I've been working on several things for FF in the last week or two. Firstly, I've been attempting to inject some life into the push cap point. Beefy suggested a cool idea which I'm now using; the cap point is like a huge loading bay blocked off with trucks and other stuff, and the area behind the cap point is a large, vertically imposing building which houses the bay doors. Obviously this is a lot more work compared to having a TFC-styled closed-off warehouse, but it's going to look impressive when finished, so it's worth it. I've also rejigged the lighting and changed the sky, so although I actually really liked the old overcast and dull look (it helps set the mood of a bleak industrial complex) I've now overhauled it. It's now nice and sunny with a blue ambient hue reminiscent of de_prodigy. I've also completely changed the fog values, too.

For those interested in the lighting aspect of source, in addition to the lighting tutorial by 3D Mike, you may also find the following Valve wiki link of use. In short, I realised that I seem to spend forever trying to come up with moody atmospheres and interesting lighting, but sometimes some good ol' sunny day action is the order of the day, especially with summer upon us. I've been reading Dave Johnston's blog on and off for ages now, and it's easily digestible and interesting read. I usually always find something interesting to take from his posts. I just thought I'd post the URL in case any other level designers like reading everything they can get their grubby little grid-snapped hands on.

Once the cap point is finished, I'll be revisting the 3D Skybox. At the moment the surrounding area is one of the generic hilly scenes that are so common in Source maps, but although it looks alright, it's hardly the best I can do. I want to build up a surrounding industrial landscape with more interesting features.

In addition to the mapping, I've been working on various other things. I've been keeping the FF wiki up to date, keeping track of tasks and also documenting the hint system. It's tough to remain focused on any one task when there always seems to be so many tasks to do. Such is life, I guess! Mirv has been working on the hint system lately, so it's really good to have him back. Mulch has been his usual kickass self, so no surprises there. We've also picked up a few new very capable coders, a new mapper and a modeler/animator. We'll be unveiling these guys with the new media release. The job listings page on the site is now out of date, so please don't treat it as gospel. As ever, we will look at any and every email we receive, though.

MEDIA RELEASE SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON (as in the next day or two). It's long overdue, and I can only apologise for the delay. Rest assured, we have plenty to show you guys, though.

Direhit asks:

Will servers be able to actually exec map configs without having to hack up the mapcycle.txt or using a 3rd party program?

This is not currently slated for our first release. However, we are interested in making it possible.

Nezumi:

That dev jernal talk of movement in shallow water reminded me. Here's two questions about player movement.

1. If you're in shallow water next to a short wall (that comes out of the water) you jump automatically when you look at the wall. This is annoying as hell. Will you be taking this out of FF?

Currently this functions similar to HL2. In further testing if it is determined to be problematic it might change. We've discussed making some improvements after release to the HL water movement code. The recently released Sin Episodes demonstrates at least one change that we are considering, namely being able to manually jump out of water if you're near the surface, regardless of proximity to any ledges.

2. In HL1, if you held duck, then jumped and released duck while in the air you would have enough clearance to put your feet down and land standing up. In source if you try this, you land ducked, then stand up. Will you be changing this? I'm kinda assuming so, what with all the player movement changes you guys have been talking about...

This has to do with the default jump height, player height, duck height, duck jump height, etc. These have already been tweaked to reflect HL1/TFC values in Fortress Forever.

Ambex:

1. Will there be a limit of decals like in tfc?

Mp_decals should function identically in FF as in TFC. As far as a hard coded limit on the client in Source, I'm sure there is one but not sure what it is.

2. Will there be a flashlight?

Yes, toggled with a server command.

3. Instead of posting media updates including maps, players or guns, would it be possible to perhaps maybye if it is ok to post sounds of the weapons? Sprites, or just effects?

Our new sounds care of British Tang could make it into an update in the future. Sprites and effects are also candidates once they are in-game and near final.

4. Will you have any media update of our community based maps in progress such as badlands etc?

We've considered this but until our custom content is available to our community mappers and we're past our first release, this isn't likely to happen.

5. Will FF include snow?

If Source does then FF will (yes).

Sh4x:

I'd like to know if it's gonna be possible for mappers to have flags reset position floating in mid air or if they're gonna have to be standing on something absolutely.

We won't be limiting mappers in this way. As a general rule if it was possible in TFC, it will be possible in FF.

