Half Life & CSS maps converted to VRML 3D chat worlds!

About a year ago, I created a website called "Virtual Half Life", having to do with the concept of giving alternate uses to custom made Half-Life or Counter Strike maps. My idea was to convert HL & CSS maps to the web-3d format VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language), upload them to my website and have these game levels as 3D chat worlds on a custom multi-user server platform called ABNet from Kimball Software inc. So far, I have about 10 .bsp maps running as multi-user, converted to VRML worlds on my Virtual Half Life website. My website is similar to "Second Life", but unlike that website, Virtual HL is free to use, no sign up is necessary and you get to choose any 3D avatar from anywhere you want. But above all, the 3D graphics and user interface on Virtual HL is a lot better than on Second Life. The only drawback to the ABNet 3D chat server, since it's still being developed for, the only web browser that it currently supports is Internet Explorer, all other browsers are incompatible. Hopefully this will change soon. Other than that, to fully experience and participate in the ABNet 3D chat network, the download and installation of two small plug-ins from my website will be needed also. Anyway, here are a few screen capture shots of some of the Half Life or Counter Strike maps running as converted VRML chat worlds:

[IMG]http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g72/stargatex/WLD1.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g72/stargatex/WLD2.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g72/stargatex/Dragon2.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g72/stargatex/Dragon3.jpg[/IMG]

My website is: http://www.virtualhl.info/VHLbase/VHL_Front_Page.htm
If any of you do decide to check out my website's 3D chat worlds, all I ask is that you read carefully the instructions for loging in. And once again, sorry for the ABNet 3D chat network not being compatible with Firerfox, Opera, or Chrome. Trust me, if it was up to me, all web browsers would be compatible with ABNet.

Wow, how vary complicated. I'm impressed.
I'd check out your site but i would sooner set my self on fire then start up IE voluntarily. Every time i do SpyBot Search and Destroy gos off because IE try's to change a bunch of crap.

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Reality has become a commodity.

Yeah, that's one thing I was kinda bummed on, how it only works on Internet Explorer. The last time I saw the statistics, less than half of the people from the interwebs don't use Internet Explorer.

Still though, its pretty awesome what you've managed to do and I might get those plugins and give it a go in the ol' Internet Explore 6. You converted Crossfire right?

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Aaron's Stuff

I wont bother to be honest. I don't even have IE installed on my system. Its a neat idea, but I dont even do Second Life or any of them wacko 3d avatar world things.. I am firmly planted in reality, except for when I play my MMO. heh heh.

aaron_da_killa said:
You converted Crossfire right?

I am not really sure on what you mean, can you explain it a bit further?

Oh, its just one of the classics from Half-life. Don't worry, I was half joking :P.

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Aaron's Stuff

No, I don't have that Crossfire map on my website. The way that I choose the maps that I convert to VRML, is first I open them up with Crafty from Nem's Tools. The .bsp map file will display in full 3D in Crafty's window, but most of the time the map will be rendered by Crafty without all it's textures, or only some of them. My guess is that this is due to two things: The way the map was complied or save, and the fact that I don't have HL, CSS or any other Valve game installed on the PC that I use to do the map conversions to VRML. Now, sometimes I will find a map where Crafty will display it fully textured on it's 3D window, and the reason for this, all the textures used on that particular map are custom. Here is this special form page you can go to for seeing which maps I have converted to VRML so far, it's a select field menu that displays pictures of the 3D scenes. If you want, just scroll through them and see if you recognize any of those maps there: http://www.virtualhl.info/VHLbase/ExpressLogin.htm

You could install Safari, which is a good alternative to firefox, had no problems so far.