Silverfisk Blog

0 comments by Silverfisk on Nov 10th, 2008 digg this super bookmark

The new version of Hammer Units Converter has been released for you to download. I know I said that I probably wouldn't continue developing it seven months ago when I released version 1.1, but I did and this version is much better than the previous ones. So here I go again; this will probably be the final version of this program, unless a bug is found or I get a feature request I decide to include.

In other news, I have not been mapping as much as I want to, mainly because of school but also because when I haven't been mapping for a while, I simply get lazy. Me and my friend have resumed the work on our school project, we're making a singleplayer mod in the Orange Box engine, we've just finished the story so actual work on the mod has not been started yet. You might get some more info on that later (we will add the mod to ModDB when we have something to show).

I have been following the progress of an awesome game-to-be lately, it's known as Overgrowth (releaseQ1 2009). In this game you'll be a rabbit on two legs beating the shit out of other rabbits, wolves, cats, rats etc., it may sound stupid but it's gonna be awesome. You may have heard of a game called Lugaru, well Overgrowth is basically Lugaru 2. Wolfire Games - who are developing Overgrowth - have been releasing alpha versions of their game to those who preorder. So if you're a fan of indie games, a furry or if you're simply looking to beat the living shit out of something, I suggest you download the Lugaru demo, it won't let you down.

Also, Darkfall Online is going to accept more people into beta around now, "on or around November 10th" they say, wich is today. I don't think they'll start sending the e-mails today though, it's in the Darkfall dev's nature to be late, I hope I'm one of the lucky ones in any case. And if I don't get in there's always the open beta to look forward to, wich should be a few weeks from now at the latest, since they're aiming for a release in early december.

The last four days I've been entertaining myself with the Left 4 Dead demo and I must say it's quite entertaining. I have been playing two player split screen with a few chosen ones, it works like a charm, both online and offline. Of course I have the standard complaints about the match making system, it's not like I dislike it (sometimes I can't bother to find a good server), it's rather that they decided to leave the server browser out that upsets me. It's not that big of a problem though, you can bring up the console and write openserverbrowser to get it up anyway, but you can only join those servers that have changed a certain server setting. I'm very much looking forward to the full game.

You might be familiar with Cortex Command, a 2D sidescrolling shooter with pixel physics. Data Realms have released a new build (build 22) recently. This is in my opinion the best build so far as it features lots of new weapons, new actors, new drop ships, fixes, self preserving AI, a full mission and more. It's actually starting to look like a proper game. Don't ask me why it haven't got a profile here on ModDB, it's a mystery.

Thank you very much for reading, comments appreciated, please track me to recieve updates.

0 comments by Silverfisk on Oct 22nd, 2008 digg this super bookmark

I'm writing this message to inform you that version 2.0 of the Hammer Units Converter is in development, this is a complete rewrite of the program, but this time I'm getting some help from my dear friend Precautious (maxdata1 (at) hotmail.com).
So far the interface is done, Precautious is working on the whole math part, hoping to make stuff easier for me. This is how it looks at the moment:
 

As you can see it looks completely different from the previous versions. We are also going to add support for yards and 3D-skybox units. This is just the interface and none of it works yet, if all goes well you should be able to download a working version before november the 2nd.
If you have any feature requests or comments, post below. Remember to track my profile to recieve updates as they become available (see under 'Profile' to the right).

0 comments by Silverfisk on Sep 22nd, 2008 digg this super bookmark

So, what have I been up to? Well to begin with school has started, this means less time for modding and more time for boring stuff. This wasn't a very good time for school to start because I was like "Yeah I have no school so I can do all theese projects at once!". And then school came so I have to prioritize.

The map I was talking about in the previous news post was for Follow Freeman, it's mostly done but I ran into some issues, for example the RPG guys on my map don't wanna fire, i've tried if they do in normal HL2 and they do so I don't know what's wrong there, I'm gonna solve it somehow... Also my NPCs don't want to start running for the players at one place. I'm gonna redo all those NPCs to make sure I get it right.

My priorities right now are as follows:
1. School
2. Finish the Follow Freeman map (so I can be done with it and put all my work into The Wind)
3. The Wind 
4. Anything else

"Anything else" includes tutorials I wanna do, gaming, translating stuff, testing stuff and other stuff I like to do or have said I'll do. Peoeple shouldn't be allowed to play games as little as I've been the last few weeks. :-(

Oh, "Anything else" also includes the next version of Hammer Units Converter, I'm gonna add yards to it, and I might add a function to calculate between 3D skybox sizes too as I often find myself doing that manually (which is so 2007). I might also rewrite the whole application because I've learned so much stuff about Java this year in school (and will learn much more) so it'd be for the best.

I'm thinking about doing a tutorial about doing cliffs in Hammer, or if you have a special request I'd do a tutorial about that instead, just send a mail or PM if you've got any good ideas.

Thanks for reading!
Don't forget to watch me. 

0 comments by Silverfisk on Aug 19th, 2008 digg this super bookmark

It was quite some time since I posted my first blog post and since then alot of stuff has happened. I've bought a new 22 inch widescreen monitor for example, it's a breeze working in Hammer now :-D . And speaking of wich, I've been mapping much since I've taken on a freelance mapping project, I'll let you know for what it's being made when it's made public. My mapping for The Wind have also been progressing.

Like three weeks ago I recorded some material for a Hammer tutorial I was going to make, today I finished it by adding the text and stuff, you can watch it here: Youtube.com , the tutorial is about how to make a scripted event in Hammer, I'd appreciate if you watched, rated and commented!

The program I made, Hammer Units Converter, now has over 100 downloads, I'm really proud I got that many downloads and I hope people will keep discovering it and telling their friends, thanks.

Another great thing is that the school starts tomorrow! It's gonna be great, I got much to learn. The class im looking forward most to is Virtual Environments, we get to learn 3DS Max. And of course meeting my friends will be great too, this will be my last year in this school.

Thanks for reading and have a nice day!

0 comments by Silverfisk on Jun 28th, 2008 digg this super bookmark

This is an epic moment as my ModDB profile recently had its 1,000th visitor! I just felt that this would justify a blog post. Now that I'm at it I can talk about some other shit too, well I'm a mapper, I make maps for the Source engine and I always try to get better by experimenting and just mapping. I'm in a mod team, we are making a movie called The Wind.
I like playing games, today I've been playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Day of Defeat: Source (the beta rocks) and I've been mapping, I'm making a new little experiment, it's like a fantasy castle thingy. You can see it if I ever finish it, but don't count on it.
More about the games I like: I often play random mods for Half-Life 2 and random indie games like Platinum Arts Sandbox (BTW I made the Swedish translation for that one!) and I'm waiting for Lugaru 1.5 (Lugaru 2's engine with Lugaru 1's gameplay), check out the Wolfire blog for that. Another game I've been waiting for in over a year now is Darkfall... Oh the vicious game that is Darkfall, the devs for that game do not know what a deadline is it seems, but they have officially announced the beta for this year and I believe them.
Just now I read Deathbal101's blog, it turns out we have quite a lot in common and I find his writing to be interesting.
In other (very random) news: I turned in some late assignments for school, we had until today before they lock our grades so I just turned in two half finished assignments, dunno if they'll affect my grades but anyways.

This concludes my first blog post, ever. So thank you for reading and have a nice day!

PS: Check out the program I made! Hammer Units Converter is the name, DL and comment!