GCFs were altered today (patch 1,2)… So here’s a cherry-picked list of “interesting” changes. Not much point talking about DLL changes whenever the patch a bug, etc. These are mainly changes that caught my eye or I think would be useful for TF2 mappers to know about so they can browse the new ingredients for map ideas.
Big things are happening RIGHT NOW at this blog. Things involving cultivated brain-fruits. BIG things. Things that rhyme with “lack LSD”. Things that rhyme with “Mac123-hata policed.”
Not tomorrow. But today. BIG THINGS. Stay tuned.
After several months I’ve got the new version of PackBSP where I want it, so I’m releasing (cue fanfare) version “Beta 1″ to start the bug-hunt. Particularly possible bugs that I personally would never encounter, because I don’t model or map very prolifically. I’ll make a “proper” page with a list of features etc. when the beta phase is over.
Read more…
In Team Fortress 2, the Pyro class has a rather special ability to–through careful timing–reflect enemy projectiles. Since Valve seems to be trying to further emphasize this role, I think it would be a good idea to address some issues with the compression-blast’s usability. Why usability? Because the compression blast (or “airblast”) is one of the most ping-sensitive mechanics in the game, requiring both a fine sense of timing as well as being not compensated for lag effects.
There are some good technical reasons for it to be ping-sensitive, but at the moment is lacks important feedback to users so that they can judge an correct for the effects of internet latency. Read on for pictures.
Someone accused me of making minor changes to a map called ctf_2fort_freak today. OK, it was a while ago, but I only noticed I had youtube messages to moderate today.
Turns out the folks at The Gamers Playground have two “2fort Freak” servers. The only problem? It’s a direct copy of ctf_2fort_revamp_b1, which I released on FPSBanana back in July 2009. It’s even got the spots where you can fly around and see my name. I should emphasize that it’s entirely possible the folks running the server don’t know it, and that instead some unscrupulous player presented a renamed file to them.
Hey, that's MY map...
So I’m feeling a bit conflicted. Somewhat pissed, and somewhat happy that people like the ideas behind ctf_2fort_revamp more than the statistics would suggest.
[I had this sitting around as a draft, collecting dust. May as well publish.]
The gaming industry has been struggling for a few years with the concept of “linearity” in games, ever since the hardware limitations involved have started to relax, allowing far more content to be generated and shipped. With some recent announcements over Crysis 2, folks have been discussing how its predecessor, Crysis, was-or-was-not “too linear”.
I think linear/non-linear is a bit of a distraction from the important thing: Offering the player interesting choices.
After the recent update, some folks have complained about things like blurry weapon icons. Apparently the new version of the icon file didn’t have settings to prevent low-texture-quality settings from working with the icons the same way they do with all the other textures in the game, so everyone used to low-quality blurry floors and walls now had bits of their GUI also going blurry.
An example of the glitch.
Hopefully Valve will make an update soon to fix this, but in the meantime you can solve the problem by extracting the problem files and modifying them with VTFEdit, using the modified copies to override the ones that are in the game’s core files.
Rather than make everyone do it themselves, I’ve uploaded “fixed versions” right here. This will only work on servers which aren’t set to sv_pure, and after Valve patches it you’ll want to delete the copies you’ve made: If you leave them sitting around your hard drive you won’t see any new icons Valve adds to the game later. Simply follow the instructions in the readme.txt file.
Today Valve released a patch for TF2, but strangely the download monitor says it weighed in at about 100 megabytes. What’s in there? About a week ago I went ahead and adapted some jhllib code to log data about the updates, so it seemed like a good opportunity to try it out. So what changed between the 13th and the 19th?
Altered:
New:
As you can see, the changes seem to pretty closely track the posted patch notes. Shaders, bug reports, HUD elements… And many of the shaders increased in size, perhaps with a lot of conditional code for Mac compatibility?
However, the size changes don’t seem to match what Steam is showing. It’s possible Steam’s download status screen is wrong, or includes CS:S beta content which was skipped for me… Or I’m just not looking in the right places. Hmmm.
Still rewriting various bits and pieces of PackBSP. Today I want to talk about how Source games handle finding files, as far as I can tell from guesswork, testing, and code comments. I'd welcome any corrections on this stuff.
If the game need a file, like "sounds/weapon/pistol_shot.wav", where exactly does it get it from? For most Source-engine games, this turns out the ordering is a bit more complex than I had originally expected.
Read more...A while back I did a video of how the Pyro’s flamethrower worked, trying to debunk some other reports that you could get extra range out of it by aiming upwards, as if it were a firehose. Some other folks bravely took up the challenge of some contradictory data, and came to a startling conclusion: The Pyro’s flamethrower sometimes shoots farther or shorter than normal! At last, scientific validation for every Pyro frustrated because an enemy ought to be in-range, or everybody else frustrated because they knew they weren’t.
At some point I’ll collect all the scripts and console commands from those old tests, but for now I just wanted to put out some information for anyone with more time on their hands to investigate the problem.