As for a lot of gamers, Half-Life's form of storytelling was the games biggest appeal. The original scripted sequences have all been preserved, but enhanced to utilize the tools that the Source Engine provides for producing dramatic scenes. Since the generic security guard and scientists have evolved into their respective roles as Barney and Dr. Kleiner in HL2, I've tried to maintain the essence of those personas. Kevin Sisk and Mike Hillard have tapped further into these characters and brought tons of personality to every scene. No longer will NPCs stand around waiting for the player to arrive. They will be involved with their surroundings and establish their individual context in the game world. They interact with their environments, realistically express a wide range of emotions and talk with each other and the player while following him around the facility.

There will be additional scenes, though. The height of the development experience for myself has been creating new scripted sequences within the original narrative framework. I've included an audio-demo from one of my favorite chapters, Office Complex. Once a script is finalized and the scene is recorded, Kevin will assemble a radio-play so that we can get an advanced preview to help visualize how the scene will pan out. You may recognize where this scripted sequence originally takes place. The player comes across a security guard beckoning for help behind a locked gate. Upon approaching, both come across a frightening discovery:



It took a while for me to find my groove, but it allowed my style to mature immensely. Hearing the scripts voiced, edited and implemented has been extremely rewarding as each character within the facility has been brought to life. The new and extended scenes also fit organically into the story. They serve to increase the excitement and drama without jarring the sense of nostalgia that makes this mod so great. Each sequence stays true to form, true to character, and - most importantly - true to Half-Life.

Now that "Black Mesa" was coming into existance, and "Barney" is now a specific character, Barney Calhoun, it was time to go back to that basic buddy stereotype that everyone fell in love with and pay homage to it, with perhaps a few differences here and there in order to differentiate the "Black Mesa" security guards from the "Barneys" of HL1, and of course, Barney Calhoun.  But not so much to completely deviate from the original stereotype, as you can surely agree that a complete reinterpretation from scratch would be considered a sin.

So the question is, "what makes this character what it is?"  When I look at the "Barneys" of HL1, I see the following traits:  Loyal, laid back, a brother on the battlefield, however a tiny bit insecure.  Because of this he tries at times to act a little macho in order to compensate, resulting in looking like a dork 1/3 of the time.  In fact if given the choice, he'd probably head in the opposite direction (when no one's looking of course).  However when called to duty, no one fights harder at your side.

I find I relate to Barney Calhoun a good deal as I'm a laid back easy going person myself in real life with insecurities of my own, and the best characters are usually the ones that everyone can relate to on some level.  I suppose the success of a fictional character is giving them the traits that make him/her interesting while balancing them out with those traits that one can relate to.  I suspect this concept is what makes the character of Gordon Freeman fairly successful even though he is, for lack of better words, a blank state for players to inhabit.  Despite this "vacant" personality, Gordon Freeman still has the set-in-stone traits that I think everyone would like to have; Health, vigour, atheleticism, friendliness(in terms of being approachable, cuz no one seems to ever be scared by the guy), and a strong sense of honor and comradery.

Now while the security guards may share these traits to various degrees, I still had to ask myself, "well, what can I do put my own spin on this guard persona while keeping it familiar?  The best answer I can give ya is that it sorta involves a little bit of method acting on my part. I  try to imagine how I would react if I was this character, so in effect I'm incorporating a little bit of my own personality into it.  At the same time I try to remember that certain lines will need that, well, "barney-ism" to it.  Cuz, let's face it, some of those classic lines are hard to forget.  It's definitely a balancing act.

So it's fair to say that the end result's gonna be a 50% me/50% barney-ish type of deal.  Hopefully the voice that comes out of this 25 year old North Carolinian's cakehole will do the part justice.

Like with anything technical words eventually spring up to define complex ideas and turn them into manageable ideas so I’m going to introduce you to the luxel. A luxel is at its heart a pixel of lighting information, I’m not sure where the U comes from but I think a luxel sounds better than a lixel. We all know pixels are colored and arranged and put together to form an image, higher resolutions means more definition and clearer boo… pictures, the same applies to luxels. Source has what it calls “light maps” these represent the luxels on a given surface; the light map grid controls the size of the luxel in units. One luxel is by default 16 units square. There are advantages to certain properties of a light map.

Adjusting your luxel size does a few things so to save complex sentences.
Luxel size – Down
File Size – Up
Compile Time – Up
Texture Memory – Up
FPS – N/A
Looks – Up
And vice versa, increasing your light map size has its drawbacks, and from that it’s best to work a bit of give and take. For anywhere you increase the light map you’re probably best decreasing it somewhere else otherwise your VRAD is going to take forever to make a gigantic map files that only people with lots of memory can play without fps issues (using too much texture memory on computers with low RAM will slow them down ); however, the change in quality is apparent below.
 http://members.shaw.ca/dvdgillen/BMS/Dam_Lmap.jpg

There’s only 2 relevant tools for adjusting light maps, the first the light map grid size in the top right of the face edit dialog. The other is the light map grid 3D view. The basic rules I use for light map optimization goes that any face that doesn’t receive light (no draw, trigger, etc) gets a light map of 1024, so it’s easy to identify. Then every other visible face gets a light map of 32. This means the entire map is usually a bit smaller and a bit faster to compile and that I can usually increase light maps at need in the rest of the level. Anything that gets indirect lighting but is still relatively close to a light like the floor or ceiling above a light gets a light map of 16. Anything that has an obvious shape of light or has light directly cast on it form a short distance gets a value of 8. This usually keeps things clean looking and retains the form of the light. Then anything lower is only ever set from the need for a more defined shadow or wanting to have a shape to it. I’m sure you’ve all seen Raminator’s excellent work with low light map scales in Blast pit.

Lastly I’ll leave you with an example of some light map optimization I’ve talked about before with pictures as practical examples are often best. In the picture below one side shows the in-game compiled version and the other side shows the light maps as displayed in Hammer. The light map view is easy to access: left click on the word Camera in the top left of your 3D view, and from the drop down select 3D Light map Grid. In this view, yellow faces have smaller than default scales, white faces are at the default and blue are larger. The hallway we are looking at has wall mounted lights and a few ceiling lights as well. In the picture it's clear to see where the light map scale has been increased and decreased. The front of the pillar has an increased light map because of the light source on its face, to catch all the detail. This is not such a major problem as the pillar is a small thin face and the only area with a lower scale. The floor and a few of the walls along the edge have been scaled up, as looking at the in-game rendering little to no detail or change is seen in the light map; they are excellent candidates, the floor especially so with its large size. The other faces have been left at the default resolution as they all have some play of shadows or changes in brightness. While not detailed or essential enough to warrant a smaller scale, increasing the scale would only serve to create poor looking lighting as the lack of detail would show.
http://members.shaw.ca/dvdgillen/BMS/Dam_LUse.jpg

Apologies for the lack of original content to this blog; however, I believe some blog is better than no blog and I would not like to disappoint twice in a row.