Starting Fall 2016

I slightly over-estimated how much work I could get done over the summer while balancing my personal obligations. I started summer with the goal of learning a classes worth of C++ on my own, and I was 90% successful. Why 90%? Because I got a job at my University. And because pointers are hard.

I used "Programming: Principles and Practice Using C++" by Bjarne Stroustrup (The guy who created C++) as my primary resource for learning. Starting from Hello World!, to inputs, conditionals, functions, switch statements, loops, vectors, and finally structs. After getting those basics down, structs and pointers were the real heavy hitters I needed to cover. I got through structs, but ran out of time before pointers. Which is a bummer since that is probably the hardest thing I'll have to cover.

Like the title says, Fall term has started. I'll only be doing 13 credits spread between 3 classes, but it's different this time as 8 of those credits are at University rather than Community College. The difference? Required labs and recitation separate from the normal class schedule. Add that to my new job, Doing IT for one of the college at University, and things are about to get all busy again, but at least I am still learning and now making money in a field that's really intriguing.

What next? I don't know. I'll keep this blog going on programming and engineering adventures. Hopefully I'll get back to the HL2 mod, or maybe start modding another game. Fallout 4 perhaps?

HL2 Map update

I've been taking it a bit easy these first few weeks of summer. Though life is still stressful, I've worked on my map a bit more.

 

I added a park! I wasn't sure whether or not to put a park or a run down parking lot in this area but I had a friend suggest park and I think it turned out pretty well. I also added that large apartment building, a combine checkpoint, expanded on the factory, and added the combine wall. Wrapping up this last area finishes the major details and structure of the map and next up comes decorations and smaller details. Also I should put a story line in this eventually but I decided to take a Valve approach of creating a world and environment first and let the story fall into place.

My next post SHOULD be more of my C++ adventures, but if I end up making more progress on the map then why not.

Summer 2016

Gotta start somewhere.

Spring Term Update

Oh hi there. It's been about a month since my last post so I figured I would pop up and give you an update.

Like I've said before, engineering is hard. I learned recently that getting a job is also hard. On the up side, I believe that I will actually have a monthly income starting this summer. On the downside, it's family related and won't last longer than the summer. Hopefully I can arrange a real job by fall but we will see.

This is also be the first summer in 4 years that I will not be taking classes. Besides my 40 hour obligation, the only other thing I need to do is learn C++, well, at least get that ball rolling. This means, if all goes well, I can post my C++ projects and Game Dev stuffs from my free time. Basically, I took an intro programming class at one college and they taught me Java. I'll be taking the next level programming class at another college in the fall that will teach my C++, meaning I have to relearn that first intro class but in C++ over the summer. Shouldn't be TOO bad and it won't be the end of the world if I can't do it. I can always repeat that first intro class just with C++.

I really like that this blog exists. It reminds me the progress I've made, the thoughts I've had, and how often I repeat myself from some other post. I'm still writing down game ideas in a private document as well. The document and this blog are just awesome ways to give me a boost when things get a bit too hard for my liking. Anyways, I'll be back after finals week which will be awhile but totally worth it.

Engineering is hard.

Oh hey there. I missed a week again. To be fair I didn't have too much to write about as there were a few nights these past few weeks where I'm up until midnight doing homework. Which is always fun. Add that to that hectic personal life I keep mentioning and other homework and I end up just too busy.

So let's talk about my plans. I'm applying for jobs to start this summer. Despite being of college age, I've never actually had a job which doesn't help my resume. Or my wallet. But the goal is to move out and solve 90% of my problems, so I'm really glad to be working towards that.

As far as Dev goes, I'm planning on teaching myself some intro C++ over the summer to save myself paying a university priced class. I keep having ideas for games though. Usually Indie games come up with a unique feature and base a game around that, but my idea of a game is more... ambitious. I mean indie versions of Metro 2033 or Battlefield 4.

Speaking of which, Indie games are weird to me. itch.io is probably one of the biggest indie game distribution site out there. All the games there are really... similar? I guess this could be said about indie games as a whole but there are a ton of "rogue-like", 2D, sidescrolling, pixel graphics... that sort of things. Is that type of game just really popular? Or easy to make? A majority of the games I play and all the ideas I have for games are First or third person, 3D game. Maybe it comes done to personal taste, but 2D games just don't have that much appeal to me.

