Hey everyone, this post does not contain a bunch of interesting mapping guides or stories based on some online game. This is just a heads up on the situation for the next couple of weeks to what is planned for the next few months for Virtually Reality. But first i just thought i’d let you know that me and Soul are going to be on holiday for the best part of 10 days, which is from the 3rd to the 12th of September. It is a bit of a late holiday but my work has been mounting and its the right time for us to go away for an awesome camping adventure. If you’re interested in reading about our adventures then you can do so via my personal twitter blog.
Stoned Wombat will be the all powerful forum admin and wordpress poster whilst we’re away. So if you make a post in the blog then let Stoned Wombat know and he can post it for you.
When we return we have a bunch of changes coming for Virtually Reality, and probably some more ideas which we will get whilst camping. The first of which is that we are going to be getting a Left 4 Dead 1 versus game planned, date is yet to be confirmed but we hope to get some old members from the Survivors Diary back playing with us and getting some old school Left 4 Dead fun on the go.
Souls “Art of Team Fortress 2: part 2″ video is nearing completion and will be finished shortly after we return from the camping trip, so expect it to come out around the 13th – 15th of September. You can read more about that in her forum production blog.
Secondly, something that we have mentioned not so long ago is that we will be buying ourselves a Team Fortress 2 server and doing a month’s worth of mutations for Team Fortress 2. We will be editing the Server CVAR’s to bring a different type of gaming experience for TF2 players, we’re not aiming for serious game play but something a bit different like having Spy and Heavy night or something. We already have 4 ideas lined up and some posters will be coming along about that after we get back. That is set to take place during October 2010.
Thirdly, we will be getting a bunch of new changes to the website in the way of layout. Nothing too major the navigation is set to change and how we organise our content is going to become radically more efficient, as our idea for Virtually Reality has changed so has the way we wish to display our content. some of our regular posters will be getting their own blog pages rather than having to post under “guest”. Also we have word of new content coming from our forum pirate, Stabby, she is meant to be doing something on one of her favourite games, something that soul knows about but is not allowed to say.
One of the major new changes that i am thinking about is use of the new Steam API. It’s a new way for users to log into the forums, instead of having to register you will be able to log in using your steam details (you will go to the steam website and it will check your details, we won’t get any of your log in information) and then you can browse the forums with your steam account and make posts. If you don’t have steam you can create a forum account like normal and use that. Current users will be given the opportunity to switch to the steam account setup and be able to log in via that instead.
There are some other ideas in the works and more will definitely come from the camping trip so stay tuned, we hope to also have enough content soon to start majorly advertising ourselves everywhere and getting this community bigger and better.
Fear not my dear readers, I have not abandoned you. I have however gone for longer than I had hoped without a post so here’s an update on the status of that beta invite I promised in part 2.
In a physical sense the map is totally ready for beta and has been for just under a week. Proof:
Routes are finished, lighting has been added, the gameplay perspective of the environment is actually complete pending beta feedback revision. But I’ve hit a wall with the navmesh. For those who don’t know, the navmesh is what tells the infected, survivor bots and director where they can and cannot go. It’s also absolutley required for gameplay to actually happen – without it the map will run fine but it will be empty. You can generate the navmesh fairly easily with a few console commands by aiming the crosshairs at your feet and typing:
Well, I’ll try and avoid boring technical details but a navmesh has now been automatically generated. I’ve typed the commands at the bottom of the article for anyone who wants them.
But the silly computer is not all that good at doing that and the navmesh has several problems. I say several, there was several thousand individual navmesh tiles reporting problems. The key problem is that the computer failed to correctly generate a path from the start to end of the map, and without that there will be no wandering infected and the bots will wander even more aimlessly than usual. It won’t be playable.
Sad face.
So before I can release the beta I have to identify all the breaks in the path then adjust the navmesh and probably also the map to correct them until the path is complete (as it should have been in the first place). How long this will take I can’t say but it’ll probably be another week before I can give out the beta links.
Also, I will only give the links to the first 3 people who request them after part 3 is released. You can find me on steam (insanewombat) this site (Stoned Wombat) skype (stoned_wombat) or by email at walmsleymk1@googlemail.com. The beta and eventually completed map will be hosted on it’s own dedicated server courtesy of United Gaming Clan.
