DescentBB

I haven't posted anything new for a while as far as mapping goes, so here's what I've been working on:



You can download this map and leave reviews at:
http://www.planetphillip.com/posts/powe ... lf-life-2/
http://halflife2.filefront.com/file/Pow ... n_17;93527

You can also visit the Valve Developer Wiki page at:
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Powerstation_17

Lastly, I've moved all of my maps, including those from Descent, to my brand new web site at:
http://www.kyomaps.com/

Yes... I've been busy.

Sweet lookin Map K. o_0

Makes me wish I had HL. .. just wondering, do you make TF2 maps on the same editor?

Also, how many of the meshes did you have to fab yourself?

Very nice.

Great site too. nice and clean. Love the dried mud texture.

glad to see you're still active somewhere, if not the Descent community. I'll make you proud of Aurora Outpost, its one sweet looking level. Oh and about your description of Aurora Outpost on your website, its no longer called Descent Vignettes, its now called: The Enemy Within. Just so your website is up to date on names. I'll forward the final release link to you when its released so you can change where the descriptive link takes people to.

K, knowing you from the past, this makes me want to go out there, buy HL² (and a PC that can actually run it ) and enjoy the sheer quality work that I know I can expect from you.

This will be awesome! I'll toy with a PIV machine I have laying around.

I highly recommend anyone looking to buy HL2 get the orange box. Well worth it, just keep in mind it is a 20+ GB download off steam, so those with internet bandwidth caps beware.

Krom wrote:I highly recommend anyone looking to buy HL2 get the orange box. Well worth it, just keep in mind it is a 20+ GB download off steam, so those with internet bandwidth caps beware.

whoa .... o_0

I can still find it stores around here. Not many mind you, but it's there.

Short, but fun! I hope you make more (throw in some drivable vehicles, eh?).

Did you get a PM from me recently? (Asking for permission to modify some of the robots from Project: Mandrill to use in my upcoming D2X-XL mission.) I haven't got a reply yet.

If you want, I could even send you some \"sneak peek\" levels from the mission.

(If I don't get permission, I'll just make do with something else. I've already got permission to use an amalgam of robots from several different missions.)

Dangerous ground Alter-fox, I got a nice drilling from Kyouryuu in the past for that! LOL

Duper wrote:Makes me wish I had HL. ..

Tricord wrote:K, knowing you from the past, this makes me want to go out there, buy HL² (and a PC that can actually run it Razz) and enjoy the sheer quality work that I know I can expect from you.

Get it. You will not regret the Orange Box. Even nearly four years down the road, Half-Life 2 and its Episodes are still among the finest FPS games you will ever play. The amount of content out there is breathtaking and unlike many other PC games, Steam makes installation of mods a breeze. No hacking around to trick the game into loading a user map. No wacky console commands. You can launch the best mods right through Steam.

Just look at the staggering amount of single player content on PlanetPhillip alone. Half-Life 2 is a game you will play well beyond the official maps.

Duper wrote:just wondering, do you make TF2 maps on the same editor?

For the most part. All of the Orange Box games (Episode 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2) run on their own version of the Hammer editor. It has a few improvements compared to the version used to edit pre-Orange Box games, but is largely the same editor. As far as I understand, the editor interface hasn't changed a whole lot since Half-Life 1.

Personally, I'm fine with that. Hammer is a great editor, maybe even the best I've ever used. It may not have all of the bells and whistles UnrealEd has, but it makes up for it in speed and efficiency.

Duper wrote:Also, how many of the meshes did you have to fab yourself?

All of the meshes are stock from Half-Life 2. From a technical standpoint, it is worth pointing out that some "meshes" can actually be fabricated inside the editor. One of Hammer's neatest features is that you can group pieces of BSP geometry together into "detail geometry," which it handles like a formal mesh. You can fashion a lot of detail right in the editor, rather than having to resort to an outside modeling tool. More often than not, when I would look at Valve's work, I discovered that some of the nicer looking props were actually creative BSP details. So, as far as those "meshes" are concerned, there are a fair number. Stairs, archways, the fancy reactor thing...

Flatlander wrote:Short, but fun! I hope you make more (throw in some drivable vehicles, eh?).

I plan to address both of these in the next project.

Thanks K. Great answers. So.. uh.. you getting a cut on the sales? that was quite the pitch!

I wish!

So I played through the level and was quite pleased with the results, the only issue I had was a low framerate in the room with the two parked combine vehicles, everywhere else was fine. A very nice looking and nice playing level, but it will make me think twice about going for a swim next time...

Yeah, the framerate has always been gnarly right there for me. It's because the outdoor area is being rendered while you are in the garage. I could have used those portals that fade-to-texture when you get far away from the windows, but the sheer number of windows made me question if the framerate impact of that would have outweighed the already-existing scenario.

Plus, I was already overbudget with the entity data. The fading windows are pretty expensive on the data side of things to implement. You can push beyond the entdata values (Just 384KB is allocated by default, I think this map ended up at 112%), but you risk crashing on lower-end machines if you do so.

There's a limit to how you make the levels? That's lame.

Hey, on the subject of sounding like a Valve spokesperson...

The Orange Box is only $29.99 through Amazon right now. That's for all platforms: PC, 360, and PS3. If you haven't played Half-Life 2, or want to know what this Portal thing is all about, you need to buy this thing. It's still the best value on the market today.