User talk:CrabbyData

Mark the Wiki Markup

Sorry but, apart from help pages and talk pages, wikipedia articles are never signed, because it discourages other users from adding to these articles. If someone is interested in knowing what you've done, he can check the page history and also the user contributions list. --Andreasen 04:08, 17 Apr 2006 (PDT)

Ok, sorry I removed the undersignments :) Sorry 'bout that... I just got started in the Wiki-stuff, so I'm just a n00by in this wiki-contributing --CrabbyData 05:49, 17 Apr 2006 (PDT)

“ Sorry but, apart from help pages and talk pages, wikipedia articles are never signed ”

Sorry but we're not at Wikipedia ;)

Sorry.. had to say it :p Jupix 10:15, 17 Apr 2006 (PDT)

Haha, no, indeed, but then again, he's got a point that it discourages other people for contributing... And it doesn't look that nice when everyone is gonna add 'Added by blabla' :P I like the way it is now, and let's keep it that way ;) --CrabbyData 10:20, 17 Apr 2006 (PDT)

Yes, I've always agreed that there is no place for sigs in wiki-articles, I was just pointing out to dear Andreasen that a wiki != wikipedia :)

By the way, you should really use preview :) Jupix 10:27, 17 Apr 2006 (PDT)

“ By the way, you should really use preview :) ”

Haha, yeah, sorry for that :) Once I think it's good I post it, but then I see something that needs to be adjusted :P Happens all the time ^^ --CrabbyData 10:32, 17 Apr 2006 (PDT)

Don't sweat it, we all make mistakes ;) Jupix 10:39, 17 Apr 2006 (PDT)

--CrabbyData 10:51, 17 Apr 2006 (PDT)

CS:S Image?

What's wrong with this one? Besides, I don't know if it's the jpg format, but your logo looks strange too. --Andreasen 11:01, 18 Apr 2006 (PDT)

Sorry, I couldn't find any little icons to match with the one I was searching for, so I uploaded my own, from the map of steam/steam/games ... I changed the one on my user-page to the one you gave above :-) --CrabbyData 11:04, 18 Apr 2006 (PDT)

Advanced elevators

Are you still working on this or should I take off wip?—ts2do 19:23, 13 May 2006 (PDT)

Sorry, I was very busing making 'werkstukken' (a lot of papers with a lot of text) for school... So I had a very busy time... I'll continue on it right after I've finished my mini-tutorial I had to write for someone (and myself) on Client_Command_by_Trigger_proximity. So, you can expect the first for sure at the end of this week! --CrabbyData 01:44, 14 May 2006 (PDT)

A friendly reminder: The articles are still not finished. Those Work-in-Progress signs are starting to collect dust. --Andreasen 12:03, 2 Jul 2006 (PDT)

O, damnit, that's true :P I totally forgot about them! I was working way to hard on my UploadVMF site and my LAN-Party websites... And not to forget, my own map for the Source Mod Collaborate. I'll finish them this or next week! --CrabbyData 13:39, 2 Jul 2006 (PDT)

This is your final notice, dammit. We have noobs copying the WiseElevator page directly to this site. Save us, please. --Andreasen 21:32, 6 Sep 2006 (PDT)

Oh man, this is getting too funny now. ;-) --wisemx 01:50, 8 Sep 2006 (PDT)

It's not that your articles are of poor quality - they are very, very, VERY helpful. It's just that the format, the first person perspective, and such, isn't compatible with wiki standards, so just copying the article to the wiki would be a bad idea. --Andreasen 12:13, 8 Sep 2006 (PDT)

I'm currently working on a new feature for the SDK Nuts site where anyone can click to create a PDF file from any of the tutorials, hopefully that will help here too. --wisemx 13:31, 8 Sep 2006 (PDT)

YO! CRABBYDATA! ITS 2008! Where's the ^%$#@ Tutorial! us n00bs can't wait much longer! --JeffMOD 06:24, 24 May 2008 (PDT)

Client command/flashlight tutorial

I just made a bunch of edits to the tutorial you just made. My aim was to trim the "fat" - anything that felt superfluous to the tutorial itself. Lean = mean, etc - concise is almost always easier to read and follow. If you feel I've taken out something vital, by all means feel free to put it back.

