half life 2, unreal 2k4 mods?

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Mon Sep 05, 2005 10:59 pm

hi there,

I've wanted personally to look at doing a mod for halflife 2 or unreal2k4 for a DM level.. I need to do some creatures and props involving normal maps and the like for one of those engines anyway.. part of my job for the school I'm working at. and I need to do it before christmas

is there any skilled programmers who have a handle on one of those who would like to make it worth my while to do a DM level?

Here's basically what I need to do. I have to learn Z-brush to do normal maps. I need to design and animate a monster (maybe two), and I need to do a basic map with some textured walls and floor figure out the lighting and placing of weapons and such.

I'd be willing to do a sword, crossbow, monster (popular vote?), and one level (popular vote again?).

I understand there is a lot that would need to be changed to be accurate.. however, not everything need to be changed yet. Though I was thinking a mod of the gravity gun could perhaps be used to be a hand instead to pick up items, throw them, pull switches. etc. Not sure how the spell system would work but they have a particle system in there that does fire and smoke and lightning.. so just accessing "Weapons" through a unique interface I would guess is how it would work.. you hit the right "combination" and it activates the weapon. the "weapons" all use the same "ammo" which also regenerates. breakable doors are possible too.. characters holding items as well is there. Not sure about armour though.. that would be a larger modification I'm sure.

hmmm..

Anyway, if there is interest and skill there.. I'd be willing to give it a shot. As I said, I need to do something anyway for work.. so might as well go towards something..

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Tue Sep 06, 2005 2:59 pm

Arena level 8 would be a good idea for the level, very wide space for moving around, with soem secret areas around the walls

zoom · Post by **zoom** » Tue Sep 06, 2005 9:36 pm

cool plan.
I cannot help you much since i do not know what normal maps are and i am no programmer, but here is my 2p.
I would suggest to "cite dungeon master".

do not be 80% faithful to the original. *

implement some things that someone who played dungeon master may remember or relate to dungeon master..

!!level/map:!!
1.)distinct areas out of the game;
maybe a mix of many levels.
I thought about a compressed level incorporating "firestaff to dragon area" lava on the bottom and electricity on top..
are skeleton key stairways unique to dungeon master?
2.)the scorpion part of the tenth level. Leave the zoooom area out.

conclusion: there must be a wide space; preferrably in the middle

slightly modify the map(pieces); you have the possiblility to make levels with many floors/storeys.(2 or three)
**************************************************
*
keep it simple. You do not have much time.

but i think you still have fire and alternate fire.
I do not know if there are items lying around that you
may throw around..

Also i would go for a simple spell casting mechanism maybe.
It could be a bit tedious to fumble with the runes in a fast paced action shooter(the dm monsters had some idle time)
You should be able to shoot as fast as you can move.
You move seamlessly around so why not shoot in rapid succession?

how about just pressing fire for a single fireball and alternate fire for a mega fireball(uses up more mana of course)
or make it poison cloud and poison ball(weapon 2)

What do you mean by regeneration of ammo? respawning on the ground (likely) or like mana regeneration??

cool would be to make the weapon power dependent on the ammo/mana in backpack.
like casting lowlevel fireballs if ammo low,and casting medium ones at 50 to 120 ammo available up to mega fireballs when ammo is maxed out. but i do not think that is possible so forget it..
-------------------------
M like monsters °-°
--------------------------------
fun would be to shoot screamers, thats for sure
even if they count as supernumeraries or furniture!

am i getting this right`? is it intended to be multiplayer?
So maybe you do no monsters but focus on different player characters, like hissssa, wuuf, humans,...
this could be quite cool.

or just make a screamer player character. imagine: a vexirk(player) vs. a screamer(another) who is soaring through the sky..
ok. this is quite absurd but would be fun, nevertheless.
you can make it a more serious approach or just a hilarious one.

If intended for single player only you could be much more faithful - a dungeon master level per se could be doable then, i think.
Hope this is of some use

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Thu Sep 08, 2005 9:43 am

well weapons use amo.. I need to make the mana be ammo in a sense.. so there fore I need it to regenerate like mana does.. I'm sure there is something in there for that.. like a power cell or what have you. I also need it to be set so that all the spells (which would be seperate weapons) activate by use of clicking symbols and they all use the same ammo pack but take different amounts of the ammo to fire. Basically this is working around what already exists.. so make it appear as though its doing what DM did..

no super mega fireball blast cannon stuff.. just the basics of what was there already..

