Source compiling issues AGAIN

So I recently tried to compile a model for source and received a semi-cryptic error in the form of:

WARNING: *** Encountered VTF file with an invalid minor version!
WARNING: *** Encountered VTF file with an invalid full header!

I also had two materials on my model. The materials were in separate directories. I don't think either of those points were the problem. Considering it said the vtf file has issues I figured it was the vtf at fault. I had been using vtfedit to convert my png's to vtf's and I guess I hit a flag somewhere or something.

I fixed the problem by exporting my vtf from GIMP instead of converting it with vtfedit. I get the feeling I did something else too though. If that doesn't work for you, read on.

Blend textures to add subtle wear and tear

I want to talk about tiles. Tiles are a nice texture to use because they have a lot of innate detail. They have grout, which provides opportunities for nice normal maps and variations in phong/envmap specularity, they can have cracks on them which looks cool, and the tiles themselves can have cool designs or just alternating colours. The problem with tiles though is that this inherent detail is misinterpreted for ease of use. As nice as it is to slap a tile texture down and give yourself a pat on the back as you sip you freshly prepared congratulatory cognac on the rocks, it's not at all that simple - as usual, como siempre.

Tiles are actually a pain in the ass to lay down in real life. I tiled my toilet and bathroom once. It was horrible. You have to cut here, lay there, measure this, and it's all such work. This experience led me to look at game tiles in a different light. No longer can I drop a tile texture down, rotate it 45 degrees and think no one will look twice.

Simple hallways aren't at all simple

Gameplay in DA is poised to be liquified awesome, as are the environments. Looking at some professionally made maps helps put your own environment art in perspective. I have taken a screenshot of a simple random hallway in CS:GO and analyzed why it is the standard people expect in modern games. I thought it would be nice to point out what makes a simple scene awesome, and hopefully our loyal readers will gain a bit of an insight into how to look at an environment as more than just an environment. If you can quantify what makes something look good and then replicate that, you'll progress in your skill faster than the average noob

Here's a simple screenshot I took, and the resulting revelations:

Continuous Boogaloo and Hotspot Distribution: Map design principles for Double Action pt 3

As we have already seen, DA is all about continual, flowing movement through the environment. We have managed to tailor the environment to uninterrupted slides and dives, but what about the greater picture? The very layout of a map should allow our action heroes to continually run, dive and slide without hitting a wall or a dead end and having to recalibrate their path. My favourite way of ensuring this is to plan our map in terms of:

Overlapping circles of travel

When planning a map (which is something that needs to take place before starting) you should take into account the greater travel paths of our intrepid heroes. A simple way to think of this for now is three circles overlapping, like a ven diagram:

Doors: Map design principles for Double Action pt 2

Doors are a bit of an 'in joke' for game designers. For something so simple there are a million variables to consider. In DA we have a similar situaion. Considering what we already know about DA's gameplay mechanics, we find that we need to use doors in order to enhance the probability of an uninterrupted boogaloo, which is contrary to the very idea of a door: to stop people.

Divey wivey and smoothin the moovin: Map design principles for Double Action pt 1

Double Actions gameplay is heavily reliant on smooth, fluid and continual movement around the environment. A player is having the most fun when sailing through the air and sliding around corners, akimbos blazing at a similarly horizontal opponent. DA doesn't have any cover system and the crouch key is rarely used (except to stunt). Taking these factoids into consideration we see that it is important that DA maps have long, unobstructed avenues for the player to exercise his right to boogaloo as a verb. Have you ever taken a lateral dive around a corner, vindicator poised to deliver a lead-whoopin on the briefcase bearers behind, only to clip into a stray pole or lonely brush face? You'll realise that this is heavily not fun.

The problem with wide open, unobstructed lanes of fire is that they look bare, but as we start to add detail we also start to block the player. As a small mod dying for attention on the scene we want to have nice, detailed environments to show off to our adoring public, but we can't sacrifice anything in terms of gameplay. So in order to tackle these problems we have a few options.

Multiple .qc compile at once - Blender SMD tools

I knew there was a way to batch compile .qc files with this plugin. I have been making multiple models and modular sets that require a lot of tweaking and it sucks to compile the .qc files one by one. I finally recovered how to do multiple compiles straight out of blender (by looking at the SMD tools page on the VDC durr...).

All you do is select your qc directory, and then append the first few letters of your .qc files, followed by an asterisk (*) onto the filepath in the "QC file path" box. Observe:

You're welcome.

Video Tutorial: Models from Dota2 to Blender

I made this one as much for myself as for anyone else.

Rendering a transparent background (alpha channel) in blender 2.6

So after scouring the net for this and getting quite frustrated, I figured it out myself. Short and sweet: In your render panel (the camera) under 'shading', change the 'alpha' dropdown box to 'Transparent'. Et voila. Render with a transparent background (you may need to make sure you have the 'RGBA' button pressed in the 'output' pane on your render panel as well).

EDIT: If you're trying to bake alpha from one mesh to another, you'll need to create a new material on the lowpoly mesh, scroll down and tick the 'Transparency' box, and slide the 'Alpha' down to zero.

Decompiling Portal 2 Models

I have been trying to decompile some models recently and I found out it's harder than it used to be. Luckily this guy has it sorted. I'm going to copypaste that post here, just in case that one gets deleted or something.

