RocketRunner wrote:Wait, wait, what are you talking about?
I thought Steamworks was that system where Valve tried not to profit off mods.
-snip-
Edited to be more helpful:
Wikipedia wrote:
Steamworks
On January 28, 2008, Valve released Steamworks, a free development and publishing suite that gives developers access to every component of Steam. Steamworks can be combined with a standard Steam distribution agreement, the latter of which gives it advertising space in the Steam store but also provides Valve with a share of revenue; Audiosurf became the first game to be released in this way on February 15, 2008.
Most games using the Steamworks API also opt for a presence in the Steam store. The only known exception (since Valve does not make announcements about such games) is NBA 2K9.[28]
Last edited by Tallfire on Mon Nov 09, 2009 1:18 pm, edited 6 times in total.
RocketRunner wrote:Wait, wait, what are you talking about?
I thought Steamworks was that system where Valve tried not to profit off mods.
and that's exactly why Synergy has no Steamworks (and many more like Dystopia or Eternal Silence) and doesn't toally made the Mod from Scratch to archive the goal: Plain HL2 Series Coop Mod (Hint: Steamworks has actually nothing to do with Valve, at least in licensing)
besides @ Ny: Synergy has only one Coder too (Natural Selection 2 had only one too until recently) so it's not really impossible to have less Coders, the problem is that those Coders i'm speaking of are quite skilled (and probably got more time and less fraking troubles with things like a missing server....)
thank you fug4life, i appreciate the quick, polite reply & genuine intention to help, forgive this delayed reply, as i made sure to put every piece of information you provided to use, and have been a busy busy bee - always a good thing no?
so straight to business and back on topic my friends.
here is the exact situation
i ended up meeting a member and talented mapper from this forum, in game by the name of Shiftey. he has been providing a very generous amount aid, support and personal time to get things moving along much quicker so far. he is quite knowledgeable and has saved endless hours of having to figure things out via trial by error. thanks buddy!
-server is progressing well at a very acceptable rate
-advance spawns are daily being added so having to travel after you die isn't such a hassle (thanks for teaching me in person shiftey)
-shiftey provided the necessary code for a map transition blocker that forces players to wait for their team before switching map, by opening a sealed gate/door, removing the ability of bunny-hopping "rushing" players forcing a map change every 2 minutes by racing to the end, thanks man
-9 out of 68 campaign maps have been edited so far (excluding ep1 & ep2, will will be edited after the main hl2 campaign is complete), about 9 or 10 of these are "cinematic" and really dont need editing at all
-all maps will have customized ammo placement, enemy npc placement/combat situations, and other team-play encouraging modifications such as removal of health kits, health chargers, etc to encourage people healing each other often to survive, staying together (altered damage values make player "rouge-like" behavior harder to survive, again encouraging sticking together more), blah blah, etc
-other miscellaneous improvements for the greater good (want to keep this post short as possible, but theres a lot to talk about)
here's stuff that still needs doing/wishlist/whatever
-still was not able to implement lives system in campaign through forced/override map_cfg files, i will experiment with this more in depth to make sure it isnt a problem on my end, but i'm nearly certain it only gives you lives on a fresh mapload, not transitioning from a level to the next - if i can get this to work, it'll really enhance gameplay by adding "value" to each life, making survival a priority, removing fool-hardy gameplay stye by knowing "i have infinite lives". even so, im not sure how to make the map "restart" if entire team is annihilated
-bloom settings are considered a "cheat", which sadly removes the ability for custom visual settings/appeal. last night when tweaking bloom (old hl2 maps), i put together a "fake HDR" like config that -seriously- made the entire environment look better and come to life - would it be possible to make "mat_force_bloom" excluded from the "cheat" list? unless its an engine limitation or hardcoded and required to be classified as a cheat, this command is absolutely harmless as far as exploits, and would ridiculously benefit the visual presentation if allowed to be tweaked clientside, theres about 7 different parameters that can be tweaked with bloom
-a handful of small requests regarding particle effects behavior that i believe would improve visual appeal for this ten-fold, however ive taken up enough room - can provide detailed "concept" if interested and requested by someone with the power to make these non-intrusive/realistically implementable enhancements/changes to the mod if suggestion/layout were to be agreeable
well id say thats a mouthful for now ill go ahead and get back to work
(if you are that much talented to change an entire mod behavior without changing the source code, it would be better to focus on other stuff like making MapAdd Scripts for HL:S and contributing them to us, or if you can do coding is there another option open...)
but in this state the only thing that i want to say here is:
there will be people that will claim that the features are inside the mod and will bother how to make it bla bla bla, and i'm definitly not going to help or awnser to them... (expect if you inform the players about the customisation, using the MOTD would be a bad idea as 99% skip that window, myself included)
I've been testing some of his mapadds and they really make the HL2 campaign a lot better. The way it is with the default Obsidian mapadds, the HL2 campaigns are playable but they aren't much fun.
