Back Issue 16 - 1st Jan to 8th Jan 1999
Qoole99
For those of you who are sick of Worldcraft not working, then here's an alternative that
many of you will rejoice about: Qoole99
We will be releasing a public beta of Qoole 99 on January 12th, 1999. Gather in EFNet IRC channel #Qoole for discussion at 6pm PST. We need your help to test this new version thoroughly.
Games that will be supported in this beta are Quake, Quake II, Hexen II, and Half-Life. Rendering support includes software (MFC and MGL), Glide, and OpenGL. New major features that you will see over v2.50 include an object tree view, prefab manager, compile output window, and a leak detector. New object editing features include plane clip, mirror and flip, intersection, a new easier scaling mode, and alignment settings.
The Qoole 99 interface is completely new, Windows 98 style. However it retains the same ease of use and speed aspects of Qoole v2.50. There are a few other minor things as well. Some features will be missing in this beta. Most notably are DirectX rendering, and game support for Sin and Heretic II. We will be researching support for the LithTech engine (for Blood 2 and Shogo), as well as possibly the Unreal engine. These would likely come after the first official Qoole 99 release.
MDLViewer
Wavelength has compiled the source code for the MDLviewer that was released in the latest SDK.
I mirrored it here cause the PQ mirror list took me
forever to hack through to find a working link.
Update by Dann - 06 January 1999 22:18:45
Parametric Animation! Coolies!
Saw over on the mighty Bluesnews that over on OzTF that there is a bit from Robin Walker of TeamFortress Software on the totally cool sounding Parametric Animation which we can all expect in TeamFortress II. Here is the blurb...
Sheol:
Robin, just a simple question for oztf if you don't mind.
What the hell is parametric animation and what benefits will
it reap for gamers?
Lint0Deth:
Parametric animation's the next step up from Skeletal Animation.
One way of describing it is to say that it adds AI to the animation
system itself. In most animation systems, the computer knows what
the player is doing, and plays the correct animation. Run animations
are played when the player runs, and so on. The computer knows
what direction the player's facing, so it knows how to draw the
player.
With Parametric animation, the computer looks at everything the
player's doing, not just what his/her main action is. If the player's
running one way, facing another, firing, and taking a bullet hit in
the shoulder, then every one of those parameters are taken into account
when the player is drawn. The animation system smoothly blends each
of the individual animations needed to convey all those events into
one animation.
The end result of all this is a level of reality in animation you've
never seen before. He's running where it looks like he's running.
He's aiming where he looks like he's aiming. He's getting hit where
it looks like he's getting hit, and so on. All the information about
a player is there in front of your eyes, just like real life.
Robin.
Update by Alex - 05 January 1999 22:54:22
1st ACE Xtra Deathmatch Level
A guy called Dante who now works for Radioactive Software has released a totally superb level called The Gantry normally I think that map reviewing sites have slightly suspect criteria, but for once Radium has a great review of this map.
Update by Alex - 05 January 1999 18:04:07
The Valve Connection Opens
Grunt sent me a mail about the opening of the The Valve Connection (and the subsequent closing of The Black Mesa Half-life Center).
The site formerly known as The Black Mesa Half-life Center is finally back online after a month of downtime as The Valve Connection (http://3d-unlimited.com/valve). This change was made due to the recent announcement that Team Fortress 2 will be a stand-alone game. So now you can find the latest news about all Valve Software products at The Valve Connection.
Winamp 2.08 is also out...
Update by Alex - 03 January 1999 17:13:50
Two New Deathmatch Models
There now are another two new deathmatch models, just released by Valve this time they are a Robot Grunt (177Kb) and a Zombie (181Kb).
SinglePlayer. Time to Perfect?
Having just tried my first user-made Half-Life Singleplayer level JailBreak I have to say overall I was pretty much impressed by the overall variation of this set of maps, even if not by the choice in name! But it really just does stand out just how much the Valve levels were playtested and so-far rank as being the most excellent.
Download JailBreak from this page.
SDK Update
Ken Birdwall from Valve (of course!) updated some aspects of the SDK (Software Development Kit) for Half-Life mainly revolving around modelling. Here is the info and links to the related files...
These ZIP files are part of the developer release for the Half-Life Tools and Multiplayer models. They are fairly large, and it's doubtful that you'll need all of them. They also don't come with any documentation, so you're probably better off going to a Half-Life editing site and letting them set you up with exactly what you need.
hlmplayer.zip (3479Kb) : the intermediate files and textures needed to rebuild the Half-Life multiplayer models, along with the raw 3DStudio Max 2.x model sources. You'll need the model exporter found in hltools.zip if you want to export your own.
hlmplayermax.zip (4654Kb) : the 3DStudio Max 2.x source files to the multiplayer animations. By themselves, these are pretty useless and I can't think of any reason why you'd need them, but there also wasn't any good reason to not include them so here they are.
hlsprites.zip (88Kb) : a small example of a Half-Life sprite QC file.
hltools.zip (400Kb) : latest build of Half-Life tools used with Worldcraft, as well as a model exporter for 3DStudio Max 2.x and Character Studio 2.x.
hltoolsrc.zip (239Kb) : source code to the tools found in hltools.zip. Also includes a sample OpenGL based model viewing app. These files are only needed if you intend to edit existing tools or build new ones.
Update by Alex - 02 January 1999 17:38:55
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