Half-life 2 mods are becoming outdated. There are much more powerful engines out there now. If I we're to think about doing a game in the source engine, I just do a scratch build in Unreal Engine.
[quote]Valve, the company behind Half-Life, have given Seabrook approval to use graphics and assets from Half-Life 2 and while the game is not an official Half-Life title it has been approved by the company.[/quote]
:what:
Doesn't everyone who purchased their games have access to the assets, and SDK? Have I been defrauding valve for the last 13 years?
[QUOTE=Richard Simmons;49602607]:what:
Doesn't everyone who purchased their games have access to the assets, and SDK? Have I been defrauding valve for the last 13 years?[/QUOTE]
Of course they have, that's how a sea of mods for HL2 was created and even one of them being the reason for this forum's existence.
It's just a nice title for him to throw around so it looks like he's got importance.
[QUOTE=smidge146;49602534]Half-life 2 mods are becoming outdated. There are much more powerful engines out there now. If I we're to think about doing a game in the source engine, I just do a scratch build in Unreal Engine.[/QUOTE]
I think it's kind of noble, Source is a real sonuvabitch to work with, and it requires you to know a LOT of different skills, and usually a bit of hackery to make anything decent with it. I think the dev fought an uphill battle just to show that he could. I'd hire that guy.
Even with premade assets it's got quite a fucking learning curve compared to other modern engines.
[QUOTE=smidge146;49602534]Half-life 2 mods are becoming outdated. There are much more powerful engines out there now. If I we're to think about doing a game in the source engine, I just do a scratch build in Unreal Engine.[/QUOTE]
Making a good Half-Life 2 mod/map can show great proficiency in understanding the fundamentals of level design, and I don't mean technical understanding of the engine. A good example of this is Minerva: Metastasis, it isn't the prettiest thing ever made on Source, but it plays extremely well. The level design in Minerva is almost perfectly crafted to guide the player, give subtle hints and visual clues, use lighting to convey mood, and give the player concise and achievable goals that have a satisfactory gameplay payoff.
If you can achieve that in a map/mod, then you're pretty much set to work on any game that uses similar player interface (Player inside 3d world).
[editline]25th January 2016[/editline]
[QUOTE=Richard Simmons;49602607]:what:
Doesn't everyone who purchased their games have access to the assets, and SDK? Have I been defrauding valve for the last 13 years?[/QUOTE]
What's more interesting is that it's being sold on Steam, meaning he had to pay for licensing the engine, something Valve has been trying to move away from; You can't even access the [URL="https://web.archive.org/web/20120211003916/http://source.valvesoftware.com/"]Source technology page[/URL] on Valve's website anymore.
[QUOTE=smidge146;49602534]Half-life 2 mods are becoming outdated. There are much more powerful engines out there now. If I we're to think about doing a game in the source engine, I just do a scratch build in Unreal Engine.[/QUOTE]
Really good practice for Source 2 though, which is coming 100%.
I really think Source is much easier to work with than UE4 and in some cases, Unity. Especially for world building, and all the tools run on a potato.
[QUOTE=Noi;49607258]I've tried to make something in UE4, but it feels like a mess. However, source engine is nice working with, despite being old.[/QUOTE]
Are we talking about the same source engine, the one where you have to learn a coding language to import models?
Trust me, as soon as you get familiar with UE4 you'll never want to touch source ever again
[QUOTE=Ryo Ohki;49609095]Are we talking about the same source engine, the one where you have to learn a coding language to import models?
Trust me, as soon as you get familiar with UE4 you'll never want to touch source ever again[/QUOTE]
I sure hope Source 2 gets something similar to blueprints.
paying for half-rate Half Life 2 mods now? what?
[editline]26th January 2016[/editline]
Black Mesa was okay but this is just getting out of hand
[QUOTE=Ryo Ohki;49609095]Are we talking about the same source engine, the one where you have to learn a coding language to import models?
Trust me, as soon as you get familiar with UE4 you'll never want to touch source ever again[/QUOTE]
You certainly don't need to learn a coding language to get raw models into source. Plopping stuff trough studioMDL is fairly straightforward and you need to pen down like 4 lines for it to grab the model and convert it.
