I found that glitch too. Nobody stick it on YouTube or Valve will fix it!

MasterLagger wrote:
I found that glitch too. Nobody stick it on YouTube or Valve will fix it!

How is that glitch to any advantage though? I just used the high portal replacing fling glitch and made myself fly into the beams on the roof. Then got bored of it.

If you read into 'The Final Hours of Portal 2', the game was extremely rushed. They announced it too early and constantly went through drastic changes in the entire story and gameplay mechanics. From what I understand, Valve is made up of 50~ employees. It's safe to assume that less than half of them were responsible (full-time) for Portal 2 while the rest of them were working on keeping other Valve products up to date. Split that team of 25 or so employees into their separate fields and try to make an entire, full-length game, that will appeal to a mass audience in such a short amount of time and you're going to miss things like this.

It's easy for you to complain when all you have to worry about is the single map you've probably been working on and testing a million times for the past few days/weeks and there's absolutely zero rush to get it done on time. What if I told you, as of right now, whatever map you're working on is due within 12 hours? You'd rush like hell to make sure it works without any breaks and make sure the actual gameplay feels complete.

There's always going to be that one little thing that you'll miss and keep postponing on fixing due its low importance in comparison to the things that actually matter.

In the end, if a good mapper consists of only someone who obsesses over perfect textures and the best optimization, then you won't get very far as a mapper, in my opinion.

I'd rather play a unique, fun, well designed map with subpar optimization and a few misaligned textures than a perfectly optimized map with amazing aesthetics and perfectly aligned textures with a clich? puzzle that brings nothing new to the table.

Calling Valve terrible mappers clearly says that you think a good map only consists of looks and you are neglecting the fact that the originally in their puzzles is what makes their mapping valuable to the company.

Oh, and you're wasting your time nodrawing every surface that can't be seen by the player. Compiling will automatically do that for you.

raulness wrote:
If you read into 'The Final Hours of Portal 2', the game was extremely rushed. They announced it too early and constantly went through drastic changes in the entire story and gameplay mechanics. From what I understand, Valve is made up of 50~ employees. It's safe to assume that less than half of them were responsible (full-time) for Portal 2 while the rest of them were working on keeping other Valve products up to date. Split that team of 25 or so employees into their separate fields and try to make an entire, full-length game, that will appeal to a mass audience in such a short amount of time and you're going to miss things like this.

It's easy for you to complain when all you have to worry about is the single map you've probably been working on and testing a million times for the past few days/weeks and there's absolutely zero rush to get it done on time. What if I told you, as of right now, whatever map you're working on is due within 12 hours? You'd rush like hell to make sure it works without any breaks and make sure the actual gameplay feels complete.

There's always going to be that one little thing that you'll miss and keep postponing on fixing due its low importance in comparison to the things that actually matter.

In the end, if a good mapper consists of only someone who obsesses over perfect textures and the best optimization, then you won't get very far as a mapper, in my opinion.

I'd rather play a unique, fun, well designed map with subpar optimization and a few misaligned textures than a perfectly optimized map with amazing aesthetics and perfectly aligned textures with a clich? puzzle that brings nothing new to the table.

Calling Valve terrible mappers clearly says that you think a good map only consists of looks and you are neglecting the fact that the originally in their puzzles is what makes their mapping valuable to the company.

Oh, and you're wasting your time nodrawing every surface that can't be seen by the player. Compiling will automatically do that for you.

Wow... this was actually the reaction I was expecting from this thread. Personally I think Valve's work is brilliant based on the amount of time they made it.

Oh you, troll, you. I thought something was sketchy about the fact that it was you posting this since your other threads seem to be pretty legitimate. Either way, I had fun writing that.

10/10

raulness wrote:
Oh you, troll, you. I thought something was sketchy about the fact that it was you posting this since your other threads seem to be pretty legitimate. Either way, I had fun writing that.

10/10

It was iWorks idea. Blame him xD.

Well I played a lot of Valve Games and found a lot of glitches in every single one of their games, It doesn't make them bad its rather fun to change up the game.

Here's my sorta "study",

Valve = Great Designers/Story/Sound/a lot of stuff actually

BUT they are horrible at finishing stuff in their maps like why make a Player clip stop half way threw the area and not just finish it to the roof because it causes stuff like this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gai4zXIFhmw

That video above shows the Grenade Launcher Glitch (Only video of what I was talking about), you could jump over player clips in L4D2 Survival and get to the Safe house and skip to a level that's not even a Survival Level or you could get to unreachable areas and never be hit once and get a Gold Ranking in the scoreboard.

Also the famous Jesus Room in L4D (You look up that video BTW)
Its all textured inside and can be broken open by zombies to a room that no zombie could enter, I never map for L4D but I bet you need to make that door breakable because if it was just a brush it wouldn't break.

But like I said, It makes the maps fun if you want to explore out just get out of the areas

~ Summoner

(Also to everyone who didn't read this is what I said : )

It seems Summoner as a good sense of humor. Glitches are great. I remember play Half-Life and finding over a dozen cool glitches and Easter Eggs. It now seems that Valve has lost it's touch with little secrets nowadays. Oh well, they still make great games.

