Model Stone Railing Pack a4

[zlsa]

Stone Railing Pack - These models present the illusion of a wall, but you can jump over them.

A pack of stone railings. Railings can help you, the mapper, in many ways:

• They block players.

This "Stone Railing Pack, alpha 1" Includes:

• Four different lengths of straight railing, for when you want to stop people who are aligned to the grid.
• Three different end columns, comprising of one end column, one in-between column, and one 90-degree column (when you want to change the direction the fence goes.) Note that the latter two are patent-pending.
• Two different lengths of 45 degree railing, for when you want to stop people who are travelling at exactly 45 degrees.
• Two smooth, angled connectors that transition from 45 degree railing to straight railing, in case you're feeling adventurous and want to stop players from going straight or at an angle---at the same time.

Each model includes a collision mesh, which means these railings will block players, grenades, boxes, and anything else your players throw at them. They also include three skins---the default, neutral white, and a far less neutral red and blue. (These can be used for marking territory.)

Technical Details
The depth of all railings is 12 units; they're designed to fit into a 16-unit-wide area with a bit of room to spare. They're 36 units high (well, technically, only the collision model is 36 units high. The top of the railing is actually at 35.570 units, and the columns are a staggering 37 units high. But who cares, anyway?)

The 45 degree segments line up perfectly with the straight segments (as long as you use the angled connectors, as you should.)

The collision models follow the curve of the railing; they're not any bigger for the columns (so if you want to be a jerk and force your players to bump up and down if they walk over a column, you'll need to clip that manually.) Even the smooth, angled connector has a collision model, and it follows the inside of the curve.

 

[Moonrat]

wow that is a stone railing pack!

 

[theatreTECHIE]

These look great! One suggestion though is to make the collision mesh follow the model shape more closely. At the moment, if the collision mesh is used, players won't be able to shoot through the gaps, and if it isn't used, stickies would be able to be hidden inside the railings. This makes me need to create my own collision mesh out of block bullets if I want to use these.

 

[Diva Dan]

You should probably be using player clip for railings anyways. But it depends on what you want to do. 90% of the time you should use player clip though.

 

[zlsa]

I was originally planning on making the collision mesh hollow, but that means lots and lots of collision boxes. How much does this affect performance? (I'm assuming that most mappers won't use No Solid and custom playerclips anyway.)

 

[Mikroscopic]

I would just make the collision out of simple boxes with gaps in between them. No sense in making 100% accurate collisions.

 

[Necrσ]

It would appear that you forgot to include textures in the download file? All im getting is a props_railing folder with all the model files in it

 

[Werewolf]

Does this use stock textures? Because I have just downloaded this and I don't see any texture/material files included, only the model files.

Just loaded this in Hammer, and I have missing textures.

 

[zlsa]

Changes in this release:

• Missing textures have been added.
• Fixed missing skins on some models

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[Werewolf]

Changes in this release:

• Missing textures have been added.
• Fixed missing skins on some models

Thanks, but a couple of issues:

1. You have only packed the .vmt files, not the .vtf files, so the models still have missing skins in game.
   
2. You've added a whole bunch of un-needed folders. Just to check the files, I had to open:
   "home\zlsa\data\wine\steam\drive_c\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\Team Fortress 2\tf\materials\models\props_railing"

 

[zlsa]

My bad, sorry. This is the first time I've packaged up anything for a Source game (or even created models), and I'm finding the whole workflow a little weird and time-consuming (especially for lots of duplicate models, like I have), so I wrote custom Python scripts to simplify the whole process. Long story short, my custom scripts aren't doing what I expected them to do. I'm adding the (hopefully fixed) version now.

 

[zlsa]

Fixed the missing VTF files and the ridiculous zip file directory structure (thanks, Werewolf!)

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[Werewolf]

You've included all the files now, but the vmt's are incorrect, resulting in missing textures in game.

I took a look, and your vmt's read:

"VertexLitGeneric"
{
  $basetexture "assets/railings/textures/stone-railing-blue"
  $surfaceprop default
  $model 1
}

The path to the $BaseTexture does not match where the file is actually located, so the game can't find it.

 

[Werewolf]

Side from the other issues, I have a couple points of general feedback:

• I noticed that you have some props that are simply rotated 45°. These aren't needed as we can simply rotate props in hammer anyway!
• The origin for many of them is a few units below the bottom of the model, so when you place them they appear to float above the ground, and depending on your grid scale, clip into the ground when lowered. Line your the prop origins with the bottom of the models to prevent this.

 

[zlsa]

Sorry for the issues. I'm doing this all on Linux, and since Hammer (and most of the Source tools) only work on Windows, I have a duplicate Windows installation, and I run all of the Source tools through Wine. This means that my scripts also automatically copy all the files to my Linux installation, where I run TF2. I'm on a slow computer, and when I change a model, I need to recompile it, recompile the map, pack the assets into the BSP, copy the BSP to my Linux tf/ folder, then start TF2 again. This takes about 15 minutes. Even then, if a compile fails, the old (working) files will be copied over.

TL;DR: all my mistake, and I'm fixing it now.

 

[Werewolf]

Sorry for the issues. I'm doing this all on Linux, and since Hammer (and most of the Source tools) only work on Windows, I have a duplicate Windows installation, and I run all of the Source tools through Wine. This means that my scripts also automatically copy all the files to my Linux installation, where I run TF2. I'm on a slow computer, and when I change a model, I need to recompile it, recompile the map, pack the assets into the BSP, copy the BSP to my Linux tf/ folder, then start TF2 again. This takes about 15 minutes. Even then, if a compile fails, the old (working) files will be copied over.

TL;DR: all my mistake, and I'm fixing it now.

Anything done well takes time. We're not rushing you, just giving feedback. Take your time, make sure you've done all you need to and have no errors.

 

[zlsa]

Side from the other issues, I have a couple points of general feedback:

• I noticed that you have some props that are simply rotated 45°. These aren't needed as we can simply rotate props in hammer anyway!

These are there so each 45 degree segment ends on a clean 64 unit boundary. This means you won't have to manually wiggle things around to make them fit. The spacing of the supports is slightly stretched compared to the straight sections so it looks the same as the others.

Side from the other issues, I have a couple points of general feedback:

• The origin for many of them is a few units below the bottom of the model, so when you place them they appear to float above the ground, and depending on your grid scale, clip into the ground when lowered. Line your the prop origins with the bottom of the models to prevent this.

Huh, they're lined up for me. If you copy and paste the model, does it sit flat on the floor?

 

[Werewolf]

Huh, they're lined up for me. If you copy and paste the model, does it sit flat on the floor?

My mistake! I created a test map for so I could take a screenshot and show you, but when I looked closer I could see it was because one of the faces has no texture, so when it's viewed from the side in the 2D view makes it look like the prop is floating above the ground.

I've circled it in red here:

 

[zlsa]

Oh yeah, only the simpler LODs have that face filled. It's because, in theory, that face shouldn't be shown anyway (you should always butt it up against a wall or use a column to end it.) It's there for the simpler LODs because the ends won't line up anymore, and I didn't want there to be a gap through to the floor.

 

[zlsa]

This release fixes the incorrect material filename in the VMT file; it also adds a 90 degree curve with a 32 unit radius, and updates the collision mesh on the straight sections to have gaps in them.

Read the rest of this update entry...