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I am an intermediate Source SDK user (Half-Life 2 content, etc). I am creating several mods of my own (99 Bolts, Assault on Overwatch, and other personal projects) and I am contributing to several other mods (Room Escape, etc). I have good ideas and the will to learn. I'm also a nice guy who is willing to help others learn about Source. - November 2011

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The Ten Commandments of Mapping (Two Lists)

zonbie Blog 6 comments

I wrote these two lists on Interlopers.net and I would like to share them with you all. The first one offers a broad understanding of a strong mapping philosophy. The second one is focused on improving the mapping of beginner Source mappers.


The 10 Commandments of Level Design (Philosophical)

1. You are the One True Master of your maps. No one else can build your maps for you.
2. Optimization is more important than aesthetics. Engine performance affects player immersion.
3. Even though your game-building programs may give you trouble, remain patient and vigilant.
4. Take strategic breaks to remain creative and avoid "mapper's block". Go outside sometimes.
5. Study the mapping of successful video games (Half-Life 2, Call of Duty, STALKER).
6. Lighting makes the level. Be bright, dramatic, and colorful. Use total darkness only if forced to.
7. Sound is the very best tool for player immersion and mood enhancement.
8. Never steal content from another mapper. Obtain permission before using the assets of others.
9. Seek out the opinions of fellow mappers and learn from constructive criticism.
10. Learn to create your own assets (textures (easy), models (intermediate), and entities (difficult)).


The 10 Commandments of Mapping for the Source Engine (Technical)

1. Valve is the creative force behind the Source engine. De-compile Valve's maps and utilize the VDC.
2. Optimization is more important than aesthetics. Engine performance affects player immersion.
3. Save your work often. Generate a spare copy of your work in case your map becomes corrupted.
4. Never use the "Carve" function for any reason. "Carve" will corrupt your maps and your computer.
5. Fix leaks as soon as you detect them. Leaks reduce map quality and ruin engine performance.
6. Playtest your level's gameplay as soon as possible. Add details only after the layout is finalized.
7. Learn about the tool textures and their effects on optimization, gameplay, and aesthetics.
8. Use two light entities per "light": a bright light_spot and a dim light of the same color.
9. Disable collisions and shadows on certain prop models to improve player movement and aesthetics.
10. Game environments need at least twice as many details in order to be considered "good" in mods.


And the GOLDEN RULE OF MAPPING:

More than anything else, a map should be FUN to play.


I am eager to hear of your suggestions and/or improvements. This is a work in progress and I plan to adjust and modify this list based on the suggestions I get. I'm hoping to post this in the VDC once we can all agree on it. :)

October Mid-Month Update

zonbie Blog

GETTING BETTER

Practice makes perfect. My outdoor areas have always been my strong point, but I used to have little patience to work with the indoor areas. It was because my approach was all wrong. I used to spend way too much time detailing one room at a time, never really laying out the bare bones concept of the level. I finally branched out of that in June when I started making the disowned 99 Bolts maps. The zombie tunnels level is the first level I laid out completely before going into any detail work. If you remember the beginning of that second map, the detail level went from great to shitty pretty fast.

Well now I feel that things have changed a bit. I'm feeling a lot more confident about designing interiors. Now I'm trying to use displacements (instead of brushes) as walls. Keeping those things sealed is a big hassle. But I think it's going to turn out well as I continue to practice. So keep practicing your own techniques and read up on the techniques of others. Check out this awesome article on displacement techniques. Chinese Room

LONG STORIES

Even though I have been out of Hammer, I have been working on 99 Bolts almost incessantly. I have been doing a lot of research and sketching. After my honeymoon, my wife and I took a long road trip through Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas. I took nearly two thousand photos and drew a lot of diagrams and maps, occasionally writing notes like "good place to hold up" and "assassination point" and "gunship ambush" and along the way.

I've been brainstorming the exact route through the wasteland since I began 99 Bolts and I can tell you this. There will certainly be an interstate in the wasteland. There will also be a dilapidated residential neighborhood, a blown up train station, and an abandoned country manor. (Please don't think the three notes in the last paragraph correspond to these locations, because they don't.)

