I've been teaching myself some of the entities in CS/HL2. Here's a really small test map with stuff like shutters that move, a shutter that moves AND can be shot off, ropes that break, roof beams that fall in, explosions, fire, a ladder, use of displacement terrain as broken wall parts...etc. A while ago I released a small DoD 1.3 map that had a fireable 88mm in it...in this map the trick is to get the explosive barrel to blow up...but try and do it without shooting the barrel itself. Have fun (both bsp and vmf)...copy the bsp to your CS:Source mapping directory (it's a CS test map). When you go in you can use the console command impluse 101 to give yourself full dollars.

http://mysite.verizon.net/warewind/blogger.html

Displacements for broken walls! FuzzDad, you're a genius!

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I was thinking about how that would be a great way to make broken buildings. We also need some textures that blend from brick or plaster to a burnt/charred look.

Actually...you can use overlays (decals) for the blackend part if you want. I used one stained one in this test map for effect (inside wall). The thing to remember though is that we're not sure what the acceptable counts for physics entities will be...those things take a lot of the engines overhead...espeiciall the net traffic...so too many and it's a lag-a-thon.

All I wanted to show here were some of the idea's floating around in my head on how to make things blow up or move in DoD maps.

The displacement wall-break thing is relatively easy (credit to Waldo...he and I discussed how to use displacement for roads, terrain, busted wall parts, etc):

1) Make your wall the old fashioned way with a few angled brushes for the busted parts then copy all of them and move the copy to the side.
2) Use the face selector (like you would be painting a brush face) and select the flat broken part of your copied wall pieces.
3) Assuming you already know how to create displacement brushes go ahead and create the displacement terrain at 2 scale. You'll notice that all you get is the flat side of the original set of brushes...the side where the wall is broken.
4) Now...select all of them and group them and place them back over the original wall parts...make the width two units smaller than the width of the wall.
5) Use your displacement tool in the X, Y, or Z directions to pull some of the faces outwardly. You'll need to experiement and you'll find some of your sides will pull away from the original face of the rubble creating gaps...use the displacemnt tool to shove those pesky edges back into the original wall brush.

A that link you'll find the vmf file. Remember...this is just my way of doing it...there's even a bug in the map I can't seem to fix...see if you can find it. I also didn't pay much attention to face splitting so I'm sure I could be more efificent in my design. But...I'm also sure the dev team will eventually release a sdk version of one of the official maps and there will be other techniques to do the same that might even be more effiicent.

Sounds good there fuzzdad, I didn't think of using displacement maps for making destroyed wall edges.

Pics of test map:

http://mysite.verizon.net/warewind/images/test1.jpg
http://mysite.verizon.net/warewind/images/test2.jpg
http://mysite.verizon.net/warewind/images/test3.jpg

Wow. I don't have HL2, and every time I see screenshots of the source engine my jaw drops. Good job, Fuzzdad!

I thought most official CSS/HL2DM maps used displacement maps for broken out edges anyway? (Just stating this, of course it's good to have in a test map.)

Why the use of phys_ballsockets FD?

You can get shutters to work with 1 phys_hinge, and be removable with force with hinges? Just curious as to why you have two type of shutter, one with ballsockets and one with hinges.

OMFGITS DOD SOURCE OMFGOMFG OMFG

I'm not a mapper but I'll try this out anyway :p

looks awesome! are displacements expensive, and if your using them at that size that often kinda thing?

P.S. is the bug that roof thing u fall through?

What are func_details?

Originally posted by Ginger Lord
Why the use of phys_ballsockets FD?

You can get shutters to work with 1 phys_hinge, and be removable with force with hinges? Just curious as to why you have two type of shutter, one with ballsockets and one with hinges.

Because you can control the way the shutter falls off...it looks great when you disengage the lower ballsocket...the shutter then hinges and pivots on the remaining socket...it canters slightly out of the way...it looks exactly like a shutter would if one hinge was shot away.

Now...I have chatted w/Mugsy and they (the devs) are trying to get a handle on the numbers of like physics deals they would be comfortable with in a map...these things cause a lot of net traffic and are more suitable for single-player maps. He did tell me that the use of the rope entities were low overhead and did add a lot of ambience to the maps so expect to see stuff like you do in this tes map...telephone wires and wires and other stuff hanging off debris...when you add things to the vertical component in t a map it really adds to the ambience.

However, you can really see the traffic and gameplay problems even minor entities cause in this little test map ...all that stuff that falls down when you bust the explosive barrel = net traffic...and then in-game it interferes with your movement. It's why I fire off a health change to all the entities after teh sequence starts (the roof-cave-in deal) so they may be easily destroyed with a few shots or a nade blast. Remember the primary focus of the game is the game and gameplay...not necesarily how pretty everything is.

The real deal here is this is how I learn how to use the entities to achieve certain effects...kinda like getting the tools sharp in the toolbox

http://mysite.verizon.net/warewind/images/test4.jpg

that looks a lot like mohaa from those screenshots, especially the bocage town missions. i remember copying a house from the m3l3.bsp level (the nebelwerfer one from the sp demo) as practice years ago that looked just like the first screenshot (which isn't a bad thing btw). except these screenshots look better with the displacements. i don't like them too much though, having to line them up perfectly to sew them, and unless you want gaps in them, cutting holes out of it is near enough impossible.


and func_detail is what func_walls were in HL1, brushes that are ignored by VIS so they don't block your view or create leafs or splits along other brushes.

It's actually just a salt-box house I came up with on my own based on one from the original dod_bocage that Fat Tony gave me...after playing every single WW2 game out there one house ends up like all others if you remove the roof and blow the windows out (four walls or less w/holes in them...lol). BTW...I usually don't "cut holes" in my wall faces with ehcarve tool...I build the holes by vertex manipulation of brushes.

One of the reasons we have not seen DOD:Source yet is that it takes a lot longer to map now...you have so many tools at your disposal and in order to get it right you need to be VERY detail oriented...so if adding busted wall displacement brushes is what it takes to achieve the look you are shooting for then you need to be as perfect as you can...and that takes time. I just went back through that test map and if you look at the seams carefully enough you'll see I missed several...you can see through the gaps in some cases. Think about how long it's taking the CS mappers to put out new maps...this stuff ain't easy.

Yeah, the amount of time needed to make decent looking maps now is immense, sure you can get a map out quicker....but it doesn't look half as good as if you take your time.

The map I'm working on is quite odd now, as I've learnt new tactics the town has evolved from a very "blocky" town into a more detailed one and then one with fancy bits.

GingerLord and Fuzzdad make me squiggle with glee.