Now that everything works fine, I cannot guess why the idea of using “trigger_push” entities to help the player turn in the corners didn’t come to my mind sooner. Now it looks like a brilliant idea! It worked perfect since the first attempt. So, this is how I solved the problem about the friction and the Pacman turning:

Remember that the Pacman thing is actually the player from a top view camera. This means that physics affects both player and Pac. However, this is a long story that I will reveal whenever this mod will be released.

What’s next? Fix some problems related with the ghosts. That’s it. After that… create a lot of levels for your enjoyment!

Valve always finds the way to piss me off. This is battle against my patience and my inventiveness… and Valve is winning. Making mods with Hammer wasn’t hard enough, and now they decide to get rid of some basic and historic console commands like sv_gravity and sv_friction were (Actually this happened when the Orange Box was released). Fucking hell! I have to fake every single feature of my mods… and now I have to fake the gravity and the friction as well??? This is just unbeliveable! What those commands did to you, Valve? You raped them! You raped two of my favourite console commands!

Why am I so angry? Well… let’s talk about PacMan. Last week I mentioned that I had some problems related with the friction:

- First, I tried to fix it with a console command. But it wasn’t there.

- Second, I tried to fix it with scripts, creating a new surface with new values. But the friction, apparently, has LIMITS.

- Third, and my last chance: I have to place some crappy invisible toggleable walls to prevent PacMan slip more than it should.

This kills the performance,  it makes me create useless brushes and a non-stable function in the game. This could be fixed even with sv_acceleration… but guess what? Is no longer available.

Valve… why you hate me so much?

PS: I know that there is a trigger_gravity entity and also a trigger_vphysics_motion entity… great, but I don’t care. I want my precioussss console commands back. -_-

This was funny… ¬¬’

Indeed friends… I’m tired of apologizing every time that I update this website for being such a lazy bastard so, let’s skip that part.

SO… what’s the situation here? Yep, I finally moved to Berlin, and I’m working in Yager Development as MultiPlayer Game Designer, and that involves responsabilities that I could barely imagine if I would continue working in Pyro Studios. My lead designer is XSM, which some people will remember as the Project Lead from Dodgeball mod for Half-Life 2 (Related entry). But this is not a coincidence… THIS is happening because both of us really wanted to work together, and THIS has happened in Berlin.

However, I promissed to some of you that I wouldn’t talk about my life in this entry. Too late!

So… SDK-Project! I have been working for the past two weeks in Pacman: Missions,  specially focusing on all the conditions related with the ghosts. Most of the scripts are polished; there are just some minor bugs related with the paths that the ghosts choose randomly and also with the fucking Pacman’s friction. This means that the mod is already working, is playable, funny and even challenging.

This is the current state of the mod (Hammer view!):

There are only two things left (Actually, two doesn’t means two… )

1.) Create missions:

The number of missions can be really high, because adding more levels doesn’t involve creating new maps. The whole game is played in the same field, with the same recicled entities, but some new levels will involve the addition of new challenges. In order to create more levels, we just need to mix some of these variables. These are some of the current conditions which you could find while playing:

- Ghosts (1 – 8 Ghosts)

- Ghosts speed (2 speeds)

- Teleporters (On/Off)

- Closed paths (To create different rooms in the same level)

- Screen conditions (Shake, rotating camera, TV Noise, fog, darkness…)

- Control conditions (Slower, faster, inverted…)

- Special conditions (…)

- Etc.

2.) Create some funny and easy-to-made cutscenes:

And this is not about models, dialogues or animations… is about having good practical ideas. Sometimes, a static camera showing an abstract situation is thousand times funnier than a 3 minutes short animated movie.

These “cut-scenes” work as a reward for the player. If he know that there is a short and funny “cut-scene” each 5 levels (for example), he will try to get as far as possible in order to watch them all. Everybody loves cut-scenes! (Except if a cut-scene involves coke, popcorn and turning off my cell, Mr. Kojima).

Now it’s time for some feedback coming from YOU guys. I need good ideas coming from your brains! Now that everything is working:

1.) Which variables would you like to see on some levels? (Example: moving walls, buttons to open doors, BIG ghosts… etc)

2.) Do you have a funny idea for a simple, unique and memorable cut-scene involving both PacMan and Half-Life Universes?

This was the update you were waiting for!

Guten nacht, mates!