Talk:City17 Episode 1

Discussion

Note: keep all topics and articles in the this area so that it wont get confused with the MOD progress area.

Ah turns out somebody had fixed the Archive thingie for me. Thankyou Pizzahut.--Gear 16:26, 23 Oct 2006 (PDT)

Archiving??

little cleanup maybe? your pages getting pretty long with old news stuff :) --Angry Beaver 14:31, 22 Oct 2006 (PDT)

Hmm yeah i still would like to keep the entire log though however i will make an Achieve for the months.--Gear 17:47, 22 Oct 2006 (PDT)

Brightness

Funny. I'm watching the media now on a LCD-monitor and it's all much brighter then on my CRT. --dutchmega 03:09, 7 Sep 2006 (PDT)

Hmm, might simply have to do with the brightness of the monitors being differently tuned, but also LCD screens is known for having much better contrast between similar colors, yet perhaps this explains why the pictures are so dark: MrTwo has an LCD monitor. --Andreasen 09:33, 7 Sep 2006 (PDT)

Hi guys and yes thats true i have an LCD monitor displaying at 1420x which is widescreen. Oh thankyou Andreasen for letting me know about the talk page to keep everyone informed about the mod, so her by i will start the Progress area!

About the data cache error, have you checked the discussion on User_talk:Mdurand? --Andreasen 12:17, 7 Sep 2006 (PDT)

Light

Maybe a tip: I always like 1 dynamic light in the room, which would flicker a bit. Everything dark is not always fun. The player sometimes runs from 1 light to the another. --dutchmega

There are definitely lights that flicker quite a bit but the team chose not to put too much of that. It looks a bit funny in the map but theres about one or two thats there.--Gear 04:43, 27 Nov 2006 (PST)

It's dark

This is a talk page, so if I may cut in here: The two last of these three pictures are 95% black. Also, almost all players are aware that lack of detail can be covered up with darkness. That's the reason why dark maps are generally frowned upon, just so you know. --Andreasen 13:48, 9 Sep 2006 (PDT)

Yes im also quite well-aware of that. All though it is a dark Parking Lot the team is putting a ton of detail in it. I didn't mean for darkness to be an excuse for low detail i was just simply stating that dark covers up detail but the team didnt want to do that. Its dark but there is a LOT of detail aha maybe too much but so far the map runs very well and it doesn't go very slow either. Really it doesn't go slow at all. The average fps is 34 to 30 so thats quie well but that also because i haven't Vis leafed everything yet by adding occluders and Hint brushs or even area portals.

It's weird.. It's not a zombie-mod but still so dark. Are you also going to use these maps in DM? Please note that is not meant bad.. we're just wondering why.. --dutchmega 14:01, 9 Sep 2006 (PDT)

Personally I have no problem with it, because you would probably still see the muzzle flashes of the Combine light up where they are, so it might be very effect-full. Zombies in darkness, on the other hand, could slow things down to a crawl. I just hope though, that he doesn't release the map as dark as his screenshots, because then the mod would be a LED monitor map only. He should probably adjust his brightness setting. --Andreasen 14:26, 9 Sep 2006 (PDT)

Haha yeah i know its a bit funny that i've been showing you dark screens however the begging og the MOD takes place at night however the rest of the MOD is morning and daytime and just a bit more night and thats it. Im sorry for making everything so dark. And by the way yes there are Zombies in the area as the way there are in HL2 EP 1 but not a lot. So i promise you guys there will be deffinitely a lighter more well-lit map to play in.

Ideas

If anybody has any ideas or anything they would like to see in the game please tell! Just don't put nothing that would take months to make or anything that doesn't make sense. Thank you.

Working together

How do you work together on the maps? Just plan like "you do that part, I do that one and you that other part"? --dutchmega 06:51, 24 Sep 2006 (PDT)

Actually no its a bit different then that. Its a system we put together. What we do is pretty much talk about the general area and progress of the mod. After that we get a good heading of where we are going with the game. We pretty much all design the maps but yet we stick to the story and dont stray off to far or anything.

Also i like to call it the "Team Lead Method"

Its where we all work in or on a certain map and change different aspects of it. One does the overall lighting, one on the environment, and one on the combat. Also any other area of that map that needs to be worked on as well we will work on but its a odd process kind of. However we all head in a general direction to the same goal.

After that we decide what will go and stay of course and test different aspects of the game. I'm lead level design so i control what the final map will be but still i always ask the team does this look good and whats your opinion?

Also i like this method because we all design the same thing. But with different points of views. Which is cool because then we can see: "that looks more realistic or maybe we should give more detail to this idea". Its not a competition to get their idea in the game but rather just a different concept design of the same object. Rather than one person coming up with all the ideas which is a bit limited and even hard to fully create within a map that might require something much more different.--Gear 13:49, 4 Oct 2006 (PDT)

Decompiled maps

Valve don't take kindly to people decompiling their maps as a basis for "new" ones. You might want to create your own work from scratch at some point... --TomEdwards 10:57, 6 Jul 2007 (PDT)

Hmmmm........ well okay then Tom i haven't really decompiled the maps hence the fact you don't see a citadel in the outer map im having alot of problems geting it there and vavle does'nt mind really if you do decompile work just as long as you don't copy it and use it for your own. No in fact i ended up playing alot of ep 1 to get some ideas besideds the player is in easten germany and yes all those maps are my work. Months aand months of work. Ive not copied valves work in any way but i do admit to getting alot of ideas from ep1 and other mods out there that gave me inspiration but i would never go as low as to copy someone elses work!

Also if i can remember the new chapter of minerva happens to use ep 1 content, perhaps he has decompiled maps as well.........? --Gear 11:38, 6 Jul 2007 (PDT)

I'm having a hard time believing that you so precisely reconstructed so many of Valve's areas. But it's not my problem so I'll leave it to you.

Minerva 3 uses Episode One props and textures, which don't require decompiling. --TomEdwards 12:47, 6 Jul 2007 (PDT)

No i understand i've felt that way quite alot too and alot of the areas may look a bit like ep 1. However no i did not decompile any maps so far. So far i have alot of errors with most of the ep1 content and namely getting the New citadel model from afar to work properly. Apparently it's in the 3d skybox but it doesn't appear when the game is in action plus i've been playing all th maps on Episode one rather than City 17. Ive been having trouble getting all the content to work on the mod and appear correctly. But i understand where you are coming from and yeah i could face some serious trouble as well but mainly ive taken lots and lots of screenshots from ep 1 from deifferent angles trying to nail the geometry just right and maybe i geuss i nailed it pretty close. However the only maps that look like ep 1 are the parking garage maps. The rest of the maps are different. Mainly i just really liked the ep1 parking garages and i wanted to do something like that in my mod. The rest of the three maps are outer city and dont copy or look alike ep1.--Gear 14:15, 6 Jul 2007 (PDT)

Also if you look closely the only geometry that looks the same are really the parking garage supports and of course the overlays projected on to them. Everything else is well not really ep1-ish.--Gear 14:21, 6 Jul 2007 (PDT)

MOD Progress

Log

1. Archive August,2006
2. Archive September,2006
3. Archive October,2006
4. Archive November,2006
5. Archive December,2007
6. Archive March,2007
7. Archive July,2007
8. Archive August,2007
9. Archive September,2007
10. Archive October,2007
11. Archive November,2007

Work began on April 15th, 2006.