I've been busy with mod work and following modelling tutorials. I'm recreating the head because it was too high poly compared to the body. So, I'm doing the box modelling approach instead of spline to help keep polycounts down.
The mod work has taken me away from actually making my own maps and bouncing ideas off the team has resulted in them doing the ideas instead of me. Sadly, I like to avoid doing what I've already seen done in Portal 2 (unless it's an improvement over what I've done before), so I'm back to the drawing board again.
So, here's a video of what currently isn't working out for me:
As usual, there's more information in the video's description.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Time Shifting
I've been staying up longer and longer to "get things done" and now I'm not going to bed until daybreak. Not good. So, I'm shifting my sleep schedule back so I better fit with the normal working day. As such, I've been used to doing a lot at night, so being up during the day really hits me hard creatively. Whoopie...
The gaps for the cheek and jaw have been filled in. I need to round them out a bit because it looks awkward right now (well, not having a neck does hurt it somewhat). I don't want the jaw to be that pronounced on her.
The gaps for the cheek and jaw have been filled in. I need to round them out a bit because it looks awkward right now (well, not having a neck does hurt it somewhat). I don't want the jaw to be that pronounced on her.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
3D Modelling tutorial progress
The YouTube character modelling tutorial I've been following apparently started back up again this month after a year and a half wait. So, it isn't complete. That was a bit disappointing, but I still got a lot out of it.
The author has a host of other tutorials for me to follow, so I grabbed some on the next section: the head. The head tutorials were going alright, but they were all recorded in one go and ended without a complete head. So, I'm on my own, kind of. I've stopped looking for more tutorials and am using the Joan of Arc tutorial to get an idea of what polygons should go where using the techniques from the video tutorial.
The head tutorial I was watching started with the "bones" of the head (the strips you see for front to back and top to bottom) and ended with connecting them and forming an eye. I've just started on the lips and I'll have to reference the original tutorial for how to do the ears.
I'm still mapping for Portal 2, but I've been doing mod work recently. I could show it, but I'm pretty sure the rest of the team wouldn't be too thrilled about that.
The author has a host of other tutorials for me to follow, so I grabbed some on the next section: the head. The head tutorials were going alright, but they were all recorded in one go and ended without a complete head. So, I'm on my own, kind of. I've stopped looking for more tutorials and am using the Joan of Arc tutorial to get an idea of what polygons should go where using the techniques from the video tutorial.
The head tutorial I was watching started with the "bones" of the head (the strips you see for front to back and top to bottom) and ended with connecting them and forming an eye. I've just started on the lips and I'll have to reference the original tutorial for how to do the ears.
I'm still mapping for Portal 2, but I've been doing mod work recently. I could show it, but I'm pretty sure the rest of the team wouldn't be too thrilled about that.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Branching out
There was a statement made by both Feargus Urquhart and Jim Rivers of Obsidian Entertainment from presentations I've attended saying "You should know at least a little of all aspects of game development." The reason being you'll have a better idea of what you're asking/being asked to do and the work needed to do it. There's also a better appreciation for what people do.
While I was working on porting Blood Dragon armor to Skyrim, I was thinking about what it would take to make my own armor. That, and how unfamiliar I was with the 3ds Max UI. I'm not very comfortable with XSI Mod Tool 7.5 (Even after following the Colt-1911 tutorial on the VDC), but seeing as how I have more of a workflow setup with Max, it made more sense to stick with it. After using Hammer for 7 years, I have a decent grasp on primitive 3d modelling (and level design), but Hammer can only do so much.
After some searching, I found this tutorial. As it states on the page, the tutorial was written in French and translated to English. As with most translations, certain words are misinterpreted and/or sentences come out broken. The tutorial itself isn't that easy for me to follow either.
I spent an hour trying to get the first tutorial done, but lack of explanation on some bits threw me off and I scrapped what I had. I'm better with video tutorials. I like seeing the steps performed in "real time" instead of an image followed by another from a different angle or on another section, it's rather jarring. So, I searched YouTube for character modelling tutorials and came across this series.
