Pic of new CS map I'm building

Well, the new map I've been making for CS:S is coming along quite nicely. Been working on it over the last few days. The outside has a pretty strong resemlance to the school I went to highschool at but other than that, the buildings are pretty different. I'm probably still a couple days away from getting a real test version out for play testing.

The map is pretty graphically intensive though but looks really nice. I'm really trying to go for the look of someplace that was just attacked by terrorists. In some spots, there are dead people and you can tell that they dragged themselves across the floor to where they eventually died because there is a trail of blood streaked across the floor. Just a cool detail I think. Runs fine on my machine but we'll see about lesser, weaker machines.  ¶ 10:59 PM 2 Comments

  Level screenshots and video of the 760 clan match
This weekend I finally finished the level that I created for the 760 clan for the game Counter-Strike:Source. Took me about a week of working on it after work and gameplay testing with the clan. We playtested about 6 versions of the map until we got to this version which is the most balanced for gameplay. Each time one of the teams was winning all of the rounds.


I'm already working on the next level which should be finished by next weekend if I'm lucking. It's coming along quite nicely so far although it's more complex than the last level I created but not by much. I'm striving to keep the levels I create fast and action packed so I'm making the play areas pretty small. I'll be posting pictures of the next level in a few days. At this point I could post a few pics because some of the areas are pretty finalized but I want to add a little more polish first and I don't actually have a good render available to screenshot just yet.


I've posted a lot of the screenshots of the map in my Flickr account if you care to look at more of them.

Here is some video of the clan match from today that I had with 760 Clan. We divided the clan up into two parts and had a scrimmage against ourselves which was a lot of fun.

Here is some video of the action from the match.  ¶ 4:13 PM 0 Comments

  Moving on as a programmer
Working at the new company has been really good so far. I've been working on a lot of different things and it's enjoyable learning more about programming in C# and with ASP.NET 2.0 and trying to implement their AJAX solutions. Yesterday I figured some stuff out and then the power at the company went out and I'm not sure if I saved my work or not but we'll see when I go in on Monday or Tuesday.

Today though, I moved out of little programming land and stepped up to the bigger arena I believe. I have now pretty much reached the limitations of what the Express editions of the free Microsoft IDE's can do. This weekend I've been attempting to devise ways to create server controls in the express editions and apparently it's not permitted. Before this I've been able to to most of the small programming projects I need in those pieces of software and intermix it with 2005 whenever nessecary but now I need to get the regular edition. Hopefully I can get a copy from work for my home PC.  ¶ 11:45 PM 0 Comments

  Video of new CS:S map I made So with my first free weekend now being out of school, I've created a map for Counter Strike Source for my clan although I think others will enjoy it. I'm putting the finishing touches on it now and playtesting it with the clan but I'll be releasing it shortly.

Here is a video of my running through the map. No sound but it's only about a minute. Notice the HDR but not the over use of it like in DOD:S or every other CS:S map out there.

  ¶ 7:25 PM 0 Comments

  The others have my babies Lost is on tonight. West Wing is now gone off of TV forever and Aaron Sorkin, the creator of The West Wing has a new show he's creating called Studio 60 which looks interesting. It's basically a fiction version of what would happen if Saturday Night Live became good again. I read the script for it and the writing is really good but it's got Matthew Perry and Amanda Peet in two roles that probably don't fit them. Most of all Amanda Peet. Here is the preview. Unfortunately I can't embed it in the page.

In other news, I got a job for the summer as an AJAX developer at the company SponsorHouse.com and I'll be starting tomorrow. I finished my last final today for school and overall the semester went well. I'm glad it's finally summer again.

btw, I really have no idea why I titled this what I did.  ¶ 12:24 PM 0 Comments

  Prepare to laugh at these videos If you never got a chance to see it while it was on, the show "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" was just put on iTunes. It's about three guys and a chick that own a poorly performing bar in Philly and all the crazy stuff they go through. All four of them are pretty much idiots on the show so that's pretty much the whole premise but it's great. I just downloaded the first episode which I never saw and it's so funny. Here is a preview from one of the episodes from the first season.



Oh, and here is another.



Oh, and this next one guest stars Micheal Rosenbaum, the guy who plays Lex Luthor on Smallville.