X tips for blender I thought everyone knew

I have been using blender for like 9 years now (although I only count the last 3 being any good) and have never really gotten involved with any blender-specific communities. I have been somewhat of a silent learner, watching tutorials and googling for tips rather than getting involved in the community. I don't know if this is a good or a bad thing.

The thing is, I just finished a blender-related-forums web surf and I was surprised to see how many things people don't know about blender. So I'm going to do one of those "6 things you can do to lose fat RIGHT NOW" lists for blender features. I have no idea how many of these I'll do, hence the X. Rather than being a cunt, I'll start with the best first.

Simplicity in design - friend or enemy?

I have a real soft spot for simple designs - minimalist if you will. The thing I love most about modelling and coding for games is the way the restrictions of the medium force you to omit information, and the way you can construct your design so that the omissions of this information don't detract from the user experience, but add to it. Kind of like when people listen to music to "hear the notes they don't play".

This impressionistic approach to design, wether that be for websites, games or a simple logo, can be a double edged sword. On one hand it means that there is less production work to bring your design to life since there is essentally less information to display, but it also requires a lot of thought and planning to go into the early design stages and sometimes during testing it can all fall down catastrophically. So is simplistic design better or worse than the traditional information spam approach?

Community Creationism - or "Can I be a knight of Mars? With... you guys? Maybe get me one of them... bats?"

I'm going to coin a term here and I have no idea how accurate it will be. Community creationism. After being exposed to lots of different types of media and communities in the last few years, I have discovered what I think may be a human trait. It goes something like this:

As you are exposed more regularly to a media form, situation, thought process, community or other concept involving social interaction, no matter your initial thoughts on the concept, you will form an affinity for it. This affinity grows into a desire to contribute, and thus you become a community creationist. I'll explain with examples from my own life.

I fucking hate apple

I need a way to express how much I fucking hate apple and their fucked up interface.

I have just spent the last week trying to upload my app to the app store. The main concern being that I don't own an apple computer. This makes it very close to impossible to effectively work on an iPhone app.

Awesome uploading gif generator!

I don't spruik much but I just found this and it's awesome

Loading GIF generator

I am always trying to find decent free loading gifs and that has a selection of pretty much all the ones you ever see on the net. I thought it worth noting down in case I am looking for it again later.

Lazy mysql

I fucking hate MySQL.

is it just me or do the letters 'sql' take far too long to type? They are in complete opposite ends of the keyboard and chafe my ass. Add in 'my' and you now have a word that requires you visit all compass points of your keyboard to type it. What's worse, every mysql function in php has "mysql" at the start of it!

Because I am a lazy bastard I made a little function that eases my pain.

function fetch($str){
    $q = mysql_query($str);
    $a = mysql_fetch_assoc($q);
    if(!$a){
         echo 'e: Fetch() returned an error! '.mysql_error();
         return false;
    }
    else return $a;
}

Now I can just call fetch("SELECT * FROM `my_ass` WHERE `mysql` = 'shit'"); whenever I require an array from a mysql string. I don't have to type "mysql" once!

Seriously, try typing mysql ten times fast.

Things I wish I had been told about objects

You can read this in a nice wiki format here

When looking at tutorials and tips, you'll hear phrases like "the objects 'x' method" and "returns an 'x' object". If you're not sure what this means, it definitely helps to get a grasp of the concept of objects when you are programming.

A big problem I had when I first learned about Object Oriented Programming was that tutorials all needed to be so damn correct. Since I was only a noob this lead to confusion and frustration.

This post is not entirely correct, and in some ways just flat wrong. But it serves to bridge the gap between procedural programming and OOP for the newbie. If you continue down the golden path of OOP you'll find that a lot of the stuff I said here was fallacious, but it was a means to an end.

Prototype is so handy

I have been javascripting like a madman recently. I now have quite a bit of experience in the language. Here's a few fiddles I did to get my head around stuff like objects, dragging stuff and AJAX calls:

My JsFiddles directory

Try the cards program, you can upload a picture and give it a name/description. It's supposed to be a jumping off point for making online card games like magic the gathering or w/e.

The benefits of going to "work"

I work a job on a week on week off roster, which affords me the luxury of working fulltime on my models/games every second week. I treat this as an opportunity to "dip my toe" into the work-at-home-as-a-desperate-indie-dev lifestyle that I am clutching at strings to obtain. The problem is finding the line between leisure mentality and work mentality.

When working round the year and having only the weekends and after work to model, I would have to smash out my models at top speed just to keep up. This attitude translated fantastically to working with lots of time, oh man did I get some shit done, but lately I have noticed that with plenty of time to spare, I have more time to waste. It's hard to admit, but there are real downsides to fulltime home work, and subsequent upsides to what I call "work work".

Benchmarking Models

For a while I have been wondering how to find out just how resource-hungry any model is. Obviously the more details in a model the harder it will run the PC, but exactly how much, and what is the hungriest, is somewhat of a grey area for me. I was hoping that perhaps someone had made a program into which you could load a model and it would tell you how much cpu it takes to load, how much ram it requires, etc. Unfortunately it doesn't appear that this exists. This is understandable considering the different needs of engines, the different PC environments and I assume a whole range of other crap. But I still want to have something to benchmark my models against, dammit!