Question about Mods

Heylo all. I'm working on a test mod, just seeing to create them and what work needs to be put into them. I have two questions, thanks in advance.

1) How do you pak a mod. What program is needed to do this.

2) How do you make Sound play on the menu screens. What needs to be coded for this.

This isn't really a mod design forum. It focuses mostly on maps. Don't expect to get good answers...

For sound do you mean sound when you click a button, or music? Because music is not possible on the menu screen yet. Basically I think to make sound for a button, you replace current sounds in your mod, or code them in your sumthin..

 

To make a .pak, just get PakScape and click New pak file i think

(PS:Family Guy rox0rz! The evil money)

Vash said:
For sound do you mean sound when you click a button, or music? Because music is not possible on the menu screen yet.

Then how do you explain NS =\\

(FG is rockz0rs though)

honestly don't make a .pak for mods...it's not worth the time. You might as well just keep the folder structure (a la almost every mod... i.e. tfc, cs, dod, dmc, etc.)

i havent downloaded ns yet but if it has an animated logo like hl and tfc does then they may have included music in the avi file that displays the logo

and as for the sounds replicate how valve did thier sounds and just use your sounds in thier place in its mod folder  (i cant word that any better)

and to make a pak file use wally as it is almost an all around halflife extractor and you probaly use it for wads  so use it for paks too  that way you dont have to deal with another program

it could be in the .avi but most likely not, whenever the new half-life patch comes out it'll allow for a more dynamic menu (so far as I know DoD retail already has this function, but I've yet to see it myself) so that means music. Just look at some tutorials on mod creation, and try and follow a directory structure similar to any mod. modname/sounds; modname/sprites etc. etc.

Thing is, dosn't the moving logo only move on the first menu? NS has it on all of them last time I played.

first off, gl on the mod, im currently trying to figure the in/outs of moding, ive gottin most of the menuscreen GUI modded, im currently looking for a list of files needed/ possible to mod, i have found some interesting things, i would suggest getting the latest version of the SDK(standard development kit) that helped me figure out alot of the files editable for modding.

as for your direct questions:

(1) i know that Wally (can be found on this site) its a texture editor, and doubles as a .pak file generator, however im not sure how you tell HL to use your pak file and not HL's pak file, or if you even need to, i did however notice that none of the mods (retail: BlueShift included) have pak files, i know not why that is, maybe they got lazy  

(2) i believe the sound is withing there logo.avi file (name of avi file not sure) would be the simplest way of doing that. not sure if this is the method valve took though.

People don't use .pak files because they are a waste of time. Why not just let people add custom stuff easily rather than put it in a pointless and more time consuming to edit .pak?

I can see why game developers use systems like pak files - it certainly hides the complexity of a game, which can be nice for non-developers who wish to use things like custom maps and whatnot without being faced by hundreds of folders and files.

as far as i know, the reasonning behind using pak files is that they are like zipfiles, in the respect that they are archived files, but it seems that pak files need not be extracted inorder to use there contents, im not sure about this, but i have noticed some servers using HL vox speech for annoucements and such, weither they extracted the files or not, im not sure. another reason i assume this is that the HL pak file contains most, if not all the the files editable for modding, yet if they arent changed they are defaulted to HL content, even content not existing within HL dirs.

if this is true, then pak files can be very useful for large games, or mods which need there content, but dont want to be bogged down with bunches of directories, and files, and such.

Ever try to move 1000 files that total 1gb? Ever try to move 1 file that is 1gb? Which do you think takes longer? hehehe

Also, I believe it keeps those files from being tampered with by the common player. If you have enough sense to download a pak explorer, you at least know what SOME of the files are for. But - if you're some 12yr old kid who just got his brand new copy of Half-Life.... He might be tempted to try and start editing files with notepad and such! Anyway.. there's a lot of reasons, but the idea of using packed directories was PURE GENIUS!

good point...

anyways, is fortune gonna accept an answer or what? i sure hope he picks me

OH PLEASE... Pick me Pick me!!!

If you plan on extending this project into a mod. with any custom coding at all, then it's worth knowing how to set up and compile the Half-Life sourcecode.

For that, you need:

• A copy of the SDK 2.2 or 2.3
• A C++ compiler, ideally MS Visual C++ v6

Extract the sourcecode into a directory, and use the compiler to open sourcecode/dlls/hl.dsw, which is the workspace for the server dll.  Compile this (build hl.dll in one of the menus).

The server dll goes inside your mod. folder, in a subdirectory called dlls (i.e. Half-Life/myMod/dlls/hl.dll).  You also need a liblist.gam file in the main mod. directory, which tells HL what files your mod. uses.  Copy across the valve one; edit it in NotePad if you want to change the name of your server dll (since the names must match up), and also to choose what your mod. is called in the menu system.

Similarly you can compile the client dll by opening the sourcecode/cl_dll/cl_dll.dsw workspace and building the dll.  This goes in the mod. cll_dlls folder.

 

Gollum Always has to out do us with his bullet buttons, formatted paragraphs, and different color text > : )

Bah, you give in too easily :heee:

Well, you know, it's not exactly difficult to:

• Format paragraphs.
• Add bullets.
• And colorize text.

Well Wtf do you think I am?

• Smart
• Catchy
• SEXAY!

Hah, I could Never do that stuff that gollum does...

Guys, you're missing the point :rolleyes:  

The Point:

• It's not what you've got, it's what you do with it that counts.

:kitty:

omg...you guys crack me up

damn you gollum, i had this until you had to show up with your uber help...damn you

i coulda easily used ...

• Bullets
• Colored text

and paragraphs, but i felt it wasnt needed, and acually would have been a great waste of my time as someone (Fortune) hasnt shown there face here sense the beginning of htis post.

leave it to gollum to use gayish purple

runs away

Gollums just scraping for them extra snark marks from getting a correct answer to a post, get about 5 I think....

Sir, you demean me thus!  I need no SnarkMark incentive; for me, showing off is a pleasure unto itself.

Besides, some twerp just awarded himself the correct answer....grrr 

-knocks gollum over- GIMME HIS SNARK MARKS, RAWR!!!!

Yer wonder which idiot that was :rolleyes:

Well there's a turn out for the books....weird.

resigns self to never truly understanding the mysterious workings of admins

Hahaha- that actually makes me laugh.

Tough, but fair.

Hrm.  Actually I think other people answered the question better than I did (my answer is good but somewhat off topic) so......shrugs