Developer Journal: trepid_jon
Posted 1 decade ago Team Lead / Project Manager
Hunted had its first playtest on Sunday. We poppin' cherries off! HAAAAH! Poppin' cherries off! HAAAAH! Poppin' cherries off! HAAAAH! Poppin' cherries off! HAAAAH!
That's gonna be the Ying Yang Twins' next platinum-sellin' single. Just watch. Wait, what happened? I'm over here now.
For the past few weeks, Jesse and I have been on mission of sorts to finally get a playable hunted committed to FF's SVN so we can finally get started with some "real" hunted playtesting. We were tryin' to get the playable hunted committed last week, but we failed. This week, however, we just almost/kinda/sorta failed. Wait, what?
I downplay it like that because even though we managed to commit an updated and playable hunted for Sunday's playtest, we "almost/kinda/sorta failed" by continuing to neglect the escape area. And because of that, I woke up on Sunday before the playtest with a feeling of guilt like, "Why did we waste time yesterday by retexturing areas and working on semi-finished areas...when there isn't even an escape area yet and we haven't even started the lua scripting."
We didn't completely waste time on Saturday, though. We finally added info_ff_teamspawns (which I think is a worthless entity, because info_ff_script should be able to act like a spawn point...but I guess that's for another wonderful dev lua discussion), info_ff_scripts for health and armor kits, and the 2 holes on the corner of the ruins that overlook the warehouse ramp and field.
But even though we did some useful stuff on Saturday, we still didn't make the escape area...which means we should have completely failed for the second week in a row.
There were only a couple of hours before the playtest, so there wasn't enough time to make an actual escape area and recompile hunted...because hunted takes a couple of hours to compile. In hindsight, there actually was enough time due to the playtest being a little delayed, but the keyword there is "hindsight." So instead of making the whole escape area along with a trigger_ff_script for the escape's brush-based trigger and other brushwork that would require a full recompile, point entities were used so hunted could be recompiled with -onlyents.
A new concept that Jesse and I want to go with for the escape area is using a portal instead of a normal door like in the old TFC hunted. So the buttons that used to open a door would open a portal instead. Right now, this portal is only using a point_camera and a scaled down version of HL2's models/effects/portalrift.mdl...along with not using _rt_Camera for the portal material's basetexture, because FF supports multiple render targets for multiple monitors watching multiple orgies all at the same time. Very cool stuff, but it's not perfect for the desired portal effect Jesse and I want.
What Jesse and I really want to have is an escape portal that basically looks like the portals in Prey and Portal, so you actually see through the portal like you're looking through a window. That way the lame low resolution point_camera portals can be murdered in their sleep.
Anyways, by using point entities and -onlyents, a playable hunted was committed for Sunday's playtest. But Jesse...missed out on all that Sunday fun. Hahahahah, he missed hunted's first playtest. Everyone point at the queer and laugh.
Here's the extra goodness, though. My "mouse3" button is my "Push to talk key" in Ventrilo...and it just so happens that for me, "mouse3" is bound to "jpeg" in FF. So every time I talked to the team on Vendrilldo, I also took a screenshot. Which means...I took a lot of screenshots, and here are some of them...
Note: because these were essentially "accidental" screenshots, they were all taken at jpeg_qualilty's default setting of 90. Also, the HUD is being reworked right now, so I cropped the current HUD out of the screenshots. And the sniper rifle view model isn't in-game yet, so I cropped it out as well. Annnnnd I also cropped out other incomplete things, like the escape area...or lack thereof. I'm leaving the one screenshot that shows the sniper with missing textures, though (09)...just because.
O&A PARTY ROCK!
Discuss on the forums → View all developer journals That's gonna be the Ying Yang Twins' next platinum-sellin' single. Just watch. Wait, what happened? I'm over here now.
For the past few weeks, Jesse and I have been on mission of sorts to finally get a playable hunted committed to FF's SVN so we can finally get started with some "real" hunted playtesting. We were tryin' to get the playable hunted committed last week, but we failed. This week, however, we just almost/kinda/sorta failed. Wait, what?
I downplay it like that because even though we managed to commit an updated and playable hunted for Sunday's playtest, we "almost/kinda/sorta failed" by continuing to neglect the escape area. And because of that, I woke up on Sunday before the playtest with a feeling of guilt like, "Why did we waste time yesterday by retexturing areas and working on semi-finished areas...when there isn't even an escape area yet and we haven't even started the lua scripting."
We didn't completely waste time on Saturday, though. We finally added info_ff_teamspawns (which I think is a worthless entity, because info_ff_script should be able to act like a spawn point...but I guess that's for another wonderful dev lua discussion), info_ff_scripts for health and armor kits, and the 2 holes on the corner of the ruins that overlook the warehouse ramp and field.
But even though we did some useful stuff on Saturday, we still didn't make the escape area...which means we should have completely failed for the second week in a row.
There were only a couple of hours before the playtest, so there wasn't enough time to make an actual escape area and recompile hunted...because hunted takes a couple of hours to compile. In hindsight, there actually was enough time due to the playtest being a little delayed, but the keyword there is "hindsight." So instead of making the whole escape area along with a trigger_ff_script for the escape's brush-based trigger and other brushwork that would require a full recompile, point entities were used so hunted could be recompiled with -onlyents.
A new concept that Jesse and I want to go with for the escape area is using a portal instead of a normal door like in the old TFC hunted. So the buttons that used to open a door would open a portal instead. Right now, this portal is only using a point_camera and a scaled down version of HL2's models/effects/portalrift.mdl...along with not using _rt_Camera for the portal material's basetexture, because FF supports multiple render targets for multiple monitors watching multiple orgies all at the same time. Very cool stuff, but it's not perfect for the desired portal effect Jesse and I want.
What Jesse and I really want to have is an escape portal that basically looks like the portals in Prey and Portal, so you actually see through the portal like you're looking through a window. That way the lame low resolution point_camera portals can be murdered in their sleep.
Anyways, by using point entities and -onlyents, a playable hunted was committed for Sunday's playtest. But Jesse...missed out on all that Sunday fun. Hahahahah, he missed hunted's first playtest. Everyone point at the queer and laugh.
Here's the extra goodness, though. My "mouse3" button is my "Push to talk key" in Ventrilo...and it just so happens that for me, "mouse3" is bound to "jpeg" in FF. So every time I talked to the team on Vendrilldo, I also took a screenshot. Which means...I took a lot of screenshots, and here are some of them...
Note: because these were essentially "accidental" screenshots, they were all taken at jpeg_qualilty's default setting of 90. Also, the HUD is being reworked right now, so I cropped the current HUD out of the screenshots. And the sniper rifle view model isn't in-game yet, so I cropped it out as well. Annnnnd I also cropped out other incomplete things, like the escape area...or lack thereof. I'm leaving the one screenshot that shows the sniper with missing textures, though (09)...just because.
O&A PARTY ROCK!