About to give up

[Gambini]

I start this thread with very little will to even write a proper briefing. I´m tired and about to give up for real. I have a mod that could have been finished in a couple of months, a mod that took me years and I can´t do any progress on it because the fucking steampipe. The following things dont work anymore thanks to steampipe:

All external tools: Propper, GuiStudioMDL, MDL Decompile, Etc.

Valve tools: Faceposer, Vrad (it crashes when running full parameters), buildcubemaps, etc.

I´d like to know if any of you didn´t opt for steampipe and if so, if the game is working as before at least. I know they broke it (surely on purpose, to force us to switch to steampipe) Last time I used it it lagged like hell and there were many many bugs like NPCs not talking at all. There are a few ways to still use some of those tools, but most of them require hackish things like creating bait folders with duplicated or triplicated content. It is a pain in the ass, and if some tasks were slow before, now they´re a thousand times slower. This is getting on my nerves, modding for Source is not worth if we have to deal with so many issues. I did my best to help, I joined their github thing and reported as many issues as I could properly describe. But they dont get fixed, I just read excuses.

[Armageddon]

It is very disheartening that VALVe isn't even trying to fix it. But hang in there.

As for the broken tools, Faceposer should work if you rebuild the scene image. Vrad shouldn't be crashing, which hammer are you using? There is a very tedious fix for building cubemaps, you ahve to open the .bps with Pakrat and delete all the previous engine version cubemaps and then you should be able to rebuild in the new version. For Propper, I think the guy is working on a fix.

The NPCs not talking is due to mods no longer mounting the skills.cfg, just copy it from EP2 into your mod.

[Stormy]

GuiStudiomdl allows you to view the .qc lines it creates, right? Maybe you can copy that into your own .qc file and compile it manually? And see if you can use Crowbar instead of mdldecompiler. Also isn't ShawnOlson working on updated steampipe tools?

I guess these aren't really helpful if your maps aren't even compiling properly. Valve will fix it... eventually. Although they do have a bunch of highschool kids working on steampipe now...

Maybe take this time to work on assets that don't require steam interaction? Make some models, design some textures? Sucks that all your mod content is in source and you can't just dump it over to UDK or Unity.

[marnamai]

Gambini add me on steam, I 'll talk you through it and help you out were possible.

I am also experiencing a lot of problems with modding the source engine but I 've got a few workarounds.

@Stormy: Steampipe =/= Pipeline

[TheDanishMaster]

My GUIStudioMDL works fine with

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Half-Life 2\bin

in the config thing. You just have to click Config and then input that directory in as either EP1 or Orange Box

[Gambini]

Thanks guys for the words. I have workarounds for making GuiStudioMDL and Propper work, but it´s tedious. Vrad crashes only when running full parameters, like -staticproppolys -textureshadows, etc. It doesn´t crash per se, but more it just stops working and dumps a file with no extention that weights about half the size the bsp should weight. It´s very difficult to reproduce the problem since I leave my computer working at night when I need to do a full compile because it takes about 2 or 3 hours. I´m using the hammer that comes with hl2.

About building cubemaps, the game takes the shots and all that but I never see a damn reflection (like if i were running mat_specular 0), I´m talking about clean maps in which cubemaps were never built. So I doubt Pakrat would help in this case.

Make some models, design some textures

I´m done with that stuff for the moment, my creative energy points to make scripted sequences and other things work on the maps. I dont really want to invest more time on design as with these records Steam may change their mind anytime, and release SteamPenis Beta which makes steampipe mods unplayable...

My GUIStudioMDL works fine with

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Half-Life 2\bin

Yes I managed to do that but the compiled models are still being placed in the wrong folder. I have to move them manually every fucking time I do a change. Imagine how fun the taks becomes when you´re blindly trying to make the origin point of a w_model match the attachment point of a NPC. It takes several tries.

Gambini add me on steam

Can´t find your profile on the interlopers group. What´s your ID?

BTW Yesterday after writting that post, and out of desperation, I moved my files to a safe place and uninstalled all Source games, trying to opt out off steampipe. I not only didn´t have luck but also accidentally deleted a few GCF files, which now seem like a treasure of gold since they aren´t downloaded anymore.

One tip for you all: If you want to have a working non-steampipe half life 2 for doing things with the old SDK, install Minerva.

[marnamai]

http://steamcommunity.com/id/marnamai/

[Armageddon]

Pakrat will help, it did the same for me, it's outputting solid black cubemaps which is why you can't see them. Just delete them from the .bsp and everything will build fine.

[ErikKiller]

Hijacking the thread.
Anybody figure out why Hammer in SDK2013 bin doesn't launch the selected game? Personally, I'm working with Ep2 and the appid file actually does point to 420 but it throws an error as if it's not been chosen?

[Gambini]

At Github I´ve been told you have to set the project environmet to the Ep2 folder. You do this through your control pannel, advanced setup. However this doesn´t work for me and the compiler keeps launching 220 everytime.

[Armageddon]

Yeah it's broken, just have it drop the map in your mod and then start the mod from Steam instead, and turn off run after compile.

[ErikKiller]

Duct tape. Valve needs lots and lots of duct tape.