Dm_Island17 source file

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.

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

I must say though that it was helpful...

http://www3.hmc.edu/%7Enalger/dm_island17_vmf.zip

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.

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.

Hell, thats stuff even I want to see.

LOL Habboi, that made me laugh :biggrin:

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.

: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

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...).

Someone needs to discover an anti-decompile protection.

/me made a crappy dark snow version, then deleted it

the seagulls didnt look too good in snow, nor the water

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.

lol, dont worry, i wont bring out island18

but nat told me about that, you shoulda screened it first XD

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.

-Importance of aligning textures with normalmaps

-Importance of aligning textures with normalmaps

-Importance of aligning textures with normalmaps

-Importance of aligning textures with normalmaps

-Importance of aligning textures with normalmaps

for emphasis. :smile:

seriouse question (please no flame) what are normal maps?

-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. :sad:

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. :sad:

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...

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.

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.

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?

I don't know which displacements you are talking about, but all of the
underlying faces are all rectangular. Hammre can't do displacements on
non-quad surfaces. Other parts of the brush can be triangles, but the
surface the displacement is on has to have 4 sides.

When I was making it, I planned out 90% of it with brushes beforehand,
then turned all the planned faces into displacements, then applied a
massive subdivide (smooth) to all of it and cleaned up the
resulting mesh by hand. The other 10% that I didnt plan out beforehand
were the holes in the displacements for the tunnels and so forth, and
some of the connections in the very middle. In hindsight I think that
was a mistake since the time I spent on those parts was far more than
if I had just planned for in in the beginning.

Id just like to say that this source file has really helped with my understanding of area portals!

this source file has been really helpful to me there was stuff in there i didnt know how to do!!

seriouse question (please no flame) what are normal maps?

What are normal maps?

seriouse question (please no flame) what are normal maps?

What are normal maps?

http://members.shaw.ca/jimht03/normal.html