With a video tutorial in hand, I opted not to create a dummy account for the-blueprints.com to get the video's reference images. Instead, I reused the scene for Joan of Arc and am now following through as best I can. I prefer it this way because I'm watching a method performed and am simultaneously adapting it to what I want to do.
While I was working on porting Blood Dragon armor to Skyrim, I was thinking about what it would take to make my own armor. That, and how unfamiliar I was with the 3ds Max UI. I'm not very comfortable with XSI Mod Tool 7.5 (Even after following the Colt-1911 tutorial on the VDC), but seeing as how I have more of a workflow setup with Max, it made more sense to stick with it. After using Hammer for 7 years, I have a decent grasp on primitive 3d modelling (and level design), but Hammer can only do so much.
 |
| I made a window based on this using only brushes in Hammer for the Amber Library (Screw brush counts!). |
 |
| The tutorial I followed did not cover UV unwrapping, so I've been winging it with Unique UVs that I'm not ready to show. |
After some searching, I found this tutorial. As it states on the page, the tutorial was written in French and translated to English. As with most translations, certain words are misinterpreted and/or sentences come out broken. The tutorial itself isn't that easy for me to follow either.
I spent an hour trying to get the first tutorial done, but lack of explanation on some bits threw me off and I scrapped what I had. I'm better with video tutorials. I like seeing the steps performed in "real time" instead of an image followed by another from a different angle or on another section, it's rather jarring. So, I searched YouTube for character modelling tutorials and came across this series.
With a video tutorial in hand, I opted not to create a dummy account for the-blueprints.com to get the video's reference images. Instead, I reused the scene for Joan of Arc and am now following through as best I can. I prefer it this way because I'm watching a method performed and am simultaneously adapting it to what I want to do.
 |
| Symmetry mode is such a timesaver. |
In other news, Firefox had another major version number change, 11.0 (probably be 4.8 or 5.0 at this point on the old system). This has subsequently broken the addon Tab Utilities, again. Only instead of the address bar being broken, I can't right click on a hyperlinked image or else it'll open whatever the link a new tab. There was another bug, but I can't remember it at the moment. I've disabled the addon for now, but that means I no longer have the old 3.5 style tab context menu or the Clear Tab History option I've grown accustomed to. I suppose I'd better embrace the new UI.
If there's one thing I should work on for this blog, it is getting my verb tenses straight. I'm talking about the past then jumping to the present, back to the past, present, etc. Stream of consciousness indeed. Back to flow.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Mixing Games
I've been playing Skyrim for a month and, well, I got really bored of J'zargo running around in Daedric Armor. It was great and all, but seeing it over and over made it an eyesore.
So, I switched out my DragonPlate Armor for the Daedric Set and ran around in that for a while.
And again, I got bored of seeing DragonPlate on him. This time, though, I set out to do something different. Something to curb my desire to hop into Dragon Age 2 and give me something better to look at: I set out to port a Dragon Age 2 armor set into Skyrim. I eventually settled on the Blood Dragon armor.
Disclaimer:
I know porting game content from one to another and releasing it is, in most cases, illegal. I never had any intention on release and never will release it. There are way too many bugs and inconsistencies and I would rather make my own than release someone else's work (though it took a ton for me to get it working).
Now, I had barely scratched the surface of what the XSI Mod Tool could do after finishing the Colt-1911 tutorial that ever so conveniently left out the skinning part a few weeks prior. Anyways, every search result I found for manipulating Dragon Age 2 meshes involved Lightwave, Blender, or 3DS Max, no XSI, anywhere. Since I hated the Blender UI the last time I tried it, never heard of Lightwave, and had to make an account just to get the Mod Tool, I decided to finally take advantage of said account and get a student version of 3DS Max 2011. I wasn't sure 2012 would work with the plugins I found, so I went with the safer option.
To keep in line with my disclaimer, I'm also not going to explain what I did so as to avoid telling you how to do this on your own.
Needless to say, diving straight into 3DS Max was difficult. I was constantly trying to navigate using either Hammer or XSI's keyboard shortcuts. So, I watched several tutorials and got a better feel for the UI. A week of crash course learning later and, voila, J'zargo in Blood Dragon Armor:
There were some issues with the model such as using the wrong flags for the armor piece and the ever annoying proportion mismatch between Dragon Age 2 and Skyrim.