I’ll see you back here in around a week with part 3 and that tasty beta.
Stoned Wombat
Greetings fellow geeks! This is not a tutorial just a list of what you do. Yes, there is a difference, a tutorial looks like this. Anyway:
nav_edit 1
nav_mark_walkable
nav_generate_incremental
Hey presto, a navmesh of, in theory, all the areas you can travel to. Next we tell the director where the player starts by aiming and typing:
nav_toggle_in_selected_set
mark PLAYER_START
nav_clear_selected_set
Then we repeat the process for the ending area except with
mark FINALE
or
mark CHECKPOINT
And once that’s done we round the whole thing off with:
Okay, so i have been thinking about this article since the announcement of the new Left 4 Dead/2 DLC, for those that have been holding up in their safe rooms too tightly i will give you a quick catch up: Valve announced that the new DLC for Left 4 Dead 1 is going to be coming to Left 4 Dead 2 as well. It will be a 3 map campaign but this one has longer maps than the Passing and Crash Course so it should last everyone a bit longer as well as have a whole new way to do a finale. In this campaign, in Left 4 Dead 2, you will be able to play as the original four survivors. There is some other stuff about a comic etc but the major thing is that Left 4 Dead 2 players are going to be getting the Left 4 Dead 1 campaign: No Mercy. Which, as I’m led to believe will be playable, in L4D2 as the original 4 survivors.
And this is where the point of this article becomes apparent. The strengths of the two games are going to be coming together in almost a perfect join like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle of zombie fragging awesomeness. Left 4 Dead 1 and Left 4 Dead 2 have very little in common to me, yes they feature the same concept but the execution of the two games is very different. Here is where they differ:
Left 4 Dead 1′s strengths:
Survivors: that’s right, we love the original survivors. Not one of them is hated generally by the community, you don’t get kicked from someone elses lobby just so that the lobby leader doesn’t have to play as that hated survivor. Francis, Bill, Zoey and Louis are all smegging awesome characters, they are well made, interesting, funny. The Left 4 Dead 2 survivors on the other hand, although fit into the southern American style are more annoying than charming.
Atmosphere: Left 4 Dead 1 is set two weeks after the first infection so the world the original survivors find themselves in is already breaking apart, rotting and the last fires are just going out. This world was dark, creepy and tense. The feeling of death was visible even from the colour of the walls and this was an atmosphere which i greatly prefer over Left 4 Dead 2. It’s actually something i miss the most in the second game. L4D2′s atmosphere is nothing like this, the infection for these survivors has only just hit and so everything is still in working order. Even the carnivals and amusement parks are working to an extent. This world was not as forboding and is never as memorable, atmospherically speaking, as the original. Especially in No Mercy where the hospital barley had power and its lifts were slow and sometimes missing.
So these are the two strong points of Left 4 Dead 1 over Left 4 Dead 2, so now for its sequel:
The Best Bits of Left 4 Dead 2:
Gameplay: Left 4 Dead 2′s gameplay was where the sequel greatly improved over the first one. Melee weapons, and a greater diversity of projectile weapons and infected allows for more fun and diverse gameplay. You had a choice for most of the weapons, it is not like the first one where it was dual pistols and that was it, you got them because they were an improvement on just one. In Left 4 Dead 2 you chose between a number of Melee weapons from baseball bats to frying pans, or you choose the dual pistols again or the one hit kill Magnum. Each choice gave you different outcomes, and allowed people to balance their weapons out better. Players with automatic/sniper rifles with melee secondary, could cover team mates from a distance and still hold their own against enemies up close. Players favouring the shotgun can choose the pistols as backup to allow better combat capabilities at a distance. As well as that the finale’s and crescnedo’s differ from running around collecting cans to running across a friggin’ rollercoaster to turn off an alarm that’s calling the infected. This leads to a better bunch of times of zombie fragging for everyone.
Infected: Although i hate the skinning of the new smoker and the new tank, Left 4 Dead 2 has the best infected, hands down. The walking witch, the charger, spitter and jockey allow for a better load up of infected to fight against. And not only that but there is also the uncommon-common infected that made horde events more dangerous to the survivors, as well as the versus game play that has become more balanced against teams who camp in a corner.
So you see the two games are great and i love them both but they have areas of strength where the other does not. And this is where the No Mercy in Left 4 Dead 2 is going to become the best part of the two games because you get:
To play as the four survivors
The atmosphere of No Mercy
The diverse weapons
The new infected
This is such a perfect joining of the two games that it makes me wish it was already October 5th so that i can get onto playing that game. I am aware that you can already download the No Mercy campaign for Left 4 Dead 2 and perhaps even remodel the new survivors to the old ones but this change is going to be official, meaning that there is going to be a huge improvement on the voice acting. We will hear as Louis picks the Samurai sword and Francis grosses out over the Bile Bomb, with Zoey chuckling at the chainsaw and Bill doing unspeakable things with the new M60.
I find that often times what draws me to a game is not the same thing that draws my girlfriend. Headshots, zombies and gore may not strike my girlfriend as particularly engaging BUT that won’t stop her from spending hours customizing her mercenary’s mask, much to my chagrin… I found this video of the Fable series creator Peter Molyneux’s new game, Milo. Built to take full advantage of the Xbox’s new camera, Kinect, which allows players to interact with their games in much the same way as the Wii (but arguably in a much more interesting way), Milo follows the story of a young boy who has recently moved to a new town and is having problems adjusting. You essentially play as a figment of Milo’s imagination, there to aid him in his troubles.
Most of this is explained in the video, but what really got my attention was the different ways men and women interacted with Milo. This video is a demo of the first ten minutes of the game, to which Molyneux is giving a presentation. Most of the video is regarding the game itself but Molyneux speaks, at times, about the different interactions men and women have with Milo. Very interesting. I’m done repeating the words men, women, different, interesting and Milo. Here’s the video:
I always get excited when I find games that look like they’ll further the acceptance of gaming as a culture. This one looks like a contender to me. What’s a game that you see as a vehicle for mass acceptance? Why?
Captains Log stardate: 88194.45. Things have been very busy, ever since my promotion to the rank of Commander, starfleet have been keeping me occupied along the Romulan front. However the new ship that i have at my command is a lot more powerful than the last, the Pegasus-B. And with Rear-Admiral Langford being given command of a Sovereign class ship too, we were more than ready for any Romulan challenge that came our way.
U.S.S Osprey - E
Despite the ongoing battles that the federation faces, we still continue our primary objective of joining new species into the United Federation of Planets. It fills me with hope that so many new species will join our quest for peace and exploration. The latest member to Starfleet is the speicies known as the Grafittis, my first encounter with a member of them was found, dancing amongst a starship hologram, on a desk on which people were working. I had thought this was some kind of cultural thing and in my most diplomatic fashion, i climbed up onto that desk and did the robot. She did not seem to have really noticed and continued with her dance. Langford stood to the side looking a bit confused by the experience. I bid her good day and left.
Missions have started to become increasingly dangerous, recently during a search and rescue we became trapped by Hirogen who were trying to lead us down to a planet and get us to play through some of their training exercises as the enemies to be defeated by their initiates. I almost lost my entire away team during such skirmishes but Rear-Admiral Langford managed to reach our position in time and beamed down to assist us. It still confuses me why a delta quadrant species is here in the Alpha Quadrant, especially within Romulan space. Such questions i hope to be answered in the near future.
I wish all away missions started like this...
The Pegasus was recently called to the aid of Admiral Leonard James Akaar who was negotiating a treaty with the Chief Elder of the Aelasans over mining rights for a resource known as topaline. We were tasked with maintaining the peace within the sector when we came into conflict with some Romulan and Klingon ships. After defeating them we detected multiple life signs on the planet below, me and Langford led an away mission to the planets surface in an attempt to reach Admiral Akaar and defend him from the approaching Klingon away teams. Upon reaching the surface we came into contact with the Chief Elders daughter, she led us to the village although her fear seemed to have caused her to make mistakes during her chosen path as we often ran into contact with the Klingons. We reached the camp and found that the Klingons were also trying to get mining rights on this planet, but with the assistance that i gave to the Chiefs daughter, i was able to help the Admiral and complete the agreement for Starfleet to have mining rights over the Klingons.
The destruction of the Romulan homeworld has not caused them to show any signs of collapse and still maintain a strong militrary threat to the federation, although the civil war between the Remans and the Romulans has escalated i find that they are still able to construct ships of vast power. Along with a Federation task force we engaged a Scimitar class battleship, one last seen in 2379 which almost caused the destruction of the U.S.S Enterprise – E. Luckily starfleet combat ships have come a long way and we managed to destroy the ship and its surrounding vessels with relative ease.
The Scimitar falls...
As we go further into space and encounter enemies wishing to destroy the federation and what we stand for, it enrages an alien anger inside me. I remember a time when we used to be explorers not fighters. But alas the Federation will always need battleships to defends its borders and people, and i know that the Pegasus and the Osprey will always be there to defend them…
It’s been a while. Hi. How are you? I’ve missed you. …in a very platonic way. ANYWAYS!
Let’s Get It On!:
Burnout Revenge
What’s the worst thing about racing games? You’re burning down the stretch. You’re in first place with two opponents right on your tail. You’re closing in on the finish line when BAM! cross traffic slams you into a guard rail and you’re impressive lead quickly becomes a solid fifth place finish. That’s when you throw the controller across the room, erupt into obscene profanities (half of which don’t make any sense), and contemplate ejecting the disc, snapping it in half and slitting your wrists with both halves ensuring you’ll never have to suffer from this shitty, SHITTY GAME ever, ever again. …or something like that. Well, the beauty of Burnout is it makes crashing fun. This racer is a bit arcadey so the cars handle less realistically and allow for more good ol fashion enjoyment. Some players hate this, others (read: gamers less into the intricacies of realistic car racing physics and more into recreating famous movie car chase scenes) love it! Weaving in and out of traffic on the highway, going the wrong way down a city street and ramming your opponents into the scenery are just a few of the engaging aspects of the game. And each of these activities fill your boost meter, which gives you an edge. And if you crash, not only does it look beautiful but you have the option to steer your wreckage into oncoming racers and sometimes even blow your own car up! Hahaha!
If you’re like KS, racing is fun but the destruction is funner! …or more fu, no funner! There’s a Race Mode (do whatever you want in the process but cross the finish line first to win), Road Rage Mode (there is no finish line, destroy the most opponents before time runs out) and Crash Mode! Crash Mode presents you with an intersection or something similar and gives you one chance to cause as much damage as possible. You can do this co-operatively or competitively, competing for a better score and working together to boost it.
Here’s a clip of a race (Warning: For those who have heart conditions… enjoy!):
And Crash Mode… but in German:
The color filter at the end was added by the filmer. What he, for some inexplicable reason, did not show was the copter cam at the end that hovers over the wreckage as it totals the amount of damage in dollar value you caused. Very fun!
This time, leave a comment. Like racing games? Why or why not? What’s your favorite racing game?
Hey, I’m Stoned Wombat and this is part 2 of my series on the mapping process, explained using examples from a custom map I am developing according to each post.
Today I’m going to be talking about the first stage of actually creating the map, “blocking”, and about where you can go from there.
“Blocking” when mapping with hammer refers to sculpting the basic shapes of the map using the brush tool. This is almost always the very first thing you do because it lets you look around what you planned (you did make a plan, right? right?) ingame and in hammer and then revise it. That’s what this part is all about, getting a feel for the map and then adjusting it as needed.
So, you open up hammer and you’re greeted with three empty grids and a black box. I’m not going to cover how to use hammer because that has been thoroughly explained in other tutorials so if you don’t know how, skip down to the bottom of the article where you will a selection of tutorials linked.
Still here? Great. I recommend having your plan somewhere where you can see it while you work as a reference because when you try to create from memory things rarely seem to turn out the same way. I like to have a printout of my plan on the desk in front of me or have it open in a separate window.
Now what you want to start doing is creating brushes the shape and size of the buildings, open areas and other large objects you may have in your map. Simple shapes will do, we’re aiming to do this quickly and simply because the simpler you keep it the easier it will be to revise. Don’t start creating windows or doors or even walls, a fat square brush will do just fine for a building. You just want to create a space which you can wander around in. This took me about 15 minutes, if it takes you more than an hour even for an exceptionally long map you are doing something wrong. Here’s what I ended up with. The image on the left is my previous plan, the image on the image on the right the top-down view in hammer.
