Jesse apparently can't read, the water sucking limit is at 41 units. After 41 hitting jump will just make you start "bobbing on the surface".

Stop it, Jesse.

Random Fact:
I got naked with Mark's mom last night, and she did a thorough inspection, and it turns out she wants me.

Sooooo, Jon and I have been workin' on cz2 lately, and it's look kinda cool here and there, haha, that's all I have to say about that, I guess.

We've been raisin' hell about some stuff in FF, though. Like, movement in water.

The movement in FF is really awesome, it's just.. it's just bonerific shit moving around in FF. It's so smooth and awesome. Well, until you land in some water.

See, in water that's >40 units deep, your movement gets douchey when you want to, say, jump. We had to stomp ass just to get 40 units to be the new "maximum minimum." See, in HL2, in water that's <40 units deep, you can duck while in the water, look up, and you'll see both outside/underwater at the same time, and that's lame. So, it's easier to just make water at least 40 units deep to prevent that from being possible. Well, before it was changed, you couldn't jump in water that was >36 units, but in water that was 36 units you could jump fine. A 1 unit threshold for that was just dumb. So, we finally got them to make it 40, but now... what about water that's 41 units deep you ask? Exactly, there's a problem -- the movement code needs to be tweaked so that you can't suddenly not move around "naturally." So, basically, we need to find a "maximum depth" so that once you get to that depth your movement would be restricted as you'd expect, but up until that point your movement is just gradually deprecated.

Haha, ok, so, a recap of that if you didn't understand...

I think the movement code needs to be changed so that when you're in water that's >40 and <(# to be determined), your movement is gradually hindered instead of instantly hindered just because you're in water that's >40.

Oh yeah, I keep recording demos of different cool things in FF to release as dev journals, but I'm horrible at figuring out how to compress shit in either DivX or XviD, and these "tutorials" I find are worthless. So, if you actually know a thing or two about compressing videos for HL/HL2, then you should get in touch with me so that I can more cool videos.

More Q&A from the forums! A bunch were answered in the thread here. What follows are the leftovers.

MikeFed:
What's going to happen to pushback in FF? Atm it's pretty damn powerful, will it be toned down at all, or even totally removed?

It may end up being adjusted slightly for some weapons. The sniper AR comes to mind. Overall the effect will be less pronounced.

SWAT_Pointman:
Will the huds and crowbars be team-colored? Thanks in advance.

No. As with most of the visual aspects, these will be user customizable though.

AfterShock:
Is the engineer discard function being changed and if so, how?

It will likely change from TFC to make a little more sense(where’d all my cells go?!). This isn’t something we’ve addressed directly yet, though.

pan0phobik:
How will grenade spawns work? Or to be more broad... how will grenade usage/management work as a whole in the final product?

Grenade bags won’t pickup for players with full grenades. Everything else is up to the map maker.

TurboWolf:
How big will FF client file be?

Big. I can’t say exactly as it’s not done yet. I'd guess in the 500-1000MB range. Perhaps larger.

Pook:
Will there be a client side logfile that can be used to generate stats ?

Yes. Stats should operate on 3 levels: client, server and global. There will be more information about this as it becomes available.

Post more questions! Until next time. . .

Sooooooooooooooooooooooooo it's been forever since I've done a real Dev Journal update. "Allegedly" people don't like my comics or random stuff that isn't FF Dev Journal stuff.

Anyway.

So, I saw Brian Regan last night and he was awesome (haha, here we go again w/ the non Dev Journal stuff! I totally just fooled all of you.) But really, his new stuff is incredible; I have never laughed so much.

Okay, I'll stop.

I've been neglecting my duty (for at least a couple of weeks now... :X) to add the hud hint stuff that will pop up letting the player know important stuff (yeah... that really describes what it is...) BUT I have been doing some bug fixes/feature additions.

While not getting into fisticuffs with the trepids over some water depth issue(s), I've been:

• working on the DM map
  
• fixing bugs like:
  
  
  
  • re-wrote buildable building code [which fixed just about all of the little annoying problems that were coming up]
    
  • added in cameras & multiple render targets [btw, point_camera.cpp needs two minor fixes to actually make it work (pm me if you're trying to get cameras to work for your mod and aren’t having success) and added the ability to have multiple render targets (this was a hl2world tutorial though so I can’t take credit for that)]
    
  • made it so you can’t build dispenser/sg on top of each other (like, you could get the models to be all up inside each other)
    
  • made it so you can’t build dispenser/sg on elevators
    
  
  
• made some awesome MS Paint image of how our HUD should look (rofl...)
  