Here's some differences I found between the games:
The female version is just broken. It looks great in NifSkope and 3DS Max, but in game the vertices on the upper spine are missing (I can see the ground through my back), the breastplate is crumpled like she braced a fall with her bosom, and, as mentioned before, the fingers are way, way off (think Hagraven fingers).
It was great while I had J'zargo, but The Companions' quest line progressed to the point where he was forcibly removed from my party. Now, I have the uncustomizable Vilkas floating around, taunting the walls; Meeko, placing his terrible collision box in the MIDDLE of doorways, unable to move backwards, always insisting on moving forward to get out of my way or just not moving at all; and Shadowmere, who just loves charging into massive groups of enemies trying to pull off a Frost-like suicide.
 |
| The armor was getting rather dull in both viewing frequency and color |
So, I switched out my DragonPlate Armor for the Daedric Set and ran around in that for a while.
 | |
| Cheese! |
And again, I got bored of seeing DragonPlate on him. This time, though, I set out to do something different. Something to curb my desire to hop into Dragon Age 2 and give me something better to look at: I set out to port a Dragon Age 2 armor set into Skyrim. I eventually settled on the Blood Dragon armor.
Disclaimer:
I know porting game content from one to another and releasing it is, in most cases, illegal. I never had any intention on release and never will release it. There are way too many bugs and inconsistencies and I would rather make my own than release someone else's work (though it took a ton for me to get it working).
Now, I had barely scratched the surface of what the XSI Mod Tool could do after finishing the Colt-1911 tutorial that ever so conveniently left out the skinning part a few weeks prior. Anyways, every search result I found for manipulating Dragon Age 2 meshes involved Lightwave, Blender, or 3DS Max, no XSI, anywhere. Since I hated the Blender UI the last time I tried it, never heard of Lightwave, and had to make an account just to get the Mod Tool, I decided to finally take advantage of said account and get a student version of 3DS Max 2011. I wasn't sure 2012 would work with the plugins I found, so I went with the safer option.
To keep in line with my disclaimer, I'm also not going to explain what I did so as to avoid telling you how to do this on your own.
Needless to say, diving straight into 3DS Max was difficult. I was constantly trying to navigate using either Hammer or XSI's keyboard shortcuts. So, I watched several tutorials and got a better feel for the UI. A week of crash course learning later and, voila, J'zargo in Blood Dragon Armor:
There were some issues with the model such as using the wrong flags for the armor piece and the ever annoying proportion mismatch between Dragon Age 2 and Skyrim.
 | |
| If you ignore the ice spike in his noggin, you'll see his hands are rather...off. I fixed the knees later. |
- Skyrim's human women are modeled to be the same height as men, then later scaled in-game
- Dragon Age 2's human women are shorter at the model level, not in-game (they might be scaled later as well, never looked into it).
- Dragon Age 2's humans have shorter arms compared to Skyrim's
- Skyrim's women have large manly hands compared to the petite ones of Dragon Age 2. I'm talking Mossman's mitts from Half-Life 2 here.
The female version is just broken. It looks great in NifSkope and 3DS Max, but in game the vertices on the upper spine are missing (I can see the ground through my back), the breastplate is crumpled like she braced a fall with her bosom, and, as mentioned before, the fingers are way, way off (think Hagraven fingers).
It was great while I had J'zargo, but The Companions' quest line progressed to the point where he was forcibly removed from my party. Now, I have the uncustomizable Vilkas floating around, taunting the walls; Meeko, placing his terrible collision box in the MIDDLE of doorways, unable to move backwards, always insisting on moving forward to get out of my way or just not moving at all; and Shadowmere, who just loves charging into massive groups of enemies trying to pull off a Frost-like suicide.
Monday, March 12, 2012
I don't want to want to upgrade.
My PC has been showing its age lately. Things are slowing down, games aren't running as smoothly, my components suck up power, and I want my compiles done faster. It has come to the point where defragging and deleting temp files isn't helping.
