The Carve Tool and You
by Nacimota on Dec.07, 2009, under Tutorials
There’s something I’ve always wanted to discuss in regards to mapping with Valve Hammer Editor, and that is the use of the carve tool. As far as I’m aware, the carve tool was never intended to be used with anything other than a rectangular brush, because when given a more complicated primitive to work with (such as a cylinder) the results become quite messy.
This has resulted in many veteran mappers adopting a viewpoint that is essentially “NEVER USE THE CARVE TOOL”, which is then passed on to new and aspiring source mappers who read those kinds of comments in tutorials and forum posts. Despite this, the carve tool remains a useful technique for quickly creating rectangular holes in a brush and shouldn’t be discarded from your mapping arsenal. (continue reading…)
Upgrades and Stuff
by Nacimota on Oct.30, 2009, under News
So after waiting a whole week, I finally got myself a copy of Windows 7 (and two gigs of extra RAM). I used the public beta and release candidates so I haven’t seen any big surprises but I’m definitely enjoying the experience. Windows 7 has a bunch of cool features like Jump Lists and progress bars in the taskbar (not sure what they call that exactly). They’re actually unexpectedly easy to work with, so I’ll probably write a tutorial on those within the next week or so.
Speaking of unfulfilled promises, that carve tool article still hasn’t been published. It is of course, my prerogative, to blame the aforementioned delay on preparing my machine for Windows 7. It should be on the site later today, so stay tuned if you’re waiting for that.
Australian gamers left for dead by the Classification Review Board
by Nacimota on Oct.22, 2009, under News
The Australian federal government’s Classification Review Board announced today that Valve Software’s Left 4 Dead 2 will not be awarded an MA 15+ rating, which the game requires in order to be legally sold in Australia.
The board originally refused classification for Left 4 Dead 2 last month, which forced Valve to appeal the decision and quickly throw together a less graphic version of the game in order to meet the November release date. The three-person panel, which voted unanimously to refuse classification to Left 4 Dead 2, explained their reasoning in a press release made available today on the board’s website.
The computer game [Left 4 Dead 2] contains a level of violence which is high in impact, prolonged, repeated frequently and realistic within the context of the game.
In addition, it was the Review Board’s opinion that there was insufficient delineation between the depiction of general zombie figures and the human figures, as opposed to the clearly fictional ‘infected’ characters. This was a major consideration of the Review Board in determining the impact of this game on minors.
The decision has reignited the debate concerning Australia’s lack of an R 18+ rating for video games. Video game classification in Australia remains the strictest of all classified media due to its lack of an R 18+ rating. Valve plans to submit a modified version of the game to the board for review.
Excuses and Litigation
by Nacimota on Oct.10, 2009, under News
Okay so it’s been just under three months since I last posted and that has been for a variety of reasons, which I will now outline.
I was briefly sucked back into the world of MMOs, first by playing EVE Online and then World of Warcraft soon after. I managed to get a Hyperion in EVE (a battleship roughly 1.7 kilometres in length) and a level 80 Death Knight in World of Warcraft. Having achieved these goals and essentially selling two months of my life to CCP and Blizzard, I decided I was done with these games for now.
I’ve also had some web hosting and development work for various people that I’ve been dealing with and I’ve been writing a DirectAdmin skin for the guys over at Honest Networks.
On that note, I’d like to say that writing skins for DirectAdmin is a bitch. The fact that there appears to be a relatively high demand for DirectAdmin skins with very few people making them seems to reflect this. The skinning system works, but it’s unnecessarily complicated. You can read more about it over at http://www.directadmin.com/skins.html.
I’ve also been spending a lot of time on IRC as I’ve been writing an IRC bot in C#. I may or may not cover some of that in the coming weeks but who knows.
I also received a whole a bunch of messages and emails in regards to the SketchUp video I made, there seems to be a substantial amount of people who can’t find the plug-ins that are ostensibly now included with the regular SDK. Not to worry, you can still download them right here by clicking this link:
http://files.nacimota.com/sketchup_plugins.zip
Speaking of Hammer, I’ve got an article I’m planning to write covering the use of the carve tool, probably the most controversial tool in Hammer. It won’t be particularly long so that should pop up on this page soon.
In other news, the iiNet vs. AFACT trial officially started last week with both sides giving opening statements and explaining the BitTorrent protocol. For those of you who are overseas or just living under a rock, AFACT is the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft; iiNet is an internet service provider that AFACT is suing on behalf of several major film studios and the Seven Network. Their complaint is essentially that iiNet is infringing copyright by not preventing pirated material from being downloaded by their customers.
