I was wondering....

When I got the SDK for Source... well, first I yelled OMGOMGOMGTEHPWN, but then I went straight into creating an NS map. I just wanted to see if I could recreate the "feel" of NS.

I made a CS:S map and converted a few ns.wad textures but so far I haven't been able to get it right. I could do this with regular hammer tho...

Anyways, I was wondering if anyone else has tried? If so, would you mind showing off your results?

If nothing else, it might occupy us a bit while we wait for the (inevitable) announcement: NS:S.

/Silverwing:S

Yes, I have, I converted all of ayumi.wad, and made normal maps,

the unfortunate news about this is that I have discovered (dev team take note)

that becuase NS textures are so superbly made for the HL engine, they will need to be remade for source so that normal maps work and so that the resolution is 512x512

i have SSs of 2 maps that I will post later for the benefit of those who are curious

I've mostly ported Altair just for kicks and like Hyperion was saying, the NS textures were optimized for the HL engine. You run into a few problems when you move to Source. For instance, the average wall texture in NS is 128x128, in Source it's 512x512. Most HL details are brush based, in source they're prop based and we don't really have any props to work with. The brushwork ports fairly seamlessly, but the textures will need to be updated and the entity work will be a bit messed up. We'll also need to get some new sexy props to decorate our maps.

Oooohh! NS:S on the way!

Iv been working on the techinal side of HL2 maps, got planes cars and various other neat things, like vgui_screen(latest work of head hurting) and most of logics. I made some nice looking maps after hl2 first came out but I soon found without the ablity to model/skin/animate very well my maps are limited to whats given =/

OK, heres is one SS (from beta yes I know but its all ive got for this map)
You can see the problems created because of the low rez normal maps, and my lack of being able to get the alpha on the normal maps to work correctly.

EDIT: Crappy quality I know I was rushed, Ill do better later.

It still looks damn sexy as far as anything I have ever seen in NS is concerned.

uhh... even as far as NS is concerned, i wouldn't take that over almost anything. it just doesn't look good. not to say NS won't look great on source, but the textures are like glass right now, and missing color. i'll wait till it's "later" till i say anything more.

another thing is the bad behaviour of the new vhe. I started retexturing an small map I did a few years ago. and thats the point: texturing doesnt work as "smooth" as one is usd to. another problem are the system requirements. loading all the textures and models took ages even with my 1.5ghz so I guess it would be a good ideas to "upgrade" first.
Im pretty annoyed about te fact that you cant simply use textureset a) within maps of mod b). tha cant be it! I never ever could get the idea behind adding the sdk to steam. after the last steam update vhe wasnt able to find the game.txt. good job valve!!! we love you all!!!!!!!

That uber shinyness is the result of the fact that i could not figure out how to add the specualr factor "part" of the material, and as a result, its really shiny, itll look better when its done correctly (which I havent figured out yet).

I'm not sure if you've seen this or not but it can be very helpful http://www.hl2world.com/wiki/index.php/Category:Texturing

and
http://www.chatbear.com/board.plm?a=viewth...=4990&v=flatold

For normal maps

I'd be curious to see how the existing NS textures look in Source. I'm not sure it's going to make sense for us to redo all 30+ megs of textures, that's just an incredible amount of work. I'm sure the results would be incredible, but I don't think Cory would want to redo everything just for a graphical upgrade (and I don't blame him).

If anyone ports their NS map over to Source (especially an official NS map), I'd love to see screenshots of it. I tried importing the .wads and had a fair number of difficulties. I think Mendasp has had some good results so far, but I'm not sure.

we seriusly need atleast some of the ns textures remade, or just sized up to go well in source
if annyone plan on doing that, tro to get the ns.wad "sourced" first

Sounds like a challenge, im going to try and pull a few NS textures over and see if i can run them in a map w/out probs. You say they need to be @ 512x512? And I saw somethin about a tga file?

When I ported bast and sava, the textures were blurry (and the lighting was horribly dark), so I think we have no other alternative, the textures need to be remade, we can only hope that the massive hype of a NS port will get us good texture artists, heh.

As always, when I don't like something, I end up deleting it, so this would be the third time I've deleted the ported bast/sava, heh.

