McGaffryson wrote:Is it possible to use Jackhammer instead, or does it have to be Hammer? I heard Jackhammer was a bit more user friendly and up-to-date than compared to vanilla Hammer. Also, is it possible to use Seedee's map compilers (link related)? Apparently, these optimize maps a lot better than the ones in the vanilla SDK do, but I don't want to use them if it will make maps incompatible.
I am not totally sure about that. In fact, I have never modded the HL engine at all. I am pretty much a BF2 modder, and I know how to installmods to all GTA games, and the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series and the Bethesda RPG's, but as far as actually modding HL itself let alone doing it on HLDC I still am trying to get my other projects out of the way before I do. I have had ongoing mod projects for the past 5 years or so and trying to get them all wrapped up before I jump into this. I seem to be one of the only guys willing to try and make new mods with this so seeing you interested gives me a glimmer of hope.
McGaffryson wrote:Does that mean textures have to be baked within each BSP with something like Wally, or do I have to replace stock textures in the texture wad with custom ones? I'm assuming Operations 1942 used custom wads?
Again not quite sure about that but my old HLDC modder friend mentioned that particular mod would not be able to be ported over until we had the source to decompile them and merge the textures on the maps I believe. I am going off of memory from about a decade ago from that HLDC modding forum but that was a problem for that mod at least.
McGaffryson wrote:Good to hear model swapping works. I have some experience with low-poly modeling, so this definitely gives some breathing room. Are custom animations part of this? I have experience with 3D animation, and good animation could help enhance story driven moments, so if that is something that can be achieved, then I'm in business.
I don't know for sure about animations, I hope so but I can't say if I remembered any custom ones, but we have a port of Paranoia and They Hunger and they definitely have all new weapons.
One thing I did forget to mention, is that while you can just add over the PC models and play them, you gain significant performance gains by using the .PVR texture format which is the native format that the graphics deals with. I know there are tools out there for people to convert textures, as the PVR chip was used in the early iPhones and tablets back in the day so there were a few similarities between those different platforms. So I am sure if you google .PVR texture converter you will find something that will be able to handle it.