Okay, and if you never saw the show The IT Crowd, here is the second episode of that. It's like the TV show The Office for the UK crossed with Office Space but probably mixed with some other show I can't think of but it's actually better than the The Office for humor I think.



Oh, and here is more video. Jim and Dwight in the The Office are two sales reps that sit next to eachother in the show and Dwight is a little crazy and Jim is very mellow but they have a constant ongoing war which is hilarious. Someone put together this great video of them.



And then I saw this. It's a PSA announcment on NBC about getting attacked by bears that has Dwight from The Office in it. I think this is a joke. I'm just not too sure.



Oh, and here is a collection of the best clips from The Office.

  ¶ 10:32 PM 0 Comments

  Fight club for inspiration
I saw Tara Hunt's blog post and it got me thinking about what a great movie Fight Club is. Tyler Durden explained it well:

"Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."

  ¶ 7:00 PM 0 Comments

  Releasing "The Escape" HL2 episode

After a couple of months of development and a long delay, I'm going to release this single player game for Halflife 2. It's a three part series and ends abruptly but I hope to add on a couple more parts to it in the future if I can find help.

You can download it here.

The instructions in the zip file will tell how to install it and run it with HL2. All I did was create maps so there aren't any textures or anything else that needs to be installed as well but the maps are fun to play. Hope you enjoy!

From the instructions

The Escape

- Version 0.1

Currently this version isn't complete but it's fun to play. The idea is that I'll probably make another map pack that will pickup where this one ends. Starting out in a room with a locked door (just don't open it right away), looking outside the window is sense of desperation in your situation. Don't jump out of the window because the door will be kicked open.

Install
To install the levels, just extract the three levels into HL2 maps folder. For me, I have it on the H drive so it looks like this with the standard install.

H:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\pmweb9873\half-life 2\hl2\maps

Running
Launch HL2. Make sure the console is available by going to your options, controls and clicking the Advanced button and enabling console.

Open the console with the '~' key. Type in "map ch1_avoidingcapture" and hit enter. The map will load and you can begin playing the three part series of maps. The maps will transfer into one another so you don't need to load each one separately if that makes sense.


Notes:

-Occasionally you'll see a HEV suit near the start of the levels. Those were put in while the levels were being built and I haven't got around to removing them yet.

- The end of the three levels is quite abrupt at the end of a large ditch. That's just where I've stopped mapping. I'm always looking for additional help with this project.

- My end goal is to have a 5 or 6 more maps of gameplay for this map pack.

- Comments? Send them to mendoza.paul@gmail.com


Hope you enjoy!

Paul Mendoza
http://www.crazysalsadancer.com

  ¶ 11:42 AM 0 Comments

  Best casual game ever!
This is a great casual game that I think anyone can learn in about 15 seconds.
A couple of months ago I downloaded this free game called TrackMania Nations. Most of my friends don't play racing games but at a LAN party about a month ago we all played it for probably two hours and it was probably the best game of the LAN party. Normally I dont even enjoy racing games that much as I normally play FPS games or RPGs but this game really is an amazing thing. The screenshots I think are pretty impressive but here is why I really like this game.

The game has amazing graphics. I'm sure you can see from the screenshots that I have posted that it looks pretty good but there really are some neat effects. The shadowing of the cars is very realistic looking, as a cloud passes over, the coloring of the enviorment changes, everything is highly detailed, the motion blur looks awesome and the cars look amazing. But beyond that, it's control scheme is very simple. All you use is the Enter key to restart your car and the arrow keys to control direction and speed.

And here is my favorite part. All of the cars are the same although they can have different paint jobs. There aren't any brake upgrades or tire upgrades or any of those things. It's just a get in the car and drive. Don't worry about tuning your car for performance or anything like that. This also means that the learning curve for this game is about 15 seconds.

And then there are the amazing maps. The maps are like no other racing game I've really played. It's a cross between skateboarding and indy car racing. You have to use strategy on every corner when it comes to braking and acceleration but then there are booster pads and loops on the track that can send you flying across massive expanses. If you don't hit the jump just right, you'll miss the landing and it'll totally mess up your time. It also has a very easy to use map creator so that anyone can learn how to make their own maps in a matter of minutes which means that there are tons of maps out there to play. I've only played the same map twice at most while playing online.  ¶ 6:47 PM 0 Comments