Now, I'm still on my first install of Windows 7 from 2009 (provided you ignore the beta) which is pretty impressive. Back on XP, I was reformatting every couple years. That said, if I reinstalled 7, I'd probably see everything speed up again. I've had the Windows 8 Developer Preview and, now, the Consumer Preview dual booted via a virtual disk and on my primary drive (a 500GB Maxtor from around 2006) and both were really quick. Then again, they weren't bogged down by all the programs I have and the dozens of remnants from incomplete uninstalls.
I'm having that problem of "But I have everything setup the way I want it" coupled with "It was a chore to even get this thing installed ONCE!"
My Specs:
Operating System
MS Windows 7 64-bit SP1
CPU
AMD Phenom II X4 920
RAM
8.0GB Dual-Channel DDR2 @ 401MHz (5-5-5-12)
Motherboard
Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. GA-MA78GM-US2H
Graphics
ViewSonic VX2235wm (1680x1050@59Hz)
512MB GeForce 9800 GT Eco-Intelligence (BFG Tech)
Hard Drives
488GB FUJITSU MAXTOR ATA Device (SATA)
977GB Western Digital Caviar Green ATA Device (SATA)
Optical Drives
HP DVD Writer 1170d ATA Device
Audio
Realtek High Definition Audio
PSU
Antec Basiq 500w
As you can see, it is a modest PC I've been building up over the years. I started with a Emachines C2684 and gradually replaced parts along the way. The only remaining original part is my keyboard which, thanks to prolonged exposure to the original plastic covering, still has nearly all key labels completely intact.
All I really want to do is upgrade my processor. However, I've been using AMD since my Emachine and want to give Intel a shot. So, I've had my eye on the 2500k; not so much for the overclocking, but the upgraded integrated graphics (in case my gpu dies on me). However, that means I'd have to upgrade my RAM and Motherboard for obvious reasons.
I could stick with AMD and grab one of the Thuban hexacores or Zosma quads, but that only postpones a complete rebuild for perhaps a year. In the long run, I want an upgrade that'll hold its own for as long as what I have now and I'm not liking what I see with Bulldozer. Suffice it to say, I've reached the end of my upgrade path and have to branch into something new.
My graphics card was a RMA from when my 8800gt died and produced artifacts at the desktop. It was just as powerful as my 8800gt and did not need external power, win-win. So far, it is keeping up with the times as I don't max out every single game. My most intensive game would probably be Skyrim and before that was Dragon Age 2. In both, I occasionally get 60fps (Vsync), but I mostly get 40 dropping to 14-15 in busy scenes (by busy, I mean the screen might as well turn white from all the particle effects going off).
I've been looking at the GTX 560 TI because it is priced at what my 8800gt was and that lasted me quite a while. But getting it would require upgrading my PSU and if I did that, I'd want something at least 80+ Bronze. I'm quite happy with my monitor and probably won't go any higher than my current resolution for the foreseeable future.
Now, the RAM. I've never actually used all of it at once. Lately, I've been more ambitious and have pushed 6GB by having 3ds Max, Hammer, Portal 2, a Linux VM, FireFox w/ 30 tabs, and a media player running at once, not including the system tray applications (AV/Firewall, Afterburner, Steam, etc). So, if I ever wanted to build a new machine, I'd have to have at least 6GB which, given how I'm looking at Dual-Channel CPUs and RAM in powers of 2, I might as well get 8GB.
My harddrives are alright; I wouldn't mind keeping them. Sure, my 6+ year old Maxtor could probably be replaced, but it's working fine for me. All the junk I've accumulated over the years is the issue. My primary drive is just applications and OS, so it's at less than 50% capacity even with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview installed.On the other hand, my secondary drive is at nearly 80% capacity because of all the software install files, several VMs, games, and other files I keep around. It doesn't help that game saves go up to the hundreds of megabytes with Fallout 3 and New Vegas topping 1GB before I zipped them down (Skyrim is threatening the same, but I've been more vigilant after experiencing slowdowns when I have more than 8 saves).
So, that's where I'm at. Reformatting is my best option right now because, well, I can't afford to upgrade anything. I'm still quite happy that what I have continues to hold its own but there's that little voice going "it's time to upgrade". I keep telling it to wait until Ivy Bridge and Kepler come out to either a) be a better value than what we have now or b) drive prices of current gen parts down. I need to be careful of falling into an infinite "I'll wait" loop.
