Messages

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HL2EM Discussion / The future

« on: January 13, 2020, 12:54 PM »

MMod does a lot of the right things, for what it doesn't do regarding new models, textures, etc – it excels at the others, like effects, and that enigmatic Game Feel; honestly I doubt we (HL2EM Devs) would have ever spent time getting the feel where they did. 
HL2:EM was all about screenshots, and lots and lots of arguments about the name of the mod.

Really what killed HL2:EM was pretty multi-faceted, probably the same rot that kills most ambitious mods; that being a lack of talent willing to stick it out, scope creep, and disorder.  It being developed inside a dropbox account for the first part of its life probably didn't help either.

Half-Life 2 : MMod, which ironically enough was at one point "Half-Life 2 : Episode 2 - Enhanced"; Actually it was misspelled "Enhased Mod", though they got the last laugh, having released something!

If Source 2 actually ends up being a thing, then I'd certainly be willing to work on a Half-Life 2² project, but I can't say the same for anybody else that was on the team.  It'd be a massive undertaking, but assuming the talent was there, then I think there's at least a chance that the scope and direction could be pinned down, resulting in at least something getting done.

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Announcements / Officially in Hiatus & The Future

« on: September 24, 2017, 01:57 PM »

Well from what I understand, the project is still being worked on, but by only one guy. I just wish that more people could pipe in and assist for it to be finalized as a steam release....

Dunno who, Ken might be churning away at some code, but at this point it'd be so divorced from what "HL2EM" was that it's not relevant here.
I think Stiffy360 posted some work in the FP Mapping section, but that was mostly experimentation, don't think there was an intention to actually restart, especially since it was still OG Source.
But I can only talk about what comes my way, I'm not hard to get in contact with, so if people wanted me to know things, they'd do it.

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Announcements / Officially in Hiatus & The Future

« on: September 24, 2017, 01:47 PM »

Can you please release the current files to the public, so maybe the rest of us can try and fix it? Source 2 will probably take longer to release than initially thought.

The project was an amalgamation of a bunch of people's work, it isn't right for me to release others work without their express permission.
That said, a number of members have released their work outside of the project, such as Porky-da-Corgi, whom released his face textures on GameBanana independently.
I've also released a chunk of what I made on my own website.

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HL2EM Discussion / Is it dead?

« on: October 31, 2016, 07:17 AM »

See: http://hl2em.com/forums/index.php/topic,2494.msg2870.html#msg2870

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HL2EM Discussion / Suggestion Sanctum

« on: January 26, 2016, 11:18 AM »

Nah, I'm not into 'better', I'm into WIP and broken stuff. I find 'behind the scenes' and in-development more interesting than release content.

So, is steam version basically a raw port to a different source engine branch? I'm just eager to see how it worked. It's Alien Swarm branch, isn't it?

Yes, ASW branch with a lot added in, main menu acts a lot like the L4D2 menu.  Experimental CSM shadows.  And lots of bugs.

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HL2EM Discussion / Suggestion Sanctum

« on: January 24, 2016, 12:13 PM »

So... Could we have a download? I mean it's on steam - it should be super-easy to allow dedicated people from this forums to try it, I'm dying to see what was there in your mod, to mess around a bit.

The Steam version doesn't have much actual content in it, the code has quite a few changes (Ken did these), but a lot of the actual content is still in each developer's folder, quoting myself from Facepunch:

Lots of placeholder and broken stuff, all developers had their own content directory that the "modded" into the game to use, very little of what was made actually was included in the steam version, most of it had to be downloaded off the SVN and manually put in.  (This was done because nobody but Ken knew how to pipe content onto steam)

If you're looking for a "Better" HL2 Experience, look into Half-Life 2: Update, or download "Half-Life 2: Old Engine".

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HL2EM Discussion / Suggestion Sanctum

« on: October 28, 2015, 07:16 AM »

Just wondering, if the project does fall through, will any of the content created for it be released?

Probably not in full, I released some of the stuff I made, and Corgi had released some of his stuff too: http://hl2.gamebanana.com/skins/126833

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HL2EM Discussion / Suggestion Sanctum

« on: October 25, 2015, 01:19 PM »

If it's cancelled or anything like that, could we ever have a download in its current state, Doing that at least the mod wont be totally dead doing this, It's one of those "It's not Half-Life 3 but i'll take it!" things. There have been people following this mod for a few years with the same internal question, "When is it coming out?!", and hearing "It's Dead, Jim." is really off putting, this is one of those unique mods, and maybe it would spring new life, more HALF of the current LIFE it could bring, Bug Posts, putting Devs on a fun little bug hunt... something?

