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Dm_Island17 source file
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 Re: Dm_Island17 source file
Posted by mazemaster on Thu Apr 7th at 7:53am 2005

While Snarkpit was down I released the .vmf source for dm_Island17. So, uhh yeah you can download it here:
http://www3.hmc.edu/~nalger/dm_island17_vmf.zip

Quoting Readme.txtI mainly intend this source file to be a teaching tool for helping mappers learn how I achieved certain effects. However, feel free to use this source as you see fit. If you want to include parts of Island17 in your map, that is OK. Just give credit where credit is due.


Of course most of you snarkpit people, being the skilled mappers you are, know how to do all the effects, but hey it might help someone.




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 Re: Dm_Island17 source file
Posted by habboi on Thu Apr 7th at 8:51am 2005

It's a nice gesture but I uhh decompiled it ages ago :S

I must say though that it was helpful...

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 Re: Dm_Island17 source file
Posted by Andrei on Thu Apr 7th at 8:53am 2005

? quote:


Quoting Readme.txt certain effects




What effects? Everything was pretty plain and straight-forward. I really haven't seen anything really special that would make people ask themselves questions.
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 Re: Dm_Island17 source file
Posted by DrGlass on Thu Apr 7th at 11:42am 2005

The birds, the echo, the water death, the area portals, etc.

there are alot of elements that newbies and novice people would like to see.
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 Re: Dm_Island17 source file
Posted by Agent Smith on Thu Apr 7th at 2:08pm 2005

Hell, thats stuff even I want to see.
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 Re: Dm_Island17 source file
Posted by ReNo on Thu Apr 7th at 2:40pm 2005

LOL Habboi, that made me laugh smiley

Its always nice to see experienced mappers releasing the source files of their work. I'm quite keen to see how much of the map was made from displacement surfaces personally, I've yet to really have a shot at a large outside area in source.
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 Re: Dm_Island17 source file
Posted by Dred_furst on Thu Apr 7th at 6:27pm 2005

:O
just :O

so i can modify it and re-release saying its mostly done by you

but still :O

its a kickass map, but didnt expect the source to it :O
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 Re: Dm_Island17 source file
Posted by DrGlass on Thu Apr 7th at 6:40pm 2005

the public isn't dumb, if some one runs out with an island_18 we all will know. Keeping things like this from the public isn't going to stop bad people from getting their hands on it (even though I think I argued to keep the decompiler out...).


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 Re: Dm_Island17 source file
Posted by Andrei on Thu Apr 7th at 6:42pm 2005

Someone needs to discover an anti-decompile protection.
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 Re: Dm_Island17 source file
Posted by Natus on Thu Apr 7th at 6:54pm 2005

*/me made a crappy dark snow version, then deleted it*
the seagulls didnt look too good in snow, nor the water
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 Re: Dm_Island17 source file
Posted by DrGlass on Thu Apr 7th at 7:02pm 2005

Andrei, this is what we have to deal with. Anything you give the the public can and will be stolen. Dont put maps on the web if you dont wnat people to get their dirty little hands on them.

its just a trade off.
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 Re: Dm_Island17 source file
Posted by Dred_furst on Thu Apr 7th at 8:39pm 2005

lol, dont worry, i wont bring out island18

but nat told me about that, you shoulda screened it first XD
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 Re: Dm_Island17 source file
Posted by mazemaster on Thu Apr 7th at 10:41pm 2005

So in response to Andrei's question about what people could learn from
the map: I have given that a lot of thought since thats the main reason
for releasing the source.

First, since releasing the map, I have gotten 3 emails from mappers
asking about the birds, the 3D skybox, and intersecting circular
tunnels. I imagine that there are quite a few more people like that who
haven't emailed me.

Second, as I was making the map, there were a lot of strategies I had
to learn and tricks I had to pick up. That took up the majority of my
time making the map actually, learning the ins and outs of the engine.
For example:

-Meshing the water in the skybox with the water in the map

-Making props "respawn" if they fall out of the map

-Getting the fog to look "right", and making the map fog mesh with the skybox fog (this is harder than it seems!)

-The birds...

-Using areaportals

-Properly using displacements

-Use of hirearchical vis groups (message: use them!)

-Tricks to reduce vis times (clip roof edges, etc)

-Good ways to vis underneath displacements

-How to make a breakable window using models and their subgroups.

-Importance of aligning textures with normalmaps

-Where to place cubemaps

etc

I didnt even have time to learn about and implement soundscapes before
the deadline, which was the next thing in line for the map had the
deadline not come so soon.

My hope is that by looking at my map, other people may not have to spend so much time figuring out all that stuff.



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 Re: Dm_Island17 source file
Posted by KungFuSquirrel on Fri Apr 8th at 2:46am 2005

? quote:
-Importance of aligning textures with normalmaps

? quote:
-Importance of aligning textures with normalmaps

? quote:
-Importance of aligning textures with normalmaps

? quote:
-Importance of aligning textures with normalmaps

? quote:
-Importance of aligning textures with normalmaps


for emphasis. smiley [addsig]



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 Re: Dm_Island17 source file
Posted by DrGlass on Fri Apr 8th at 3:13am 2005

seriouse question (please no flame) what are normal maps?
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 Re: Dm_Island17 source file
Posted by Andrei on Fri Apr 8th at 9:20am 2005

? quote:

-Meshing the water in the skybox with the water in the map


You mean they blend perfectly? Each time i've played the map, the border between the two is painfuly obvious. Must be yet another hl2dm material bug. smiley
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 Re: Dm_Island17 source file
Posted by Captain P on Fri Apr 8th at 9:52am 2005

? quote:
You mean they blend perfectly? Each time i've played the map, the border between the two is painfuly obvious. Must be yet another hl2dm material bug.


Or perhaps it has something to do with DirectX levels?

That's one of the things that make HL2 mapping harder: you don't exactly know how other people will see your effect, and with a lower end system, you can't even achieve them yourself...
So this would requires testing on multiple machines...
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 Re: Dm_Island17 source file
Posted by habboi on Fri Apr 8th at 1:14pm 2005

Decompiling is ok because they can't steal anything otherwise it just wrecks your maps.

The compile tools refuse to finish because they know that you decompiled some bits.

So it's ok to decompile but only to look at how stuff was done. You can't do anything else with it anyway.

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 Re: Dm_Island17 source file
Posted by Rof on Fri Apr 8th at 5:03pm 2005

? quote:
The compile tools refuse to finish because they know that you decompiled some bits.


Wow, those amazing psychic compile tools, huh?

Generally the problem with recompiling decompiled maps comes from areaportals, which aren't correctly recovered, and from rounding errors, which make brush positions inaccurate.

The first one I will probably eventually be able to correct. The second one is inherent in the process. Going from vmf->compiler->bsp->decompiler->vmf, the brush representations go through about 3 different forms. A cetain amount of accumulated rounding error during the conversions is inevitable.
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 Re: Dm_Island17 source file
Posted by pepper on Sat Apr 9th at 9:29pm 2005

I have a question, some displacement maps are made of triangle brushes, but as a displacement there square, how did you archive this? And did you go around making the brushes first, or did you create a brush and then the displacement one at a time?
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