IHaveAPlan

Introduction

Hello everyone! It’s been quite a while since the last update and blog, but I have been hard at work trying to get everything in order for a couple of releases! Let’s take a look at what's been cooking for the last 2-3 months.

Words from the Castle

So, I’ve been working on the FGD (Obviously) for a while now. I had the chance to talk to a lot of the former developers from Ritual Entertainment and they have all been so helpful in their own ways. I had the rare chance to sit down with Castle, one of the former level designers, in Discord and talked for a decent time about the game and other things. Here is a summary of the conversation we had regarding CS:CZDS.

“When we got the Gearbox build, they had practically finished the game and that would have been great, but we went at it with a machete and cut a lot of the content.

Valve told us to make a HL1 experience in the Counter-Strike world and what we delivered was very far from it. There was no connection to the previous levels, no 'Show, don't tell' theories in the levels, characters constantly spewing lore and there was always an objective to do. So it was never really a HL1 experience. It was a super linear, mostly scripted game with annoying sections that didn't need to be there.

At the time, we had too much power and we were way too ambitious when it came to CZ. For example, The AI was over scripted, the first time a dude falls down the stairs is cool,
but the hundredth time is just like ‘Eh, okay’. We didn't need to have a .SEQ file system or anything like that, Mutimanagers would have worked for everything. The same thing can be said about the annoying stealth sections, we didn't need those and the game would have probably done better without them. We weren’t trying to make Metal Gear Solid. If you do remake or port the levels, make sure to get rid of the fail state stealth parts for good.

After CZ got taken out of our hands, they released our work as 'Deleted Scenes'. Till this day I have no idea why they decided to do that, it is what it is, but I would have liked it to be under a different name.”

And that’s what he said. It was a pretty wild time for the fellas at Ritual Entertainment, don’t you think?

The .FGD!

There has been a bit of a change in some of the .FGD. Mostly involving adding, removing and fixing some stuff that has been bugging me for a while. You can get the .FGD here: CS:CZDS .FGD

The Sprites!

You can also get the new Retro Hammer Icon Sprites to go with CS:CZDS! Grab 'em here: Retro Hammer Icon Sprites

Shiny new features!

I want to continue this section by highlighting one of the most recent discoveries. Let me introduce to you, ‘func_model_brush’.

The func_model_brush is a new way to represent a fake 3d skybox that extends the world visually.
Here is the basic rundown. You 'attach' model entities to it (which can be put anywhere as long as the origin is in the map), and when the func_model_brush is within view (PVS) those models also become visible. You can have different '3D skyboxes' for different areas in the same map. better for performance for maps that contain both outdoor and indoor areas.

Using JACK's OBJ export option, as you can see above, I made a really quick model that could be used with the item_generic entity that can be hooked onto the func_model_brush. Here is the result in game:

So, how does it look? I think it looks pretty cool, it helps keep the performance smooth and can also open up a wide range of cool looking backdrops that don't rely on being in the skybox. I hope you can use this feature well and create some cool stuff!

Update on Valve...

I have been in contact with Valve for a while now, updating them and soon, I hope to hand this FGD off to them to include in their official game repository for CS:CZDS. This was their response to the FGD:

"Hi IHaveAPlan,

Thanks for checking in again.

At the moment, we're not going to be able to provide access to that code. We do appreciate your interest though and kindly ask you to respect this decision. To give you some additional information here. In the past, we have only provided code access to partners that we have worked with before or have certain information about them. Please note that this wasn't the only reason here and there were other factors that we considered, before making the decision.

Steam Support
Finn"

Unfortunately, Valve decided to not give me access to the source, old builds, or documentation. Here was their response on why when I poked them to give more about the decision:

"Hi IHaveAPlan,

When it comes to internal repositories or code and the subsequent approval or denial for external devs, we like to keep this information that lead to the decision confidential. Thank you for your understanding in this matter. You can continue to update us here and we will make sure to backfill our internal repository, as well as keeping everyone at Valve in the loop, who are involved in those kind of decisions.

Steam Support
Finn"

It seems that Valve has said no to my requests. Which is unfortunate because of some annoying bugs with monster_sentry (sounds fail to precache), func_doors/buttons (unlock_sound keyvalues are broken) and kinda-of-implemented entities such as env_particle. But, thus is life when dealing with a corporation that doesn't want someone to fix things for free.

Anyway enough of that, and on to some mapping stuff.

Oh look, here come that map update!

Recently, I've been having a lot of trouble mapping and getting the motivation to keep going after the failures with Valve and the frustrations that has caused for the .FGD (Good example is monster_sentry). So I went back to basics and started to make a small level that highlights the new things that can be with CS:CZDS. So far, this is what I've got:

Holy Dev Textures 007!

Kinda long video, but it highlights half of the things that I want to implement into the level that show what can be made with CS:CZDS. Still have a lot more things to put in. It follows the classic HL1 type of gameplay loop. The ol' Explore>Puzzle>Kill>Repeat. Some of you keen eyed people might have spotted a couple odd things, I'll keep those to myself for now, but what you see now is currently in the released version of the FGD. So, get to it! Make stuff!

I'll see you later, might be awhile or it might be in a few days, who knows now!