MarkSinclair.net - Blog

Update

Mark — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 16:43:37 +0000

Soon!

The TF2 Contribute System is Annoying

Mark — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 12:30:41 +0000

The Pharaoh's Choice hat - created by me!

I feel the need to rant a bit.

The TF2 Contribute site seems fairly straight forward at first glance. Enter your details, upload the relevant files, click submit, done. The annoying thing is, there’s no “confirmation screen”, letting you know the submission has gone through. Well, there is, actually… when you start the process, you enter your Steam ID. Once everything is submitted, it takes you back to this page, which would make you think that it’s gone back to the start. However, if you put in your Steam ID again, then it’ll take you to the confirmation screen. I didn’t realise this when I first submitted some hats (one pictured above) and the Engineer items I blogged about before. Meaning they never went through! I had to resubmit everything yesterday, which was a pain. That said, it did give me the opportunity to polish them, improve the models and the textures, fix some clipping issues, and make the hats paintable. So that’s nice, at least.

Now let’s hope they make it into the game!

New TF2 Map

Mark — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 11:14:01 +0000

I’m making a new map for Team Fortress 2. What’s interesting this time around is that I am working in collaboration with my friend IrishTaxiDriver. We’ve set up a shared Dropbox folder to keep everything in sync, and so far it’s working really well. The only problem is that he’s at least 5 hours behind me (timezone wise), and his sleeping pattern is worse than mine, so it’s a bit difficult to communicate at the moment.

This project is also giving me some more experience with using instances in Hammer. There are 5 control points in this map, and each one is instanced, allowing for easy editing and positioning (lots of angled geometry) in the final map.

Here are some Hammer screenshots of what we have so far:

The A point

The B point

The C point

Overview (still need to block out points D and E)

So that’s the main thing I’m working on now. The layout should be all hammered out in the next few days, then we can start getting some serious playtests in. Let’s do it up!

Modelling Fun

Mark — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 15:33:03 +0000

I decided to make some weapons for Team Fortress 2 this weekend. Developer “GreenMarine” noted on the SA forums that they didn’t have enough quality Engineer submissions, so I figured I’d jump while the iron’s hot.

I thought about going with a construction theme, but also calling back to Team Fortress Classic. In the end, I decided with a nail gun (to replace the shotgun or the pistol) and a spanner (to replace the wrench). To accompany the weapons, there would be a misc item (can be worn along with hats). To fit with the theme, I went with a dust mask.

Here’s how they turned out (click for big):

I’ve submitted the items to Valve. I’m really hoping that they’ll decide to use them! We shall see. My fingers are crossed.

Modelling and texturing these taught me a hell of a lot. Texturing in the TF2 style is great fun, and very rewarding.

- Mark

update: I posted them around the internet (mainly /r/tf2) and got some good feedback. A lot of people said they looked too realistic, but I don’t think they do. The cut-out images in the advert were actually taken from Half Life Model Viewer, so they look a lot different than in game. Here are some raw images of them in game: