Happy New Year 2011

Merry Christmas 2010

Steam Holiday Sale: Save 50% on all VALVe Games

• VALVe Complete Pack

Save 50% on all VALVe Games through Jan 2nd

Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, Counter-Strike: Source, Day of Defeat, Day of Defeat: Source, Deathmatch Classic, Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, Half-Life Deathmatch: Source, Half-Life: Blue Shift, Half-Life: Opposing Force, Half-Life: Source, Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, Portal, Ricochet, Team Fortress 2, Team Fortress Classic

Steam Holiday Sale: Save 75% on Day of Defeat: Source

€2.50 - $2.50 - £1.50

Day of Defeat: Source Updates Released

Updates to Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Day of Defeat: Source and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Source Engine Changes (CS:S, DoD:S, TF2, HL2:DM)

• Fixed an engine crash caused by too many precached models in some community maps. 

Day of Defeat: Source

• Fixed an exploit where clients could prevent weapons from recoiling properly.

• http://store.steampowered.com/news/4820/

Hammer Source Player Scale and World Dimensions

by World of Level Design

One of the most fundamental aspects of level design is proper scale and dimensions. A door way that is few units too large or too small will ruin the illusion of your environment.

A building set to improper scale will destroy the immersion of the player in your environment.

Hammer Source has few key aspects of keeping your world on scale and proper proportions.

The tutorial covers:
How to keep your map to proper scale and dimensions
Hammer Source character scale, wall height, door dimensions, stairs
Developer textures
Grid values

Read more ...

Day of Defeat: Source Updates Released

Updates to Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Day of Defeat: Source and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Source Engine Changes (CS:S, DoD:S, TF2, HL2:DM)

• Improved sv_pure:
  
  • Materials / Models / Sounds / Animations are more comprehensively protected.
  • Switched from CRC to MD5 hashes for stronger per-file validation.
  • Fixed some issues between custom files and server whitelists over level changes.
• Added HL2:MP to the list of dedicated server games when starting a server via the Tools tab in the Library

• http://store.steampowered.com/news/4812/

Interview with Billy Hallden - Level & Environment Design

by World of Level Design

Billy Hallden is a level designer and environment artist. I have been inspired by his work on WoLD forums and I wanted to find out more about his work, his process and if there were any tips he could give to an inpiring level designer and environment artist. Read more ...

Hammer Source Map Construction Breakdown

by World of Level Design

Hammer Source Map Construction Breakdown takes a look at what elements levels are made up of in Hammer Source. Knowing how a map is constructed inside Source helps you to understand your own process and what you need to do with your own maps.

The tutorial covers:
How the map constructed?
What elements are used?
How everything comes together in Hammer Source.

Read more ...

Lighting Compile Options

by Timothy 'YM' Johnson @Nodraw.net

Today I’m going to discuss the lighting conventions of source. Source has been evolving steadily since Half Life 2, with the introduction of HDR with Episode 1 and then per-vertex lighting for static props and shadowing textures with the Orange Box. These new methods for calculating lighting at compile time have become the standard for source, everything produced since the Orange Box uses them.

Unfortunately the improved lighting introduced with the Orange Box was not added to hammer’s default compile settings, even as options, so we must add them ourselves. That means we need to know what they are and what they do. There are three options that we’re going to look at today, texture shadows, per vertex lighting for static props, and exact outline shadow casting for static props. So what exactly do they do? Read more ...

Hammer Source Interface Crash Course in 15 Min

by World of Level Design

Hammer Source Interface Crash Course in 15 minutes. The tutorial covers the entire interface to get you started mapping in Hammer Source. Most commonly used functions are covered.

After watching the 15 minute video you will be comfortable navigating around the viewports in Hammer Source and you'll be ready to start mapping.

Read more ...

DoD:S, TF2, CS:S and HL2:DM Updates Released

Updates to Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Day of Defeat: Source and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Source Engine Changes (CS:S, DoD:S, TF2, HL2:DM)

• [Windows] Added support for raw mouse input. Raw input reads directly from the mouse, bypassing Windows control panel mouse settings. This addresses issues with high DPI mice, and provides for a more reliable controller experience at various resolutions
• [Windows] Improved custom mouse acceleration
• [Windows] Updated mouse configuration UI to support raw input and acceleration; added tooltips to some of the options
• [Windows] Fixed UI tooltips so that they display correctly on first hover

• http://store.steampowered.com/news/4669/

Source engine day/night cycle & dynamic weather

by biohazardpro

The position of the celestial bodies is dependent from season and clime. Right now the 2D skybox uses one texture with some overlays applied and a procedurally generated static mesh for stars.

All weather effects, daytime, clime and season are synced between client and server. Weather is randomly applied based on the current climate and the time of day can be read from the hosts computer.

Additional information:

The shadowmapping code is written from scratch and not based on Valves technique in any way. In my current build two shadowmaps at 3072² and 1024² are drawn to allow a shadow with a range of 10k units (the video just shows the former one though), all factors are variable and can be changed to the users liking.

During a second pass of the main view various information (worldspace normals, screenspace normals, depth, sky mask, sharpen mask) are drawn via MRTs to different textures at once to allow post processing effects like SSAO, DOF, edge detection and godrays. All screenspace effects can be individually toggled as well.

The weather effects include particle effects, fog, color correction and sounds, every weather routine can be assigned a weight to allow more variety. Particle effects are partially drawn in worldspace and a seperate view similar to how 3d skyboxes work.