Wanton Hubris

Do you play Quake? Of course you do. Then you need this program:

Quake Injector

It’s absolutely fantastic! It’s written in Java which might give you a few initial giggles trying to get it to run but once you do, it’s like magic! All of the maps over at Quaddicted show up in an easy to use list. You click a map you want to play and Quake Injector does the rest, including downloading required mods that the map might need.

I played a bunch of old school stuff this morning and it was totally seamless. Works on Windows and Mac and, well, I guess anything that can run Java.

Grab it, it kicks ass!

I’m reaching the tipping point with this level. The point where you decide one way or the other whether it’s going to get done or not. The point where you do a gut check and decide if you really feel like seeing it through to completion.

I’m feeling good about it at the moment. We’ll just have to get over this middle hill.

One thing I find that is really helping in regards to maintaining my interest in working on the level is leaving many areas unfinished. This gives me the ability to open the level and start moving the camera around, looking for something that strikes my fancy- “Should I detail out that broken wall? That door way needs fleshing out but, then again, that hallway needs to be connected somehow. Screw it, this secret area needs better lighting.”

In the past I would generally finish each area before progressing. This new method seems to be working much better.

This is a quick look at the level I’m currently working on. It’s going to feature specific combat arenas and is set in a temple environment. This is shaping up to be the largest level I’ve ever done so hopefully nothing will break down and force me to make compromises.

You can tell by the spectacular view of the outside void that this level is very “work in progress” at the moment. It’s coming along though. I’m up to 2,177 brushes now.

I’m adding a new feature into LevelEd for the next release called “layers”. Layers allow you to group entities/brushes together into meaningful groups so you can quickly select or hide them all at once. What’s really interesting is the concept of “Smart Layers” which will automatically include all entities/brushes that meet specific criteria. Here’s a shot of the very early, unfinished layer inspector:

All that is currently supported is a set of LevelEd provided smart layers (smart layers have the purple folder icon beside them). In this case, this is a default set of smart layers that filter off of the entity class name. So, for example, if I toggle off the layer titled “trigger” then all of the trigger entities in the level will hide themselves.

Eventually I want to allow the user to create their own smart layers with basic filtering statements like “all lights with a brightness > 200″ and “all entities with a targetname of ‘blargh’” and things like that.

Of course, aside from smart layers there will be basic layers as well which you will be able to freely add and remove entities from as you see fit.

The level marches forward. I’ve been doing something to this level pretty much every day. I want to get at least a few new brushes in every day because that means at the end of each week, progress has been made. I’m finding that this strategy is working pretty well for me so I’m going to continue onwards.

I just hit 2,000 brushes and considered that a blog worthy milestone. And there’s still a ways to go. Oof!

What’s interesting about this level is that I’m forcing myself to be productive partially via sabotage. I’m concentrating on the play areas and the walls/floors while ignoring roofs. This means that the level hasn’t successfully VIS’d since I started working on it. When it’s done, I’ll finish up the ceilings and get it sealed but until then I think the lack of a successful VIS is allowing me to be a little more creative because I’m not constantly concerned with r_speeds and who can see what from where. However, having typed that I now realize that Quake is going to break itself soon from too many clipnodes or something and I will be forced to seal it early. Bah! I will carry on until that happens at least.