Episode #59 – ft. Tension
This week William, Phillip and Emanuel are joined by Hectic Glenn of hl2.net. They talk about Black Mesa, 99 Bolts, In Development, Orion, Zombie Zoo, Post Script and more… Later they interview Cooper (Person-) and Alex (AnotherOne1) of Tension.
Transmission Code: 18449 (#59)
Extended Show Notes
Introduction
- 00:00:30 · William, Phillip and Emanuel are joined by Glenn (Hectic Glenn – halflife2.net).
Podcast17 News
- 00:03:40 · Google Wave Invite Competition update.
- 00:05:20 · Zombie Shooter 2 Keys competition.
- 00:08:55 · Live stream changes.
Follow-up & Errata
- 00:10:30 · Decay
From The Mouth of Valve
- 00:13:40 · Left 4 Dead 2 Authoring Tools in Private Beta
- 00:17:30 · New Ways to Find Great Games and Steam’s Early Holiday Sale
- 00:20:40 · Steam client update released (Wed, 25 Nov)
- 00:28:50 · Alienware Goes Digital With Steam
Releases
- 00:33:10 · Zombidity (HL2)
- 00:34:00 · Joutomaa: The Great Wastelands – PreRelease
- 00:34:30 · Natural Selection 2 Pre-Alpha Spark tools
- 00:37:40 · Wolf3D Remake Demo
Media Blitz
- 00:38:40 · Black Mesa – TOW Test video
- 00:40:10 · SHIFT – Story Mode Car, with video
- 00:43:30 · Athena – Source code recovered, now resuming development.
- 00:50:40 · Outbreak: Condemned – Microbrush 2 Released
- 00:52:45 · Orion – Closed Beta and Release Dates announced.
- 00:57:00 · BLACKSECTOR – Character Production – The UASC
- 01:01:40 · Zombie Zoo – Punching, Raccoons and Brochures
- 01:03:40 · 99 Bolts & In Development teaming up.
- 01:05:40 · Post Script – First screenshots, teaser trailer
Interview
- 01:07:40 · Interview with Cooper (Person-) and Alex (AnotherOne1) of Tension.
Articles
- 01:52:45 · Ars interviews Valve’s Jason Holtman about the future of PC Gaming and the Steam platform.
- 01:56:20 · CSS SCI FI 3: HARDWIRED hints.
Discussion
- 01:56:40 · PP Poll Question 148 – Should mod teams remove old demos?
- 01:58:23 · Everyone’s pick of the week.
- 01:59:40 · Wrap-up.
Download Links
- Full Transmission (111 MB)
- Interview Only (42.0 MB)
Follow-up & Errata
From The Mouth of Valve
- L4D2 Authoring Tools in Private Beta
- L4D2 Update Released (Fri, 27 nov)
- Steam client update released
- New Ways to Find Great Games
- The Steam Early Holiday Sale is On Now!
- The Steam Early Holiday – Friday’s Deals
- Alienware Goes Digital With Steam
Releases
- Zombidity (HL2)
- Joutomaa: The Great Wastelands – PreRelease
- NS2 Pre-Alpha Spark tools
- Wolf3D Remake Demo
Media Blitz
- Black Mesa – TOW Test video
- SHIFT – Story Mode Car, with video
- Athena – Source code recovered, now resuming development.
- Outbreak: Condemned – Microbrush 2 Released
- Orion – Closed Beta and Release Dates announced.
- BLACKSECTOR – Character Production – The UASC
- Zombie Zoo – Punching, Raccoons and Brochures
- 99 Bolts & In Development teaming up.
- Post Script – First screenshots, teaser trailer.
Interview
Articles
- Ars interviews Valve’s Jason Holtman about the future of PC Gaming and the Steam platform.
- CSS SCI FI 3: HARDWIRED hints.
great to have emmanuel back
Yes, it was, but don’t you think he was a little subdued?
