the engine and the sdk

[the unloved]

as i look upon this game, i think- ♥♥♥♥ happens



firstly we are getting tiles to play with-does this mean goodbye to my beloved brushes? or does it mean no more hammer any more?!

secondly- WHY IS VALVE MAKING DIFFERENT ENGINES!!!!!

the idea of the source engine was that it would be ONE single engine for ALL of valves games that gets constantly updated.

this broke when the orange box came out, but valve has updated all their source games to it. now when the l4d came out there was TWO source engines. and now there will be a THIRD!!! what is valve doing?!?!?!

[YoungScripter]

1. Different engines is good.
2. Hammer would be nice. If the game doesn't allow Hammer editor, it's crap.

[Corrn]

I believe they're updating all their games to the newest source engine slowly

[YoungScripter]

Which is great.

[Snausages]

I don't think Hammer's gonna disappear. The game has its own mapping tool yeah, but one of the developers also recommended to finalize your maps in Hammer before publishing them to make them more stable.

[the unloved]

1: different engines=not good

different engines is stopping valve from giving the ob engine pretty l4d effects and stopping l4d from being on the mac

[moosenukes]

TileGen is primarily a tool for level designers. You can build sets of rooms and corridors, then easily rearrange those pieces to make a final level. You can also specify some generation rules and the tool will randomly generate a level for you out of those pieces.

You can build and play the level right from within TileGen, but you generally want to take the output into Hammer for refinement and building into a full campaign.

The tile system is meant to make starting a map much easier, but you still take it into hammer for the detailed stuff. You could probably do the entire thing in hammer as well if you like.

Valve hasn't updated all of their games to the L4D engine because they would need to drop DX8 support. There are a lot more people using DX8 than you might expect.

[Bindal]

You build the tiles in Hammer - and then build the maps in the tile-tool.

And the different engine is a result of a different need of features - in this case, a top-down-view with the corrrect way to aim and a lot of other things.

[Frequalizer]

You do your name honor, at least.

[the unloved]

yeah, my brothers pc is still using dx8


but then if valve concentrated on one engine, there might be options to disable dx9 rendering shaders (making l4d playable)

[TheDude7053]

TileGen is primarily a tool for level designers. You can build sets of rooms and corridors, then easily rearrange those pieces to make a final level. You can also specify some generation rules and the tool will randomly generate a level for you out of those pieces.

You can build and play the level right from within TileGen, but you generally want to take the output into Hammer for refinement and building into a full campaign.

^This

[facepalm]

yeah, my brothers pc is still using dx8


but then if valve concentrated on one engine, there might be options to disable dx9 rendering shaders (making l4d playable)

this is one of the most ignorant statements I have personally ever seen

[the unloved]

this is one of the most ignorant statements I have personally ever seen

you blatantly havent looked at all my posts then.




but seriously, valve should come up with a way to make every new technology they make expand on the old, rather than make the old obsolete

[Flying Ace]

it's not a different engine it's a different version*

also all it does is keep people from running gmod with it

[YoungScripter]

Garry was looking into getting AS content to work with GMod, FYI.

[The Only Camper]

1. Different engines is good.
2. Hammer would be nice. If the game doesn't allow Hammer editor, it's crap.

for number 2: Indeed, I'm kind of sad to see that it will be tile-based.

[analogfantasies]

for number 2: Indeed, I'm kind of sad to see that it will be tile-based.

It's already been stated, and quoted in this thread, that you can import maps into Hammer, so don't worry.

[turtlesoup]

it's not a different engine it's a different version*

also all it does is keep people from running gmod with it

this exactly, I don't know why people are instantly associating a new feature set with a completely different engine, it's still source.

[Ceryk]

this exactly, I don't know why people are instantly associating a new feature set with a completely different engine, it's still source.

Seriously. It says very clearly it in the second paragraph:

"Along with the game get the complete code base for Alien Swarm that features updates to the Source engine as well as the SDK. Alien Swarm adds 3rd person camera, depth of field, improved dynamic shadows and a wide variety of gameplay additions to the Source engine."

[Simon.C]

for number 2: Indeed, I'm kind of sad to see that it will be tile-based.

It's not Tile based. You have a choice. If you want to create a map in Hammer completely from scratch, you can.

From the Black Cat Games forums...


Tell us about the tile-based mapmaking? Sounds neat. Is Hammer used? Can Hammer be used instead?

It's really neat. You create 'tiles' in hammer. Something like a room or a corridor. If you've made a corridor, you assign an exit/entry point at each end, or if you've made a room, assign one at each entry way.

You save your room or corridor, or what ever, then run the tile program. You're presented with a grid and you can place the tiles where ever you want, just line up the entry points to the tiles.

OR, you can paint down an approximate path for your level, on the grid, and the program will place tiles down in a random order and follow the path as close as it can. It'll line up the entry points for you.

Something like that, anyway.

Neat. How do wall-heights/transparencies work? 128 units, auto-transparent when camera passes? Oh, and what's the tile width in Hammer?

I have no idea about wall heights and transparency stuff, but you can make a tile any size or shape. There probably is a minimum size, but you can make tiles L and T shapes, or anything really. If you wanted, you could make an entire cavern, or a sandy plain, down to a small cap to cover an exit, or a small cubby hole or something.

How do triggers or scripted events work (buttons etc)? Is it done within Hammer or in the tile program? If it's done in Hammer are you able to trigger something in one tile that changes something in another even though they could have been made separately in Hammer?

Also are you guys supplying prebuilt tiles with the game?

There's a sample tileset. You do all the trigger work in Hammer. Entities get renamed to be unique each time they're placed down, but you can make names global by prefixing them with an '@' sign, that's how you can do logic between different tiles.