Hammering away again...

Technology and Gaming
#1

Been playing around with hammer again… This time with HL2. I found an old write-up monologue that seemed like it would provide good back story for a mod set in the HL Universe.

I’ve only been playing with the first map for a few days… A train ride. Here’s some pics I just took. Sorry for the high file sizes, I didn’t compress them!




The first two shots are older (about 1 hammer-hour), and the water has been changed, and attention paid to empty spots in the background.

Um, yeah. Lots of trees. Besides being a bit bland, how does it look? Also, the train doesn’t have wheels because the player would be IN the train. That last shot is just because it looked cool.

#2

Pretty solid. My suggestions pertain to the first image. Lower the level of the gravel and road, they seem a bit high. I would also add a few more brushes to the arch of that entrance, just to smooth it out a bit. As for the others, your displacements look solid and everything seems to be coming along nicely.

#3

If you were making that tunnel, how would you go about it. Because the way I’m making it, I’m in peril of having it compile all wierd. Happened once, and I had to go back and do some clip-cutting and vertex-editting. It’s the fact that it’s not on a perfect NSEW line that seems to be causing the problems that I DO encounter.

Just a bit of advice would be appreciated.

Thank you for the feedback, though!

EDIT: As to the gravel being so high: It’s mainly because the entire track is flat and is just about even with the grass at one point. I’ll pull the grass up a bit and lower it towards the bridge, because the bridge is where a big shift in nearness-to-the-ground-osity occurs.

Oh, and you REALLY don’t wanna see the other end of that road. It’s practically the edge of the map (The entire map takes up pretty much the entire horizontal plane of Hammer), so it just goes up a little ramp and ends on a wafer-thin foundation. I don’t know what I’m going to do about that just yet.

EDIT AGAIN: Does anybody know the name of the animation for sitting down on a cliff (like those two do at White Forest when you first arrive) or the related idle? I’ve been through the entire thing twice and I’m only finding the animation of the guy who picks up the pipe to beat the manhacks in HL2…
Edit to the previous subject: I settled on the canal_sitdown thing, it works nicely, as you only see it for a bit before a tree obscures him.

Anywho, all that’s just about resolved, now I just need to get a teleport working to make the segment continue. Dark tunnel, fade to black, tele to other train, fade out, out of tunnel. Problem is, I can’t figure out the proper sequence of entities required… WAIT! Now I just can’t figure out how to tell it to teleport the player, as he doesn’t exactly have an entity name. Already tried Player, Gordon, PC, and those types of things…

… And yet another nevermind. Who wudda thunk that trigger_teleport would trigger a teleport?

Damn, I’m working on the Industrial Sector of the map, and I’m just about done (next section is going to load, the map so far consists of two huge plates, and about a full square mile of land), but now my compiler is doing something I’ve never encountered before.

It’s getting stuck on VRAD, but not spending any CPU power on the process. Usually it just rides it up to 99% and sits there not doing anything, but now it’s really NOT doing anything.

Confirmation: It’s getting stuck on “Build Face Lights”. Perhaps the map is just too big?[/SIZE]

Fixed: Missed a really intricate object that should have been func_detail’d.

#4

Finally, a fully compiled approximately 80% completed Area 2 of my first map. This shot is pretty final, I might add some details and play around with the gravel pile, and place a track for the train (it goes through the warehouse under the bridge on the right), but other than that… Yeah, it’s a semi-sortof-notreally complete image.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and I’m prolly gonna put some smokestacks in the background. And doors on the warehouses.

EDIT AGAIN: Just about done, just having a little trouble worming the train’s way through a bit of a tight spot. Got it not to clip into a cliff in one place, only to have it happen to a lesser extent a second later…[/SIZE]
Fixed, train makes it though nice and clean now.

#5

Looks pretty damn cool man, I like it! :slight_smile:

#6

Newest issue is a stupid one. prop_static, prop_dynamic, nothing seems to work to let the smokestacks show up (the smokestack that falls during Water Hazard?). I’m gonna keep trying, maybe it just didn’t save last time.

#7

try a prop_physics

#8

Good idea… trying now…

You, my friend, are awesome. It worked! Now just to move on to the final segment of this map… La tunnel de train.