I thought he was a controversial as he ever was! Great to have him back after such a long break. William can be too serious most of the time…
Hey guys,
Just a quick update about Microbrush 2. There is a ‘newbie’ menu, that allows users to find hotkeys but overall it’s based around it. Pretty much the entire building was made in Microbrush 2, I had exported it from that and into Hammer, and from that we simply just added some lighting. Overall he map building was made using solely MB2.
– Scott “Sythen” Baker.
Outbreak: Condemned, Lead Level Designer.
How much time would you estimate you saved by doing it that way?
I really like the idea of two-mice gameplay in the Tension mod. Too bad they removed it. Nice to have Emanuel back, but also Glenn. Makes for a good show. This line-up kicks ass! :)
Haha, god did we love that idea. We still do as a matter of fact, and who knows what may happen in the future. We do scary things when we are bored… :)
Couple the two mice, with foot pedals for movement, webcam headtracking for looking around and you are onto a winner. Can’t wait to see/smell what you guys create once smellyvision finally hits on screens!
“I am ashamed to say I drink tea.” -Hectic Glenn
And rightfully so.
HOW DARE YOU, SIR! tea drinking has been a fine English tradition for hundreds of years.
I didn’t say that Heppa, I said I’m ashamed I actually drink Earl Gray and Assam. The reason why I was ashamed was that I hit the English stereotype bang on the head, which is never fun :(
Drinking monkey tea now (PG tips monkeys btw). Phil you let the English corner down with your honey and lemon codswallop.
Anyway, I just listened to this episode back, what on earth is this ending music hairy Will?
Stuff the English corner. Why do you think I left the sinking ship AKA United Kingdom?
That meow music is pretty funny. I’m gonn plan a song this week and write some mod-related words for it.
Yes, because drinking tea is not an English stereotype to begin with.
I am also drinking tea right now – Earl Gray as well.. Emanuel wanted meow mix… so I put meow mix. hehehe
Good podcast! What happened to Thomas and Ackart? Hopefully one of them will be on the podcast this Sunday.
Thomas has sort of moved on from Podcast 17. He is extremely busy with school and becoming a married man – our Thomas has grown so much!
- It’s not unusual to get the game as a gift. I got TF2 that way
- simulated lag, more like introducing delays. As long as that’s done to throttle down the incomming player connection requests, that’s ok. It’ll avoid having the game server DOS-ed with connection requests.
- giving already bought game: I agree with Phillip, you should be allowed to gift the game. I mean since the steam account tracks all the games you have, they can have it done so that when you gift the game you’re then no longer allowed to play it. But I guess in this case money wins: let the dude buy the game, even if he doesn’t end up playing it. And why allow the poor sap to gift it to a friend, when you can have the friend come in and also buy the game?
Maybe I was too ‘evil’ here, and what I said above is crap. Maybe.
- regarding backups: Phillip, cut them some slack, most likely they never had an HDD failure until now. I never had back-ups until my HDD failed.
- regarding MB2 and exporters: Blender also offers this capability. Still, you don’t have a ton of exporters for it. Why? Well, not because of coding, but more of not having both the coding abilities and the file format knowledge with the same person. Nevermind will and interest to create such exporters. It’ll take a bit for both MB2 and Blender to get a big list of exporters.
- regarding inviting: no. You’re then basically depending on those people to distribute the mod. You can try that durring the testing phase, but (yeah, there’s a BUT there) you will not be able to control who comes in to test the mod. That is bad, because some people, while good to play with them, don’t always provide the more detailed feedback you might want.
- Gift giving is very usual, but you have to buy it as a gift.
- I think you are “right on the money” about money being the reason you can’t gift unplayed games.
- No I won’t cut them some slack. Everybody should think about stuff like this, especially somebody who puts hours of work into soemthing. Considering how easy it is to do, I don’t think anybody should be excused. If me shouting at people helps someone save a vital piece of work, but annoys a few other peopel I’m happy.
- The inviting idea IS about the testing phase, not the full release. That’s why you control the release. Depending on the mod, getting feedback may simply mean ots of players playing with no crashes – that is also good feedback. You will be able to control who comes in to test the mod, because you can have veto over each invitation.