In particular, it's common style to only link to another Wiki page once in any Wiki article. I haven't taken out every double link, but I've taken out any duplicates per major section.

Also, this seems to specify the steps required to make it work for a CT team with only one player. Could you please update it so that a reader knows which things need duplicating and which don't, for larger teams? Obviously if you are laying down multiple trigger_proximities, you need to ensure that if they are unused at the start of the round, they are deleted somehow, etc.

Thanks. Good tutorial. --Giles 05:03, 14 May 2006 (PDT)

Thanks Giles! I really appreciate what you did :D Good job! I'm beginning to like the tut myself xD

I also added an extra chapter on how to create multiple triggers and multiple commands... Please, feel free again to 'clean-up' this one again... I'm not the expert on that subject ;) --CrabbyData 06:02, 14 May 2006 (PDT)

I'm fairly sure that the edits TomEdwards made eliminated the need for that point_clientcommand input you added back in your most recent edit. I thought about making those changes myself, but I presumed you'd made it that way round because it was bugged the other way round. Either way, what's there now is pretty incoherent because contains parts of both approaches.

You didn't address a major bug with your suggestions for multiple triggers. If a player doesn't spawn at a particular spawn point because there are too few players in the server, then what you describe would leave a patch on the floor which would turn a player's flashlight on when they ran over it later in the round.

Also, what stops your setup turning the player's flashlight on every time they pass over the spawn point, rather than only once at the start of the round? Does trigger_proximity only fire once? I'm not familiar with how it works because I use trigger_multiple almost all the time.

I would address these things myself, but I don't have CS:S installed at the moment, so wouldn't be able to test them properly. --Giles 09:04, 14 May 2006 (PDT)

Sorry for the late reaction, but I had to go out for dinner at a restaurant with my grandparents... Well, for the solution (I figured it out while eating xD ), read the tutorial again (will be added in a sec) --CrabbyData 13:11, 14 May 2006 (PDT) (Late note: forgot to say done :P)

Hosting_sample_maps

User_talk:BJ

Answered --CrabbyData 14:40, 24 May 2006 (PDT)

With regard to the database tables and fields ideas I mailed to you, I suggested separate tables for the maps and images because a long time ago I was told that large variable-sized fields that may change should be placed in a separate table to "enhance" server performance. I have no idea if that's still the case. —BJ^(talk) 04:43, 25 May 2006 (PDT)

I assume you are talking about MySQL databases? Images shouldn't be placed in the database... --dutchmega 07:33, 25 May 2006 (PDT)

Okay. I wasn't really proposing a specific db design as much as mentioning fields that I think might be necessary for anti-spam and other admin purposes. —BJ^(talk)

Pretty much done with the basic entity parser. Specific interface stuff with the final site will have to be edited, of course. Created a table of Valve entity names with mod ids as that's pretty much the whole idea for the parser. The parser script creates an array of entity names (duplicates removed) and entity ids from the table. Right now the table has just Base and HL2 entities taken from the FGDs as I just wanted to do some testing. DoD, cstrike, hl2mp entities can be added later. Takes a bit of editing to extract the entities from the FGDs (a little over 300 entities between Base and HL2) but that comprises better than 90% of all the Valve entities. There will be some tweeking necessary, of course, but that's what testing is for! Parsing for textures used in a map won't be too bad, but creating a lookup table to test the names could be a challenge as I don't have a ready list of valid texture names! Any ideas for creating one? —BJ^(talk) 13:45, 27 May 2006 (PDT)

Wow! Sounds near-perfect ;) Nice job so far!