Also, I plan on going and playing around with entities and what-not, but is there a way to have the output of a camera (I know how to place them) show as an overlay to the player’s screen? The player needs to be able to retain movement control in this case, though.

#9

Use more overlay/detail textures or something to break up the repeating textures on the gravel pile and ground. You should also use more displacements so everything looks less angular and flat. Otherwise it looks good.

#10

This is looking great! Keep it up :3

#11

Brother Shrike, yeah, this is just a bunch of displacements thrown together. I’mma fill the basin area of the quarry zone up with more details once I’ve finished the map up.

Well, I just did the math, and the track is about 1 mile long! (that’s using 1 hammerunit = aprx .75 inches). Oh, and the quarry’s really coming together. Regarding the rock pile… I’m working on placing an overlay that seems to work perfectly, but am having trouble finding a good balance between too much and too little. I’ll just need to play around a bit more.

#12

How did you create those displacements? I’m just wondering, since i’ve never actually seen how another person does it.

#13

I have a small thing.

In the second picture it looks as though the grass leads right up to, and than into the water. This wouldn’t typically happen as grass doesn’t grow underwater, or in areas where the soil is constantly battered with water. I would expect to see mud or rocks underwater and in the area leading up to that little lake thingy.

#14

I fixed that actually, now there’s a new displacement in the valley left by the main grass displacement. There’s a bit of a visual eye-stopper between them, but as you will be moving the whole time, it’s not a big problem.

@Solokiller: Simply place a large brush, select the top face with the texture tool, and in the texture interface, click the “Displacement” tab, then click create, and add some noise. Then copy it to the surrounding areas (can’t make one too large or it will look very jagged as you can only have up to a power of 4 cuts), highlight them all, and click Sew.

#15

:3

#16

Lol. Pointless post is pointless. Yet made me smile…

Anywho: Filled the emptiness of the basin with a processing plant. Looks like the foundation is going to have to spread, cuz they don’t exactly look right, sticking right out of the earth. Maybe if I make the earth rock instead, it will look a bit better than grass…

EDIT: I can already tell this area is going to go through MANY iterations… But here it is, FOR NOW.

Shot from across the “track” (next to the closest crane in the last photo) facing the new industrial area. Yellow building on left is the same as the last photo, only from the opposite side.

Other side of the yellow building, facing same direction.

Definitely thinking of putting a giant gravel elevator (the long ramped enclosed conveyor buildings?) in the empty space on the bottom/left of the last image…

A reminder: These are all things that are only going to be seen in passing, and that the player will have zero chance to interact with. In later levels (the player may pass through some areas), barriers will be made by the environment (crashed trains, fallen buildings, etc), and areas will be optimized where needed.

UPDATED CONCEPT IDEA
I was thinking… maybe I should remove the props and put more piles of mined-rocks and maybe a few raised sheet-metal-walled buildings. Like in the picture on this site:
https://www.victoryminerals.com/about.html
Funny how I got there, reading an article on Half-life removed levels, found my way to episode 2, a translation of Waxta Nobeabl (the mine sines), googled it, and found Victory Minerals, but that’s totally irrelevant

#17

Working on the tunnel. It was getting a bit boring, so I had it turn a bit, and added a maintenance area, seen below, in all its unadorned and completely barren beauty.

Floor texture for the track area isn’t important as you are currently unable to see down that far.

I just did some reading up on HL2’s original design plan, and this is going to end up being a lot like the intro sequence to HL2 was originally going to be (Gordon walking up to a vista of a beautiful city through a squeaky-happy-green-landscape, then the city morphing into C17 as we know it). Except its going to happen in stages here.

UPDATE: Working on the highway-canyon area. Gotta make it a bit longer to go around a corner out of sight.

#18

Question: If I leave “smart edit” mode and create a parameter called “parent” and assign it to a given object, can I make a info_landmark parented to a prop_dynamic? Or will it just not recognize it as a valid parameter and ignore it.

#19

It would only work if the entity supports the parent system, and an info_landmark obviously doesn’t, since it links 2 (or more) maps together.

#20

I was hoping to use it as a teleportation landmark. Or can I use anything as a local landmark for a trigger teleport?

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