it calculates it should receive.
[url]http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/VRAD[/url]
[QUOTE=gamer_lv;16070283]VRAD is the command-line tool that compiles a map's lightmaps and per-leaf ambient lighting. It gives parts of the map, called patches, a certain amount of brightness depending on how much light it calculates it should receive.
[url]http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/VRAD[/url][/QUOTE]
What he said. Or if you're not a mapper or a technician of some kind, it compiles all of the lights in the map. If you turn it off, you have fullbright.
Wasn't it also that different engines had different compile settings? Like the first source engine could do more than the OB engine?
[QUOTE=nardix;16093704]Wasn't it also that different engines had different compile settings? Like the first source engine could do more than the OB engine?[/QUOTE]
I don't know. It was shortly after OB that I started paying attention to how the engine actually worked.
Since it's a pretty big decision to make, I've been doing side things instead for now. For example, I copied the exterior of the ship (including doors, excluding windows) into a new vmf and made an almost exact replica with no interior. From the outside it looks the same except for the windows, which are just blacked out. Or if you get really close you will notice certain other small differences. But this will be very useful any time I want to put in a copy of the outside of the ship into anything. For example, if I want a mini-fleet in a 3D skybox, or more parts of the wreck without having to bother with the interior. By optimizing it specifically for this purpose, I've reduced it from 257 brushes to 127.
Shadow broke the thread!
But that peice of info is important, he can now easliy recreate anything he wants in the PF shape, the new hologram is a good example, he can now make something like that in about 2 seconds using the new saved vmf rather than several hours.
Also, just to let you guys know, I'm going on holiday for about 8 or 9 days. That means no computers, no internet, nothing. I'm sure that Kaffo can answer most of the questions you may have.
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