At long last

The rolling boulder effect, which I planned waaaaay back, finally works.  I have a fully-functional test map and will soon weave the effect into Gmdm2.

For those who don't know the history, the boulder functions as follows:

• It travels along a path that is influenced by the configuration of doors.
• It animates properly, rolling at the correct angle for every turn.
• It responds to lighting conditions in the same way that players and monsters do.
• It has switchable sounds (for different surfaces), that play in the proper area. 
• It kills any player that it hits.

So far as I know there are no bugs with this setup.  The only one I can imagine is a possible loss of synchronisation if there is too much lag (but since the map is likely to be played only on LANs, this is not a problem).

I may add a number of other effects - shaking ground wherever the boulder approaches, a trail of dust or water splashes as it moves.....but the fundamental requirements are all satisfied.

I believe the relevant e-slang is, WooT!

Gollum is teh king!

I think this calls for a celebration :biggrin:

SO, is gmdm2's completion visible?

Don't get your hopes up Fraggard, he just said the boulder was complete. :biggrin:

 hehe. But now we can do an Indiana Jones stylee boulder-dodge, albeit on an unfinished map :razz:

fraggard said:
I think this calls for a celebration :biggrin:

SO, is gmdm2's completion visible?

Me too.....dances on top of rock

There are other things to do in Gmdm2, but this was the big one.  To be honest, I didn't know if I'd ever get this working (until I began coding myself about a week ago).  I didn't want to finish the map if the boulder wasn't in it, so it pretty much stopped me mapping.

So that's a qualified "yes" :biggrin:

Wooohooo, glad to hear its all coming together mate :smile:

No doubt all the hassle from the rolling rock has made him a little bolder when facing a challenge, but probably a little balder from the hours of hair tearing!

I'll get my coat...

Gwil said:
I'll get my coat...

Good Idea...

Gwil said:
No doubt all the hassle from the rolling rock has made him a little bolder when facing a challenge, but probably a little balder from the hours of hair tearing!

I'll get my coat...

I'm honoured that, for me, you debased yourself with such a pun :smile:

Grrr....the sound playing isn't as robust as I thought it was - seems to have some trouble following boulder across the level, possibly due to path teleporting.

Nevermind, I'll fix it.  And if not, I'll just find an evil hack :biggrin:

You could replace the boulder with a giant cheese. Cheese doesn't make much of a rolling sound.

rollin', rollin', rollin'....got that boulder rollin'.........**sung to the old Rawhide theme for ya bleedin' brits and whatnot..... :biggrin:  feelin a bit ornery tonight....anyone need to be set afire??....   no??....good.... :dodgy:

Mike, GJ on the rollin rock thingy....i know it took quite a bit of effort....maybe you could share some of the code or something with us eh?....might be educational..... :eek:  so whats on tap for yer next trick??....

Doc Brass.... :dodgy:

CHEESE FOR ALL! CRACKERS FOR FEW!

*Cracks open the champagne

I don't celebrate till I see it in teh flesh!

 

Show me the money, and I'll donce...

Not 100% finished but sounds like your on the right track.   I look forward to seeing it in action, if it works it will rank well with other great effect maps such as davroplex. :smile:  Good luck

(of course, I'm probably being overly optimistic)

thats a digital photo right?

no clue. I stole it from Plexor. he used it when Mawibse actually finished the AHL version of Mountain Hamlet. Of course, Mawibse then changed it again. And of course, after all the reworking he did, the final wasn't as good as the beta from 2 years before.

some things disintigrate if you polish them too hard...

Leperous said:
You could replace the boulder with a giant cheese. Cheese doesn't make much of a rolling sound.

giant pieces of cheese dont roll really well... i should know.. they dont bounce too high either...

 

yeah Gollum- would a player be able to 'ride' on top (get there via ledge, noclip etc) or just get killed/squished?

either killed/squished or left behind (in the hl engine i think if something moves underneath you and there isn't something to stop you from falling off, youll fall off, with the exception of horizontal stuff. .. i may be wrong tho

Jinx said:


(of course, I'm probably being overly optimistic)

 

I hadn't thought of letting players "ride" the boulder - at the moment touching it is instant death - but there's no reason I couldn't add it in.  Neat idea; I'll have a think about that  :smile:

Dr Brasso said:
Mike, GJ on the rollin rock thingy....i know it took quite a bit of effort....maybe you could share some of the code or something with us eh?....might be educational..... :eek:  

Well, if people are interested then I'll provide as much information as they like.