For everybody who is interested, the backup solution I mentioned on the show is called Syncplicity: http://www.syncplicity.com/
I recommend you try and use tese comments to use referrals with each other because you can increase you free storage from 2Gb to 5Gb.
I hope to write an article about free back up storage sysem in the near future, with an eye for mod management.
Thank you for posting the link here! I might try it after i make some serious work. And of course i am looking forward to the article.
Cheers
About that. We and a lot of mods use Subversion to distribute the mod between developers. It’s pretty handy for both keeping a backup and such.
Another lovely episode. I especially like the interviews, keep em coming. =D
Great podcast, really like when Hectic Glenn stops by, makes me laugh everytime.
I really am liking this program, it makes a good back and forth with modders, and, along with Moddb, generally brings the modding community closer together
My pick of the Week had to be the interview, Single-player mods are more interesting to me, and Smashball kind of missed the point for me by making it a frag-fest. Mirrors edge also missed the point in the later levels by putting you indoors and in claustrophobic maps where the free-running didn’t have a chance to shine. About the WASD vs. the forward button, I say WASD all the way just for controls sake it would be easier to line up that hard jump if you could strafe along an edge.
Questions for Tension
1. Will the grappling hook and the super jump be the only acrobatic elements in the game? e.g. will there be wallrunning/jumping?
2. How will sliding down or across a wall effect momentum mid swing or fall. In Smash ball if you clipped a wall you lost all momentum and fell, causing a lot of frustration for me when it could be used as a steering element, like contact a wall at an appropriat angle and slide on it, disengage and go through a somewhat small opening.
3. Can I see my feet in game?
4. Will there be a Mouse 2 use in the default keyboard setup?
5. Will there be support for 3rd person view?
6. I love you
7. Since the world is covered in water, some levels where you needed to skim the water could be neat or having boats you had to jump to and from. not a question, more of an idea I guess.
8. Waterworld the movie sucked.
Thanks.
P.S. Au-Heppa I’m looking forward to Short Stories.
Oh lordy lord, i hope you read this or thats alot of wasted time. Here we go!
1. As of right now thats all that is in the game, although we have been thinking about other movements (including the two you mentioned)
2. If we are thinking of the same thing (grazing a wall while swinging) no you do not use speed. We have been talking more and more about sliding.
3. Probably not in the first release, but boy do we want too.
4. I’m a little fuzzy here, are you talking about using two mice?
5. Probably not, we busted our brains trying to figure how animations would line up.
6. Awwww sweety, you shoulden’t have. :) Haha thanks for the love, you know we give it right back to the community!
7. Boats are a nice idea, and yes skimming makes you feel like a total badass.
8. Agreed.
Whew, hope i got them all!
- Alex
Thanks a lot for your time :D
by number 4 I mean right click. I heard that the grappling hook will be controlled by left click (I say m1 and m2 for some reason) is right click the release?
Hmmmm, well as of now it’s consolidated into one click as thats the way we had originally imagined it. I’ll bring up the idea of different buttons when i next see Cooper.
If you click you grapple and swing, if you hold left mouse you pull, how do you unhook from a swing? Also is it possible that, having 2 things on one key, for a user to map his keys int the options menu to separate them? sorry for question spam :P
Well to get our of swing you simply click again, and when you pull its done by releasing the key. We will look into the option of releasing with another key, but as someone who’s been playing it two keys would seem un-natural. Especially for the pull.
that sounds good, natural/comfortable. :D
Hello folks! Thanks for the Post Script shout-out and the mainly kind words. It’s good that the mod’s dividing opinion before release, in just the way all art and entertainment should!
holy butts, Phillip, make sure you put up a review for Dangerous world sometime soon, it’s been out for aggggggggggeeeeeeeees.
They just came out with another update too!
You really gotta try Warsow, I love it!
Nice that you mentioned it :)
http://www.warsow.net/
oh ok, that sounds good, really naturaland easy to use. Makes me happy :D