A heads-up about the SDK

Mr. Happy

Mr. Happy

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Jul 16, 2008
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The blending and foilage propagation in Unreal gives you more control though doesn't it? I haven't spent much time with it really and am not up to date on the current UDK, but I'm really impressed by the results people get with it.

ForbiddenDonut said:
I use displacements quite a lot, but I'm not a big fan of how they work. The whole "needs to be in quadratic formation with every other displacement" really eats a lot of my time.
Click to expand...

Same here. Allowing displacements on triangles would be really helpful. I like what I can do with displacements but it get's tedious. I hope more engines will support voxel terrain for caves and stuff.
 
Pocket

Pocket

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Speaking of features and the support thereof, I had a thought. You know how custom campaigns in Portal 2 and the Left 4 Dead series are packaged into VPK files? I wonder if TF2 will start to support something like that. I ask, because it seems to offer more flexibility in what sorts of things you can bundle up in it. Reskins of stock assets, for example, which are currently an issue because they persist after map changes if you just pack them.

I bring this up because I just watched footage of the Left 4 Dead 2 map Deathcraft II, which among other things reskins the zombies and player characters in a Minecraft theme. That's an extreme example, but it might be a viable workaround for things like custom intel models.
 
Tarry H Sruman

Tarry H Sruman

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Mr. Happy said:
The blending and foilage propagation in Unreal gives you more control though doesn't it? I haven't spent much time with it really and am not up to date on the current UDK, but I'm really impressed by the results people get with it.
Click to expand...

That really just boils down to the single biggest advantage UDK has over Source: Assets can be modified directly and quickly in-engine. Rather than having to make a vmt and specify the textures and settings in notepad, you can add materials to a terrain and them paint them. With Source any asset management is done through crude tools and obscure text files, UDK had a special, streamlined editor for editing the properties of just about anything.
 
colacan

colacan

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Apr 14, 2012
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So, on April 30, we will trade the SDK for a new king here in the Netherlands.
I preferred a working SDK, but whatever.
 
Burnout6010

Burnout6010

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Oct 14, 2012
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stevethepocket said:
Speaking of features and the support thereof, I had a thought. You know how custom campaigns in Portal 2 and the Left 4 Dead series are packaged into VPK files? I wonder if TF2 will start to support something like that. I ask, because it seems to offer more flexibility in what sorts of things you can bundle up in it. Reskins of stock assets, for example, which are currently an issue because they persist after map changes if you just pack them.

I bring this up because I just watched footage of the Left 4 Dead 2 map Deathcraft II, which among other things reskins the zombies and player characters in a Minecraft theme. That's an extreme example, but it might be a viable workaround for things like custom intel models.
Click to expand...

I have tried out the system for a bit in the SteamPipe Beta and VPK files do work perfectly.
Modding has just become easier ^^
 
ForbiddenDonut

ForbiddenDonut

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Mar 20, 2012
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Tarry H Sruman said:
That really just boils down to the single biggest advantage UDK has over Source: Assets can be modified directly and quickly in-engine. Rather than having to make a vmt and specify the textures and settings in notepad, you can add materials to a terrain and them paint them. With Source any asset management is done through crude tools and obscure text files, UDK had a special, streamlined editor for editing the properties of just about anything.
Click to expand...

I really can't emphasis enough how large of an advantage this is. It's so much easier pulling my model into UDK and checking it out (for scale, editing and properties). I cannot believe that Valve hasn't done something to improve this process in the last decade.
 
NoodleCollie

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I'm hoping they're thinking of doing things like this in Source 2 - ideally I'd love to see the methods of animating present in the SFM integrated directly into the developer tools so that you could define a prop's animation for a specific purpose in a map (think intro camera paths in L4D made smooth without having to parent to an invisible animated prop handle), rather than have to go and create a prop from scratch.
 
Mr. Happy

Mr. Happy

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Jul 16, 2008
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Oh god yes this ^^. I have spent many many hours animating cameras in source and it is always quite tedious and frustrating having to jump between tools and game views to get it right. That and physics simulations, also a PITA since you have to keep updating the surrounding geometry if you change the map to get a new simulation.

Great news about VPKs!

Even in UDK there is a bit of a process. It would be nice to see tools do away with import/export and replace that with databases so you can go between editors and tools by selecting the object to edit. *sideways look at p2sdk maya button*
 
Pocket

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Burnout6010 said:
I have tried out the system for a bit in the SteamPipe Beta and VPK files do work perfectly.
Modding has just become easier ^^
Click to expand...

Interesting. I'd like to know more about how this works, especially as far as servers automatically sending clients maps they don't already have. If I recall correctly, CS:GO just grabs custom maps and sticks them into the /downloads/maps/ folder. Does the server have the option of serving certain custom maps as VPKs instead of BZ2s? Where do the VPK files go? What happens if a user ends up with a VPK that contains the same map that they already have in their /maps/ folder? Or a different one with the same filename?
 
Burnout6010

Burnout6010

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stevethepocket said:
Interesting. I'd like to know more about how this works, especially as far as servers automatically sending clients maps they don't already have. If I recall correctly, CS:GO just grabs custom maps and sticks them into the /downloads/maps/ folder. Does the server have the option of serving certain custom maps as VPKs instead of BZ2s? Where do the VPK files go? What happens if a user ends up with a VPK that contains the same map that they already have in their /maps/ folder? Or a different one with the same filename?
Click to expand...

What I know is that SteamPipe TF2 can't download maps (custom content all together actually) correctly, or maybe it's just me, who knows ! Nothing shows up both in the downloads folder, or in the maps folder, and downloads are authorized :/
 
fubarFX

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Burnout6010 said:
What I know is that SteamPipe TF2 can't download maps (custom content all together actually) correctly, or maybe it's just me, who knows ! Nothing shows up both in the downloads folder, or in the maps folder, and downloads are authorized :/
Click to expand...

maybe the server has to be steampipe as well for downloads to happen?
 
Burnout6010

Burnout6010

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Oct 14, 2012
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That's the problem, I tried to join a Deathrun server earlier, the custom content was shown as downloading but it never appeared in any folder, I even tried a search for the map file name but nothing

A little thing I noticed is that materials/models mods do not work in SteamPipe, you have to put them in /tf/custom/yourcustomcontentname/
then in /yourcustomcontentname/ you can create folders like models, materials, etc
 
Mr. Happy

Mr. Happy

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So how does that work for vmt's? Is the new /custom/etc./ not needed for the $basetexture etc. ?
 
Burnout6010

Burnout6010

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Mr. Happy said:
So how does that work for vmt's? Is the new /custom/etc./ not needed for the $basetexture etc. ?
Click to expand...

Sorry I was misleading : I was talking about material/model mods that replace content from the original game. For example, the quake hitsound.

EDIT : If you are creating custom materials that DO replace things like maybe the scoots pants, you can create them like you would always do, they just need to be placed in /tf/custom/etc afterwards

I'm still jumping between the two versions of the game as both are installed, but I believe that content that does not replace things from the original game still work under tf/materials, tf/models, etc ...
Otherwise, if the custom content does replace things from the original game, it needs to be or in a .vpk or in tf/custom/*my_mod_name_here*
Custom models would then go in tf/custom/*name here*/models
 
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