Now, I'm still on my first install of Windows 7 from 2009 (provided you ignore the beta) which is pretty impressive. Back on XP, I was reformatting every couple years. That said, if I reinstalled 7, I'd probably see everything speed up again. I've had the Windows 8 Developer Preview and, now, the Consumer Preview dual booted via a virtual disk and on my primary drive (a 500GB Maxtor from around 2006) and both were really quick. Then again, they weren't bogged down by all the programs I have and the dozens of remnants from incomplete uninstalls.
I'm having that problem of "But I have everything setup the way I want it" coupled with "It was a chore to even get this thing installed ONCE!"
My Specs:
Operating System
MS Windows 7 64-bit SP1
CPU
AMD Phenom II X4 920
RAM
8.0GB Dual-Channel DDR2 @ 401MHz (5-5-5-12)
Motherboard
Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. GA-MA78GM-US2H
Graphics
ViewSonic VX2235wm (1680x1050@59Hz)
512MB GeForce 9800 GT Eco-Intelligence (BFG Tech)
Hard Drives
488GB FUJITSU MAXTOR ATA Device (SATA)
977GB Western Digital Caviar Green ATA Device (SATA)
Optical Drives
HP DVD Writer 1170d ATA Device
Audio
Realtek High Definition Audio
PSU
Antec Basiq 500w
As you can see, it is a modest PC I've been building up over the years. I started with a Emachines C2684 and gradually replaced parts along the way. The only remaining original part is my keyboard which, thanks to prolonged exposure to the original plastic covering, still has nearly all key labels completely intact.
All I really want to do is upgrade my processor. However, I've been using AMD since my Emachine and want to give Intel a shot. So, I've had my eye on the 2500k; not so much for the overclocking, but the upgraded integrated graphics (in case my gpu dies on me). However, that means I'd have to upgrade my RAM and Motherboard for obvious reasons.
I could stick with AMD and grab one of the Thuban hexacores or Zosma quads, but that only postpones a complete rebuild for perhaps a year. In the long run, I want an upgrade that'll hold its own for as long as what I have now and I'm not liking what I see with Bulldozer. Suffice it to say, I've reached the end of my upgrade path and have to branch into something new.
My graphics card was a RMA from when my 8800gt died and produced artifacts at the desktop. It was just as powerful as my 8800gt and did not need external power, win-win. So far, it is keeping up with the times as I don't max out every single game. My most intensive game would probably be Skyrim and before that was Dragon Age 2. In both, I occasionally get 60fps (Vsync), but I mostly get 40 dropping to 14-15 in busy scenes (by busy, I mean the screen might as well turn white from all the particle effects going off).
I've been looking at the GTX 560 TI because it is priced at what my 8800gt was and that lasted me quite a while. But getting it would require upgrading my PSU and if I did that, I'd want something at least 80+ Bronze. I'm quite happy with my monitor and probably won't go any higher than my current resolution for the foreseeable future.
Now, the RAM. I've never actually used all of it at once. Lately, I've been more ambitious and have pushed 6GB by having 3ds Max, Hammer, Portal 2, a Linux VM, FireFox w/ 30 tabs, and a media player running at once, not including the system tray applications (AV/Firewall, Afterburner, Steam, etc). So, if I ever wanted to build a new machine, I'd have to have at least 6GB which, given how I'm looking at Dual-Channel CPUs and RAM in powers of 2, I might as well get 8GB.
My harddrives are alright; I wouldn't mind keeping them. Sure, my 6+ year old Maxtor could probably be replaced, but it's working fine for me. All the junk I've accumulated over the years is the issue. My primary drive is just applications and OS, so it's at less than 50% capacity even with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview installed.On the other hand, my secondary drive is at nearly 80% capacity because of all the software install files, several VMs, games, and other files I keep around. It doesn't help that game saves go up to the hundreds of megabytes with Fallout 3 and New Vegas topping 1GB before I zipped them down (Skyrim is threatening the same, but I've been more vigilant after experiencing slowdowns when I have more than 8 saves).