If you're working with more complex models, full of animations, vertex animations and what else, you're obviously going to have to know more. But pretty much the same applies to most other engines.
Honestly important any model into any engine and making it look good will require you to know a lot of fundamentals.
Bulletball: Source
[QUOTE=wraithcat;49609395]If you're working with more complex models, full of animations, vertex animations and what else, you're obviously going to have to know more.[/QUOTE]All it takes to do this in UE4 is export a single scene from your modelling software of choice and it will all automatically work. You can also change single assets freely, whereas source requires you to recompile the entire model even if you want to do something like changing the name of a material
Doing this in source requires:
1. Exporting model as smd
2. Exporting animation as smd
3. Exporting flexes as vta
4. Hook up model with the animation
5. Set up the flex controllers
6. Set up the material .vmt
7. Hook up the materials in the .qc
I've done this in the past. A lot of this stuff I had to figure out on my own because tutorials do not always cover exactly what you need. I know that pain. Even knowing all of this perfectly beforehand, it takes several minutes to set up everything.
Even then, the only reason a very simple model is straightforward (debatable) to import into source is because you had people doing their homework for years so there's tutorials on how stuff works, otherwise you do indeed literally need to learn a coding language
[QUOTE=Noi;49609708]I get this feeling that GUI is just making everyone feel like débile, I'd rather have more control on my workflow.[/QUOTE]
It's more of a shortcut than anything. UE just happens to support scene formats for some modeling programs. It even supports .psd for fuck's sake.
I'm sure you can tweak it yourself, but the choice of convenience is nice.
[QUOTE=Ryo Ohki;49609095]Are we talking about the same source engine, the one where you have to learn a coding language to import models?
Trust me, as soon as you get familiar with UE4 you'll never want to touch source ever again[/QUOTE]
You call qc's coding languages?
[QUOTE=Recurracy;49609850]You call qc's coding languages?[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE]A QC file is a script which controls the process of compiling SMDs into a binary model that can be loaded into a game. The extension stands for Quake C, the programming and scripting language from which the Valve Data Format was originally derived.[/quote]
[url]https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/QC[/url]
[quote]QuakeC is an interpreted language developed in 1996 by John Carmack of id Software to program parts of the video game Quake.[/quote]
[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuakeC[/url]
Yes
Qc =/= quakec
nevermind, misread
yes because you would use PSDs and use 5000 different content formats as opposed to the engine native one because?
[QUOTE=Noi;49609708]I get this feeling that GUI is just making everyone feel like débile, I'd rather have more control on my workflow.[/QUOTE]
It's not limiting at all, you're just filling in some blanks instead of having to look up every setting you need and making sure the syntax is correct.
And there's nothing wrong with sticking with what you're familiar with, but for someone starting out learning to use source is a very near-sighted move
The main difference is whether you're going to use your time to deal with source's time consuming workflow or use that time to produce actual content in a newer engine
[QUOTE=Map in a box;49612550]yes because you would use PSDs and use 5000 different content formats as opposed to the engine native one because?[/QUOTE]
people work with PSDs while texturing, and would probably rather not have to convert their textures to a proprietary format like VTF to see their texture results
(the VTF plugin I have for Photoshop is incredibly slow, so I'd rather do this too)
WAIT THIS IS GOING TO BE HALF LIFE 3? some fan made mod thats going to need to be paid for?
[QUOTE=cynaraos;49616590]people work with PSDs while texturing, and would probably rather not have to convert their textures to a proprietary format like VTF to see their texture results
(the VTF plugin I have for Photoshop is incredibly slow, so I'd rather do this too)[/QUOTE]
Because if you do it that way you have to continuously keep up with w/e photoshop changes about format. If they add a new type of layer blending effect, you're going to have to update your PSD importer to support it.
UE4 already suffers from this problem. They don't support the whole PSD format, because its fucking massive and they add new shit all the time, and then don't update the documentation for it.
What you really want is any workflow as easy as drag-and-dropping an PSD.
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