I like the choose your door choose your fate.. seems like a good level. Nice variety in there.

I did intend to expand the graphical elements of the level.. not just plain walls.

I really want to do a mummy though.. so it might not be blue meanies and rockpiles in there.. maybe a mummy and something else..

moo

Post by **linflas** » Thu Sep 08, 2005 11:41 am

Some ut2004 mods to check/test for inspiration :
- UTRPG brings some RPG features to the original game.
http://mysterial.linuxgangster.org/UTRPG

-"The Soulkeeper" will be more hack'n'slash than DM but it looks very promising. There will be spellcasting too.
http://mods.moddb.com/4274/
http://www.thesoulkeeper.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=10

zoom · Post by **zoom** » Thu Sep 08, 2005 2:57 pm

for something else, I would suggest a non material monster..o0°

The level would be a good choice.

Tom Hatfield · Post by **Tom Hatfield** » Thu Sep 08, 2005 9:06 pm

UnrealTech doesn't support normal maps, so if you plan to make them, plan on using the Source engine — in which case, I can't really help you because I know approximately zilch about the Source engine. If you're using UnrealTech, I can probably do anything you want.

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Thu Sep 08, 2005 9:17 pm

hmm I suppose I could use unreal.. it was either that or halflife. And since HL2 has an issue with the firewall at work, we may not be able to use it anyway. So maybe Hl2 is not the one I want.

Would have liked the normal maps though

so, Tom, do you think you can work a spell interface for it? switches and floor pads?

moo

Tom Hatfield · Post by **Tom Hatfield** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 6:44 pm

Spell interface should be interesting. I'll look into the existing menu interface, which uses number keys in the 200X version (no more mouse pointer). Floor pads and switches are just triggers, which you can build right in the editor. Just out of curiosity, are you planning to have a mouse-driven interface? Because I'll have to look at UT99 code for that. They did away with mouse in-game in UT200X. I mean, it is an action game.

The material editor is fairly robust. I said with impunity that the engine doesn't support normal maps, but I'm not 100 percent sure of that. Maybe 99.9999 percent sure. Still, I know there's at least one way to simulate bumped reflections on surfaces, which is good for ice and other shiny materials. I'll check Project Torlan and get the details.

Tom Hatfield · Post by **Tom Hatfield** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 6:46 pm

Oh, damn. It just occurred to me: I'll have to install UT2004 again. *sigh* there's 5.2 gigs down the drain. ;) j/k, I'll get on it either tonight or tomorrow.

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 11:56 pm

normal maps are no big deal.. by the time the students will be at this for a project they won't be ready for normal mapping yet. we don't go into that untill second term... after christmas.

I need to be at a point where I'm exporting animated characters into the map by november 01 I guess. dunno if anything is doable on your end by that time.. but it doesn't need to be.. so long as I get my crap together intime for that date and you can keep playing with it as long as you like.

moo

Tom Hatfield · Post by **Tom Hatfield** » Tue Sep 13, 2005 12:46 am

Hmm. . . well, you could burn lighting into your textures and use those in UT. You wouldn't get dynamic lighting that way, and it's not the same as normal mapping, but you can produce some really nice static results. As long as you know how to burn maps in whatever software you're using (still using Softimage? I'm still using 3ds max), you can port those over to UnrealEd without any problems.

Let me free up some drive space and play around with the engine a bit. I have all the scripts on my backup drive for reference, but I can't compile any new ones without an installed copy of the game, and I wouldn't mind playing with the editor. (I've only made one complete map for UT2004. I was more into Quake mapping back in tha Day, and the way the editors work are exactly opposite. In Quake, you add geometry to the world. In Unreal, you subtract it.)

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 9:45 am

heard from alandale just recently and we talked about reviving the old DM3D thing we had started long ago.. I mentioned it once breifly before. Above you see a possible mummy for that engine.. I had started it for unreal and may still put it into unreal but I'm also letting you all know that there might be a new 3D DM coming.. we shall see what we shall see.. it's already in a working condition.. just needs to be updated and expanded upon. It will also be free for download..

will keep you posted.. for now enjoy the mummy./

moo

Post by **linflas** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 10:22 am

very nice work ! did you use z-brush ?

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 5:18 pm

nope.. not yet anyway...

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 9:04 pm

Hey cows, did I mail you feedback on that engine a while ago, or just imagine I had?

