Reepblue's Notebook

After a whole summer of Hammer Notepad less videos, your probably wondering "What happened?" and you call back to when I use to post a video at least every month or so. Well its a long story. So lets start this from the top. Introduction: I have videos filled with Beta videos and interviews of Left 4 Dead, Portal, And Portal 2. And I still watch them even though I watched them hundreds of times over. Why? Well for some reason, watching videos like that gives me inspiration, and I say to myself "I wanna make something like this, with this style." Kinda silly since I have Left 4 Dead, Portal and Portal 2, but its not the same playing the retail and then watching a game in progress video. And If you know me, If I'm not creating something new, I'm recreating the old. I have the Left 4 Dead videos from QuakeCon 2007 and Showdown LAN, and I love the videos of them. Why? Well for those who don't know, In the older versions  of Left 4 Dead, (Remem...

Portal: Alive & Kicking was announced a few days back. Its a Portal 2 addon, which will recreate the adventure of Chell during  the adventure of the original Portal, with the current look of Aperture labs.  So why do this is a few other people are doing it too, and why play it? Portal: Alive & Kicking is pretty much a collaboration of recreated Portal maps for Portal 2. Not only Colossal and I are working on it, but also PortalPlayer, an admin for myApertureLabs, Omnicoder, mapper of the third place entry Edifice of the Summer Mapping Initiative Contest, Groxmapper, and  Wauterboi, who does music. This project is still under development, so please watch the ModDB page for more updates.

That's right, today was my official first day of summer vacation. I've spent the last few weeks not really touching my computer that much as I had school, and during the day, it was to hot to operate a PC. And folks, there is no need for A/C if we usually get 80 degrees for only a month. But now, I got more time open up. First off, I gotta say I have not touched the Portal 2 Authorizing tools in a while. Not only because I have not gotten a chance to really map, but its due to the fact that I'm pretty dry on ideas. No, I'm not asking for my inbox to be flooded with your ideas, I'm just saying that after a full 3 years now of Portal mapping, I'm sort of burned out. Although with Portal 2 and the new stuff that came with it, I can't find myself to make clever puzzles with them. I guess the Portal 2 Demomap was a bad thing after all since I made my Puzzles in Portal 1. Now, I'm not ditching Portal (2) mapping all together; I'm just taking a break from...

Portal 2 was first shown off at E3 with the chambers under dilapidation and disrepair. Since then, we knew that Valve would have a lot of foliage models to use, and the lighting was gold. Since the tools can be available, its time to see how hard it really is. As you can see from the grid, It gets REALLY messy quick with the foliage. Also, a hard part about these types of chambers that you need to balance out the level. Too much, the chamber gets to cluttered and looks like Aperture Science is in a rain forest. Too little, it looks like my grandmother planted them. So whats the secret  end out doing? Well, I put the heavy foliage on the walls, but making sure its not covering up any check boxes. Then I used the hanging vine models and made it "grow" out of the sides. Also a few metal here and there and damaged tiles helped. Next comes the lighting. I've looked at a lot of Valve maps and its clear that the light_spot and env_projectedtexture goes h...

With the release of Portal 2, I was wicked hyped to play it. After I played the campaign, I then went right into co-op. And after that, I played the campaign three or four more times. And every time I played it, I could not wait till the SDK. It was not long till people figured out that you can config the Alien Swarm SDK to map for Portal 2, since the engine versions are close enough such like Source 2006 and Source 2007. However their method involves copying over the files into a mod folder. Meanwhile like a pro, I just set up the SDK to read the Portal 2 VPKs. A thread on myApertureLabs about setting it up is here. So what did I do the instant I loaded up the tools? Well, to be honest, I was lost. It felt like I was mapping in unknown territory, much like I was mapping for Team Fortress 2, or Left 4 Dead. So, I started to make buttons and switches like I would for Portal 1. It was not long till I got a hold of a decompiler and realized that doors, ...

First off, this map and the vmf is out. You can download them both here . (The vmf is in the SDK.) As you may notice in the SDK I have 2 vmfs. The plan was to extend the map a bit, but it did not go well at all. No idea why, I got andry and gave yup A little history: The paint system started way back in the summer when everyone was remaking Portal 2 elements in Portal 1. One thing that people tried and tried was the gels. Well to be honest, while on a role with the Thermal Discouragement Beam, Faith Plates and Vents (What happened to those?) I got cocky and decided to tackle the paint deal. To make a long story short, I did it in the most complicated way possible. The main issue was not the jumping effect, but the stains. To fix this, the floors worked like a grid. The paint would hit a sector, making the stain and spawning the effect at the center of that box. You can see it here . But for the common human mind (and its normal for everyone else to see this as mad...

First post, lets see how this goes. . . Ever since I played Left 4 Dead on my favorite campaign No Mercy, I always wondered how Valve got the lightning effect to work. It was not until May 2009 when I got to see the vmf. In Valves case, the lightning effect is done by logic_cases, sounds, logic_timers and flashing sprites in the 3D skybox. However, this is in the first part of No Mercy when your outside and inside almost equal amounts of time. Without going into detail on how they did theirs, I decided to take a whack on this effect for a map were your indoors. Better remember, lightning never strikes twice! This was for a small map I was playing with, mostly playing with an idea me and another developer were doing. For that screen, I had to go into demo mode, and slow down the playback. Yeah, it flashes that fast, like real lightning. A neat effect to have in your map, totally when you use env_projectedtextur...