In addition to planning the route through the wasteland, I have been writing extensively on the story of 99 Bolts. I have found a wealth of information online, and I have come up with some very interesting ideas that merge the apocalypse factors of Fallout with Half-Life. I have been writing script dialogue and planning out custom scripted sequences. Over the next six months I hope to both learn Face Poser software and design my own sequences. Or perhaps I can attract a faithful and talented individual who can do it for me. I have already attracted a modeler and a texture artist this way, so let's see what happens.

MARRIAGE AND THE LIKE

I got married on September 26th. It turns out that my lover decided to disown a life of slumming it with a certain wise-cracking, car-racing, bad-mouthing punk who spends his Sundays making tragic mockeries of decent podcasts. (Rock on, Emanuel and co.) I'm having a great time with married life, but (as I expected) I'm having some trouble getting used to working on the mod with a lady around all the time to interest my attention. I'm sure it's only temporary. At least I have a new full-time playtester at my disposal. Heh, GIGGIDY.

GOOD BYE, HAWKEYE

Well folks, that's all I have for now. Like I said...a very short, relatively boring update. I will not be updating in November. I'm going to wait until December 15th to really bring 2009 to an explosive note. Plus, with Assassin's Creed 2 and Left 4 Dead 2, I should be pretty distracted in late November. I can use late October and early November to get a lot of work done, and then come back to it in early December to put final touches in.

99 BOLTS: September Mid-Month Newsletter

zonbie Blog

99 BOLTS: September Mid-Month Update

This month’s update is smaller than the last one. There's not so much media this time around. In an effort to grasp my multitasking potential, I’ve been evenly splitting my time between 99 Bolts and another mod called Room Escape. (link) In addition to that, I have the ubiquitous pleasure of getting married to a beautiful young lady from my hometown in about a week or so. And in addition to that, I'm going to be listening to Muse's newest album while driving south to see The Mars Volta live next week. (Two of my favorite bands of all time)

SO!! The combination of 99 Bolts’ continuously positive reception, my ability to crank out maps for both mods, my musical high fortune, and my luck at tagging and bagging my dream girl...all in a thirty day period, guys!!...it all makes this September feel like a very good month. On with the news, then.

PLAYTEST RESULTS

If you haven’t had a run through my playtest, let me re-assure you: you didn’t miss much. The playtest levels I provided might as well have been rotten apple cores for all the visual and gameplay polish they had. But all that aside, I learned some valuable lessons from the gameplay in these playtests that I will be applying to the eventual reincarnation of these maps. I’ll tell you how everything went…here’s how the playtest levels worked. The test is split up into two maps – a bright, wide-open wasteland map with combat against bandits and Combine, and then a dark, claustrophobic underground level with combat against zombies.

In the wasteland map, you found your crossbow early on and started wreaking havoc on the numerous enemies in the wasteland. You soon found some allies and they helped you charge a Combine outpost. When the reinforcements arrived, you left the allies behind and escaped into a network of tunnels. In the tunnels map, you learn that the sparse rebel forces living there have recently lost a crate of grenades to bandits, who fled into the zombie-ridden tunnels. The task falls to you to fight your way through the maze of tunnels and recover the grenades, which you can use to blast open the various metal gates that block your path to the city.

Chief complaints about the wasteland level were that there were too many Combine to fight. Cool, I can dig that. I think a better-designed Combine outpost could have maximized some smaller numbers on their part. Or perhaps I could simply add in a few more rebel pick-up points. You guys tell me how I can solve that scenario, and I will answer you with finished maps. Another problem is that a few of you may have missed finding the crossbow entirely. That’s a very tragic finding in my opinion, as the name of the mod lends itself to the idea that you will have a crossbow!! In the future, I’ll have a cool crossbow-obtaining solution that guarantees you don’t simply miss it.

I got more complaints from the tunnels map and that’s totally understandable. Aside from the sudden aesthetic changes, there were disgusting empty rooms and weird dead ends all over the place. Furthermore, the increasingly larger waves of zombie attacks from all directions seemed to get really frustrating after the second or third time. Combat seemed to feel uninspired. I believe that’s a correct observation. On reflection, I remember trying to design an area that could be dark, simple to navigate but difficult to escape, and multipathed, all while making a gameplay loop. I enjoyed the idea of sending the player back the way he had come previously.