The announcement still fairly well conveys the state of the project: http://hl2em.com/forums/index.php/topic,2494.msg2870.html#msg2870
Most of the primary developers (The people who were making models, modifying levels, textures) are in contact, but nothing is being made right now.  The project is in hiatus, if Source 2 comes out and we don't pick back up, then the project will probably be dead, if not then it'll come back; we're all waiting on Source 2 to see what happens.

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HL2EM Discussion / Suggestion Sanctum

« on: October 12, 2015, 05:19 PM »

    Man, that's harsh. It's a shame to see such a good idea get stuck because nobody wants to do the work they're assigned and nobody wants to trust anyone else to do the same.

It's something mods and even indie games suffer from commonly.  It's something I plan on getting more experience in, barring Source 2 coming out suddenly this or early next year.

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HL2EM Discussion / Suggestion Sanctum

« on: August 24, 2015, 06:53 AM »

I didn't realize that post was from April, but anyway there's some very huge trust issues from what I've seen, which is why the mod is pretty much stuck where it is. Also some people simply do not to as they are told, which is really annoying but I already said that in the previous post.

I think it was also an organization issue, we need to have people group up, such as having teams that can focus on specific areas (such as per-level) and implement assets. Assets don't even need to be finalized, as long as the level is openable in the game, and you can preview and do more work on it, it's fine; finalization should be done in waves.

With organization there also needs to be goals and loose deadlines, just so people get things done in a timely fashion.  There are benefits to a do as you please system, but I think we do need more team oriented goals.

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Announcements / Officially in Hiatus & The Future

« on: July 22, 2015, 08:44 AM »

No more SDL?

SDK?

No, not in the form we're used to; we don't have code access and can't compile custom mods like we used to, that's the main issue;  once that happens we can begin.

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Announcements / Officially in Hiatus & The Future

« on: July 21, 2015, 06:25 PM »

I hear Dota's getting first dibs on Source 2.

Yeah, Dota 2 Reborn is running Source 2.

I'm hopeful, Gabe has talked quite a bit about Source 2 being open source, very open source, so much so they're removing almost all middleware.  And while I haven't seen that happen yet, I'm hoping they're just waiting for the codebase to be fully finished so it can support multiple games needs (such as having proper global illumination, which it does not have currently), maybe they're waiting for their current project (Probably L4D3 and/or HL3) and shipping it all in a nice package.  Think SFM once Meet the Pyro was finally released, but with L4D3 and Source 2.

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Announcements / Officially in Hiatus & The Future

« on: July 13, 2015, 01:22 PM »

Source 2 out yet

Not yet, hopefully an SDK comes out for it in full soon.

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Announcements / Officially in Hiatus & The Future

« on: April 03, 2015, 09:26 AM »

Huh, interesting. So HL2's maps with all their optimization and scripted sequences can be imported without breaking into a million pieces? I thought it'd be the other way around. I forgot about them abandoning the .mdl format though, so I can see that being really time consuming to convert every single model.

The raw geometry can be imported, and the entities and their information will be in the same place; but so far a lot of the scripted entities have changed or don't exist in the DotA build; so they'll likely need to be remade.

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Announcements / Officially in Hiatus & The Future

« on: April 01, 2015, 04:00 PM »

Sad to hear that work has stopped 

On the other hand, Source 2 looks promising. Although unless Valve fully supports it, porting the maps would be hell. Everything that can conceivably break, probably will.

The maps are the easiest part, currently the DoTA 2 toolset allows direct importing of VMFs.  The hard part is going to be batch decompiling the models and textures so they can be re-imported (temporarily, until replacements are made).

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Announcements / Officially in Hiatus & The Future

« on: March 25, 2015, 05:49 PM »

Hello everybody, we've got some news:

The HL2EM team is announcing its hiatus, this means active work and production has ceased for the time being.
This does not mean the project is cancelled, it just means we're taking a break to decide our future.

   Primarily we're assessing Source 2 as our next platform, we don't have any special insider information or anything so we're waiting for further information, and it is probably going to be a long wait.

During this time we're going to try and set more concise project goals, likely this project will transform into something more akin to Black Mesa in scope and quality.

Source 2 should allow us to freely increase the technical fidelity of our assets to match a visual upgrade worthy of Half Life 2 after ten+ years, instead of being held back with the same engine it was originally made on.
* This post will be updated with information as it comes in.

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HL2EM Discussion / Suggestion Sanctum

« on: March 14, 2015, 07:10 AM »

Does that mean you'll be revamping the current models for Source 2 to be even more detailed? If so, would you think about releasing the models you've currently done for Source 1?

The models would probably not be released, I will however release some of my textures if we do decide to ditch Source, since they would likely need to be remade anyway.