• walked (couldn't run because of ITB syndrome on left leg) my second marathon (~5:58 ish) and the medals they gave out at the end to both half-marathoners and marathoners had the state name spelled wrong so that was really nice (and the people who put the whole event on are VERY pleased to find this out after the fact... it totally ruins their event, heh :/)
  
• finally adjusted some stuff for the water depth issue once the trepids started to play nice
  

And I’ve totally lost steam (no pun intended) and focus with this Dev Journal so I’ll stop now.

Hoooooooooot pockets, indeed. I've been putting some serious hours into the mapping even though my uni workload is fairly heavy at the moment; my hate for the newer BF2 patches has made this possible (haven't played a game of anything in two weeks, and I've barely played at all since the 1.2 patch which arrived many weeks ago). This is probably a blessing. Rejoice.

Anyway, the bases theme is being strengthened and reworked. Some of the newer textures the artists have made resulted in a slightly different theme evolving. Combined with a light blue fog and an environment lighting change, oranges, purples and blues seem to be the order of the day. I'm currently changing the flag room cliffs to be less 'boxed-in' and more natural. A distant fortress overlooking the FR has also appeared in the skybox. I'm trying to make the world appear to be more continuous and far-reaching than fortress-in-a-box syndrome usually suggests. The only problem with this approach is that if you show players all this cool shit, they feel slightly confused or even cheated when they can't reach it. Trying to reach a balance between aesthetics and accessibility is sometimes tough. Example: I've taken the grate off the roof of the bases FR now. It looks, aesthetically, a lot better. Unfortunately there's no longer a visual indication that informs you, the player, that you can't get up there. Ultimately, I believe a better looking FR with a non-visible obstruction is better than an uglier scene with a visible grate. Players will learn that they can't get up there and just have to live with it.

Or they might, as the man at the duck pond said to Rothko, say ,"stop it", and, "this is appalling".

Compromise, sacrifice and balance are common threads of level design, moreso with the introduction of new technologies which in turn make new possibilities. For TFC, most of the time a level designer clipped off part of a map, the lack of possibilities made it implicit that you couldn't proceed anyway. Example: Bases FR in TFC. The fact that you can't get up there and monkey around is readily perceivable due to the .. lack of stuff up there. It was just sky. Want to go hug the sky, Larry? Didn't think so. Now that there's a bunch of stuff up there, it's not so obvious. If people gnash their teeth when they bounce off an invisible ceiling, I may have to reconsider my approach or find a new means of blocking off the ceiling without compromising aesthetics. In most games, you can simply clip stuff off using fences (with an invisible clip brush extending upwards) and nobody can breach these barriers through normal means anyway. In counter-strike, for example, you have to go to extreme lengths on many of the maps (triple boosting or more) to get anywhere near the invisible barriers. Even simple fences require several players to boost up before the clipping becomes obvious. In TF games, players can conc, rocket jump, trimp (and god knows what else) on the vast majority of maps. Natural clipping soon becomes harder to disguise, and in some areas you just have to bite the bullet and accept that players will notice a discrepancy between what they can see and what they can access. Sometimes you can get around it (there doesn't need to be an open topped flag room) but other times you can't (hunted has lots of surrounding areas that are fenced off, push has a fenced off yard). Ultimately it comes down to doing what you feel is best for that particular situation.

The way I'm working the theme is that the flag room is cut into some cliffs and there's also a hill leading up to the skybox fortress which connects into the FR roof. I'm planning on making the roof earthy, so there's a lot of plantlife and things like that taking hold without quite making the used parts of the base appear to be overgrown or dilapidated. I've fleshed out the theme, and I'm currently requesting some props from the artists so I can start adding the final touches. Framerates in pretty much all parts of bases are all very high due to well-optimised visibility and use of func_details (amongst other stuff), so I'm currently not sacrificing much rendering speed for this stuff. The trouble with unearthing a new and better style is that it means the old stuff needs to get reworked. This is both bad and good, but it generally does need to be overhauled to retain a consistent style throughout. I doubt the reconstruction work will be hugely time-consuming.

Anyway, I just thought I'd post some stuff on my mind rather than not post some stuff at all. This ain't rocket science, it's just stuff I'm currently wrestling with.

My map currently weighs 20 to 30 kilos. "That is maybe about as big as two or three squirrels."