As you can see, simple defined blocks used as buildings and terrain is all I’ve used here – nothing fancy, nice and simple. You might have noticed I’ve already started revising parts of my plan. the path from north to south is thinner reducing the open area and guiding the player better as well as reducing sightlines. I also added a murky ground-flow lake which you can see as the collection of seemingly random blocks between the two buildings on the north-south path. At this point I had decided that rather than have parkland, which is rather bland and far too open, I would have an abandoned brownfield site which gave me much more options and suited the style of the map better.
And that’s all your initial blocking. Close your level in with a few more blocks and then hit F9 and take a look. You want to finding ways to improve the map gameplay like reducing sightlines or working out how to guide the player better like adding key landmarks. Another key thing to look for is checking the scale. Make sure the map is a sensible size at this stage while things can still be changed. Once you start adding textures, props and lights it’s much more effort to move stuff around so take your time and look carefully now. You might also want to consider sharing your creation with other people, an outside observer or three can be a great benefit. The free VoIP program Skype offers a screenshare feature which can be great for giving friends a guided tour over the internet.
Hopefully now you are happy with how the map is coming along and you feel you have the brushes where you like them, save a backup and we’ll move on to the second stage of blocking.
So to recap: you now have a 3d version of your map created according to your plan with the correct scale and roughly representative of the shape of the map and how it will look to the player. Now it’s time to start adding some detail blocks.
Go back to the blocks that are going to be used in the gameplay. Buildings people walk through, walls people clamber over, etc etc. Cut and shape them into something a little more representative of how the player will experience for them. What we are trying to accomplish here is a playable closed beta that you can share out and get some feedback. Clearly, the map you have right now is not ready but fear not, with a little effort we can make it so.
This stage is all about gameplay so while you work, don’t stop thinking. How can the zombies get to the player? How many entrances and exits are there? Could the player sneak past this entire section? How is the player guided? I like to add breakwalls and holes in the walls and roofs in order to keep the player on his toes and challenged as he moves forward. Bear in mind the special infected – low roofs and windows can help them ambush and restricting the players line of sight makes them more dangerous.
It might take a few days but it will be well worth it once a friend plays the map, comes back and says something like “You do know you can hop onto this roof and skip that whole middle section right?” or “This sucks, all these rooms only have on way in and out and I played your whole map without taking damage wtf”.
Thanks for reading, I hope this has been helpful for you and don’t forget to comment below. To close, some pics from my example map. Next post will be a beta invite.
Hey folks, this is Stoned Wombat. Welcome to my new pet project, Using Hammer With Wombats.
I’m afriad it doesn’t involve any animal cruelty, instead it’s a tutorial slash blog exploring the level design process and the use of the mapping tool Hammer using the example of my specially created project – creating a new L4D2 map. I’ll keep feeding regular articles on my progress so that hopefully you, my readers, can get an idea of what goes into making a map and some ideas of your own while encouraging me to keep working. So lets begin.
For this first article, we shall begin at the beginning and like many other things in life the beginning is planning. It’s so very tempting to jump into hammer and get cracking but you must resist! Without an outline of what you are going to create, the final product will likely be confusing and haphazard. To help you create your plan I’ll run you through my planning process, with examples from my level under construction. Bear in mind that this is my personal method and you may well find that you prefer to create a different way – if that’s the case then go for it, there is no best method just the way that suits you best.
My first stage is a brainstorm – I need an idea to start to work with. A great source of these ideas is a page from an excellent website called World Of Level Design with images of 100 level design ideas. Linkage.
So I had a flick through those images and picked out the ones which looked “cool”. Then I took out the ones which had been done many times before – it’s part of our duty to the community not to keep remaking the same old areas. Next I organize them into groups of images which fit together and could become areas of a map. For example, see the image below. I have organized them into 3 horizontal groups. From top to bottom: City Scenery, Overgrown, City Buildings with the final image being the overall setting.
From these groups, we can work out how to link them together into a map. A bullet pointed list works well for me. I turned those image groups into:
•City on a mountain
•Skyscrapers, freeways
•Moves through overgrown park
•Emerges in downtown
•Escape via government building
You might have been thinking of something completely different, and that’s fine. Again, there’s no right answer and we want a little personality in our maps. Now we’ve gone from a cluster of “cool” images to a working structure for our map. But we aren’t done yet. Now it’s time to start working out In this next image, I have made a top-down annotated sketch of how the map will progress. This is the first stage where we begin to see how our map will come together. The reason for the top down view is not just because it helps us see the whole map but because once you enter hammer you’ll be working from mostly with a top-down grid.
