chester's experiences with hammer

[Chester]

i enjoy random crashes and unreasonable errors

Spoiler: when i started out

my main project is something called Source Holiday Island, a spiritual remake of the Sven Co-op Holiday Island released by a guy called Hezus back in 2005 - http://scmapdb.com/map:sven-co-op-holiday-island.

everything is quite rectangular atm as i'm leaving most of the complex geometry to the side until i'm satisfied with the prototype of each area :(

 

[dvn]

Damn, that's some commitment right there.
When I started Hammer I lost interest very quickly but I never tried to use NPC triggers. I'm now thinking of getting back into mapping, which is a moderate surprise.
can't believe i'm starting this goddamn cycle again

 

[Chester]

Damn, that's some commitment right there.
When I started Hammer I lost interest very quickly but I never tried to use NPC triggers. I'm now thinking of getting back into mapping, which is a moderate surprise.
can't believe i'm starting this goddamn cycle again

i started hammer over 4 years ago and instantly lost interest every time i tried to get back into it - but after watching 3kliksphilip's Source SDK tutorials in January i managed to get back into it and stay there

what helped for me was just making a level out at first and testing all the basic and intermediate functions (placing props, making scripted sequences, fucking around with environmental settings etc) before starting to dive into the more advanced things related to game logic

i found it easier to build a map upon something already made, hence my progress with SHI

 

[Kafe]

God I miss having fun with all the scripted sequences in hl2

 

[Chester]

this thread is dead. damn. time to revive it

Progress is actually pretty steady on SHI atm (i think i'm on alpha 8 now?) but that's not the map I want to showcase today. I've got something totally different to show off which I hope you'll find pretty interesting.

This map is called dm_toxic - originally a map called sb_manufactured made by a guy named Glitchvid for an old GMod gamemode called Suicide Barrels (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=480582967). Growing up, I played a metric fuckton of Unreal Tournament (mostly UT99) so I've always wanted to make a UT-style fast-paced deathmatch level. I got a hold of the original .vmf and funnily enough, the core geometry that was done already for the original map fits a deathmatch environment quite well. To follow the concept of a UT-style arena, I've also managed to source animated weapon/item pickups and add them to the map.

I started this a few months ago and have only picked it up recently now that I have more free time to work on things like this. I've changed and added some geometry to make deathmatch gameplay flow better and open up areas that were previously dead ends. There's still quite a lot on the checklist to take care of; namely overhauling the lighting, fixing the buggy track_train platform, fully texturing the map as well as adding destructible environments (kinda like BF4's Levolution) to drastically change and introduce new gameplay.

These screenshots are out of date (from beta 1) as beta 2 has seen quite a few changes, such as a new destructible environment (the RPG catwalk which brings that power weapon out of play) and a major update to the animated weapon pickups as the old placeholder brushes, such as the dev texture floor-plates, have been changed to proper models. Not ready to showcase b2 yet though!

 

[holiday adi]

Damn bro, your stuff looks really damn neat

 

[Chester]

Damn bro, your stuff looks really damn neat

big thanks my man, i appreciate it!

 

[dvn]

this thread is dead. damn. time to revive it

Progress is actually pretty steady on SHI atm (i think i'm on alpha 8 now?) but that's not the map I want to showcase today. I've got something totally different to show off which I hope you'll find pretty interesting.

This map is called dm_toxic - originally a map called sb_manufactured made by a guy named Glitchvid for an old GMod gamemode called Suicide Barrels (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=480582967). Growing up, I played a metric fuckton of Unreal Tournament (mostly UT99) so I've always wanted to make a UT-style fast-paced deathmatch level. I got a hold of the original .vmf and funnily enough, the core geometry that was done already for the original map fits a deathmatch environment quite well. To follow the concept of a UT-style arena, I've also managed to source animated weapon/item pickups and add them to the map.

I started this a few months ago and have only picked it up recently now that I have more free time to work on things like this. I've changed and added some geometry to make deathmatch gameplay flow better and open up areas that were previously dead ends. There's still quite a lot on the checklist to take care of; namely overhauling the lighting, fixing the buggy track_train platform, fully texturing the map as well as adding destructible environments (kinda like BF4's Levolution) to drastically change and introduce new gameplay.

These screenshots are out of date (from beta 1) as beta 2 has seen quite a few changes, such as a new destructible environment (the RPG catwalk which brings that power weapon out of play) and a major update to the animated weapon pickups as the old placeholder brushes, such as the dev texture floor-plates, have been changed to proper models. Not ready to showcase b2 yet though!

experiment: volume 2

 

[Chester]

So unfortunately the implementation of the RPG catwalk destructible environment was really buggy and didn't work that well. I've scrapped it for now and I'll return to the drawing board. I'm thinking of adding some fake DMM environments for beta 3's showcase, which would further encourage the addition of the Gravity Gun as a power weapon (using debris to kill). I spent most of last night trying to figure out how to get the catwalk destruction to work in a less buggy fashion!

On a happier note, here's some pictures of the new animated weapon pickup models:

I've got all of the pickups added in roughly the places I think are balanced but I won't ever know if it actually is until the map is released for playtesting. But as you can see, the pickups are a lot better than the placeholder models in the last set of screenshots!

 

[Chester]

I've put in a crude implementation of fake DMM (subject to further refinement!!!) in an area of the map that might see its most use. This ticks off another box on my checklist and brings us forward into beta 3. However, the core geometry wasn't really "imagined" or built for a full suite of destruction in the first place, and Half-Life 2 (no idea about the wider Source revisions, or if the issue has been alleviated with Source updates) has a bad tendency of crashing when there's too many instances of fake DMM so I'm quite conscious on only implementing it into areas that would seem appropriate from a gameplay standpoint, e.g. the RPG catwalk. Acquire RPG > blow up walls > ??? > profit

Also finally fully textured the level.

Also these screenshots are from a HDR compile hence why everything is a lot brighter. I've decided not to touch the lighting in the end until I get more comfortable with the lighting tools. Furthermore, I'm debating whether to release the map in its current state (as well as the .vmf) as it seems pretty much ready to go aside from a few minor bugs that I'm figuring out atm. I also want to make that catwalk actually destructible before its release.

Anyway, here's SHI. The window textures are just placeholders and their scaling is fucked up.

Spoiler: lots of screenshots