I believe I failed partly because most of the combat was so flat. There was rarely a time when the combat was vertical. The same is true for the wasteland map, but there’s not too much we can do about that. I think that making some more high-low portions (that aren’t stairways) may help the combat feel more diverse. In addition, I think I should focus on making the gameplay more linear, rather than make a straight loop and thus, recycle the level for the player. That will allow me to dispense with making the ever-stronger zombie waves that people seemed to dislike so much, as well as try to tell more stories with visuals.

The next incarnation of these maps will be very interesting to see. I have learned much from the playtest levels, and they have not died in vain. I have a lot of surprises for you. You ought to recognize the remade levels, and you ought to be pleased with the changes I have in store. In the meantime, I welcome more and more people to playtest these two maps, as there can never be enough criticism. So please, tell all your friends to come playtest my dead maps.

TRAPS

This is actually very short and sweet. Via a creative use of parenting, templates, logic, and physics, I have made several prefabs of booby traps that I can easily place into my maps at will. Think of grenade clusters, rigged shotguns, and swinging metal beams. And explosions. Just guess where I might have gotten my inspiration. Luckily, Fallout doesn’t have a monopoly on booby traps, so I have no qualms about making similar traps. It’s going to be a lot of fun setting these babies off in your faces.

Don't worry, though. I'm pretty sure there are a few tricks and objects in the Half-Life universe I can fashion into booby traps. That's not even counting NPC's like manhacks, hoppers, and rollermines, that just make that task easier. My aim, by the way, is to make you fall into as many booby traps as possible without getting frustrated or dying too much. So don't worry about being trap-spammed.

ROOM ESCAPE

I started working on the Room Escape mod heavily right after the August update. That’s why the September Update is weak this time around. Room Escape is being sold as a collection of puzzles with a whole lot of random themes. You might be breaking out of a medieval castle’s dungeon in one moment, then teleporting through space stations the next, all on your quest to Escape the Room you are in. It’s a fun project to work on, as it boosts my will to study logic and puzzles in Source. (I’m working as a mapper for the team)

In addition to getting some practice with puzzles, this project is my first collaboration in any mod. Thanks to a modeler named Vugam on Mod DB, I’m actually starting to learn how to include custom content in a level now, something I had never done before. I am overeager to learn more. Stay tuned to both my personal profile and Room Escape to see how that project grows.

VOLUNTEERS

I have some. I have Vugam as a part-time modeler, which I am grateful for. I also have Bekey7734 as a part-time texture artist, which I am equally grateful for. Both of these guys volunteered their services to 99 Bolts, and it's a huge boost for my morale to collaborate with them. I will occasionally by requesting models and textures from them, and they will occasionally be providing them. Perhaps next month I will have a few custom items to showcase along with the new maps and traps.

GOODBYE, HAWKEYE

Thank you for watching 99 Bolts grow. The next official update will come on October 15th, including my birthday and perhaps some real story elements to tell you about. So that’s cool. What is up with these good months? I suppose I'm due for a few really crappy months soon.

August Mid-Month Update

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99 BOLTS: August Mid-Month Update

How snide of me, an intermediate mapper, to declare my own newsletter? What is 99 Bolts right now, anyways? A few .bsp's? And perhaps some .ain's to go along with it? 99 Bolts is still a pipe dream in many respects, and perhaps my ambitions overstep my abilities...But it's good to aim high with your hopes, and work slow. I'm having a lot of fun building 99 Bolts, as I hope you are having fun watching it grow. Except, I suppose that for you, it's like watching grass grow.

Losing the "Fallout" Reference

I have made a few mistakes in the last 30 days, one of which is sell out creativity in exchange for name recognition. Fallout 3: Source, this is not. Open-world sandbox mod, this is not. And day/night cycles, weapons degradation, and character statistics, this is not. 99 Bolts began as one thing, and I let it become another thing by accidentally associating it too closely with Fallout 3. I originally sold this game as a game that was "loosely inspired" by Fallout 3. But last week I caught myself trying to replicate the design of a Vault-Tec vault.

