Ironsights Designer released

Released (thread), and the initial response has been great (thanks everyone posting replies in the release thread). Nice to get it somewhat done; I'm sure they'll be feature requests down the line, but mostly I think I'm ready to move onto something else... a scripted weapon pack perhaps, some sort of 'brutal' take on what CSE tried to do.

Or I could, you know, do that gamemode I suddenly stopped working on. Either way...

New picture of ID

Weekend projects never do work out

I'm still working on the Ironsights Designer. The base is the same, but it's come a long way - there's now a menu allowing players to use thier mouse, instead of the original myriad of keys, and you can change the weapon model without using the console (although support for that is not yet fantastic). Interface still looks nice, and new options like testing firing animations so you can see whether your offsets are suitable for weapons with multiple fire-anim-ending positions. All in all, should be a good release, where I can bask in the praise of the 3 people who look at the release thread.

School isn't fantastic, but could be worse. Examination fever is coming over the horizon - should be interesting.

Ironsights Designer: making rubbish hexed weapons with ironsights just got easier

Working on something that should be very useful to a small number of people for a very short amount of time. It's inspired by Kogsitune's useful Ironsights Helper which allows you to move along each individual axis of position and angle offset using left-click, right-click, and cycling axes with right-click, Reload and Use, is various fashions. It was a good tool, but I felt that it still took far too long to get good positions, and precision was a complex task. For my take on the idea, I've used mouse control allowing you to drag the weapon around into position. There's four different axes groups to work on - Pos X/Z, Pos Y, Ang X/Y(P/Y) and Ang Z(R), which you switch through with secondary fire, and holding primary goes into 'drag mode' where your mouse movements are converted into offsetting.

This is a screenshot that's a little outdated from where I am now, but shows the idea:

No more short summers

Computer now fully operational again. The encased fan in question had, on extraction, collected so much dust there we no airway through which air could escape from it; to save further complication, the manufacturer the computer was bought from just gave us a new fan. Computer is quieter now, and I can sit down and properly play all my games again, hoorah!

Pity I don't have any time to do so, really. Oh well - such is life.

It's the end of the world as we know it...

...well, it isn't, but I enjoy lying. Its the end of the holidays. I haven't done half the things I said I would do, and unsurprisingly I haven't done the other half either. Sounds like the prefect reintroduction to real work.

Played a bit with actual Source modding (taking an SDK copy of HL2 and fiddling with the C++). It was pretty fun, actually - I didn't do much except create a few tutorial entities and modify a couple of the HL2 weapons, but I've enjoyed doing it, and I feel confident that once I am finished with Garry's Mod (perhaps after this gamemode...) I will have somewhere to continue to where I will be to a greater extent training my ability to understand and, ultimately, write game code. It looks hard right now, but so did Lua; within a couple of months of getting into the correct attitude (declaring variables properly and all that shiz), I'm sure I could be as fast at C++ as I am at Lua now (which in some cases is pretty quick).

The problem is, the moment I take the leap from GMLua to Source and C++, I won't have the kind of support and documentation I've come to expect due to the amount we get in the Lua community... looking on the Valve Developer Wiki, information on some things is scarce, because the C++ implementation allows people to be so open that not even all the basic capabilities could be entirely documented. Visual C++ 2005 (Express Edition obviously) is great because it's easy to find the value of constants by putting your cursor over them for a second, and the actual actions of functions via searching parts or the entirety of the game solution (all the code files available to modders).

Still, no fear. B the end of tomorrow I'll have my head buried so deep in schoolwork (and sleeping after doing it) that I won't have any time to commit to anything that's actually going to impact my future. Hoorah.

Feeling disabled

I seem to be spending my last two days of freedom doing absolutely nothing. Nothing sustantial anyway. Gave some helpful replies on the GMLua forum, helped/annoyed a friend who's making an achievement system by throwing ideas at him, made sprinting in the gamemode disable your weapon (I will make your first-person view weapon 'semi-holster' when you sprint, a visual aide to your inability to fire), listened to lots of music (mmm, Coldplay), felt inadequate and doomed. Avoided doing schoolwork (tomorrow will be a nightmare). I feel like taking a picture of myself and putting as a caption 'procrastination'.

Less annoyed at the gamemode rocket launcher visuals now. They'll pass, at least.

My Todo List for Codename 'Evo'

Thought it might be fun to show people my todo list as of now. It will no doubt expand.

http://luabin.planetgmod.com/?snip=1236

Not quite meltdown, though...

Some fan hidden within the computers actual processor has broken down, meaning the computer overheats and shuts down if I do anything strenuous on it. It levels off at 70C even when I'm not doing anything... so that's a little annoying, because I cannot effectively do any scripting until that's fixed (warranty, overcomplication, awkward phonecalls, etc.)

Three days left of the holiday. Mmmmm. Well, it could be worse - it could be three days time. Reading Pratchett's Discworld novels at a helathy pace (1 1/2 a day): pretty awesome. Listening to Muse for some reason or other.

No good smoking

It's really hard to get a good smoke effect, via Lua, In Garry's Mod. Which makes trying to make a rocket launcher REALLY DIFFICULT, I mean, seriously awkward.

Yesterday was good (but I forgot to post). Got lots of work done on the submachinegun and shotgun of the GMod gamemode. SMG laserguide is fun - toggleable by right-click, it's a red beam from your weapon that bounces on metal surfaces (your bullets also bounce off metal surfaces). You can see other people's laserguides - I took these screenshots using some bots (Blogger is being very evil about me adding images):



Computer shutting down randomly during playing Crysis. I'm suspecting something overheats based on the fan going into hyperdrive when I reboot the computer, but I honestly do not know. Source games (HL2, GMod) are unaffected so I am still fully functional.

Oooh! Oooh! First post!

Heh heh heh, well here we go, eh.

I haven't really got anything to say - I created this blog primarily so that I can pretend that I can remember what happens from one day to the next. (I can't.) If you've arrived here, you've probably misclicked somewhere; if you haven't, then take everything you may accidentally set your eyes upon with a pinch of salt.

Working on another Garry's Mod gamemode. To be blunt, we barely have any - the only 'finished' gamemode that involves NO sandbox influences would be Zombie Survival, and that has a huge number of rough edges. So I'm working on a gamemode that's all about just blowing everyone else up. Trying to avoid being too much like GMDM, but chances are Garry will never release that anyway, so I'm not hugely worried. I'm making sure I keep a suitable focus on effects and postprocessing - the impressive part of ZS is definitely the way it deals with visuals, so I need to make this a serious priority if I want to make a gamemode that's better.

Real life: 1 week until holidays end. Ugggh. I'm just trying not to think about it, particularly not the 'what about all that schoolwork you told yourself you were going to do?' part.