Multimedia Update #9 news - Combine Insurrection mod for Half-Life 2

Hey everyone, sorry for this late update report but I have a grand excuse, sort of.

At the end of April my video card in my old computer started to go on the fritz. Eventually it started crashing my computer after only running several minutes so I decided to build a new PC. That is the reason I am late with this, I spent most of May getting things back up to speed and was only able to start working on CI in the last week and a half of last month. Still I got some stuff done and had a few missteps with others which you will hear about later. Due to the strength of this new computer though, I am able to work with much larger models for c. physics testing. Here are my new specs:

Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit)
Intel I7-3930K (over clocked to 4.1Ghz)
Asus Sabertooth X79
G Skill Ripjaws Z Series PC3-12800 (1600Mhz) 4x4GB
Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 (over clocked edition)

As you can see a bit beefier then my old system. I was able to render out my collapse cinematic physics test model but I will get more into the problems I faced with that in that section (I do have a video for it though).

First let's get the maps out of the way though. I was not able to get much done however I did do some work on three maps. Two I have not pulled out for a while before the last update; I worked on the Combine Underground 2 map, City 23, and City 25. Here are some screen shots:

We find ourselves back in City 23 in this screen shot. I added a roof and two new rooms to the house shown. I also did a lot of work widening the walls (they were only 3 units thick before, omfg) so that took quite a bit of work since there are some scripted bits here. Some of the things you cannot see from this angle are the driver way leading around this house, the fixed lantern on the building from last month's update (if you look the texture is black instead of lit up), and some work I did on the playground to the immediate left.

City 25 got the most work over the past week. There is a lot in these two screen shots that you cannot see that was changed. This includes widening walls and placing rooms in a methodological order, just as they do in real hotels. The huge orange thing on top is where the name will be displayed, I will me moving the whole structure back a ways in future updates or altering the structure so that this no longer sticks out over the road as it does now. Each room on the facing side now has a window and will have glass place into it during the next update. Inside I did a bit of work as well standardizing the wall spacing and textures used on each floor. I had some other ideas that I could not get into the map in time for this update.

Inside of the hotel showing the texture work. I forgot to re-enable the dust motes, the no draw brush entities for them take up most of the empty space in this building so I have to disable them to work on it. I will have to change the brush layout anyway due to new changes I will be making. I also went around and standardized the door sizes to Source standards (108 tall x 48 wide).

Finally we end some where familiar yet unfamiliar. This is a new room in the Underground Bunker's second floor. I may need to extend it again, this is much larger hen the original version, due to what this room will be used for.

As you can see not too much progress, this was about a total 10 hours worth of mapping over the course of last week. I am hoping now that things will calm down that I can get up to four or five maps going at once for the next update.

This month I toyed with voice overs for the first time. I had thought about it previously but I had never gotten around to it. I decided to start with Combine voices since they are the easiest to create and only require Audacity. I am contemplating whether I should do all the voices myself and use audio programs to modify them or find people that are willing to contribute their time to the project. For the Combine voices though I can do the first quite easily. The following video contains four tests I ran through Audacity to create a combine-sounding voice; I think some are more successful then others.

Now we get to the collapse test. Originally the model I had made was still in a stage where the blocks were all separated. However as part of the process of making these physics clips you have to merge them all together then delete the original blocks used. Here is where I made my mistake. This model contains over 1500 bones (source counts any poly mesh objects as bones in addition to the actual bones, so bone count is usually doubled), source only allows for 128 in one model. I had forgotten this and did not break the model into sections before merging the poly meshes and so I could not import into Source when I had finished the weight painting (final step before exporting).

However I was able to record the output window in XSI so I could show you what I had envisioned for it. This would be something that would make it into the game (the methodology behind how it collapses not the physical model itself). I have some very intense scenes written down in some places where these kinds of collapses could be used. In the video I show the simulation both with the polymesh and with just the "nulls" (aka bones).

I did toy around with the source code as well trying to create an overheat cool down counter in the UI but it was not playing nicely with me and I had to abandon my attempt to work on everything else. I am also starting to redesign the hud into something more similar to what we may actually be using but it will likely take several months of practice and trial and error before it will come to fruition.

That is all I have for this update, which considering I did it all in a week and a half is fairly good even though much less content then I would have liked. I am going to try to get a more substantial update done next cycle so we can get the progress ball rolling instead of spinning in place.

Thanks for following the project!