I am busy working on making my map and i've run into more problems

1. The trouble with water and halflife
Im making water that i'd like to be transparent (its in a stream that runs a large part of the map). when i set it to a func_water or even a func_illusionary (as its too shallow to do anything in anyway so i don't need it as water) the fps drops by about 20 (from my max of 60 fps) to a high 30/low 40 fps. it looks fairly good except it's somewhat visible the texture tiles, but this stream covers a good portion of the map and having slow speeds all over...... is unacceptable! so i tried changing it to solid, and that works, but it isn't transparent so the texture OBVIOUSLY tiles (and its a very dark texture anyhow so its hard to tell when im editing it so i almost can't fix it) and the player models turn completely black when walking through it in most places! Are there any fixes or compromises so i can have fast speeds, transparent water, no lighting issues, and a decent looking texture? if not some sort of combination of those?

2. Water texture tiling solutions?
If anyone has any water texture making tips, i'd love to hear them. im having a hard time keeping it from looking like tiles of water :(

3. Custom objective HUD sprite
How exactly do you make custom HUD sprites for a special objective or something of the like? For instance i have a 2 man capture near a tree on a little piece of land in the middle of th stream, the objective is the tree, and i want it to appear as a tree on the sprite icon, how would i go about making this icon and making it work like the regular icons and adding it to my map?

Tree leaves/Forest canopy texture
4. Tree leaves/Forest canopy texture
does anyone know of good tips for making foliage in the trees and not having it look like poo? There's a clearing with a flag in it and when you look up you see the background tree texture and then the sky suddenly, no leaves on the trees and all textures i've made and put up there..... just don't look right. what i want to do is have a bunch of forest canopy overhead and have a couple of large holes in this leafy canopy so the sun shines through, does anyone have any methods of doing this?

1. The hl engine sees water everywhere, so you'd have to be carefull with water not using to much, about those black models, that's just bad luck, I don't know how to fix it, but maybe try changing you're light_evinroment settings.

2. You'd have to animate textures, I don't know how to make textures so you should ask kleinluka or some other texture artist for this, I'm sure they can help.

3. I don't know but there are tutorials for this one somewhere :)

4. I don't exactly understand but I think you want trees with leafs where the sun can shine trough or something. Just use models with your env_model entity, that's always better then just brush-based ones.

1. ive found players go black when standing on a func_wall or other brush-based entites, if that brush is set to opaque.
make your water out of func_illusionaries, there is a setting (contents-water), so it will splash, but be careful not to "jam" the water into solids that are blocking vis, or hl will "see" right thru them too-(this prabably caused your fps drop)

2. i like to use 2 entities for water -an invisible{null textured} func_illusionary, and a func_conveyor . this allows you to have the water "move" using a scrollwater texture, and you can set the speed/direction etc

3. i use 2 programs for sprites both are free SpriteViewer and SpriteWizard. Custom sprites go in: dod/sprites/obj_icons/dod_mymap
and they have to be named obj_icon_custom1_allies.spr, etc etc etc etc

4. use a combo of illusionaries and models, be creative


hope some of this helps

ahh i see now, i was using one big plane of water for the stream, it was cutting into edges no wonder it lagged when it was an entity. i'll slice it up into small portions and see if that helps.

also thanks for the clues about sprite making tutorials.

i sliced up the plane of water so that no parts of it where intruding on brushes, but when i put them as an entity all but one of them(oddly the smallest one) dissapear when i compile it... anyone know how to fix that?

some ideas:
-if you used a func_water entity make sure that its not set to "starts open" or it will be off to the side, out of view like a door
-make sure they weren't "hidden" when you compiled
-i think each piece has to be its own entity or it will only render the water texture on one face
-look for other dumb mistakes you may have made

delete the "!" before the water texture when you tie it to a func_water

Originally posted by OrbMonky
i sliced up the plane of water so that no parts of it where intruding on brushes, but when i put them as an entity all but one of them(oddly the smallest one) dissapear when i compile it... anyone know how to fix that? Don't make multi-brush func_water using animated texture. If you want animated one make separate func_water brushes each of single brush or use non-animated water texture (without "!" in name).
The same story is about using waves in water brushes.