User talk:Maven

Archives of this page: 16 Sep 2005 – 16 Oct 2005 | 16 Oct 2005 – 27 Oct 2005

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Third-party templates

I'm gonna make templates of those alpha and beta things in your sandbox, I think they're good to have and look decent enough as they are. If you don't want me to, sorry. --Charron 12:58, 28 Oct 2005 (PDT)

No problem. Either AndrewNeo or I would have gotten to it eventually; you've saved us the trouble. —Maven ^(talk) 13:22, 28 Oct 2005 (PDT)

In hindsight, I'm surprised we waited so long to make these. They should have been obvious when we were setting up mod posting rules. --Charron 10:57, 31 Oct 2005 (PST)

• Just glad I can help contribute new ideas :) Also, I think the checkmark looks funny. It's kind of obvious it's not avaliable for download, if there's no download link. --AndrewNeo 11:24, 31 Oct 2005 (PST)

It doesn't bother whether it's present; if nobody wants it, remove it. For the large form, if the check stays, it should be next to the main icon rather than under it (I didn't know how to do that). —Maven ^(talk) 11:42, 31 Oct 2005 (PST)

Template:If doesn't seem to like equal signs in the optional parameter value. I'm starting to think that using Template:If was a bad idea. —Maven ^(talk) 11:42, 31 Oct 2005 (PST)

Work-around: if the download link contains =, enclose it in a nowiki tag: <nowiki>=</nowiki>. —Maven ^(talk) 11:52, 31 Oct 2005 (PST)

If

if what?—ts2do ^(talk) 19:01, 30 Oct 2005 (PST)

Template:If. —Maven ^(talk) 19:01, 30 Oct 2005 (PST)

Help!!

c:\Program Files\Valve\Steam\SteamApps\SourceMods\PWSRC\src\dlls\game_player_manager.cpp(7) : error C2440: 'static_cast' : cannot convert from 'void (__thiscall CGamePlayerManager::* )(inputdata_t &)' to 'inputfunc_t'

Types pointed to are unrelated; conversion requires reinterpret_cast, C-style cast or function-style cast

—ts2do ^{(Talk | ›)} 17:05, 6 Nov 2005 (PST)

NVM It seems I have to derive my class from CBaseEntity—ts2do ^{(Talk | ›)} 17:11, 6 Nov 2005 (PST)

Third Party Templates

I was looking into adding something like in the bottom of my sandbox, to point to the page on Valve's storefront. Maybe it could be a part of the bottom of the third party templates? --AndrewNeo 11:24, 31 Oct 2005 (PST)

How about making that a separate template? —Maven ^(talk) 11:27, 31 Oct 2005 (PST)

Templates in sigs

e icon never changes though...it'd be too cluttersome without it—ts2do ^{(Talk | ›)} 19:11, 9 Nov 2005 (PST)

How about using <sup>([[User talk:Ts2do|Talk]]&nbsp;|[mailto:[email protected] &nbsp;])</sup> instead? That produces:

(Talk | )

and doesn't use transclusion. There are several reasons why someone might change the template—including bad reasons, such as someone just trying to figure out what it does. Plus it's a juicey spammer target. —Maven ^(talk) 19:44, 9 Nov 2005 (PST)

Or <span></span> should provide the same effect as the empty font tags, and is short and more readable. —Maven ^(talk) 19:52, 9 Nov 2005 (PST)

—ts2do ^(Talk | @) 20:08, 9 Nov 2005 (PST)

Hey, that's nice. —Maven ^(talk) 20:53, 9 Nov 2005 (PST)

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Rgr, thanks :) MenZa

What happened, menza?—ts2do ^(Talk | @) 06:03, 10 Nov 2005 (PST)

Moving pendulum

Just noticed your aged question at the bottom of me talk page - sadly, I never figured out a proper solution, and went with something a bit different. I imagine it's possible with the addition of new physics entities or some horrible hacking around with springs and things (see that lowering lift in one of the later City 17 maps as an example) but done 'properly'? Nah... --Cargo Cult _{(info, talk)} 11:24, 18 Nov 2005 (PST)

Give me some details, what's desired, and I'll create one.

i.e. - Clock-like Movements or only reacts to physics. --wisemx 13:22, 18 Nov 2005 (PST)

The original discussion was at Talk:Physics Entity Overview. In short, the goal was to create a variable-length pendulum that could be parented and that, if possible, reacts like a rope rather than like a rigid body. I ended up faking it with a phys_lengthconstraint hanging from a func_movelinear hanging from a phys_ballsocket, but it's still an interesting problem.

By the way, this was for a giant claw machine I made for HL2 Kids. It's fully functional except that it's too difficult. When I have the time and inclination again, I hope to improve its grip and submit it. —Maven ^(talk) 10:36, 21 Nov 2005 (PST)

Interesting. --wisemx 13:19, 21 Nov 2005 (PST)

Well, I just noticed that the project is on hold, so tweaking the level has just dropped to lowest priority. Anyone interested is welcome to the map source, by the way. —Maven ^(talk) 13:24, 21 Nov 2005 (PST)

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Re: virus emails - I've set up a rule to move them straight into the trash, but it's got to the point that my poor iBook spends ten minutes downloading crap every time I open it up. The bounced emails from where the virus has faked my email address are particularly annoying... :-/ —Cargo Cult _{(info, talk)} 06:37, 27 Nov 2005 (PST)

Bullet penetration

Reading http://www.xmission.com/~fractil/math/kp.html so I can capture the full aspect of bullet penetration (>.<THIS IS DIFFUCLT!!ZZZAWWRAG!)—ts2do ^(Talk | @) 18:12, 1 Dec 2005 (PST)

That might be more than you need... Your mod's users probably won't notice or care about the difference between a realistic-seeming fake and a fully-accurate simulation—and it's much easier to fake it.