The actual code is mostly Spirit of Half-Life, which is open-source.  I've added in some Weapons Patch code (the doors), and I've viciously hacked the cycler entity.  That's it really.

Maybe I should post another scary entity pic. sometime soon :biggrin:

Gollum said:

Jinx said:
 

I hadn't thought of letting players "ride" the boulder - at the moment touching it is instant death - but there's no reason I couldn't add it in.  Neat idea; I'll have a think about that  :smile:

Youd have to make it much like func_train I spus, Though id prefer just instant death tbh.

Well it is a func_train really.  Just one that you can't touch, with some spinkee extras.  All I'd have to do is change the shape of the invisible func_train inside (and make it solid).

Nothing actually rotates with my boulder - it's just an illusion.

well done mate :biggrin: I'll look forward to seeing it in action :smile:

You realise that the map could turn out crap even with a spinkee boulder that took most of your mapping life to work

Well that's always a possibility, depending on who is evaluating the map.  Regardless, I'm quite sure of two things:

• It won't be to everyone's taste
• It will only be played at LANs (not online)

Sounds bad, doesn't it?  But really it all depends on your measure of success.  My measure of success is whether I am satisfied with the project.

There are aspects of the map that I would like to be able to change, but overall I'm very happy with the design.  I've tried to make a map that works well without the boulder gimmick, although I have needed to make concessions.

If you'd like to see for yourself, you can download an alpha release here.  Quite a lot has changed since then, of course, but I'm still interested in any comments :smile:

If I'm not mistaken (being deadly serious here) there is a town in Canada called Hell... I think, I know there is a town called Hell somewhere, and I'm pretty sure it's in Canada somewhere. :dorky:

Update: ground shaking and score penalty added :smile:

...now to see what I can do with Spirit's locus system.

Gagh you used spirit to create your boulder?! Thats not so impressive then, I thought you did it in normal HL using complex tains and triggers.

 

Lep says as long as the cheese boulder isn't made of sticky cheese it'll roll the same as a rock boulder.

Myrk- said:
Gagh you used spirit to create your boulder?! Thats not so impressive then, I thought you did it in normal HL using complex tains and triggers.

Lol, not so impressive? You make it sound like just anybody could do it.

I don't think I could make a boulder setup even with SoHL...

Oh, and Gollum; locus is "teh bomb". It took me a while to understand it, but once I did I was coming up with all sorts of crazy setups.

But I remember hearing something about SoHL being laggy when played multiplayer. Or maybe it was just online, not LAN... Don't remember exactly. Then again you're only going to play this on LANs anyway.

It isn't just laggy, it doesn't work at all

Myrk- said:
Gagh you used spirit to create your boulder?! Thats not so impressive then, I thought you did it in normal HL using complex tains and triggers.

Actually I have (recently) come up with a way to make my boulder in normal HL.  It wouldn't look as good, however, since it would rely on genuine rotating brushes rather than models (models can be smooth-shaded and are dynamically lit).

I need to run it under a mod. anyway, since the doors won't work in HL.  I figure that I might as well make the best boulder I can, so I've merged the doors code with Spirit to make a new mod.

I will be writing an article/tutorial (for this site?) at some point, to explain how the effects in my map work.  Judge for yourself whether it's impressive :razz:

Spirit of Half-Life is primarily a single-player mod., which hasn't been tested much in multiplayer.  It certainly works in multiplayer; there might be some bugs, and in particular MoveWith is supposed to become "de-synched" under high lag, but I'm not yet aware of anything that would affect my map (at least on LANs).

Update: and now there's a dust cloud trailing the boulder.

/me pets locus

This all sounds very impressive mate, I'm salivating at the thought :smile:

Am I the only one who can't find the boulder?

Er...sorry.  Maybe I should have pointed out that the version available for download is well over a year old :redface:   Damn, time goes so quickly....

Thanks for downloading it though; I'm sorry to have been (unintentionally) misleading :smile:

I will make it very clear when a beta version is released.  In fact, I doubt you'll be able to get me to shut up about it :biggrin:

hits Gollum with a stick

 

Less talk more work. :kitty: