Back 4 More
One Man And A Hammer
Back 4 More is the codename for a project currently being undertaken by staff member D Kennedy. It’s existed in the form of a free WordPress blog for the last month unknown to the world and has now made the transition over to Left Mouse Button as part our features. More flexibility, more control, more viewers! Nobody loses.
The project itself is none other than a full length custom Left 4 Dead 2 campaign. A one man crusade against the Hammer Source software. Progress is slow, a combination of technical issues, university work and LMB commitments are doing a good job of bringing mapping hours down to a minimum, hence the original creation of the blog in the first place to spur on construction of the maps, one might call it a small hobby. This page serves as the central hub for all Back 4 More activity. Enjoy.
Latest Post
17th February 2010
You guessed it, map 1 is now almost complete. It’s currently undergoing, or at least I’m trying, optimisation efforts. The last props were placed and the last triggers were set up, I sighed a breath of utter relief that this trialing ordeal was finally over and compiled everything to see how it looked ingame. Cue much cursing and a trickle of a tear as I dropped into a world that, for lack of a better phrase, ran like a bitch. It looked pretty but it was undoubtedly broken as looking anywhere in the vicinity of the eastern area of the map caused massive framerate drops from a clean 90fps down to, oh about, 20. Even now I’m still somewhat puzzled as to what is actually causing the slowdown, it seems too localised in one section of the map to actually be a general overload of system resources; so after much searching both in Hammer and in game I resolved that my best bet was probably to begin optimisation with area portals and hints.
Of course, being new to the whole Hammer shenanigans, it turns out that if you don’t start your map with a good idea of how you’re going to optimise it already formed then things can get quite tricky when you actually start throwing down the func_areaportals. In this instance I decided that the map needed to be split down the centre with an open area portal since the general design means that without one you can pretty much see the entire second half of the map further down the road from the start zone, coincidentally the same place where you’ll feel the huge framerate hit. Easier said than done. I may have known from the start how I was going to lay the level out but I certainly wasn’t clear on the area portal requirements until recently when I looked them up. As such a considerably amount of fiddling with base blocks and boxing in of underground displacements which were opened up to the free sky has been going on and even now the portals are being antsy as to whether they want to work or not. The one success I had was quickly followed by failure as I thought “Well I’ll tweak them a bit so that they don’t merge”, followed by inability to return the map to it’s previous state which was followed by an instant engine error when I compiled.
It really isn’t nice, I’ve certainly learnt my lesson and will be taking better care with future maps. As soon as these irritating errors are fixed I’ll be setting up the nav zones for the level and then closed beta testing will be taking place with a few previews and, camera skills withstanding, a trailer being released. When everything’s hunky dory with those work on the second map, which has already been planned out in its entirity and is currently undergoing closer scrutiny so that I don’t fall into the same despairing pits as this one, will begin whilst McDonald’s Plight is released.
Screenshot Gallery
Check out all the teasers and work-in-progress images that flaunt just how dire my mapping skills truly are…
Nah they’re pretty good actually.
The Archives
If you’ve missed any updates then you’ll find links and navigation tips to help catch up over yonder.
Back 4 More Homepage
The original homepage blog is still going to be running alongside the Left Mouse Button feature with identical content. This is due to the fact that when the project is finished the site will still serve as a blog for future Hammer adventures, namely with the creation of Team Fortress 2 maps.