The simplification I'm thinking of is to treat walls/characters/whatever, for the purposes of bullet penetration, as linearly dampening kinetic energy. Each material type would have a constant, u, which represents how much a bullet is slowed as it passes through that material—ie, concrete would have a high u, while flesh would have a low u. You'd have to tweak u values until you got the effect that you deem most realistic-looking. If d is the distance the bullet would travel in order to pass through the object completely, m is the bullet mass, and v_muzzle is the muzzle velocity, then when the bullet exits the material that it's passing through it will have exit velocity

v_exit = sqrt( v_muzzle² − (2 · u · d) / m )

(Arg, no <math> tag!) (Derivation available.) Before doing the square root, make sure that the difference is positive—if it isn't, then the bullet can't make it through the material, and should be destroyed. —Maven ^(talk) 19:34, 1 Dec 2005 (PST)

Can't we do something with density instead of doing a per surfacetype basis? Hmm...this is kinda vague...how is it done multiple times? Plus...I think I might consider adding gravity in—ts2do ^(Talk | @) 19:54, 1 Dec 2005 (PST)

I was considering surface type to be an indicator of the density of an object. I suppose that you could assign values to each brush, but that would make life miserable for the mapper(s). As to gravity, do you mean during bullet penetration (useful for travel through water, sludge, and giant bowls of pudding) or in general? —Maven ^(talk) 20:28, 1 Dec 2005 (PST)

General gravity handling..What's wrong with getting the density of the material? $density is stored in the surfaceprop anyways...—ts2do ^(Talk | @) 20:47, 1 Dec 2005 (PST)

Does that apply to walls also, or are walls going to be impenetrable? I don't know much about $density, but if you use existing values you won't be able to tweak them without breaking other things. In any case, that's mass density, whereas u is some other kind of density which I've only just invented... a materials engineer might have a name for it. But it might be that there's enough similarity that the distinction isn't important. And according to the KISS principle, yeah, $density is probably a good idea. —Maven ^(talk) 21:25, 1 Dec 2005 (PST)

Um...

I'll be missing for a while. —Maven ^(talk) 16:02, 6 Dec 2005 (PST)

I'll probably only be popping in occasionally, until Sven Co-op for HL2 is released, even in beta. Sigh... —Maven ^(talk) 13:46, 10 Sep 2006 (PDT)

Hello

I missed you dearly.—ts2do 14:43, 10 Sep 2006 (PDT)

I'm back!

So I've given up all hope of Sven. They'll never release anything for HL2. While it's laudable that they're supporting their HL1 fanbase, it sucks for me. I'm not going to wait for them to finish turning HL1 into HL2. So now I'm messing with Synergy. If that doesn't work out, there's still Obsidian Conflict to try. But somehow, I'm going to make and play some bleeping co-op maps.

So where'd the old crew go?

—Maven ^(talk) 19:25, 5 Feb 2007 (PST)

Hello mavenistic manifestation—ts2do 21:19, 5 Feb 2007 (PST)

Greetings, earthling! —Maven ^(talk) 21:34, 5 Feb 2007 (PST)

It's been fairly quiet here, but probably not a bad thing - either gaps have been plugged in documentation, or everyone's got bored and gone elsewhere. I do hope it's the former. As for MINERVA? She's ... doing okay. —Cargo Cult _{(info, talk)} 13:40, 6 Feb 2007 (PST)

That's two! Does anyone know what happened to wisemx? Or his marvelous collection of tutorials? —Maven ^(talk) 16:32, 6 Feb 2007 (PST)

SDKNuts is going down and Mark is pursuing other goals, I am going to port to the wiki eventually (got the permission etc) --Peter [AGHL] 15:45, 7 Feb 2008 (PST)

Optimization (Geometry)

It has been a couple of months since you last added something to this wiki, but I still think that this is a question for you. A long while ago you created a page called Optimization (Geometry). As I'm turning areaportals into its own article, Gear tells me that portals in multiplayer isn't even possible at all. How come you wrote so much about it then? Which one of you are right? --Andreasen 16:08, 17 Sep 2007 (PDT)

It works exactly the same in multiplayer and singleplayer....—ts2do 16:24, 17 Sep 2007 (PDT)

This is correct. Always-open areaportals are also important tools in multiplayer map optimization. --JeffLane 17:31, 17 Sep 2007 (PDT)

Yup but its usually a tad hard to pull off.--Gear 17:32, 17 Sep 2007 (PDT)

Something being advanced, and something being impossible, are two completely different things, Gear. It is extremely important that you are accurate and correct in what you say here, because it can have very big consequences. I was about to tell the Hammer community that support for this technique doesn't even exist for multiplayer, and if taken seriously, that would over time mean a significant decrease in large multiplayer map speeds. I need to be able to trust you. --Andreasen 06:41, 18 Sep 2007 (PDT)

Looks like the questions answer themselves! As has been said, it all works in multiplayer. I tested everything I wrote with HL2:DM. —Maven ^(talk) 21:13, 3 Nov 2007 (PDT)