I still got a pic of Water Treatment with Alyx, you'll need to burn your monitor brightness to see anything, but you get the idea.



I used xwad to port all the textures in this port, the first ports were done "by hand" with vtex, lots of wally and image resizing programs.

ps.- If we port NS the first thing I'll remake is feedwater, god, that hive will look gorgeous!

Damn.

We could always start a community project up to redo all the NS textures by hand...

i dont see the point in going to source just for prettier graphics, think of all the plyers ud lose who dont hav hl2 or that it wont run on their machine. itll only be worth doing if u can think of some amazing new feature which cant be done in the original half-life.

i say stay on this engine, include my training map, finish the mod, then move on to a new project

@Meat_pop I actually think that NS would run better on the sourceengine since the HL1 engine is beeing pushed to its very maxiumum already. Most machines can run HL2 decent.

Yeah I had a little go, but yeah like Mendasp said, we need new textures

would the textures have to be remade from scratch, or could the be resized and smoothed over or something

Brightened up Mendasps picture although Alyx and the VGUI looks horrendous, rest of it is a bit clearer now.

Also, they don't look too blurry if I'm honest. Although then again this is just one screenshot, and you've played it in-game so you must know best

EDIT: By they don't look too blurry, I mean they are just about playable without losing your mind or thinking "these textures are rubbish".

Any one know how to make a vgui_screen button trigger a door, I cant get it to work =(

The problem that I have with the current NS textures is that they already have specualr highlights and faked shadows, which is why I think that they need to be redone (aside from higher rez). Also, I think that the community project for porting them is a good one.

Ah yes, another problem is that there are MANY NS textures that are not Powers of 2 which is really annoying because you cant directly port them over......

Also, adding bump mapping (etc) would really liven up some of the textures - feedwater glistening with reflections for example. As the previous post said, some of the textures contain things that could be rendered on-the-fly.

eAi

the community has done some good side projects before.. im sure doin somethin like this is possible.. it'll be tricky though, redoin the textures nd makin sure they dont screw up current maps.

how would they screw up current maps? seeing as a HL map won't load in HL2 and all..

surely if its the same texture stretched over the same sized surface, itll be just as blurry as before?

I'm trying to port the map I'm working on straight over to source but I'm having a problem with xwad. Everytime I try and convert any wad using the command line below xwad does nothing and tells me that I'm "missing a parameter". Can anyone see whats missing from below?

"C:\Program files\Valve\Steam\SteamApps\chrisrocketz@hotmail.com\sourcesdk\bin\xwad.exe" -BaseDir "c:\Steam\SteamApps\chrisrocketz@hotmail.com\half-life\ns\" -WadFile "c:\valve\steam\steamapps\Half-Life\ns\ns.wad"

Sure, mappers would have to resize their textures, but its really easy to do with the "replace" button, and all you have to do is cut your scaling in half.

And MP, yes, they would be just as ugly, thats why we need to make them higher rez and scale them down by half in hammer.

Yeah just think of what is possible with 3d skyboxes in NS:S, that would be so cool.

would be even cooler if they where dynamic... seen somewhere that they cant be changed
would be cool though seeing scraps or a driftig ship floating around =)

so.. someone start work on a next texture set or something... it seems to be the only thing holdin back maps bein done right now... i can't do textures for the life of me, i woulda tryed already, heh. infact i did, but im horrible. haha. whoeva thinks they can contribute speak up

and do it now!
for the TSA (and kharaa)!
and the holy cookie of great justice!

atm im trying to get the F-ING xsi mod tool to make normal maps from models for me so I can start doing the good old flr_ textures ya know the one with the 3 rectangles? ya that one, and let me tell you, if anyone has d3_normalmap_gen, let me know!

Well if they're dynamic im sure you could simulate that somehow cagey.

Ooooh... imagine having a space station that's rotating around a planet (though the planet actually does moving of course) would it be possible to have the light change dynamically? For example, if the port side of the ship was facing a star or planet, the rooms could be lit up more and then then when it rotates 180 degrees, the starboard side rooms could be lit up more again! That would be a hella cool effect!

I doubt anyone in the NS forums atm can do textures that'd match cory's in quality >_>.

How does it look tiled?

Looks quite nice there Norn.

Excellent work Supernorn, now to get started on the other 1000 textures