So that's what's been going through my head. I'm not sure what I'll do regarding my Source mod as I have several assignments and labs to work on... and a term/research paper to get going. Aw well. I'll work on it when I can. I wish it was as easy as rambling on some private blog in some random corner of the internet.

Now with Video!

Like I mentioned last week, spring term started up again so there goes all my free time, though I did mention I wanted to make a few videos to show it off in motion. Just a quick disclaimer: I used Shadow Play to record these, and despite rendering in the game in ~300 FPS, and recording it in 60FPS 1080p, the recording for some reason has frame drops and sub par audio. I'm not sure why, I mean I'm running on the Episode 2 engine released in 2007... and I have a GTX 760... but aw well.

This first video is just a weird thing I discovered with the AI. One out of the 7 combine units will travel from one room to another to investigate gun fire while none of the others seems to really care other then going into alert mode. I'm not sure why he's doing it and why the others aren't.

The second clip is a standard walk around. I just want to reiterate that I'm still really in the world building, as you can tell by the bad lighting and low quality shadows. Other than that, I'm quite proud to have my own virtual world that I made and I'm able to walk around in.

I can't make any promises for next week. I've debated turning this into a personal journal as well but I think I'll hold off for now. I still need to finish up that area by the APC and on the other side of some of the buildings in the court yard. After that I'll have to move onto lighting and learning how to add scripted sequences, animations, models, textures.... this is a really good learning experience.

End of Spring Break 2016

Looking back on my start of the break post, I didn't realize how far I'd come in one week. I'm just going to jump right into it and show my progress.

I finished this side street






Then touched up on the other.


Then completed the plaza






You may of noticed the abundance of metropolice. Well that's because I figured out how to make them patrol! Now I have a team patrolling the streets, one patrolling the plaza, and then a few more standing guard at 'key locations'. I'm still nailing down the balance between the number of police and patrol locations. I doubt I will end up with the 15 patrolling the plaza like I had when I was messing around.

What's next? I have two more areas to finish up, then we move on to lighting, detailing, scripted events, and some sort of narrative. Walking around a combine occupied city is fun (At least for me) but that's not what people want. They want a great story, action, and memorable characters... I can offer only a bit of that.

But it's time to start up the school grind again. This term should be quite a bit easier than the last and not having 5:30pm-8:30pm classes is a huge plus. I also need a bit of a break as I spent quite a bit of my break working on this. Time well spent if you ask me. Next week I want to make a video showing the metropolice patrolling and some of the weird behavior they can have.

Spring Break 2016

Here we are, finally made it to spring break. Long awaited but too short as always. Only the first two days into it and I've made progress on my map. As you saw previously, I wanted to start by building my own little street block but then have it move into a court yard area. I originally started with a court yard inspired by the iconic one in City 17, but I decided it was too small and generic. As I have always planned to include HL2 beta content, I decided to base the court yard off of a mix of C17 and E3_Terminal, a leaked HL2 beta map from 2003. It's much larger and has more of a grand train station. Obviously I can't just copy and paste all this stuff into my map, so I'm making progress one building at a time.

I don't want to do a wide shot of the courtyard until it's finished, but here are some of the buildings I've added to it.







Last is the train station I'm working on, with citadel and all.



So progress is slow but I'm really enjoying the time I'm putting into it. The skybox is being really finicky and sometimes just doesn't show the citadel at all, so I'll have to work on that.

Other than that, there you have it. Actual progress. I plan to get much more done over my break as far as completing the layout of the city and it's buildings. Then comes lighting, NPCs, decoration, additional content, scripted sequences, and some sort of narrative.

I actually told some IRL friends about this blog. So if you are here for whatever reason, Hi there!

Dead Week.

Oh man, I missed last week's post. In my defense, it was the start of Dead week and now we are at finals week. This isn't a blog for my personal life so I'm not going to go into too much detail, but things aren't looking good on my end. The odds are stacked against me here and it seems like graduation is going to be put off by an entire year. It's not the worst thing in the world I guess, I mean, at least I'm still working towards my degree and will get it one day. Still makes me feel like shit though.

