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.