[Recruiting] Coder for 8th Hour, offering firstborn and hugs

[Botolf]

So in the course of developing The Eighth Hour I've learned that as much as I love to dabble in everything from level design, art, and code, what the project needs sometimes is more than one person. That can be a bit hard to swallow, with a project so personal and of such scope, but it's especially true now, my having blocked out dozens of maps and being faced with the challenge of working out combat, puzzles, population, and art for each of them. I love to tinker, but I'm strapped for time and space. So, without further preamble:



Big Items

- Implementation of Biohazard's Deferred Lighting + Editing Windows
This, bar none, is the biggest want here. I've made a continual effort to keep working above the bar Valve set as environments go, and to have this in lieu of Valve's beautiful but now long dated lightmapping would be the proverbial cherry on the cake. It'd tie everything together and make this baby truly sing.

- Programmer's Sandbox
If you're capable, willing, and want to take this on, consider this as much your project and your showcase as it is mine. If you've got a stable of your own concepts and ideas you want to testbed and make part of a released project, I'm more than willing to accommodate. Further, your talents and contributions won't be confined to a mere 20-30 minute mod, our aim would be for something that sticks to the proverbial ribs.



Smaller Items

- HUD tweaks: Nerfed Sprint, Removal of the Flashlight and its button/icons, Removal of Suit Energy

- Ladders: Removal of ladder sounds (or replacement with a surface-agnostic soundset)

- Titles: "Cloning" a duplicate title system, so that I can operate chapter titles and written dialogue at different font sizes (tiny chapter titles are not flattering in the least).

- Env_global (or equivalent) support with the deferred sun, to the effect of day/night cycles that proceed in real time and sync up across map loads.

- Shader support: I lust for things like L4D2's windswept tree shader, to again complete the environments. Something like material self-shadowing working with the deferred lighting would also be grand.

- Multi-component NPCs: (think Headcrab zombies, dying host but surviving crab), assuming I can't figure out how to jerry-rig the equivalent with entities.

[Gary]

No one has ported the deferred mod to 2007 yet... and even if it was ported, its not really something you can turn on or off at will. And its definitely not something you can use selectively at the moment(deferred CSM and lightmapped indoor areas). Another thing is real world performance. The deferred most isn't done yet, and because of that shouldn't be used on such a scale yet. Give it some time, and Bio will have perfected it.

Excluding the L4D2/CSGO tree sway shader and deferred renderer, the rest of what you said seems trivial enough for any half decent programmer.

[Botolf]

Definite fair point on the Deferred mod, at any rate this is something I'm definitely willing to wait on. Consider this a long-term listing of sorts

Ah, and not so much interested in a selective deferred + lightmapping blend, just the former.

[Gary]

I still plan on trying to port it to 2007 at some point for shits and giggles(and to see if I can). Ill let you know how it goes when/if I try.


Oh and good luck with the mod.

[Botolf]

Most certainly more than a few mappers interested in the potential results, looking forward to it!

And danke for the kind wishes.