Hi, since so many people like to be involved in what's going on [with the bugs!] I thought I'd [attempt to] post an edited CSV export (saved as MS Excel .xls file) of our mantis "View Issues" page. These aren't all the bugs ever reported hence the "EDITED" part in my previous sentence.

http://mulchman.trepid.net/FortressForever.rar

I've officially finished Uni for the year save for a few small reflective hand-ins; I also managed to scrape a pass in maths, so that means I don't have to waste a couple of weeks revising like a petrified chimp.

What does this mean? Well it means I'm back working on FF a whole lot more. In the last few days I've been playing a lot of games and relaxing, but now it's time to grab FF by the scruff of the neck and get moving again. My first goal will be to finish push using blunkka's textures and the prop stuff that decs, omen and I have been working on :) I'll then tidy up bases and move on to new maps, or perhaps give a helping hand elsewhere when required. The troops are returning (mirv is back, which is a huge boost) in a steady fashion and now it's time to try and wrap this thing up.

Fasten your seatbelts, chimps.

I'll round off this dev journal with some Karl Pilkington quotes. The guy is either a superb comedic straight man, or the most inadvertantly amusing man to open his mouth. If you haven't checked out the Ricky Gervais podcasts, do so. You can find the old, free Guardian stuff flying around on various websites and torrents. I realise it's in vogue to hate RG these days (the simpsons episode was crap) but the podcasts are really, really good entertainment.

"He had some dogs and that, and he hit them on the head with a stick. Pointless."
- Karl's version of Pavlov's dogs

"Don't be chuckin' stuff about, if you're surrounded by glass an' what have you."
Karl's not terribly accurate interpretation of the popular saying, "People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones".

"They go from building to building, just building."
Karl's terribly accurate description of builders.

"Stay green, stay in the woods, and stay safe."
Karl on chameleons (he thinks they are showing off, and that if they were to stay put they wouldn't need to change colour).

"Treat the world like a head"
Karl on global warming.

It's me again!

I'm currently awaiting FC's return so we can finish what's left of the weapons -- that will be a blast. Hopefully it will go really fast as he will now be able to work full time on FF and i can also dedicate as much time as usual :P
It's not like i'm sitting around scratching my beard while i'm waiting, though a couple of days ago i completed all the sentry guns with the exception of some minor tweaking of specular and normal maps to give it that last piece of umph. Right now the spec map is a little weak.
It was a pretty big task to get these completed, to be honest. while i worked on level 3 it became more and more clear to me that the other two sgs didnt really work that well together and they didnt work with the level 3 at all. The main issue was that the level 2 sg in particular didnt flow very well, so i decided on a theme for all the sgs that would make the flow between the three stages better. This meant revising my old sg .psds and their massive 100 to 130 layered uvmaps at a high texture resolution. Not all that much fun to be honest!
The extra work and hassle payed off in the end though, big time. I achevied my goal, to make the sgs be more of a family rather than just three different buildable structures (like it was in the past).

I also continued my quest to complete as many props as i can before we start finishing off the weapon models. Theres really not much to say about the props; they are just small-to-medium-sized objects that help give the maps that extra little flare. Most of the props ive worked on / been working on in the last week have been for Push, and once i get a detail prop for the skybox out of the way i will focus my efforts towards the Avanti props. And there's alot of 'em. :) There has been quite alot of stuff for me to focus on, though, and it feels good to be able to assign certain things that i can't find the time to do or that i feel that someone else will do a better job on to another member. Blunkka is the member of choice for thoose kind of jobs right now -- he's a very talented suomi lad!

It's pretty quiet in the ff camp right now. There's alot of work going on but most of it is stuff that people don't really see. A lot of bug crushing and tweaking.

The time when people are done with their educational work is approaching and i can't wait.
I'm really eager to finish this mod and get it out of the way so we can let you guys play and so that i can focus on my education. During the last year ive pretty much worked full time on FF and now i just got confirmed a place at the university i applied for. I'm not quite sure what i will be taking, to be honest. I applied for 3D Design and Animation as that's a required course before you take 3D Game Design. I asked in the application if my experience with modding and game development was good enough to just go straight onto the game design course (which focuses mainly on level design, and i have enough 3d experience for that) and i just got the mail yesterday that i was accepted, but it didn't say for what. However, the mail said something like "If you have any questions about your course please contact ..... " and he's the guy in charge of 3D Game Design. I guess i'll find out soon enough ;)

Well.. i dont know what more to say really, i'll put a new journal up when i have something to add :) Bit tired now, been up all night painting the downstairs bathroom. Was going to finish a few avanti props but for some reason i started painting it and i couldnt find any reason to stop. Hope someone thinks its an interesting read :P