Also its hard to understand most of what you said in your post. I think you're saying something about the scripts overwriting the default OC ones. In which case I'm also a little curious as to how they'll figure that out. Although, the way its progressing, I have a feeling you and the rest of the team might want to add these mapadds to 1.4. It's a big improvement from the current hack-job of a co-op campaign.
my presence is being viewed as an attempt to gloat/correct/infiltrate their hard work, this has happened many times before in other places, misinterpretations of self advertising or agendas etc. np dude :]
the emphasis informing players that it is a "customisation" unaffiliated with the creators of the mod is only a natural display of covering yourselves in case it sucks or is buggy, no one wants to be seen "supporting somethig that sucks". there seems to be a major communication barrier here as well, my intense rants don't help either.
theres been a huge misunderstanding, but such is life, heh
to conclude the thread - all my issues have been resolved and i no longer have any questions or need for support - best of luck with your updates
What the hell neico? OC has all those customisation features like mapadds, scripted weapons etc. so people can customize their server/ map the way they want. You act like this is synergy right now.
veteran_gamer wrote:to conclude the thread - all my issues have been resolved and i no longer have any questions or need for support
You managed to get the lives mode to work with the transitions? If not let me know and I'll test/confirm whether it does/does not work.
As for mat_ commands, I think you can start a map with a mat_ command in the mapname_cfg.txt and currently it loads, though if cheats get enabled and then disabled during the map, it'll reset to normal.
I'm not sure if the code will stay like this as I know there were some issues regarding this and the last/current build of the mod.
Also of note, I found that most if not all env_entities can be used in mapadds (well almost all stuff like starfield idk). I've never used in a mapadd, but an env_tonemap_controller can change bloom/hdr settings. I've never tested on a mapadd and I don't know if this will effect the built cubemaps. But I think its proabably doable because its an env_entity.
'I would probably smarten up before you meet Violet'.
'She has zero tolerance for idiots'.
I just wanted to tell those who don't know what his server's name is (I didn't see it in the posts anyway) that its called "Gangsters in Conflict." Hes spent quite a bit of work on a single map and it looks so much greater.
hey fug, i didnt get livesmode going with campaign maps, i tried with the mapadd cfg identical to the links your first reply, plus other stuff with team modes and force "team wait" cmds, there was a few of those i dont recall off hand. just to see if i could fluke it or cause any kind of miracle to transition to the next campaign map with lives mode enabled, no go.
i dont think livesmode was implemented for the campaign.. but instead for other custom/original maps, if you can get this working you'd become a hero, i have no expectations though..just working with anything i can get going
as for the hdr_tone_controller setting you talk about, shiftey mentioned this to me a day ago when we were messing with the server, we couldnt use it in the regular hl2 campaign cause the maps themselves gotta be compiled with hdr, but bloom works Pretty damn effective, except that mat_forcebloom is considered a client cheat and cant be used unless cheats are on, hdr woulda been nice, i think fakefactory recompiled the entire HL2 campaign on one or more of his releases back in the day, and they had hdr but i could be wrong
servesr now been pw\d because i found that letting the public in was too much of a distraction, people would be confused, asking questions etc for entire maps on end. wanted to blow my head off at one point haha. ill talk to my buddy who owns it to maybe take it off the steam masterlist until its ready for a spin, but feel free to join it anytime someone is in there, i go as "VG" in case you happen to be in town. at this point the only people that come in are contributors of some sort, whether its ideas, or live feedback/brainstorm while building the maps to be more efficient/creative, i know shiftey is real easy to deal with, you seem cool too tug, i know once the owner of it "big busey" gets back into action, everything is gonna speed up even further, the more people we have setting it up, the more fun. blah blah, blah blah, pretend i kept typing meaningful statements for a few thousand words, blah blah
i know my posts arent short but jerry springer has a final thought before he goes to bed -im just trying to have fun and -nothing- more. not trying to reform the mod, make an impression, pretend im something im not. i just want to setup a ridiculously enjoyable server i can mess around with on the weekends with friends/people
im damn tired and will be gone until...wednesday or so, gotta head out of state, goodnight
IMO the best system for lives would be to make it not restart the map when all players have zero lives by default. There should be an output on the game_lives_manager entity such as "OnAllPlayersLivesZero" that lets the mapper fire any command they choose, which may include a game_end.
I don't see this being very hard in concept, and it would solve a giant problem that lives mode currently has.
You could say that this may frak up past maps, in which case my answer would be to mapadd all maps that are affected by this.
(Hint: Steamworks has actually nothing to do with Valve, at least in licensing)