AFACT sends thousands of emails to various ISPs across the country each week that accuse their customers of pirating copyright material. Many ISPs including iiNet have chosen to ignore these emails on the premise that they can’t cut off a customer’s internet connection based exclusively on an unproven accusation made by a third party. The essence of this argument is essentially that their customers are “innocent until proven guilty in a court of law”, a concept that so enrages AFACT that they chose to go after the ISPs instead.
The concept that an ISP is responsible for what their customers do with their internet connection strikes me as completely absurd. It’s not unlike suing a telephone company for allowing a customer to make threatening phone calls.
The case continues on Monday.
Creating Source Maps with SketchUp
by Nacimota on Jul.13, 2009, under Tutorials
Valve released the Left 4 Dead Authoring Tools recently, which included some plugins for Google SketchUp. In this video, I’ll show you the basics of exporting SketchUp geometry into the .VMF format. The plugins export generic VMF data, so it works with other Source games too. Contrary to what I said in the video, valve has included the plugins with the regular SDK now.
I have a cold so my voice is a bit off in places. Send plugin feedback to sketchuptools@valvesoftware.com.
Upcoming Content
by Nacimota on Jul.07, 2009, under News
I have some stuff I’m planning to publish within the next few days, starting with an introduction to C#, one of my favourite programming languages. I’m also planning of writing up some walkthroughs for Valve Hammer Editor, which is part of the Source SDK.
Speaking of games, I’ve heard whispers of a rumour that Blizzard is planning to roll out the Starcraft 2 beta within the next month or two, but I take that with a grain of salt. Should we be selected to participate, I’ll chronicle the experience in its own post. You can opt-in for the beta by creating an account at Battle.net and changing your profile settings.
Stick around, more stuff coming soon.
Budget Builds and So On…
by Nacimota on Jul.03, 2009, under News
Vito Cassisi has written a guide on his blog for anyone out there looking to build a decent PC for under $1000 (that’s Australian dollars, folks). I’m sure there’s plenty of people out there looking to save cash (I know I’m a cheapskate). Go ahead and check it out:
Working with the Windows Registry
by Nacimota on Jul.03, 2009, under Tutorials
Our website contains many tutorials that require editing the Windows Registry. Rather than summarizing the process in every article, I thought it might be better to make a more in-depth exploration separately. In this tutorial, I will explain what the Windows Registry is, how to edit its contents and the risks associated with doing so.
In the early days of Windows, applications would often store their configuration data in text documents called initialization files. Typically, these files would use an extension like .ini, .txt, .cfg, etc. One of the major problems with this particular system was that with the sheer number of applications installed, the .ini files would become scattered across the file system, making them difficult to track. After the release of Windows 95, in an effort to further standardize and manage configuration for applications and Windows, Microsoft encouraged software developers to use the Windows Registry as an alternative to INI files for storing configuration data. In the years that followed, the Windows Registry became the standard repository for application settings. (continue reading…)
Hiding User Accounts on Windows
by Nacimota on Jul.01, 2009, under Tutorials
Originally published in 2008
On Windows XP and up, it is possible to hide user accounts from both the Welcome Screen and the User Accounts control panel. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how. I’m sure people have various reasons for wanting to do this, so here we go.
The first thing you want to do is head to the Control Panel and create the user you want to hide, if you haven’t done so already. I’m calling mine Secret Account. It’s important to take not of the exact name of the account, including character case, because we’ll need to use it later.
Notice that the account is shown in the User Accounts control panel. This is normal, of course. (continue reading…)
User Account Control and You
by Nacimota on Jun.30, 2009, under Tutorials
Originally published in 2008
In this tutorial, I’ll discuss disabling and configuring User Account Control (UAC) on Windows Vista, along with the pros and cons of doing so.
User Account Control, or UAC as it’s often called, is arguably the most controversial feature of Windows Vista. It’s also probably fair to say that it’s Vista’s most misunderstood feature.
UAC prompts you with a ‘click-ok-to-continue’-like dialog whenever you do certain actions. This is often interpreted as “Are you sure you want to run this program?” or “Are you an administrator?”, which isn’t quite the case. This prompting behaviour can be jarring for users, as it deviates from the behaviour of previous versions of Windows. Being constantly asked to confirm your actions can be frustrating for users new to the Vista platform. Because of this, many users choose to disable the UAC system all together, and it has become a main point of criticism for Vista. (continue reading…)