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 9:28 am

you might have.. you were in there helping with story at the time I think.. it was going to used for the other game.

which has been put on hold.

Due to legal issues surrounding Alan's job he can't make something to be sold for profit.. so I suggested a revisit to DM..

moo

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 2:03 pm

Oops, didn't mean the DM engine thingie you are talking about now, I meant the engine you showed me recently

zoom · Post by **zoom** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 7:38 pm

so can we be excited? Is there a new clone coming?
that´s good news I say!!

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 8:29 pm

maybe.. all I can say...

as I said.. I'm still hooking this stuff into UT.. but I'm looking at the possibility of an engine built just for this purpose so I know it will be able to do everything needed..

moo

Tom Hatfield · Post by **Tom Hatfield** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 11:21 pm

Right, sorry for the belated response. I did in fact install UT2004 recently, but work and other things kept me away from it, and I recently had to uninstall it because my drive space is hurting. I'll try to hook myself up with a new hard-drive when I get paid. I've got Enclave and Riddick sitting dormant while I try to develop a utility for ripping textures, and that's about 5.3 gigs. (To put that into perspective, I've only got about 6.5 gigs left, which is barely enough for UT, but I want to maintain a few gigs of scratch space for graphics and audio editing.)

So, please bear with my poor hard drive while I sort things out!

By the way, that's one sexy-looking mummy. Any textures for it?

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 6:17 am

not yet but he's in for some changes.. I decided to get even more inventive..

he'll be looking more like this..

Tom Hatfield · Post by **Tom Hatfield** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 9:51 pm

Interesting. Not sure if that's a boxing glove or a lunch box, but he looks pretty sweet.

Okay, I took your desires into consideration and tried my luck at importing normal maps into UT2004. Of course this isn't technically feasible, so instead I baked all my lighting into some textures and imported those. This took forever to render even without final gather, and it still doesn't look quite right, but perhaps this will give you a very rough idea of what's possible, provided you are able to overlook dynamic normal mapping.

The torches look a little funky in this shot; I've since adjusted them. I threw the rock in there to demonstrate soft shadows, but you can't really see it here. The Anubis statues provide a better example anyway, and there are some caustics on the statues and ceiling. That kind of stuff isn't even possible in UnrealTech or any other real-time engine for that matter. (You can fake it, but there's no such thing as real-time physically accurate photon mapping, as you well know.)

The hardest part of all this — besides waiting several hours for my textures to bake — was re-orienting them once they were ported into UnrealEd. I found it necessary to flip all textures along the U axis because UnrealEd uses a right-handed (OpenGL) coordinate system, whereas 3ds max is left-handed (DirectX). I don't know what XSI uses, so you may or may not have this problem.

This particular scene is a little too bright for my taste, but it's just an example of what you can do given the inclination. (There's really too much light in the scene to see the normal maps in action.) I would be happy to send you this map for closer inspection. All textures are archived with the map itself, so there are no additional packages to install. The rar is about 4.5 megs, too big for a public download, but small enough for e-mail.

I would also be happy to write up a concise tutorial on how to do all this, including a 3ds max texture baking tutorial if it would provide any use whatsoever, but I suspect you've got more powerful software at your fingertips. This has been a fun endeavor. If you do end up using UT as your engine — which I know hinges partly on my ability to script a new interface — I would be extremely eager to make some unique maps of this nature. I like the level of personalization UT gives you, even if it doesn't have the raw flexibility of Source.

Whoops! Almost forgot to give proper credit. Those room textures are all straight out of Far Cry. The models are all from UT2004. Custom Anubis textures provided by yours truly.

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 11:10 am

certainly looks good.. but I doubt simply baking in the shading pruduced by the normal maps helps since I'd need to spend hours modeling what I could paint into the texture in mins.

otherwise speaking.. visually I think UT has the potential to work for DM but it's the damn dependancy on guns that gets in the way. I'd like to see a sword in hand or a bow and arrow.. I'd like to see the ability to cast limited time light spells.. (can you link a light to a timer and then link that timed light to the player?) all sorts of things that would need to be done to mimic the game closer..

I wonder how close it can truley become..

zoom · Post by **zoom** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 1:37 pm

cowsmanaut wrote: I wonder how close it can truley become..

How close would you like to get?
What alternatives are out there? doom3,hl2
try all of them??
who would you need again for what?