MasterLagger wrote:
It seems Summoner as a good sense of humor. Glitches are great. I remember play Half-Life and finding over a dozen cool glitches and Easter Eggs. It now seems that Valve has lost it's touch with little secrets nowadays. Oh well, they still make great games.

Any game released now you will find that secrets are heavily reduced. I don't know if it's the fact that they think it is 'unprofessional' or they just don't have the time to make them.

In really old games there was a secret almost in every level. For example DukeNukem 3D -> it told you where the obvious secrets were but they still had little easter eggs like when you see luke skywalker hanging in a cave.
In the original Wolfenstein all you had to do was spam space and you'll eventually find one xD.

But Portal 2 did have some good ones, my favourite being the little singing turrets.

chickenmobile wrote:
I decompiled most of their work for Portal 2 and noticed how HORRIBLE IT IS.

sorry for going a little off topic but how did you decompile valve maps (bsp files)?

dhavalmistry wrote:
chickenmobile wrote:

I decompiled most of their work for Portal 2 and noticed how HORRIBLE IT IS.

sorry for going a little off topic but how did you decompile valve maps (bsp files)?

BSPSource.

WinstonSmith wrote:
BSPSource.

Thanks!

raulness wrote:
...In the end, if a good mapper consists of only someone who obsesses over perfect[ion]....

This is one of the main reasons I am a terrible mapper. I often (read: occasionally) come up with a good idea. And am pretty good at structural drafting... but in the end, I'm too much of a perfectionist to ever finish a project... I get far enough to make it look pretty decent, then start obsessing over some of the stupidest shit, realize I wasted hours (days (more)) and made no progress, get tired, and procrastinatory, and give up.

TRUE mappers. (Read: The bad ass ones). Are more "artists" than real drafters... They realize that a bit of imperfection makes it perfect.

That's not me. I'm more of a craftsman, than an artist. Which is why you don't see any of my shit in the WIP or RELEASED :-/

raulness wrote:
...In the end, if a good mapper consists of only someone who obsesses over perfect[ion]....

I am not a prefectionist, I am a playtesterist. If it works, it's uploaded. If textures look like crap, I'll fix it. If people want something better, I'll make something new that's better.

Whoa, I think I had a Cave moment.

rellikpd wrote:
raulness wrote:

...In the end, if a good mapper consists of only someone who obsesses over perfect[ion]....

This is one of the main reasons I am a terrible mapper. I often (read: occasionally) come up with a good idea. And am pretty good at structural drafting... but in the end, I'm too much of a perfectionist to ever finish a project... I get far enough to make it look pretty decent, then start obsessing over some of the stupidest shit, realize I wasted hours (days (more)) and made no progress, get tired, and procrastinatory, and give up.

TRUE mappers. (Read: The bad ass ones). Are more "artists" than real drafters... They realize that a bit of imperfection makes it perfect.

That's not me. I'm more of a craftsman, than an artist. Which is why you don't see any of my shit in the WIP or RELEASED :-/

That said, I don't think it makes you a terrible mapper either. If you were in a mod team, you'd be the perfect guy to turn to, to add the finishing touches to a map. In fact, I'm sure all you need is a little motivation from a team or a mapping partner to keep going. I'm the same way as you are (I also never end up uploading my maps).

rellikpd wrote:
raulness wrote:

...In the end, if a good mapper consists of only someone who obsesses over perfect[ion]....

This is one of the main reasons I am a terrible mapper. I often (read: occasionally) come up with a good idea. And am pretty good at structural drafting... but in the end, I'm too much of a perfectionist to ever finish a project...

By nature I am a perfectionist. At work people go wtf are you a machine? because I make everything as perfect as I can get it.

I still do release my maps but I have to be legitimately satisfied with the result. My latest deathmatch map took me about a 6 month time period to make and most people absolutely love it! Personally I think that some things in it are so crap :S so why'd they like it?

I think what you need is to make yourself stop obsessing and just get it to work and look decent. It doesn't matter if some of the lighting is bad, or a bit of the brushwork is messy. It is guaranteed someone will like it, even if you only put a little bit of effort into making it. That's why it is so important to get someone else to have a look at it sometime during the making process. That way you can figure out what aspects you can keep, and what you can improve without overdoing it.

As for drafting ideas and layouts I believe that it is necessary. EVERY project I have come up with has some kind of drawing or documentation inside my VAPD or in a .psd file on the computer.
If you come up with a good idea, write it down for goodness sake! Good chance you won't get the same great idea back again. Or even share it to someone you know who will use it! I thank a lot of the people here who have had trouble with some sort of aspect in hammer to give me ideas or inspiration.

raulness wrote:
From what I understand, Valve is made up of 50~ employees

Oh dear god that is so wrong it hurts.

Ever heard of bob the aperture engineer. It's in the developer commentary node somewhere in the second repulsion gel test. If you haven't go listen to it. Or watch a video of it if there is any.

I am one who is obsessed with detail, sometiems even going past the optimization flow to make something pretty, which as everyone knows is very, very bad. If it runs bad it doesn't matter how pretty it is; it runs bad. I have had to learn to curb my too-high-detail habits, but it doesn't help when people notice it ("Hey this wall looks a little bare compared to your other maps..") and then I go into a detail rage and detail it.

It's gonna take me some time to find a balance, but I'll do it.