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StudioMod for Half-Life 2

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    Development Journal

    Here's a little of what was going through my head while I was making this mod.

    Save the World

    Two goals were to have a user editable save/load facility and to allow the functions to be managed from the console. I decided to combine these two goals into one function by making the save function write out a series of console commands. That way I don't have to write a load function, you can just exec the save file.

    Client vs. Server: FIGHT!

    When I first started this mod, the movement was extremely jerky. When the camera man was moving over un even ground, the straight line path would force leave the character either inside the ground or hanging in mid-air. Then the physics engine would try to take over and stop this. So, what I discovered was that if I implement the code solely on the client side, the server couldn't complain and the motion was smooth as silk. One side effect of this however is that the actors will not be able to see the camera man. On the plus side, the camera can move through the actors without getting in their way.

    Won't You Be My Spline?

    Originally, my idea was to use b-splines to control the motion path. The plan was to use the recorded points as b-spline control points. The problem with that is that if you are trying to lay out a shot, you want the camera to move through the points you select, and b-splines don't do that.

    So I looked up my old college homework for an algorithm to make b-splines that go through the data points using gaussian elimination and what-not. The results came out very wild and unpredictable. The problem with this was that that algorithm works a lot better with thousands of points instead of a handful of points.

    So I finally settled on using a cubic bezier curve that starts at the 90% mark on one path and finishes up at 10% along the next path. This makes a nice curve and comes close to the original point. This does cause the path to speed up and slow down a bit through the curve, but I think it's still a nice effect.

     

     

    Contact me at [nopgames] {at} [nooperation.com].