I remember at least two people who wanted (and started) to remake emp_slaughtered. Is anyone still working on them ? I haven't been able to come up with a new map layout i'd like the make, so instead i'm thinking about retexturing (and slightly altering) existing maps. Most have been redone by Keef already, but slaughtered is still pretty ... unpretty. Hence the question, is there anyone still working on it, or can i have a go at it ?
Please do! Slaughtered is still the map that gives consistently the best matches in pub games, it deserves more than one green texture reaching up even to the mountain hills.
PLEASE, YES! first thing to retexture should be that rotting trunk next to the lake. current texture looks worse than minecraft. Maybe you can even make some minor changes that give more natural sense to the layout, like those weird concrete road in the south and the lake, they look unnatural atm.
don't ask me about slaughtered i've never had anything to do with it Also, awesome, although I would say the displacements need completely redoing as they are utterly broken fuck ugly abominations at the moment. That would be a lot of work for you though...
I wouldn't just keep the surface as vertically moved vertices. I'd replace the insane stretched mountainsides with actual vertical brushes. I have some aspects of a perfectionist in me that stop me from stretching terrain. You wouldn't believe the continual fight i had against myself when making bush and chain, when part of me wanted more detailed terrain, but the other part kept refusing to allow for stretched textures. The result has always been to manually move each and every vertice of each and every displacement in each and every axis trying to find a proper balance, and to keep doing that untill ... well untill i've gotten used to the fact that i can't make it perfect actually. This process does take a few years. Looking back, i realize i may have more than just some aspects of a perfectionist in me.
You know there's a lovely texture setting in orangebox that makes it almost impossible to stretch textures? Honestly I thought you were using it on chain. http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/$seamless_scale It has a couple of downsides, most seriously you have to convert the normal maps into ssbump versions, which can be a bit fiddly, but lost coast comes with quite a lot of heightmaps you can use to generate ssbump textures, and actually any heightmap will work with the height2ssbump tool, it's also apparently faster to run than regular normal mapping and looks nicer if you get it right. The other thing is that you can't change the scale in hammer, you have to use the one defined in the .vmt, but in exchange you can basically make whatever you want displacement wise and the texture will fit perfectly, even meshing with other displacements.
Yeah i had put my hopes on that feature, however for some reason it will only work for me with "LightmappedGeneric". I remember it looking quite awesome on rocks. The moment i turn a material into "WorldVertexTransition" for blending however, it stops working. I tried to fix this for over a week, but then i just gave up. I had copied working vmt's from forums and tutorials, but they didn't work either. Unless i turned them into "LightmappedGeneric".
You know LightmappedGeneric actually works virtually the same as worldvertextransition, for blends and displacements? I'm not sure how it handles detailprops but the only different that I'm aware of is that the blend textures are inverse when you load the map in game than when you load the map in hammer. FYI seamless_scale is also very effective and a good starting value is "$seamless_scale" ".002"
All very interesting, but quite unusefull. Seamless_scale just doesn't work with worldvertextransition for me. Also i remember how textures were inverse, so at some point in the past it must have worked. Edit: This is the screen i posted a long time ago when i was experimenting with seamless_scale combined with ssbumps: Even back then it only worked with LightmappedGeneric
It does work with blended textures, I've used it with them, one thing it can't do though is I don't think it can blend between normal maps.
Tested it again yesterday, it doesn't work with blended textures for me like i said twice before. I formatted my pc three times in the last few years, so it can't be broken files either. It just won't work. And no it can't blend normal maps. The ssbump used for texture 1 will be used everywhere. The way i make maps, i can't use seamless_scale even if it did work. Since there are places where i want details and normal maps, i'd need materials with and without seamless_scale. Ironically enough there's a very obvious seam between the two. That's the main thing i don't like about the source engine. It has all the necessary features, but this doesn't work with that, that doesn't work with this, ... and they managed to do this in a way that means that none of these features can ever be used without causing ugly effects. Source won't even allow me to put normal maps on the clifs in chain. If i put normal maps there, the blend material going from rock to grass needs one too (or you get a seam), which means all of the grass would need normal maps (or you get a seam). Even when i use my decoy normal map so there are no lighting seams while you don't see normal map effects where you don't want any, then it cripples the performance. I used materials with cloud detail only on the lower level in chain. I couldn't put them on the higher levels to add detail cause those surfaces go over in the vertical cliffs, which causes a seam of shadows on the edge. There's simply nothing in the Source engine that just works unconditional.
I believe the slaughtered files are missing or lost, although you could probly decompile it. Someone did make a new slaughtered a while ago, you might start by looking for that. You might be better off just starting from scratch though. As far as I know slaughtered is just one big displacement with canyons pushed into it. Thats why the textures are so horribly stretched and why you can drive up the walls like a half pipe.
i would even like to see that you switch the setting to maybe a bit more urban or industrial that way you could replace some of the mountains with hug building or stuff like that as long as you keep roughly the previous main paths
Yeah I can't argue with that, I've had trouble trying to use normal and blendmodulate textures at the same time, it's definitely annoying. Worse is you can't test without reloading the game, very annoying. Unreal style material editor would be lovely.
hug building ove: also silk, consider what o_O just said. if you make propper cliffs on slaughtered, chance that ppl wont be able to wallride anymore is good. while it would be way more believable (to me at least), the map will get even more of a permanent stalemate. so if you redo the canyon thing, be careful or youll earn nothing but bitching ...
No idea where your "belief" comes from. I have all official maps including unfinished maps from grizzly, keef/shandy maps and some other stuff in svn and on my pc.