But Nathan! Shouldn't you set aside your modding dreams that you aren't making progress on and focus on school? Nah. I mean I admit I need to focus on my personal life and make some drastic changes, but I'm not going to give up on my mod. The LEAST I want to do is release one completed map. Maybe just something to walk around in or small fight scenes. It's not like I'm taking time away from the rest of my life to work on it, THEN we would have a problem.

I still want to make a Source Mod, a Source Filmmaker short, a Unity game, learn programming languages... and it's the dream that one day I will be able to do this stuff that keeps me going. This blog is my whiny corner of the internet that keeps reminding me to work towards that and have something to show at the end of the week.

The the end of this week, I'll be done with finals my spring break will of started and I can continue working on my map/playing around with programming languages. Hopefully next week I will have something to show, at least talk about something more interesting life mods or something.....

Also, how am I getting page views? Who is reading this? I don't know what those few people expect of me, but there won't be anything interesting here for awhile.

Well here we are again.

I'll sum this up by saying: being an Engineering student is very stressful. This last week was just as stressful as my last few. I want to say this next week will be better for me, but who knows. I suppose I should write something here regarding my thoughts.

I chose Java as a language to learn because it's what I'm currently being taught as part of my classes, which might actually change soon so I'm putting that on hold. Talk about dedication right? Basically, the University teaches C++ (which I'd much rather learn) and the community college I'm using to transfer to university teaches Java for the soul reason of we have a old teacher and that's all she knows. Talking to University advisers, they basically said I'm going to be screwed when I get to higher level university classes without knowing C++, but.... It's not recommended I retake a class at the university instead of the community college that way I can learn C++....

So where does that put me. Well I can continue down the Java series and just deal with it when I get to University or I can retake a class as an online university class. The downside to that is I'm already under such a heavy load that isn't advised. I guess it all comes down to how well I do in my classes and what I end up taking next term.

Where does that leave me as far as game development? Well, focusing on my school as usual. But I'll still work on refreshing my Java and on my Source Mod. I want to take a video of some of the small things I was able to accomplish with the mod. Just to give me something to look back on whenever I feel a lack of motivation.

Re-evaluating.

3/20/2016 Edit: I think we can disregard the entirety of this 're-evaluation' as I didn't follow through on it at all and continued working on my mod. Whoops.

This blog is doing a fantastic job holding me accountable for my progress, or lack there of.

Let me level with you here, my goal is to make games that I am proud of and are worth playing. I want to work at those few dream companies and make the best games I can with the best people in the industry. But I know in order to do that, I need the talent and the skill to get to those companies. I want to be able to program the game, build models, and animate. Be able to create the worlds and lore to be immersed in.

So how do I plan on accomplishing this. Mainly, I'm working towards a Computer Engineering Degree with a Computer Science minor. This is taking up almost all my time, my free time, and stress. It's not as fast or specific as I'd like it to be, but hopefully that will be changing when I make it to the ladder years of the program. This should give me all of the programmer skills I need to get myself started in the industry.

What about outside of school. Well that's what this blog is for, holding me accountable to get work done in my free time. Unfortunately, what little free time I have goes to relaxing to maintain my mental sanity. Ideally, I want to start with Codecademy and learn programming. Do Blender tutorials to learn modeling and animation, and then start making mods with Source and videos with Source Filmmaker. Eventually moving to Unity to make games, but as I said, Free time eludes me.

So, now we reevaluate. I've been thinking of different ways to make use of my free time and learning the things I want to learn. What I think I'll do is which to a month by month schedule where for one month, about 4 blog posts, I work on something specific. Spend a month coding, a month in blender ect. I could do this on a week by week basis, but as these last two weeks have shown, there isn't much progress I can make depending on the time of year and where my school is.

For the rest of this month, I'll focus my time on Codecademy as I've already started the Java course. Why Java? Well I'll get to that later.

Moving outside.

Well. Here we are. Another week by and no progress. To be fair, it is half way through the term and midterm season. As I said last week, I wanted to show you outside my little testing building. 

So here it is. My little test building with a fake second floor and stairs to bring it out to the street.



I started to expand the street, adding buildings and making it look like an actual world.



