Darren Evans

Rudolph and the Snow
The Land of Plenty
Man and Flame
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVFk5UnUW98

So, now that I am done with the project i can look back and really soak it up. I think that a lot of it is how I initially imaged it to be, so I am happy about that. There are some little things that are different though, and most of them relate to technical issues. In the initial idea that I had, there would be objects constantly spawn items which was something I was having an issue finding, Also I was having trouble getting the sound to work the way I wanted, which would be to have different zones of sound that would overlap and create a changing soundtrack depending on where you were, that was difficult, so I Just used one sound on the level. The map itself looks better than I even imagined though, and I could definitely see it expanding and turnig into a really fun deathmatch level. Also, getting the point across was a little difficult, because my original intention was for someone to play the game, not just watch it on a screen. In the end I beleive that my original intentions were too lofty givenn the amount of time.
Technical difficulties were getting in the way of a lot of the creative ideas that I had, that ad time. There were a lot of little things, for instance I didn't make my skybox big enough at first, and when that happens the map decides to not create all the props in the level. Another thing is that when you use a displacement map, and you are using the episode 1 edition of half life 2, you need to put a small line of code (-novirtualmesh) into the advanced( or maybe it is expert) section of the hammer run map dialogue. I must say that in terms of getting the most help with little nuance types of things, the hammer editor help pages online are awesome. Sometimes all you need is a couple sentences describing what a certain pull down menu or entity can do and it is perfect for that.

Well, I had a lot of strange things happen today, getting the sound to work was a difficult matter, but I found that you just have to make sure they are in the EXACT format (wav, 4 or 8 bit, 44100hz, mono) or else you will have nothing, also, in the sounds folder in the source_sdk folder or in the half life 2 sounds folder make sure to make a folder with a name such as ambience or something like that to place the sounds ( using the gcf you can find the names of the folders that half life is looking for). Then it is a pretty easy matter. From there you need to go to file/reload sounds so that hammer refreshes all its audio content, then you should be fine. There are some good tutorials out there that have a lot more fine tuning sort of information, but that is the basic idea.
I was also having trouble with some of my prop_static entities not showing up in the game, so I created a larger box to envelope my skybox and for some odd reason that seemed to do the trick.
But I do have to say that now every time I try to run my map it takes about a half an hour to load and I have no clue why. But for some reason my fog looks better.
I will trudge on and come in some time next week to finish up and make it all look nice and glossy.

Here is a skybox tutorial for anyone interested. I must say that for most problems with Hammer, the help wiki is quite helpfull. One key ingredient is to make sure you make the block that you are about to turn into the sky box hollow. Another thing is that you can browse skyboxes in the texture viewer, then go to map/map properties/skybox texture file and place the first part of your skybox texture file in (ex. sky_borealis01) not (sky_borealis01up). ignore those directional suffixes or there will be (exploitable problems up the road).

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Skybox_%282D%29

So, today I got myself a deer model from online and I tweaked it and textured it so that it looks like a naturalistic rudolph. Then I made it explosive. I put it in my map and played around with it. If you look real close you just might see it.

I also worked on a sort of nest like character in XSI but I have not got that into the game yet.

Today, I started on a model for my rudolph time bomb but it looked kind of shitty, so I then went into hammer and started creating my winter wonder land, which I think looks pretty cool so far.

I particularly like the snow and trees

"the Destruction of Winter Wonderland"

Concept: I want to create a peice about my frustration/fascination with Christmas. it has always been an interesting element in my life, both bringing elements of joy and dread, questioning and certainty. I guess that my main fascination lies in the idea that, on christmas, america shuts down. There is forced participation and excpectations. I have had my own problems and hesitations with the holiday, but at the same time, family life always fights back, or I suppose you could say that Christmas Spirit comes back. For the peice, I will create the world which I challenge chirstmas, but the world will fight back, with Bing Crosby and Rudolph etc. It will win. The final presentation will be a video of the playable level.

Technical: For the project I need to do a plethora of things that I know I haven't done yet. But there are things I HAVE done as well. I will create a level in the Hammer editor that is representative of all the winter wonderlands in the world. I will also create a rudolph timebomb, which is something that i have done before. I will be using deathmatch to present the level. I know that i have to figure out certain things. For one, I need to place certain sounds that I have into the level and have them be triggered by the character moving through a certain space. The demo level in hammer uses a similar feature so I know it exhists and I could figure it out. I know that there are going to be some issues that are going to deal with the sound, like certain programming issues, but i have dealt with those kinds of things before.

Schedule: April 25th - I will create the Rudolph timebomb, work on the winterwonderland.
May 2nd - I will finish up the world, and work on placing my sounds.

outside of class I am going to do more reading about events and sound implementation
and conceptual design than actual work due to the fact that i do not have steam on my home computer. The image of rudolph from one of my previous blogs is the look I
am going for on this one.

Download file
here is my model

THis:

THen THis:

Then This:

real urban camo

Not much to it.