Progress Report June/July 2014 news - Combine Insurrection mod for Half-Life 2

Hey everyone, it is time for another update. Sorry that this is a few days late, I had some problems with Hammer compiling the maps and it took Friday and Saturday to resolve the issues.

So first off let me start by saying that progress was about mid-range this development cycle. Stuff got done but not as much as I would have liked. This was due to the source code work I did. I decided it was time to update the Source SDK code with the latest released on GitHub. In doing that I had to basically re-learn how to build it properly because I had already forgotten all of the pet peeves that SSDK2013 has and the ridiculous nature of the "self-compile" bits.

On top of this there were also some other issues resulting from me following the guide available on the Valve Developer Wiki about building SSDK2013. It says to use VC100 for the compiler mode in Visual Studio. For whatever reason I am not able to compile the code under VS 2010's architecture, I have to use VC110 (VS 2012) instead. I wasted about half a week re-figuring that out.

I then wasted another week tracking down changes I had made in the original SSDK code I was using before 2013 (so 2007) but had not marked with a comment for easy searching. This caused me to be missing some stuff like the cooldown timer, overheat tracking for certain weapons, and a few other things. There were some legit issues though, like having to fix a few sections where the SSDK2013 code usage had changed from 2007's usage of the code in that area or where something had to be recoded entirely because the code in that area no longer worked as it did previously.

Once I managed to get the SDK recompiled and with everything in it now I had blown through two and a quarter weeks. On the mapping side of the issues I found out that several maps were no longer compiling after the latest work done on them because I was blowing through the limitations. This happened on both Deck 8 and Deck 9. I had to pull Propper out from it's dusty shelf and figure out how to get it working with SSDK2013 (why I am two days late on the update).

But that is all solved for now and here we are. So on the topic of mapping progress most of the work done was on Deck 9, which is the largest of the decks in terms of map area. I started working on the second area and have a few screen shots from there to show. I also did some more work on decks 8 and 7. There was a bit of work done on deck 5 but not much really, in fact all I did was retexture the rest of the lighting elements in that security area I showed last week; although the retexturing did slightly change the look of it. I also removed the lights from there too, not sure why I did that when it is all supposed to be lit by textures. In Deck 7 I recreated the storage room stuff that was shown in the last developer's vlog. This also took a lot of time because Hammer had completely screwed up the vertices on the pylon I had made previously and a lot of editing had to be done. I also choose to go with a new method of lighting that I will also be moving forward with elsewhere due to the effect it created as you will see in the screen shots.

So here are the screen shots. Most of these are very dark and you will need to view the full sized images to see much.

This is the only screen from Deck 8. This is in that first room just off of the main hub down the left-hand hallway. The light strip you see will eventually be manipulated to run in a congruent path with the glass. This is going to be a security area when completed.

Here is that room in Deck 5. I am going to create a new light texture for the shelf thing in the back as the ones I am using for it in the screens are much too bright. Here you can see the new method of lighting I was talking about earlier. You can also see that this room looks a bit colder with the new textures around the lighting elements.

I originally was going to have two images from Deck 7 but the main security hub area did not really look like anything and there was nothing remotely interesting about it; that will change though. Here you can see two things for the price of one though: the remade storage area shelves along with the new lighting method. I may make textures based off of these but that are a bit brighter or maybe just texture the edges of the shelves with the current texture to increase the light being cast.

The first screen shot is just showing the first halfway areas of the new section of the 9th deck. The second one is really the one I thought would be interesting to show. In the area it is taken from I had to do quite a bit of creative brushing to get a ceiling in. Part of the room is a two-story area what also has a slant down to the other section of the room which is one-story. The two-story are also has some places where the walls are double-jointed or where there are sections where the pace that the wall angles down at changes. I had to figure out how to get all of the angles covered and also how to cover up a gaping hole into the void caused because part of the ceiling is higher than the other section in the two-story part.

That is all I have for screen shots. Next is the developer's vlog. This one is uber short because I lost some footage of me mapping in the second section of the 9th deck. Dunno what happened to it but I may have accidentally deleted it while I was clear out footage for Space Crusade that I was no longer going to use (I believe the files were in the same folder and Playclaw uses the process name, which is dwm for desktop recording, when saving files).

So, I mentioned an announcement in the description for the news article and that is what is going here. I have decided that, so I can focus on other projects both of my own creation and others that I am being contracted to work on, I am going to put Combine Insurrection on a side burner for the rest of the year. What this means is that I will still be working on CI every one in a while but I will not be making any updates during that time.

The reason for this is that I need to spend more time working on SC and other projects I have going require a higher precedence than both CI and SC. I cannot supply the time required while still working on both CI and SC at the same time and level. What will happen at the end of the year is essentially that the next update time will showcase all of the work completed between now and then (probably will be February 1 of 2015).

That is it for this update. Thanks for following the mod and I will see you next year hopefully with a ton of progress to show for it in both mapping and code work!