With that said, I am trying to distance myself from Fallout 3 and focus more on Half-Life 2. This game can still be loosely inspired by Fallout 3 without becoming Fallout 3. I will still have underground fallout shelters in the game, but they may not have the same feel of a Vault-Tec vault. I will still try to capture the truly shattered feeling of a sprawling wasteland, but I will not be using models or time-related mechanics that are found in the Capital Wasteland. And of course, the signature gameplay styles and structures of Half-Life 2 will prevail over the underwhelming "random encounter" theory present in Fallout 3.

Writing and Developing for 99 Bolts

The story will be a doosy, and perhaps it will not be well-accepted, but I want to tell you that it is complete. I have written the synopsis for 99 Bolts, from the first moments in the wasteland up to the shattering (if terribly distant) conclusion. I have summed up all the gameplay progressions, divided the settings, and settled on having five chapters in the game. Thus, there shall be five installments of 99 Bolts over the course of its development. I'd like to give you the names of all five chapters, but they are as subject to change...as certain wishes of mine are fulfilled or denied by the various factors the govern us all. (I can tell you that one of the chapters will be named "Chasing Winona". Perhaps you saw that coming.)

99 Bolts is about an unwitting assassin. Something terrible happens to his underground dwelling and is sent to dole out his vengeance upon Winona, the perpetrator of the terrible act. Winona is the enigmatic administrator of a nearby Combine city. (How convenient, I know.) (The idea of a very small town has been dropped, in favor of making a larger game for the first two chapters. Unfortunately, I have had to suffer the conformity that comes along with claiming the presence of a "Combine city" in my mod.) As the player draws closer to killing Winona, he begins to uncover interesting secrets that link him to a conspiracy far-reaching enough to disturb even the most distant sleeper.

If my story sounds cliche, it is for the lack of detail and actual content. I want you to heed my words when I tell you I have a high-quality story written on my computer right now. I have begun writing lines of spoken word...one day, far down the road, I will call upon talented voice actors to portray members of the player's fallout shelter, members of the bandit and resistance members, Combine soldiers, important figures (assassination targets), and even Winona herself...along with another person who shall not be named until long after some of the chapter betas have been released.

Starting Over and Learning From Mistakes

Sometimes we make mistakes and we don't even know it. Sometimes we do things incorrectly on pupose, just to see what happens. Sometimes our mistakes lead us to our greatest discoveries. Creating wasteland maps has taught me a great deal about the need to design with optimization in mind. Using hints, nodraw brushes, wise displacement use, and areaportals escaped my understanding when I first opened Hammer and created the wasteland maps of yore. (Last month.) It is a good idea to create a whole map and release a disgusting beta of it, because you get so much information from it. I have taken the suggestions and criticisms of the public and used them in my second wasteland map...and it looks wonderful. Such success had led me to start over with the first map I made. I'm pretty confident that it will run better, look better, and make more sense than its predecessor. Look for it in a few months.

Seeking Help

I am looking for a modeler who would be willing to create high-quality models of small stature. I need about ten or so models shrunk way down so they can go in my 3D skyboxes. I would like some tiny cars, a tiny version of the tall power line towers, a tiny version of a Combine APC, and a tiny version of the regular power lines, as well. Anybody who's willing to help me with these very specific requests will always have my skills as a mapper at his/her disposal, as well as a hearty thanks and credit for your contribution. I hope you know that you can take me seriously.

This concludes the longest, most verbose news post ever on Mod DB. If you are still reading this, then holy crap brother, you need to go get some food or something. I'm thinking Jack in the Box.

Thanks for watching 99 Bolts, even in its infancy.

- 15 August 2009

Looking for Help

zonbie Blog

I have pored over VDC and various websites looking for info on how to start a mod in Source SDK. I always get errors of some kind, and I can't find any tutorials on how to start a mod and set it up correctly. If someone can lend a hand and just teach me how to start the actual mod (without using any custom modeling or sound or anything, just levels with a new name on it) I would be most grateful.