So, that's where I'm at. Reformatting is my best option right now because, well, I can't afford to upgrade anything. I'm still quite happy that what I have continues to hold its own but there's that little voice going "it's time to upgrade". I keep telling it to wait until Ivy Bridge and Kepler come out to either a) be a better value than what we have now or b) drive prices of current gen parts down. I need to be careful of falling into an infinite "I'll wait" loop.
Portal 2 - Push and Pull Video is up
I finally got Steam working again by deleting my botched skin and all files except my steam.log, screenshots, and DX:HR saves. Had to do a check with TreeSizeFree to see which folders contained screenshots and save files (I hate Steam's obfuscated userdata folders).
I had to restart Steam, again, and almost everything worked. I had to let it redownload missing game files (turns out not everything is in the SteamApps folder aside from saves/screenshots) and convert various games to the new file system that were already converted before I began (at least, I thought they were).
So, here it is: Map 6 of 7 for Test Map Pack 4. More details in the video description.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Sometimes, I think software has it in for me.
Several days ago, I was looking at Steam's ui and thought I'd like a change. So, I did a quick Google search and found the Minimal Steam UI.
And you know what? I kind of liked it. There were some missing colors popping up in the Steam client console and, after quickly switching back to the default skin, I noticed some elements were missing. So began a 2 day quest to fix bugs, comment out comments that weren't commented, and customize it a bit. Add "//", modify colors, and uncomment features I want shown. Simple, right?
This lead to 2 days of Steam crashing every minute and being given the runaround by the VGUI Layout Debugger on where things were actually located and what was actually used.
This debugger only shows you the general sections you should look instead of what is specifically being used. In some cases, I spent hours searching where it pointed me to when what I was looking for was in a different folder completely.
Note the File column. That only opens files for the DEFAULT skin. Not the current skin (provided you are using a custom skin). Furthermore, if I modify resources for the custom skin, Steam won't auto update. Yet it auto updates for the default skin. Now, I could copy the skin over the default stuff, but I want a fallback in case things go awry.
Now, what I hated about Minimal Steam UI was the contrast. Stark white on darkest black. That just hurts my eyes, so I wanted to change to the default skin's color scheme. As a simple test I changed the color of a button. "GrayBG2" "39 37 35 255" became "GrayBG2" "39 255 35 255", hit save, restart Steam. Once I got Steam back up, it crashed. Okay. undo the color change. Crash. That's odd. I'll restore from the .bak I made before changing. Crash. Okay fine. I'll unzip the original. Everything works again!
What in the world is going on!? I change one simple variable, nothing major, and Steam flat out dies on me but only if I LOG IN TO FRIENDS! WHY?!
Not to be deterred, I forged ahead leaving troubles variables alone. Once fixes are done, I decide to move forward with changing the layouts a bit. Crash. Crash. Crash. Crash. Crash. Crash. Crash. Crash. And so on and so forth while I try to get the skin the way I want it.
***
I wish there was some sort of skinning program for Steam that would make this all easier (and be compatible with the 2010 UI update). I can see how I would code it, but after my last encounter with VGUI parsing in Dystopia and fumbling through this skin, I don't ever want to see it again. And yet, I need to practice if I'm to get anywhere in this job market.
***
With that kind of done, I get back to Portal 2 mapping. Fire up the authoring tools, recompile to make sure I didn't break anything, Portal 2 starts...and immediately goes unresponsive. Huh. I'll try again. Crash. I see.. Maybe
its the map, so I'll just start it manually. No dice. Okay. Spiral
Knights then. "Java has become unresponsive". Seriously?
To eliminate potential issues, I rename all overlay files so Steam will fallback onto the default ones (I don't mind the default layout so, no biggie). Restart Steam, try again, everything except Portal 2 runs. Alright..I disable the overlay for Portal 2. Crash. OH COME ON! Fine, I will go back to the default skin and restart Steam. Crash. Several restarts later and Spiral Knights, Dystopia, and Skyrim work. Garrysmod loaded and crashed to the desktop just like everything else.