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HL2EM Discussion / Suggestion Sanctum

« on: March 13, 2015, 10:11 PM »

Surely you could spend this time creating textures and models? Even if you're not currently working on the engine there's a lot that could be done.

Not much of the rendering and lighting engine is intact in the Dota 2 version of the engine, so we don't know really anything about how textures need to be authored, maptypes, etc.
If the VR presentation was anything to go by, there's a bit of proprietary methods that are going to require authoring assets specially, something we can't do since no documentation has been release, and because it's not in the engine yet.  Aside from textures and materials, we don't know polycount targets, or best-practices from valve; it would be going in blind.

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HL2EM Discussion / Suggestion Sanctum

« on: March 13, 2015, 09:48 PM »

Source 2 is confirmed free for developers, when it comes out will you think about moving the mod over to it?

That's likely what will happen, Source has become extremely unusable in its later years, and working with 2048+² textures on the engine makes it sometimes extremely unstable.  The team is currently in hiatus, waiting for more information before we decide what our plan of action will be.

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HL2EM Discussion / Suggestion Sanctum

« on: February 08, 2015, 10:08 AM »

The bad thing though is that I did prepare what was needed, the stuff was just never uploaded. But yes until better tools are more fleshed out then development is going to be a bit slow or next to none. The mod isn't going to be abbandoned, as I said it's just in limbo.

Yeah, I don't think any of us intend to just say "fuckit" and leave, but don't know what direction we want to take.
If you can get me the prepared promotional assets I can try to get Ken to replace what's there with them.

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HL2EM Discussion / Suggestion Sanctum

« on: February 08, 2015, 09:33 AM »

Is Source 2 even a thing? I mean Valve hasn't said anything official, and we both know how long it might take for Valve to release something (hell, might even couple of years). And what makes you think that Valve will release better SDK for Source 2?

This is actually a bit more hopeful, Source 2 is indeed a thing; it was somewhat "silently" released for DotA 2 in the form of their workshop tools (Alpha, as always).
I actually tried my hand at porting the raw brushwork and some of my textures to it time ago:

I think a possible plan of action is waiting for Source 2 to be fully fledged, and then launch a full-scale redo like BM; that's assuming the team is still in contact with each other once that happens.

The whole Greenlight thing was just rather odd, a bit messy too, as I was also going to make some promotional materials for it but instead there's a bunch of mediocre screenshots on it and some weird videos I had never seen which has been bugging me ever since it was made, mostly because I can't even change them and fix the descriptions and whatever else, it looks pretty subpar and I am amazed it even got Greenlit in that state, it really shows how easily Greenlight allows rather mediocre products to fit in so easily, not sure what Valve was thinking with that, but someone else would have to speak about that probably, but I'm not sure, I might as well do it myself although I'll have to think about it, I doubt at this point it would matter seeing as way too much time has passed.

The greenlight was done by BinaryRifle and Kenchan; so most of the art department didn't really get a warning beforehand either.  It just sort of showed up, and most of us just rolled with it (What else where we to do?).

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HL2EM Discussion / Suggestion Sanctum

« on: February 03, 2015, 07:06 AM »

If Valve released a properly developed SDK then I wouldn't mind working on the mod a bit more often. At this point I am just waiting for Source 2 while I'm working on some personal projects.

Overhauling anything is a major pain in the ass. Source is for the most part sticked togheter with lot's of glue and tape. SFM is probably as badly done.

Yeah, my main reason for hiatus is Source is becoming unbearable to work with.  Using Blender, Unreal, Source 2 is a ton nicer.

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HL2EM Discussion / Suggestion Sanctum

« on: January 27, 2015, 01:26 PM »

No need for Lua for that stuff- and more zombie variants are on our to-do list. 

Not to mention that "just" adding lua wouldn't make gmod addons work in our mod.

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Announcements / Facepunch thread nuked

« on: January 16, 2015, 02:50 PM »

That's a lot more blunt than what he told me, but it's true and I can understand why the thread won't be re-opened so soon. Hopefully more people come here, this place has a cool design.

Yeah, we're all usually really direct to each other, I was just quoting verbatim because I thought they explained it really well.
Also, thanks; I did most of the modifications from the base theme (OverView), porky contributed the palette and icons, ratchet suggest designs.

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Announcements / Facepunch thread nuked

« on: January 16, 2015, 08:48 AM »

Why doesn't he?

He tells me he's waiting for more content to make the thread worthwhile, that the only thing that goes on right now is "... stupid arguments and suggestions..." that "...aren't even related to the mod."

I'm inclined to agree, I wish we had more content to show but since we don't, I'd rather not just regularly go "we're still alive" when people start saying the mod is dead.