Transferring from 2007 to ASW?

[Epifire]

There has been a lot of discussion within the team on the Ravenholm project regarding engine differences on 2007 and the ASW. We have been wanting to switch from one to the other mainly on behalf of superior lighting and fast pathing, and we just wanted to get a good idea on what the move would entail?

Our 2007 version has some custom code for view sway and while it would have been better to establish this move early on, we are at a crossroads and sort of a revise stage so that is why it was brought up again. We know there are some big changes that would have to made between assets, entities, code references to who knows what else the coder would have to deal with. So our questions reach out to the mods that have already made the transition from a native HL 2 engine to the ASW.

Things like the pros and cons of moving over, to what could make the move easier or harder? Initially it would be nice to use some sort of template that could help this process along but I doubt to find that, so we are asking the people that have made the move what they could advice? We could really use the help so any comments or advice would be awesome right now, so thanks in advance.

[Armageddon]

This is all very easy to google and there have been tons of threads like this on here before.

[Epifire]

This is all very easy to google and there have been tons of threads like this on here before.

Yes Arma I already know this, I want to hear the personal opinion of people that have done this cause I know they roam around here.

[Armageddon]

I've tried a few times, it's not advisable, I know others that have tried and quit because the biggest issue is porting the AI along with weapons. I'd just stick with HL2, you're not gaining anything more from ASW. All you gain is a newer shader model but you lose VGUI and proper player physics. It's a waste of time ESPECIALLY for a HL2 themed mod. If you were going for a total conversion then it would be different.

[joe_rogers_11155]

when you say superior lighting, i mean your mod is ravenholm. how superior do you really need it to be? i think you would have a lot to gain from going for Gary's projected textures (found in VDC) and the rest should fall into place. it is a matter of being creative with the tools you have. you have been making decent headway in the current engine, why stumble over such an enourmous hurdle as switching to ASW...

[Gary]

One of the few people who have done this should really release their codebase. Steve and I(mostly him) ported the entire HL2/2007 game code over to ASW, we had planned on releasing, but never did. There was also a few others who have done it. It's basically just including files and going one by one fixing simple problems. Some functions' names have changed, some take different arguments, etc. All simple things really, just time consuming. I was actually trying to do it again on my own(and also release it), but got bored.

I could see how this could benefit your mod if you want lots of zombies and nice dynamic lighting. As the ASW engine has the model fast path which makes a lot of models extremely cheap. And the shadow mapping isn't absolute shit like it is in src2007, though it's still not all that great. But it's up to you guys if it's worth it, if you got a spare programmer, that could just focus his time on this, then I would say go for it(and release the damn base!).

[Epifire]

But it's up to you guys if it's worth it, if you got a spare programmer, that could just focus his time on this, then I would say go for it(and release the damn base!).

Currently we only have one and hes pretty set with staying in our current version unless I ended up finding a way we could achieve the mod in the ASW. Well at least if I could find out how to port stuff without it costing as much time and effort as we were seeing.

[Armageddon]

There's no easier way to port the code. it's a pain and a waste of time for a few more extra dynamic lights.

[Gary]

It's mostly going through all the files and replacing the old function/global/etc. names and arguments to the new ones. It's not hard as much as it is repetitive and time consuming.

[joe_rogers_11155]

(and release the damn base!).

yeah gary, release the damn base

btw not to hijack this thread but i have been eager to get back on the job with 99b, that's just an fyi to you

[Gary]

Crap! I forgot completely that this was a huge pain in the ass! The code wasn't too bad, but we had to constantly recompile models for them spawn or so they wouldn't crash the engine!

[Epifire]

Crap! I forgot completely that this was a huge pain in the ass! The code wasn't too bad, but we had to constantly recompile models for them spawn or so they wouldn't crash the engine!

A bit more convinced to stay with 2007 now, but just out of curiosity what was making the models crash the engine?

[ScarT]

Shared animations, or virtual models as they're called in the code.

I've tried a few times, it's not advisable, I know others that have tried and quit because the biggest issue is porting the AI along with weapons. I'd just stick with HL2, you're not gaining anything more from ASW. All you gain is a newer shader model but you lose VGUI and proper player physics. It's a waste of time ESPECIALLY for a HL2 themed mod. If you were going for a total conversion then it would be different.

VGUI is easily recoverable if you want it. Proper player physics? I doubt there's anything different in terms of the physics engine? It might have turbo-physics enabled by default but you'll be able to disable that.

We've ported Missing Information to ASW but we grew tired of Source so we never really finished it.

[Armageddon]

I you're never going to use it ScarT.

(and release the damn base!).

[ScarT]

Come again please :O?