Furthermore, ever since I changed the font color for the word "Crash", Blogger has seen fit to keep defaulting to Red if I so much as move a space away from the last letter! Oh, and now if I want this to show on the blog, I have to set the color to white which means I can't see what I'm editing, but it looks fine on the blog.Do note that that doesn't always work. As you've seen above, Blogger decided it knows better than I do and won't respect my color choices. If I choose white, it goes to black. If I choose black, it goes to red. Aha! I know! Choose gray! Nope.
And you know what? I kind of liked it. There were some missing colors popping up in the Steam client console and, after quickly switching back to the default skin, I noticed some elements were missing. So began a 2 day quest to fix bugs, comment out comments that weren't commented, and customize it a bit. Add "//", modify colors, and uncomment features I want shown. Simple, right?
This lead to 2 days of Steam crashing every minute and being given the runaround by the VGUI Layout Debugger on where things were actually located and what was actually used.
This debugger only shows you the general sections you should look instead of what is specifically being used. In some cases, I spent hours searching where it pointed me to when what I was looking for was in a different folder completely.
Note the File column. That only opens files for the DEFAULT skin. Not the current skin (provided you are using a custom skin). Furthermore, if I modify resources for the custom skin, Steam won't auto update. Yet it auto updates for the default skin. Now, I could copy the skin over the default stuff, but I want a fallback in case things go awry.
Now, what I hated about Minimal Steam UI was the contrast. Stark white on darkest black. That just hurts my eyes, so I wanted to change to the default skin's color scheme. As a simple test I changed the color of a button. "GrayBG2" "39 37 35 255" became "GrayBG2" "39 255 35 255", hit save, restart Steam. Once I got Steam back up, it crashed. Okay. undo the color change. Crash. That's odd. I'll restore from the .bak I made before changing. Crash. Okay fine. I'll unzip the original. Everything works again!
What in the world is going on!? I change one simple variable, nothing major, and Steam flat out dies on me but only if I LOG IN TO FRIENDS! WHY?!
Not to be deterred, I forged ahead leaving troubles variables alone. Once fixes are done, I decide to move forward with changing the layouts a bit. Crash. Crash. Crash. Crash. Crash. Crash. Crash. Crash. And so on and so forth while I try to get the skin the way I want it.
I got to a point where nothing was working. So, I deleted everything in the Steam folder in the hopes of solving it. That worked. Now, what file(s) specifically must be removed for this to work? The logs clearly state Steam is restoring from a cache file, but it doesn't name it. After guess and check, I find AppUpdateStats.blob to be the culprit. So, everytime I get a crash, I delete it and Steam is happy again.
Eventually, I come to the sane conclusion that replacing the Steam.style file in the custom skin would be a easiest thing to do. So, I copy all the custom colors, append them to a temp file and merge it with a copy. No crashes. Awesome!
The colors for the menu buttons are bit off, but after 2 hours of trying to change them with everything BUT color changing working, I give up and add an outer glow to make them more visible.
***
I wish there was some sort of skinning program for Steam that would make this all easier (and be compatible with the 2010 UI update). I can see how I would code it, but after my last encounter with VGUI parsing in Dystopia and fumbling through this skin, I don't ever want to see it again. And yet, I need to practice if I'm to get anywhere in this job market.
***
So, that's where I'm at right now. Nearly everything BUT Portal 2 is working, I've been working on detailing for a mod and have been neglecting my own maps. So, once I get my own ideas working (in one case, one that I couldn't get working before) and ready for final steps, Portal 2 craps out on me along with half my game library (which isn't saying much actually).
I am not a happy camper right now.
Greetings
Hey all! I've finally decided to try my hand at blogging. Given how much I write on my YouTube video descriptions, perhaps this is a better place for the miscellaneous stuff.
I'll probably put all the ranting, raving, wip, etc here to maximize how much relevant post-mortem content I can write when I put up YouTube videos. Maybe I'll just write them here instead. We'll see.
My YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/Entrophoria
I'll probably put all the ranting, raving, wip, etc here to maximize how much relevant post-mortem content I can write when I put up YouTube videos. Maybe I'll just write them here instead. We'll see.
My YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/Entrophoria
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