Quote from Megadude on March 15, 2008, 10:28 pm

Only way I know how is to make a copy of the model you want to reskin, so you are left with the original model with the original skin, and a copy of the model with the new skin. Tutorial can be found here. It was written a while ago so some errors do now pop up, but once you get around them everything works out fine.

I've also made mini versions of the portal cleansers too, for smaller shields.

Quote from Megadude on March 18, 2008, 8:21 pm

Some more pics

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c113/megadude2006/journey/yellow06.jpg
http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c113/megadude2006/journey/yellow07.jpg
http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c113/megadude2006/journey/yellow08.jpg

Some BTS areas too.

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c113/megadude2006/journey/yellow05.jpg
http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c113/megadude2006/journey/yellow09.jpg
http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c113/megadude2006/journey/yellow10.jpg
http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c113/megadude2006/journey/yellow11.jpg

Also, a little vid and a pic of something that will be making frequent appearances throughout the maps.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idzQNocdbZ0
http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c113/megadude2006/journey/bot01.jpg

Quote from rellikpd on March 18, 2008, 9:14 pm

Megadude wrote:

Some more pics

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c113/megadude2006/journey/yellow06.jpg

lol as someone who works in a place that actually has "rec yards" when i saw this picture i lol'd and cool bot btw
this thing is... looking pretty x-treme keep it up bro!

Quote from Megadude on March 20, 2008, 2:59 pm

Thanks rellikpd

Should have some more pics another beta ready sometime tonight if all goes well.

I've got a couple of questions for you guys.

1. In Portal, there were 2 kinds of voices, the big voice you heard in the test chambers and in the final battle, and the tiny speaker voice you heard in the BTS areas.

   If GLaDOS spoke to the player while they were in an observation room overlooking a test chamber, which voice do you think they would hear, the big voice from the test chamber through the window, or a tiny voice from a speaker box?

2. What do you think is the best approach for releasing betas?

   If the beta is released and able to be downloaded by everyone, you can get more responses, but then everyone will know how to complete the puzzles before the final version is released, which will bring down the final version a bit.

   If the beta is just released to a few people, the solutions to the puzzles will be kept from almost everyone, and therefore keep the final version challenging, but you get less responses, and only having a few beta testers may lead to some big error being missed.

   What's your opinions?

Quote from Ralen on March 20, 2008, 3:52 pm

1.
This depends on a few things. Does GLaDOS know that the test subject is in the observation room? Also, is there even a speaker in the observation room? If both of those are true then I think she would be talking through the tiny speaker. If either of those are not true then she would be talking through the main test chamber speaker.

2.
On the one hand I like being able to play new maps as soon as possible, but on the other hand, maps that have been tested and polished before I get my hands on them tend to be more enjoyable. There's also less of the "This looks impossible, am I just not thinking about it right, or did the mapper screw up?" factor that I get sometimes when playing user-created maps.

Quote from rellikpd on March 20, 2008, 5:05 pm

IMO
1) if glados knows the player is in the observation room. and no speaker is in there i would say use the big voice outside of the OR and maybe add a filter that makes it sound muffled? or something like that. also keep in mind that when she speaks through the little speakers she really doesn't have much idea whats going on (with regards to chel) at best i think she has some motion detectors (if even that) so i would say that anything said through little speakers should sound as if glados doesn't really know what is going on (for sure anyway)

2) personally i like good clean ready to play maps that have been hammered out and polished. thats not to say they have to look exactly like the retail maps. but atleast been tested thoroughly so that everything works. now unfortunatly there aren't entire teams of people releasing maps. so i'm always hungry for any NEW portal content which is why i even started downloading WIPs. when i first got here i refused to do so cuz i like completed/polished maps. but got so needy that i started to. and MANY people (the perfectionists among us) actually release WIPs that are better than many other (read: non-perfectionists') released maps. so it just depends what you want, but i'd say its best to have a select few beta testers

skip to here to see what rellikpd wrote:

Quote from nightfire on March 20, 2008, 7:28 pm

Does that little robot move on paths or is it actually controlled by an AI?

Quote from NykO18 on March 20, 2008, 9:06 pm

nightfire wrote:

Does that little robot move on paths or is it actually controlled by an AI?

From what I can see, it's tied to path_tracks and it's clearly visible, because it moves in straight lines and turns sharply.

Quote from Megadude on March 20, 2008, 11:18 pm

GLaDOS knows the player is in the observation room, however I can't remember seeing any speakers actually in the individual rooms. I also want to draw the player's attention to the window, so the big voice is slightly winning.

nightfire wrote:

Does that little robot move on paths or is it actually controlled by an AI?

NykO18 was right, it is set to follow path_tracks.

It looks like the beta will have to wait until tomorrow. It's 3.15am and the last beta map is almost finished compiling, but then I have to embed the custom content, create the BNS, then upload everything to the internet, which would probably take me close to 5am by the time the uploading is finished I would guess.

Also, I'm still looking for suggestions for a name for this selection of maps, (maybe a mod depending on when the portal mod stuff is released). So far, I've only got "Portal: The Second Voice".

Edit: I have GREATLY overestimated what I though would be the files size of the maps. Compressed together, they are only 11Mb I thought they would be a lot more. Since the filesize was small, I thought I would try uploading it, and it went quite quickly, so I can release this beta without any further delay, ( I hope ).

I forgot to take any screenshots of the last map in the beta before I closed Portal down, so I'll take some for you tomorrow, or if anyone wants to post some themselves, feel free to do so.

Click here for the updated beta.