I think you can request some people to each take a part of the list of textures from within Hammer (under HL2-config). There's very much help offered, but then I had nothing to do for them (except what you did now). So maybe you could recruit some people at the Talk:Hosting_sample_maps. --CrabbyData 00:15, 28 May 2006 (PDT)

Actually, I did it last night (well, early morning for you). Used HLextract on the source-materials GCF to dump a directory, then used a couple of Word macros to strip out everything but the vmts. I'll dump that list into another table. The parse will be simpler than the entity parse as all the materials in the vmf files are labeled, of all things, "material!" —BJ^(talk) 04:58, 28 May 2006 (PDT)

-looks a little confused- eghrm... ok ^^ Whatever you say :P --CrabbyData 05:01, 28 May 2006 (PDT)

I didn't actually dump the vmts themselves (sorry). Just a list of their names to match up with the names of materials as listed in the vmfs. —BJ^(talk) 05:08, 28 May 2006 (PDT)

So if I get you correct now, you've created a normal entity parser, which will output all the entities in the .vmf-file (?). And you're now working on a 'matching'-table of all the materials in Half-Life 2(?) --CrabbyData 05:12, 28 May 2006 (PDT)

Correct. A little more detail: I parse the vmf file for 'entity' objects and create an array of entity names; then the entity names are compared to a table of Valve entities; the vmf file will then be parsed for material names and an array of those names is created; the material names in that array (e.g., BRICK/BRICKWALL006A ) will be compared to a table of Valve material names. —BJ^(talk) 05:14, 28 May 2006 (PDT)

Ok :D Nice, very nice! --CrabbyData 05:58, 28 May 2006 (PDT)

Further thought: I'm not sure how useful it will be, but I can create a tables of 'entities where-used' and 'materials where-used.' The 'where-used' just means a table of entity identification number (id) vs. map id, and a table of material id vs. map id. That supports searching for maps that use particular entities (the main idea of the parse) and/or particular materials (useful?). Those two tables will be relatively small as they're just integers. What may be useful is the number of different materials used in a single map. Using a large number of materials is known to create problems on occasion, probably due to the use of texture memory. Hopefully, with vmf files limited in size and intended to be examples only, that shouldn't be a problem. —BJ^(talk) 05:37, 28 May 2006 (PDT)

It could be useful if some silly little person wanted to search for a certain map with a certain texture... I think it's the best to just put it in... It could even be used for some funny statistics xD Just put it in, while you're working on it ;) --CrabbyData 05:58, 28 May 2006 (PDT)

Info - on my site server, the entity search takes about 5 seconds for a 1.4Mb vmf file. Size doesn't necessarily indicate how many entities are used (I'm guessing brush information takes the most room), but I think loading and searching is what takes the time. I think the texture search will take about the same time. 1.4Mb should be a very large file for our purposes! :-) —BJ^(talk) 05:48, 28 May 2006 (PDT)

Ok! Nice! Thanks for the useful info :D This map of yours must be some big one... My sample map ain't even 12 kB :P And that was a text (=vmf) file with 1110 lines...!!! :| My Big thanks... again :P Check your userpage in a sec... --CrabbyData 05:58, 28 May 2006 (PDT)

Thank you, Crabby! What a nice surprise! My birthday was yesterday, BTW, so that was very appropriate! : - ) (big smiley) —BJ^(talk) 06:03, 28 May 2006 (PDT)

Whaha!!! Nice timing then :P --CrabbyData 06:04, 28 May 2006 (PDT)

<--Back to the margin. Test entity-parse and material-parse routines are pretty much done. With those two routines, a map can be parsed and map-entities and map-materials tables filled with the results. Right now, they have no gui interfaces but, with a few changes, can be modified to accept a map-name or map-id-number. Also, they don't have error-reporting as that will depend on some sort of interface with the map table, I think. However, there's a place in the routines for error-reporting to be coded. Info: the tables are a little over 0.5Mb with the material name table taking up 480Kb or so. I wouldn't think that would get much bigger when CS:S, etc., materials are added.

