So at the start of Half-Life: Blue Shift there's this really cool train crash. I had a discussion about this in a gamedev server where we were trying to determine how this was done. There's nothing in the game files to suggest it was an animated model, so I decompiled the map to check it out and...
Let me guess before reading. It's doors.
it's not *mainly* doors but i would not be surprised if there were at least one door in there somewhere
That's sick. Like the helicopter crash in the Pripyat level of Call of Duty 4 cool.
Goldsource somehow being able to do significantly more complicated sequences than fallout 3 with significantly less hackiness is so funny Like damn they just did a func train and made that shit animate, no bullshit whatsoever
it really speaks to the versatility of idtech 2.
"Now, about that beer I owed ya!" 🍺
It looks amazing ngl
I haven't played Half-Life since 2009. Is it still playable on Windows 10/11?
I played it through steam just fine, last year on Windows 10.
The bigger issue might well be your GPU. If you have an NVIDIA 50 series card it could run like garbage.
I'm gonna be real I don't think a 50 series card is going to have trouble running a game from 1998
You'd be wrong then. gamersnexus.net/gpus/nvidia-...
And it appears not just to be PhysX stuff that becomes a major issue, either. Other issues are beginning to crop up, and the further down this path NVIDIA goes, the worse it will get.
NVIDIA has gotten so large that they just don't care anymore.
ok but HL1 runs great on integrated graphics chips these days anyway, and it doesn't rely on anything special that NVIDIA could take away, so i don't get what you're trying to say here.
I've hidden some entities for clarity, but as you can see the entirety of that fucking beautiful near 360 flip the train does, with all the barrels and crates flying everywhere, was manually figured out by a level designer at Gearbox. Wonderful!
Woah. That's pretty wild
This is like the Hammer equivalent of animation keyframes lol
By the time BS rolled around, Gearbox had mastered logic setups (the rest of the lift crash is equally impressive) Then again the tight deadlines drove the level designers to almost insanity, as in several setups across the game, the entity names reflect the mental state of the creator at that time
RANDY!
I mean the lack of an I/O system does that to me, too.
Its the main reason I didn't continue mapping with goldsrc ☠️
I'm not touching the master system ever again Multi_managers seem "easy" to understand and work around, but when one starts working with multisources? That's where the insanity begins
(this post was adapted from something i originally posted to cohost and tumblr in 2023. hope you enjoy!!)
I used to follow you on cohost! Glad you're over here too. I miss cohost so much ;_;
Man, this brings back memories..I used to do a lot of amateur level making in Gold source, even made a macinina or two...so neat seeing that again
hell yeah rotate dat func_tracktrain
are those all just a bunch of elaborate path_tracks? that's awesome.
Looks like a predecessor to that bridge collapse in HL2:Ep2 and relaxation chamber crumbling in Portal 2. In both cases (according to in-game dev commentary) they ran physics calculations and baked paths into the map / model animation like this.
this isn't even remotely similar tho
Oh! Sounds even cooler, then!
This must've been a pain in the ASS to key by hand back in 2001
It gets "better"! Since they had to deal with tight map limits for perf, that meant that for any rotated brushwork, they had to make them first func_door_rotating, and then tell them to open and rotate the degrees desired (due to the way BSP makes cuts in GS) Certainly we have gone long ways since
that's wild
I attempted something similar with an elevator in source, didn't look nearly as cool as this though.
I'm pretty hands-on with hardware when it comes to computers. The software side of things drives me bonkers. I wouldn't even have thought about this while watching, let alone know where to start. Much respect.
The General with Buster Keaton. The most expensive stunt in all of silent film. (If you don't want to watch the whole thing, the bridge collapse/train wreck starts at about 7:30. www.youtube.com/watch?v=A93e...
Oh hey didn’t you used to make tf2 maps? I think I remember you!
They sure don't make games like they used to. What a classic! "FREEMAN!!!" - Panicking Scientist
Shit like this is why I love viewing a game's stock campaign in the editor. I'm sure the logic entity tree that sequences all this is beautiful too.