Blogs - jmcnary

Starting to look good. Nothing makes a map come alive like lighting. Here is a screenshot.

So much work to do still. Detailing all of the houses with windows and trim, blending the textures so there are no straight lines in the gravel alley, terrain height, and then Hynes Elementary.

I am about 4 hours into my new project. I am recreating my grandmothers house that was destroyed in Katrina. This will be the start of a campaign to get to safety with the flood and zombies closing in on you. This campaign should take you to the roof of my old elementary school building where you get picked up by a chopper after fighting off a few hordes. This is just the start to figure out if I have the proportions right. Generic lighting is all it has at the moment as well. I will post more as it comes.

I have made some progress. However, this progress is in a new game. Left 4 Dead 2 is my new focus. Fortunatly my Hammer experiance follows me. I have not completed a Hammer project beyond tutorials but its extreamly easy. I chose this game because of the built in New Orleans based content. This has been a lot of fun to work with. No screenshots yet but here is my plan(based on actual location).

I have been away from modding for some time. I've been distracted with actually playing the games I have been hoping to mod. I have come to the point where I have played all I wish to play and want to pass the time creating something great. My biggest stumbling block has been thinking about all the time I would put into a map that would never get played. In Unreal I had a server that would play the maps I made. I am at the point where I just don't care. I want to make something cool even if I am the only one that will see it. I will post pictures of the progress.

I have completed "Levi's White Room beta" It is a playable CTF version of a map I am making for Kilter's Bombing Run. This is intended for Instagib and low gravity. All that is left to do is some static mesh decoration in the hallways, bot support, ambient sounds, and to convert it to BR.

Nexus was a buddy of mine from a clan called Adrenaline. We were a UT2k4 Bombing Run clan. Both of us developed maps for the clan. At one point I took one of his maps and gave it an overhaul. That map was The White Room. I called the Overhaul "The White room(Levi's Mix)"

Since that map was still getting good play time to date, Kilter has asked me to port that to UT3. Here are a few screenshots with my progress.

A mapping buddy of mine(Kilter) from the UT2k4 days has recreated the Bombing Run gametype for UT3. Not only that but he has done a fantastic job.

He got intouch with me via steam and let me know about his progress. I may get him to post it here on Moddb, but until then you can track its progress on Kilter's Funhouse. I am so excited about BR's comeback that I have temporarily changed focus from the mod that I am trying to put together for steam that I have started creating a map for UT3. I will post the finished product on my profile. I will make it CTF first just so folks can have fun playing it until the final touches on his mod are finished.
The map that I have in the works is the first of hopefully many. It is also a never before seen concept in FPS gaming. Updates to come.

“Downside UP”.
This is the name I am giving the project I am currently working on. I am very excited about working on it. Right now I am still in the planning phase but I am very close to start developing the world in Hammer. Source has everything that I need to make this vision a playable experience.

The idea takes place in City 17 or one of its predecessors. However, this world has been abruptly turned upside down (literally). Gravity has changed for some reason and what was down is now up, and visa versa. There are several ways to explain this phenomenon and why it has occurred. I am entertaining all of them. One such explanation is that another planet may be passing too close to the one we are currently on. Causing gravity to shift. Another idea is a rift in reality caused by the teleportation on top of a citadel like the one in Half-life 2.

How long after the event that caused this has yet to be decided. If it’s soon after the event, then the hero will be on rescue missions. If it has been tens or hundreds of years, then the purpose of the hero would have to be more discovery or fighting with/against forces that are in conflict.

The fun part of exploring this world comes in the tools he is given. Dual grappling hooks will provide the hero with a way to navigate the ruins of a world that has uprooted by the change of gravity. The source mod called “Smash Ball” has developed the grappling hook mechanism with the physics that I am looking for. The rope itself has the right collision with the environment needed to introduce the physics puzzles I am hoping to provide.

The first few levels of this game starts with the hero getting used to the grappling hook device in a training facility underground. This facility would be similar to the one used in the Valve game “Portal”. This facility would be carved out of the ground and may exist in a city built upside down inside the earth after the event that caused gravity to reverse (meaning that this story happens a good 10-30 years after the event). After this training the hero would fulfill his purpose on the surface of the earth inside this city ruined from the reversal of gravity.

The visuals in this game, along with the fun the physics of the grappling hook provides, is what’s going to make or break this mod. I will post again with any future developments. I will be working on creating this world and at some point add the grappling hook technology in this world to see if it will be as fun as I picture it.

So I set this profile up on moddb.com, and I am excited to start reporting my progress modding Source. This looks like a great place to post updates on the projects I am working on. I have gone through several tutorials to find out how different Source is from the Unreal engine. They are pretty similar, fortunatly Source seems even easier then Unreal. TF2 is fun and looks to be a good platform to develop a portfolio.

This is my first mapping attempt in Source thats in progress(nothing much yet). I am going to make sure that the level works well with every class and is a lot of fun before I spend the time to decorate it.

I a few ideas for a long term project with source. I will not have too much trouble with the mapping part, but my lack of C++ knowledge may get me in trouble when I want to create an actual full conversion. The good news is that the internet has a world of tutorials and learning tools for C++ if I need it.

One idea that would be a relatively simple mod to create due to its lack of scripted sequences and complex enviornments would be a portal style singleplayer experiance with grappling hooks on each hand instead of weapons. I have always loved the grappling hook mechanic and have some great ideas for this technology. Easier levels would require you to swing across a pit, and more complex levels will have fast moving objects that you would need to time just right to grapple to. I would have a plot and would have a confrontation in the end.

Well, I'm excited about getting started, and am even more excited that a community like Moddb exists for me to report it.