By the way, I've built a support library with routines to search for entities given a map-id, map-ids given an entity-id, materials for maps, maps for materials, etc. We are using mysql, right? :-) I'll start working on a bare-bones admin interface (php) for the parse routines. Let me know if you think there's a higher priority. —BJ^(talk) 08:54, 28 May 2006 (PDT)

Yes, we are using MySQL :D Nice work so far! --CrabbyData 11:02, 28 May 2006 (PDT)

Completed a basic file maintenance page - pulldown list of maps to select from, choices of parsing or removing entities and materials from the tables (table maintenance things). Will add an admin map-info option to display entities, materials, filesize, etc. Needs to be interfaced with upload routines, map storage routines, etc. I'll start working on a search utility since I have the tables for it. Also started thinking about a screenshot resizer, assuming we'll want all the screenshots to be the same size. —BJ^(talk) 15:23, 29 May 2006 (PDT)

If you guys need a web designer / template maker, I can do good graphics, anything you need. Examples are www.siosphere.com , http://elements.siosphere.com , http://revolution.siosphere.com , and many others. I also can program the CSS part, and do layout --Gameexpertmaster 19:07, 18 Aug 2006 (PDT)

Adding music to map

hey crabbydata, thought id come over here for a change! how do you final compile? is that like testing? or in the 'file' menu "run map"? Game4ever 15:16, 26 May 2006 (PDT)

ill also send you a picture of my map over MSN if you want... my address is: [email protected] (please pardon the swearing) Game4ever 15:20, 26 May 2006 (PDT)

I'll add you to MSN later today, since I'm going out with some friends... Ehm, about your question:

• You open Hammer, logically
• You open your map
• You press F9 (=compile)
• Before you press Ok, press the Advanced button
• There will be a dropdown-menu, with something like Final

That's it. Before you're going to compile, make sure your env_soundscape or something that makes sounds, is directed to the exact name of that sound. Now with PakRat, put in those sounds. --CrabbyData 06:42, 27 May 2006 (PDT)

ummm... where do i get PakRat? --Game4ever 11:20, 27 May 2006 (PDT)

When you are talking about adding music to your map, do you mean: 1) that you have some music you want to get working? or 2) that you have some music already working in your map and now want to be able to give other people that map and have the music work? CrabbyData appears to be explaining how to achieve step 2, but it's possible you are asking about step 1? --Giles 11:35, 27 May 2006 (PDT)

Search Google xD No, serious, just look here: Pakrat

your step 1, giles Game4ever 12:25, 27 May 2006 (PDT)

I indeed explained step 2... But I'm very curious 'bout the first step ^^ --CrabbyData 12:28, 27 May 2006 (PDT)

I want to add music because my map is a 'mosh' pit, using lasers as lights etc. it looks really good but is bad because theres no sound. :( Game4ever 12:32, 27 May 2006 (PDT)

1) that you have some music you want to get working? thats the step i want explaining Game4ever 12:51, 27 May 2006 (PDT)

I think (or at least hope) it works the same as custom materials/textures, since I'm known with that... Only I don't quite know if it works:

• Put your music-file in the music-map of your game, in the GameApps folder (e.g. C:\Valve\Steam\SteamApps\crabbydata\half-life 2\hl2\sound (?) )
• Start up Hammer
• Go to the Sound Browser
• Search for your sound...

I repeat: I'M NOT SURE if this is the correct way...!!! Maybe you could search a tutorial about this here @ VDC...

Pretty much as CrabbyData describes it:

Music is added using the ambient_generic entity.

1. You'll need to put the music file (which must be .wav or .mp3) in a good place - somewhere in the sound directory of the mod your map is for is a suitable place, to keep things tidy (e.g. %Counter-Strike Source%/cstrike/sound/music).
2. You need to set the ambient_generic to play that file, by setting the Sound Name property to point to wherever you put the sound file. You can do this either by typing in the name of the sound file (e.g. if you put it in %Counter-Strike Source%/cstrike/sound/music and it was called game4ever.wav, you would type music/game4ever.wav) or you can look for it by clicking Browse (you will need to change Sound Type in the box that appears when you click Browse to be Raw instead of Game Sounds, for your music to show up).
3. Setup the flags on the entity and/or give it a PlaySound input when you want the music to play.