You can see that this is just a very quick first sketch of our layout. It probably won’t take you more than 10 minutes. In this case I went with a classic U shape. The reason I’m using it here and you’ll find them very often in official maps (the outside areas of No Mercy for instance are often a U shape) is that it lets you have a focal point in the center to give the player something to help them navigate by. It could be a particularly tall skyscraper, a dam, a scientific research center, a hospital (three guesses which l4d2 level uses a hospital as the focal point) or something else entirely so long as it’s clearly visible and memorable. The U shape also helps obstruct sight lines and lets you see your destination from the very start on occasion. Another l4d example is The Parish campaign: the entire campaign is one massive U shape. You can see the escape bridge on the horizon right from your starting position on the first level.
You can skip this next stage if you like, but I find it gives me a little inspiration as well as collecting some reference images. Reference images are pictures of areas like those you want to create and you’ll find them far better than memory for creating realistic maps. I like to paint them onto the sketch, like you can see below.
We’re almost ready to start mapping but not quite. Last and very important is a fairly detailed top-down sketch of how your map is going to look. We’ll use gridlines both for a sense of perspective and because that’s what it will look like in the editor. I like to colour-code my sketch. The blue outline is our previous sketch. The black lines indicate areas the player cannot cross, and as you’ve probably guessed in this case it will be mostly walls and buildings in the example below. The arrows indicate the path the player will take. I change the colour to indicate changing altitude aka stairs, lifts, slides etc. I’ve tried to break up sightlines as much as possible because it makes my job much easier – large open areas are a huge pain to detail.
There you have it, my process for creating a plan using just a few starting images. Next post, I’ll be talking about basic use of hammer and some tips on how to speed up the blocking in process, again with real examples.
It’s the start of a brand new set of mutations and this one will be hard to follow in the upcoming weeks. Gib fest puts the fragtasticaly lucrative M60s in the hands of all four of our survivors, resulting in a satisfying casual experience.
The game play comes off a lot easier than typical L4D2 play style which can make it feel unrewarding for more hardcore players, however cranking it up to expert throws the risk of friendly fire into the mix, but not so much that everything becomes a chainsaw massacre style cluster f**k.
For the more casual L4D2 players and people who have never been fast enough to grab hold of the M60 before their eager team mates do in a regular game, this will be a hell-of-a-lot-of-fun, because this mutation doesn’t want you to be an expert… it wants you to enjoy the game and does everything in its power to maintain this incentive.
The infinite bullet stream requires no stopping to reload, which admittedly takes out some of the excitement and tension, but if you add an injection of ahdrenline as a replacement you can get a pyro style continuous forward fire speed run on the go… get four adrenalin shots… and by god, you’ve got yourself an 80s theme party. however, speciality bullets only last for the equivalent of one clip… which isn’t a lot when you consider how much ammo this thing chews through.
Me and thorn found other benefits of not having to reload. if its cheating to use your infinite bullet stream to rescue a gnome from its wooden zombie pistachio prison… then report me to vac because I did what I had to do, damn it!
Team play is slightly lessened during horde attacks because less cover is needed on team mates when they don’t need to reload, but the special infected attacks maintain the need to stick and work together.
In light of this, it would have been awesome if the horde count was increased, but unlike the other weapon themed mutations where we had mentioned including similar dynamics, this would just be a bonus on top of an already awesome mutation. Of course you can always simulate additional hordes with the power of bile anyway…
I like to predict what the next mutation will be based on the name given in the L4D2 blog, but because the next mutation is called “Iron man” its difficult to tell what that could mean… I’m thinking a reference to the iron man contests, but I’m not sure how that will come off in game. I’m hoping infinite adrenalin rush with golf clubs and no special infected. wishful thinking…
Hey everyone, this post does not contain a bunch of interesting mapping guides or stories based on some online game. This is just a heads up on the situation for the next couple of weeks to what is planned for the next few months for Virtually Reality. But first i just thought i’d let you know that me and Soul are going to be on holiday for the best part of 10 days, which is from the 3rd to the 12th of September. It is a bit of a late holiday but my work has been mounting and its the right time for us to go away for an awesome camping adventure. If you’re interested in reading about our adventures then you can do so via my personal twitter blog.