Some parts may be faked--
inventory: Just a picture of an armor. If you run across armor, you just put it on. same maybe for items and weapons.
so no 2nd inv.screen

In "doom" for example, you had a fist; works as a ninja attack or similar(dagger,staff close range)and chainsaw (hardcleave maybe)
there was shotgun, which was only effective on medium range.
dunno, maybe crossbow equivalent..

obviously, guns would be the spells.

------------------------------
in Unreal Tourament you had this nitro weapon sortof crap thing: close range "shooting thing" would work as a sword or such.

Of course , you could just take fury or bolt blade to make for a sword that actually isa gun..

how do you like the following not very close to dm:
spells work like guns.
they have a reloading time; this is the part where you fake it:
runes appear on the hands or in the air :um oh kath ra or sth. and then you may release the spell with fire.
casting is reloading basically.
you get the "feeling" that your character casts a spell, but he is just holding a gun with a long reloading time ..

You have one mouse pointer, which you will need for looking around. so it will get difficult to make the same spell system like dm, and inventory item management and world interaction will have to be modified, too.
but maybe that is not the biggest problem..
who can help cowsmanaut?

Tom Hatfield · Post by **Tom Hatfield** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 3:43 pm

Take a look at some of the mods out there and you'll see that anything is possible. UT2004 is a shooter. UnrealTech is not . . . it's an engine, and it does whatever you tell it to do. It even does 2-D fairly well, though that's not its forte. zoooom talks about making a mod that builds upon the existing framework. I'm talking about making a total-conversion that replaces the existing framework. We seem to be on different wavelengths.

Obviously you don't have to bake textures. This was just an example. Ordinarily it wouldn't take hours, either. I redid my baking three times because I kept changing the scene in such ways that I had to constantly rebuild my photon map, and my photon settings were rather high. If you used some basic GI with modest settings and fewer surfaces (I had 32 512x512 that I ended up using), it should only take a few minutes. Importing, another few minutes.

UnrealTech supports the mouse as an input device — how do you think they did the main menus? The entire game, including menus, is coded in UnrealScript. In UT99, you used the mouse to select items from the command menu. In UT200X, they simplified this by using number keys, but you can still bring the mouse back in, which I assume is what you wanted. That's why I said, I have to look at UT99 to see how they did it.

Link a light to a timer . . . the light itself would be the timer. You'd incorporate it into a script that gets processed every tick (as most scripts do), and eventually the timer runs out. This is how you'd do any time-based spell. Basic programming fundamentals.

I'm gonna be busy with work until the weekend, but I'll see if I can't throw together some examples in UScript before next week. It's entirely a factor of motivation at this point, but if you're serious about the project, I can try to be serious, too.

PadTheMad · Post by **PadTheMad** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 6:22 pm

I wondered how long it would be until someone picked up an idea like this, I've REALLY been wanting to do this ever since I got UT99 and never got round to learning the stuff. Although last year whilst waiting for my course to start I did map out the entire first level of DM and made it look really pretty with ambient lighting, but i never got round to finishing it off. This year I'm sure we'll be looking into the Source and Unreal engines on my course, not sure how useful it'll be though....

The ChaosUT mods have melee weapons in it - just look at the Bastard Sword. And I've seen a few UT2k3/4 mods that have 3D ingame menus, I think Infection was one of them. Maybe you could have a menu over the actual game - use the keyboard to move around and then use the mouse to look in inventories...

I'm not quite sure how easy it will be to change the lighting, maybe you could have the player emit a light and increase / decrease it?

I dunno, just a few ideas - this is something I would REALLY like to see happen. Not sure if I can help but i can try

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 7:40 pm

yes, I did indeed know that there was mouse play involved.. it's a mouse driven game.. (mouse look).. and I knew there was a scripting engine. I just was not sure how powerfull it was. There are a number of things to take into account.. For example.. is it one hero? or 4? can you respawn them to their proper locaion from "bones" ... inventory get's dropped as dead.. do they even have an inventory.. what about chance to hit? is that still in effect? or is it as it has been in the engine currently.. if it strikes you.. it hurts you.. so on and so on.. Some of these are fundamental changes to how the game is played and operates. Unreal currently has nothing for this. Which means it needs to be made.. So as I was saying. it's a matter of time, interests, motivation, and then of course.. the engines script limitations..