Be aware that if you are planning to release your map on the internet, you should respect whatever copyright exists on the music file. That means getting in contact with whoever made the piece of music and asking for their permission. --Giles 13:35, 27 May 2006 (PDT)

Found it! Tutorial --CrabbyData 15:03, 3 Jun 2006 (PDT)

New layout UserPage

Just a reminder for you CrabbyData; In Internet Explorer your new layout won't display your avater and the last My Uploaded Images-image anymore. It will load up in the first seconds, but disappears when the page is fully loaded. In Firefox the page is rendered correctly. ... When typing this you have updated your page, but the same problem exists. The last images is now rendered but thousands of pixels under your page. But once again, in Firefox it's rendered correctly (even since your last update). --Jurgen Knops 06:23, 15 Jun 2006 (PDT)

Argh...! No! :P What can I do about it? (You're allowed to edit it for me) --CrabbyData 06:40, 15 Jun 2006 (PDT)

Wait, I might have the solution ^^ --CrabbyData 06:41, 15 Jun 2006 (PDT)

The bottom of the page is fine on my comp... Only it overlays the bottom line of the real layout, but that shouldn't be much of a problem... The avatar is also a minor change, which also isn't to big of a problem... --CrabbyData 06:44, 15 Jun 2006 (PDT)

Except for the avatar, the bottom-part is solved ^^ For FF... Not for IE, but I can't find the solution... --CrabbyData 06:51, 15 Jun 2006 (PDT)

I see your edit, but it still isn't solved... It has something to do with the div's, since the layout of the Wiki itself uses those div's itself... I think I miscalculated somewhere (to many /div's or something like that) --CrabbyData 08:23, 15 Jun 2006 (PDT)

In my Internet Explorer your avater and the last picture of the My Uploaded Images-section is are displayed correctly right now.. The only thing now is that your end capbot is corrupted. It will not 'close' the capsule.. So I think indeed that you have miscalculated somewhere I don't know. For so far the page is rendered correctly on my Internet Explorer installation. You can eventually copy-paste the whole layout of Zozart's his category test, which I also used for my userpage, and tweak it alot to fit it in the way you like it. About the many edits you have made; you can copy-paste the code you have made into FF right into the same page but then in IE. Just overwrite the current code in your IE browser and hit Show preview.. Nothing will be saved and you have the same code you have with the Show preview-section in FF. Same thingy I've done with these two browsers :). --Jurgen Knops 08:34, 15 Jun 2006 (PDT)

Thanks :D But for the edits; I needed to see what exactly happened at the bottom of the page, and since that's underneath the edit box, I hád to save it in order to check if it was displayed correctly... Thanks again :D --CrabbyData 08:41, 15 Jun 2006 (PDT)

My userpage is better :P --dutchmega 00:52, 16 Jun 2006 (PDT)

--CrabbyData 04:44, 16 Jun 2006 (PDT)

No problem

That I'd be willing to do, but to be the best help to me I'd need it as a modeller concept sketch. Side, top, front view. maybe some zoomed bits for details. It'll just make the process go faster :)

Yeah! Do you know SketchUp? That's a really cool drawing program, that allow you to draw in 3D. It's from Google :P I'm trying to understand it, but if I can't I think my own drawing skills won't let me (and you) down ;) --CrabbyData 03:21, 28 Jun 2006 (PDT)

http://www.sketchup.com/ (forgot to give you the site ;) ) --CrabbyData 03:22, 28 Jun 2006 (PDT)

How's the image coming (/me is not able to access forum because me is at work). Angry Beaver 06:45, 5 Jul 2006 (PDT)

I had a lot of work to do for school (year exams (I'm in year 4 (and going to 5) of the 6 in total)). I'll try to sketch them today on paper, scan them and upload... But that could give trouble, since my scanner is broken for the last couple of weeks... Else I'll make them with sketchup :) --CrabbyData 09:09, 5 Jul 2006 (PDT)

SketchUp is really easy to use. Try following these steps if you need help using it.

1) open sketchUp (logically)

2) Open a new file

3)(only if drawing from a scan) import your file (it will appear flat on the 'floor')

4) (As above) Draw around your sketch. When it becomes 'filled in' in a clour, click and drag to raise it.

(bear in mind that this is not the best-you might want to try the website, [1] Game4ever 11:01, 5 Jul 2006 (PDT)