User:Haydon

4.16.08:

I've started playing around with the editor over the last two months. Given my experience with WorldCraft and UnrealED, I knew I understood the basics, but had a lot to learn with Hammer; different engine, different nuances...

So far, my initial level has grown organically. "Let's see how this works and what I can do with it", and it's gone from there. At this point, I don't think this is a great level, but it is one that I cut my teeth on and would like to see published.

It's a small map, 4 control points. Several areas break apart the map, but I am running into a critical issue...

I've spent a lot of time consolidating brushes to decrease poly count and face complexity, and I am at a point where I am sealing the level off into areas for performance gains. However, despite the identical nature of their construction, some area portals insist on displaying the effect of a nodraw texture while some appear to work perfectly fine! All suspect portals have been recreated many times, tied to triggers/doors in multiple, creative ways. I've even copied working portals and moved them to replace the non-working instances, but no luck.

It would be a shame to have to abandon this map based on the whims of the engine to break areaportals, any suggestions?

4.17.08:

I've since stopped beating my head against the wall with my area portal issues and moved on to playing around with the entity I/O system.

With remarkable ease, I managed to contrive a framework for an assault style map. I'm envisioning something along the lines of a bank-heist or fortress assault with multiple objectives (destroy this wall to gain access, then open this door, then...). The entire objective set can be set to be non-skippable and sequential; the 'attacking' team would be forced to hit objectives in a predefined order within a set time limit.

This will be my new project and I (hopefully) will be updating regularly!