I'm of course serious about making some monsters and level items.. completing at least 1 level. after that, it really depends on what kind of time frame it took to make that stuff.. and if I'm working in the new engine yet or not (the issue with unreal as well is people need to own it to play it, where a new oe wouldn't have that need) and if so.. if it's easy for me to convert the stuff I've done over to unreal.. and as such then I could be doing a 2 for 1 sort of thing..

anyway.. work calls..

moo

Tom Hatfield · Post by **Tom Hatfield** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 9:47 pm

Scripting limitations are basically zero. If it doesn't involve fundamental changes to the multimedia architecture — which none of your ideas do, except normal mapping — it can be done.

I would advise using your own engine if you already know it. You'd have to build and release editing tools to the community if you wanted anyone else to help, and they would have to be really good editing tools. I'm of the opinion that an engine should be defined by its tools, not vice versa. With an existing engine, the tools already exist. People can start producing content right away. With your own engine, you have complete control over how it behaves and how you add content to the game — but nobody can help you until you release some decent tools.

UnrealEd is pretty much the best unified editor on the planet — at least until Serious Sam 2 comes out — and it's fairly easy to use. If you're going to make your own editor, you should base it on UnrealEd, regardless of which engine you ultimately choose.

There's a huge difference between mouse-look and a mouse-driven GUI. It doesn't matter because UT supports both. (I imagine every modern engine supports both. I don't know the underlying structure of Doom3 or Source, but I assume both have scripted interfaces that use the default rendering pipeline. That's how I would do it.)

Any mod-able engine should suffice. The only two considerations are: (a) can you use it, (b) will the community support it? Original content is interchangeable between engines as long as you have conversion tools. Your 3DS/XSI/LWO model doesn't care what engine it goes into, as long as you put it through the corrent converter first. (Except levels. Levels are pretty much exclusive to the engine you use. If you switch engines, you have to rebuild your levels from scratch. That's my greatest concern. I wouldn't t want to make a bunch of maps and find out in two weeks that you're using Doom 3 instead.) My best advice is to decide quickly, before anyone loses interest.

Let me rephrase that, because I know your decision hinges largely on what kind of help you can find. If you know somebody who can mod HL2, you should probably go with that. The whole Steam system is stupid and sucks, but people bought the game anyway, so you probably won't have much difficulty finding interested parties. By doing so, you circumvent any technical limitations imposed by UT or your own engine, and you have a prefab set of tools to work with. (I don't know how good the Source tools are, but I would guess they don't suck.)

Let me know if you find somebody. Meanwhile, I'll look at this UT source.

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Fri Sep 23, 2005 8:22 am

ok let's put it this way. I have 3 engines to look at. Source engine uses XSI but but steam will not go through our firewall at the college so we can not register it and thus not use it for the class, Doom3 uses 3D studio max which we only use for character studio so no skills in building props or characters have been developed with the class so that's out, Unreal uses maya and Max both for whatever you like.. we use maya for all our modeling and texturing and it even has an entire tool set for Maya that integrates directly. So, the choice for me is clear.. Unreal is the engine I need to develop this for.

Again I point out that I am developing this for learning purposes only at the moment because I need to be able to put together a level in unreal and import an animated character in there as well. Potentially built in maya and rigged and animated from character studio.

This project will be continued in unreal as long as my method of development for the new engine doesn't need to change.. or change much for the new engine. Basically meaning I still model in maya and animate in MAx and then levels.. well that's annother story. If I need a new editor (likley) with a new engine for the level creation then I will likley stop making the levels but I would still produce the 3D items to make the levels with and the monsters to go with it. The levels in the Unreal engine will be related to DM specifially.. the levels built in the new engine will be related to DM slightly and CSB slightly and have mostly a whole new spin on things.. a different story as well.. and likley to be slow going.. as I've annother game I'm working on that I hope to have actually lead to profit. So may switch back and forth between both as I also spend my many hours at work etc..

the point here with the unreal ed thing.. is that it's double dipping. I get a chance to make some new characters and do something fun, and I'm also doing it for work so that I can teach the students how so they can do it as well for their group projects.. so really this is the only way I can do this kind of stuff because of my busy sched.. I can justify it as part of my job at Cap.

as shown by my "mummy" I've already started and need only to finish the unwrap and texture and animate this guy. and then on to the next one.

so.. back to maps.. can we put in these triggers and such into the game? switches and pits and stuff that we can click through unreal ed? or do you need to add things in code after the map has been made in order to have those exist? I'm pretty sure there are triggers for things in there.. capture the flag and such.. and doors opening and closing.. so I'm guessing it's already there.. just want to confirm..

moo

moo