@scornkeeper
A profile dedicated predominantly to posting Dark Interval facts and some Source Engine things. SFW. See https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhbfQEaWd5MPiSEm4Ll23inE7ClMBWpYG for a collection of Source Engine shenanigans.
There's a known bug that makes the New Game dialogue fade away when clicked. As a workaround, open the console (~ by default) before using New Game. Other dialogues (settings, loading) should work fine either way.
I've put together a small addon that adds background maps to Dark Interval: Part 2 (by default, it uses static backgrounds).
www.moddb.com/mods/dark-in...
I contributed multiple in-universe movie posters for this, and I recommend playing.
The four thermometer variations in Idyllic (Map Labs - Eye Candy 2). They show the temperature outside during the day (~-15°C), outside during the nihgt (~-21°C), inside greenhouse during the day (~-3°C) and night (~-17°C).
In Idyllic for Map Labs, I gave the thermometer 4 bodygroups so that I could set its temperature for 1) daytime, outside; 2) daytime, in the greenhouse; 3) night-time, outside; 4) night-time, greenhouse. I doubt most people noticed but I don't consider this a waste of time, never.
HL2 EP1 Hackfraudery:
This background map in Ep1 depicts the Kleinercast with several bullet marks on the glass surface. Yet, once you approach it yourself, no damage is visible.
I shall patiently await the fix for this inconsistency in time for the upcoming Ep1's 20th anniversary next year!
This made placing nodes very routine and already saved me time. This can potentially even be expanded into exporting Mapadd files.
Plus, DI's commentary nodes have some custom features that wouldn't show in the Commentary Editor but do get saved by SLE.
Since the commentary file is a plain txt with entity keyvalues, I decided I could export them in SLE. It was indeed very easy. Commentary nodes and other entities can be placed the usual way, selected, and saved as txt; the game reads and plays it same as a regular commentary file.
Screenshot of Valve's Commentary Editor with Dark Interval's level ch05_under loaded, displaying one of the commentary nodes, and the editor's interface.
Trying Valve's Commentary Editor was underwhelming.
Having in-game tools is pretty cool but it's cumbersome.
You can't drag a placed node around, only replace it/set its coords by hand.
Audio records at 11KHz, which sounds bad.
Unless the map is loaded manually before the comm. file, it will crash.
New DI article with new media (that doesn't preview in embed for whatever reason😑)
www.moddb.com/mods/dark-in...
I've updated SLE to 2.108, can be found at the Releases link.
github.com/Cvoxalury/so...
It also comes with the full source code now.
github.com/Cvoxalury/so...
Finally done marking & commenting all the changes in SLE's codebase against original Hammer in preparation for source code release.
Had to diff each file separately due to past lack of diligence.
There's ~1800 changes. The number is fuzzy bc some are clustered together. But that's the rough idea.
A composite of the covers of all the games/software listed in the post.
Did you know November is the most Half-Life filled month of the year?
Besides HL 1&2, November in different years saw the releases of:
HL SDK (25.11.98)
Opposing Force (19.11.99)
Decay (14.11.01)
Source SDK (5.11.04)
HL:Source (16.11.04)
HL2:Deathmatch (30.11.04)
As well as Garry's Mod (29.11.06).
It would mean a lot to us if you posted it around, told your friends, etc. We've got another game coming down the tubes and it'd be neat to have some walking-around money for it! Help us make more stuff like this... Early investors will be rewarded...
store.steampowered.com/app/2467100/...
There's a mistake in the Pastebin readme saying there's a Workshop version. It had to be cancelled for now because the Workshop doesn't have a section for Lost Coast and it would be required for it to work properly.
Before and after:
Before and after:
As mentioned, Lost Coast's 20th anniversary is soon (tomorrow). But I'll give everyone a head start and post now:
My Lost Coast Anniversary Update!
It fixes bugs and oversights and adds more detail.
Readme: pastebin.com/S2ubYcxU
Moddb: www.moddb.com/mods/half-li...
GB: gamebanana.com/mods/629540
A sheet showing a number of flaws in Lost Coast's mapping. Top row: 1) missing faces on an arch outside the church entrance; 2) missing faces above a column inside the church; 3) visible areaportal cut-off when looking outside the church windows. Mid row: 1) missing brush inside the arched ceiling of the staircase tunnel; 2) missing face inside the church; 3) missing deck faces on the shipwreck model. Bottom row: 1) missing faces on the ruins outside the courtyard; 2) clipping canister models inside the church; 3) missing top of the bridge leading to the village. All these are taken without going out of bounds or using console commands.
Lost Coast's 20th anniversary is near.
For years it made it a little sad that it's filled with these small but noticeable flaws that'd take very little work to fix.
The 2025 Anniversary Update mostly didn't touch LC. The flaws remain.
But, and I have it on good authority, this is about to change.
If you time it extremely right you can jump down onto the APC and +use its door the frame before the impact, that counts, right 🥴
To clarify, this is about shallow water. Falling in water slows you down in the first place and if deep enough will reduce the velocity enough to fully avoid damage.
DI query:
How many people 1) notice in the first place, 2) appreciate or hate, that DI doesn't stop fall damage in liquids?
Unlike HL1-2, you can land in a meter of water and still die from impact in DI.
This is one of the times 'realism' was attempted as its own goal. How well did it work?
SLE's documentation have been posted on its GitHub repository Wiki.
github.com/Cvoxalury/so...
The Flat view in SLE draws brushes in shaded grey and displacements in grey + white wireframe showing disp triangulation. The models are rendered with a colour override depending on their tris count, with the more expensive models being brighter red and eventually (at high enough tris count) going into purple and bluish.
Flat View in Hammer draws brushes in random shaded colours, displacements in pure white, and models in textured mode. Its functionality hasn't changed much since Worldcraft's 2.x days.
Flat View in SLE is quite different from Hammer's. Working on DI, I wanted a way to tell, at a glance, tri counts on models that needed LODs and/or fade distances set for performance. It was then considered useful enough to keep.
It is also partially inspired by UE3's "shader complexity" view mode.
In the process I've updated the Arch and Torus dlgs to be more responsive (previously you had to click 'Preview' every time to update it).
With the pre-creation preview the Torus tool made sense for me maybe for the first time ever in the 19 years of using WC/Hammer.
Three types of primitives being previewed before confirming creation in SLE: Cylinder, Arch and Torus (Arch and Torus dialogues not being shown)
Making pre-creation previews of primitives was pretty fun and a little bit painful. To be true to the to-be-created shapes, it had to mostly be drawn point by point, line by line, w/ the sphere taking the longest to figure out.
I've wanted these previews for years and now I'm really glad.
My main inspiration for adding 3-Point Clipping was the BSP Editor. It goes back to 1996 & was used by Valve with HL before switching to Worldcraft.
Though 3-P. Clip. wasn't added to it until 2010s when fans started updating BSP (it being open-source).
I think it's damn neat.
bspquakeeditor.com
Did you know that in Hammer, if your selection is obstructed by something (like a transparent model), you can click Page Down to "cycle selection" and select what's behind the obstruction?
In SLE the hotkey's shared with '3' (faster to reach).
(Page Up and '4' do the same in opposite direction)
It should be compatible with Mapbase, I've made many maps under Mapbase mods with it. I'm not sure what HL2 VR is, however. If it's made with Source SDK 2013 then it should be.
In a traditional, historic, even, fashion, I forgot a vital file. This has been rectified and the GitHub releases were both updated with it.