Some of the buildings are made by me, and some are ripped straight from City 17. I'm sure it's hard to tell which is mine and which isn't. The Source Engine is really good at making linear object, and it's apparent if you stop to look at any building or structure made in the engine. This can of course be used to your advantage.



I even added an alley way with a little nook behind a building, mainly because I can. I have plans to expand on the roads and have it move into a courtyard area similar to that in the main sequence of city 17. I have a small story written out that would make up a small mod. It wouldn't be anything special with custom shaders or improved AI or anything. If anything, I can probably get my hands on some custom models and maybe better textures.. but of course, I need a world to put them in first.

There's something really satisfying about walking around in the world you create. Add some node graphing to have your squad follow you around and you feel like your world is actually becoming something. I plan on my mod being a couple of maps and I'm far from having something to show off for it. Hopefully this next week will be a bit better and I can work on expanding my map, or at least do some Codecademy.

Starting in a building.

This week turned out to be more time consuming and stressful then I thought it would be. Two midterms and lack of time to keep up with homework, but here we are at the end of the week. For my first progress post, I'll show you how I started learning the Source Engine with a basic building interior. Keep in mind, this is just the walls with textures and entities. I haven't put decals or props or anything fancy to decorate the rooms, but that would be a good thing to practice.



It started with a room to spawn in and fill with dev textures, weapons, and ammo. The metrocop is there to test the Gordon Pre-Criminal Ai. This those first few minutes of HL2 where Civil Protection just stands around and whack you if you get too close.



Then it expanded. Several more standard rooms on the right and the left leading towards a large room. This is where I started experimenting with lighting and the different effects they can make. Each room isn't an example or showcase or anything, they are more just seeing what I can do.



Flickering lights, textures that do sorta well together, and working doors.



In the large room I used for different examples of lighting but now it has become a Combine Spawn/Fighting room. The soldiers you see are friendly to the player and I set them to follow said player in a squad-like formation. I've been trying to figure out how to get the squad displayed and command-able, like citizens and rebels, but I'm still working on that.

I don't think I'll forget the moment of joy and satisfaction I got when I first node graphed my building. Without the node graph, my combine squad didn't know how to get to me and I would have to let them see me and then have them follow me around. I set up the node graphs and forgot they were set to follow me. I spawned in the map and heard a door open a few seconds later. Before I knew it, a combine squad was running at me and reporting for duty. I loved that they were smart enough to have a mind of their own and find me on the other side of the building, even opening 3 doors to get to me. Now they can follow me throughout the entire building and outside.

So that's my first actually Source progress post. Like I mentioned, I want to do these weekly as a way to motivate me to keep going, but University takes its toll. Next week I can show off my work outside, or researching other successful mods.

Never enough time.

Oh Boy has it been awhile, but I haven't forgotten about you. As a full time University student who spends his free time doing homework and babysitting, I don't have the time to make too much progress. Here we are in the fourth week of the term and I'm doing my best to keep on top of my work while babysitting, but I think I might have enough free time to get back into this.

I have tons of game ideas I'd love to make a reality. Most of them aren't too original and probably have too large of a scope, but I think it's worth it as long as I start out small. After that pong clone I got to work on a Mario clone (and by clone I mean an exact recreation) but I hit a few roadblocks and couldn't find the time or motive to get back into it. I tried out using GameMaker but it didn't appeal to me. Yes the drag and drop system was easy to use, but I felt like it was always holding me back in a way a script wouldn't. Plus, 2D games don't have that large of an appeal to me.

So where am I now? Well I'm working with the Source Engine. Dated, harder to work with, and a lot more technical, I'm starting to get a hang of the basics. So far I've focused mainly on building a map. I'm choosing to stick with the Source engine because making a mod with nearly all the assets and programming already done is much more preferable then starting from scratch with Unity3D and trying to figure out how to get their free assets to work together to make something decent. Plus, I love Half-Life and it's universe.

So here we are. I'm back again because Raghav from Black Shell Media told me to be more accountable for the projects I start and need to make a habit out of making progress, and that's what this blog is for. So you (random person on the internet) can hold me accountable for my projects. My goal as I state here now: Post on this blog weekly and have something to show for it.

Until next time!

-Dr.N