Wall Worm Forums

So, Shawn encouraged me (not forcefully) to make a post which could possibly help future Half-Life 2 modders and so in the future.
Now, just a note, this is from what all I've experienced and things that I am aware of/ AFAIK (As Far As I Know). Some of these things may be true, and some won't, but nevertheless, should prove useful.

First things first, you /CANNOT/ mod Half-Life 2/EP1/EP2 things. Before the Steam Pipe updates and so, modding Half Life 2 was like shooting fish in a barrel, it really was, until the Pipe updates and other icky stuff came along. As far as I know, you cannot get mods such as Weapon mods (Hand and World models) to be customized. In order to do this, you will NEED to compile code and make your OWN SOURCE MOD. How do you do this? Dunno, I haven't done it. All I did was take a Half Life 2 mod (such as 12 Absent Men) Downloaded it, deleted ALL it's content related to the mod and left the bare essentials, changed everything 12 Absent Men to BLA BLA BLA~ ONLY then, can you get things such as Modded weapons, custom title screens or map_backgrounds working. Shame, as I had such good looking Asiimov skins on my Half Life 2 weapons, but yeah. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is just one of the things I've discovered.

For weapon modelling/modding:
Unless you're going to Animate your weapons, ONLY MODIFY THEM SLIGHTLY. If you make an entirely different weapon, the skinning and animations will be all over the bloody place, and it'll be a pain in the ass. Also, no need for LODs, you can use them, it's suggested, but honestly, it's just a waste of time to me.. Mod weapons by either stretching them, attaching parts to them or what not unless you can properly animate and shit. It'll save you frustration and so much in the long run. ALSO DIRECTORIES, I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH ON THIS. PLEASE, TEXTURES/MODELS WHATEVER MAKE SURE THEY BLOODY WELL GO IN THE PROPER DIRECTORIES!! This is a common problem and a very stupid one.. FOR EXPORTING please, just export it as a SMD file and use something like Crowbar to export the model; it's because you probably have NO idea as to what the hell you're doing... Nothing's wrong with WallWorm (don't take me wrong Shawn) but when I tried to export the model INSTANTLY and COMPILE though WallWorm, I'd never get the bloody animations there and sequences... Just do it though Crowbar, compile though that, and viola, it's done! It takes a bit longer, but you'd definitely take the time to make something work than just have a static frozen view model, now would you? Unless, that's your thing, then go ahead, do it, I don't mind...

Next: Use Half Life 2: EP2 as much as you can. It's an opinion thing, but I honestly just prefer the EP2 system. It's great and I don't know, it just feels so much better and easier to use.

AND THE MOST IMPORTANT THING:
Please.. PLEASE.. For God's sake.. Always check the Valve Dev. Wiki @: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SDK_Docs For information.. Use the search feature there and help yourself.. Sometimes, you don't always find things, but I can GUARANTEE THAT YOU WILL DEFINITELY find SO MUCH HERE. I cannot stress how important and life saving this site is, especially with all the caps not being enough to shout it, BUT CHECK IT OUT.

Feel free to comment what all you find out; personally, this is more like a Officer Caitlyn's findings page, but eh, guess you all can share some finds of your own too... <(uu)>

Edit: Is it possible to have this pinned or perhaps, a FAQ or Tutorials section? I'm lost as to where the heck to post this <(o///o)>

So, after some time and reading up and work, this happened... <(oAo)>











Spec Maps, Alpha, and well, yeah, I dunno, but it looks flipping fantastic! Had to make my own 'Source Mod' for a source game, which was a huge pain in the butt, but yeah, it works!!! <(^D^)> I really like the look of it, now if you excuse me, I'm off to make a Source Remake of Delta Force 2! Squeee~

Hi Shawn,

Well it could be... I don't have the beefiest of computers in existence... <(o~o)> But I think I understand what you mean, could be the whole reason in fact... Anyways, I really don't have time to let it import like that, but yeah... It probably is ridiculously slow...

Thanks for the explanation though, much appreciated. <(^^)>

Ah, no worries. I'll wait patiently. <(^^)> But I've downloaded Crowbar, and so far, it's helping out; I found that not checking 'Single Mesh' on the SMD importer puts it in an infinite loop... I don't know if it's just me, but it's been doing that for every model... Also, the QC's aren't getting exported correctly, so for now, I'm just exporting the SMD's and recompiling them like I used to for CS:Source. (I think my moddings coming back to me, damn, was I really this smart when I was 13?? <(0.o)>

Thanks for the comment though Shawn, will wait~ 

Hello~ <(^^)>

So, recently, this friend of mine asked me if I could help him with some modelling, now he asked me to make a Katana sword model to replace the crowbar in Half-Life 2 (Ep1, Vanilla, EP2, bla bla bla, HL2) Anyways, so I've got the base files ripped (both W and V models) and now the thing is, changing the V models did Jack shit, and apparently, the model disappears. NOW the thing is, this has happened to me when I tried CS:Source modding; I managed to get the AK-47 and what not modded, all good, when it came to the AWP, things got out of hand, I think some rotation or some QC related thingy wasn't right and I had to do some rotation, BUT I DON'T KNOW JACK about that and it really frustrated me (just as bad as skinning a player model heh)... <(-..-*)>

I'm just wondering, mainly, asking you Shawn, do you have any ideas or information on this? Seems like I'm the only one daring to do this. There HAVE been mods for the crowbar to replace it with neat stuff like a combat axe and so, but any ideas as to how to go about with this? Also, tried Importing the model, got a weird Xform error, used QC, no probs, but any idea's what settings I Should use or so? I used to use Studio compiler and something QC compiler or something like that to make models, but I'm COMPLETELY out of touch as to what to do with the new common folders ever since the common folder was introduced... Props, okay, weapons and stuff, haha, NOPE. ZERO.

Many MANY thanks in advance. <(^u^)>

Thank you so much!! <(^D^)> I finally got it working how I wanted to! It took a lot of tweaking and figuring out, but I couldn't have done it without that "dated" post; it may be, but it got the whole concept there and worked great! Thank you sooo mcuh!!!  ;D

Hello one, hello all,

Was hoping I could get some help for my aircraft model for Source that I'm making <(^^;)>
So basically, I'm obviously, making an aircraft and was wondering, that since I made a rather tight and well fitting collision box, I never thought I'd have this problem...



However, upon viewing the collision model for the model, I saw something odd...



The collision model has been made and rounded off to fill in gaps and so... Now that's not nice as you can't go under the bird anymore; phooey <(Q~Q)> And ideas as to how I can bypass this and be able to then crawl under the aircraft? I kinda want to be able to have a collision mesh that literally outlines the aircraft roughly, just like the green drawing instead of the red lines...

Thankies! v <(^-^)>!