Half-Life 2 Roleplay (Early Look)

[pallid shard]

"It has come to my attention that some have lately called me a collaborator, as if such a term were shameful. I ask you, what greater endeavor exists than that of collaboration?

In our current unparalled enterprise, refusal to collaborate is simply a refusal to grow—an insistence upon suicide, if you will. Did the lungfish refuse to breathe air? It did not. It crept forth boldly while its brethren remained in the blackest ocean abyss, with lidless eyes forever staring at the dark, ignorant and doomed despite their eternal vigilance. Would we model ourselves on the trilobite? Are all the accomplishments of humanity faded to be nothing more than a layer of broken plastic shards thinly strewn across a fossil bed, sandwiched between the Burgess shale and an eon's worth of mud?

In order to be true to our nature, and our destiny, we must aspire to greater things. We have outgrown our cradle. It is futile to cry for mother's milk, when our true sustenance awaits us among the stars. And only the universal union that small minds call 'The Combine' can carry us there.

Therefore I say yes, I am a collaborator. We must all collaborate, willingly, eagerly, if we expect to reap the benefits of unification. And reap we shall."

https://youtu.be/P7O_PmMQPhY

[pearl pendant]

This looks awesome

[pallid shard]

Thank you! Still lots of more work to go, but it's coming together quite nicely

[violet kayak]

The animated and interactable tiels is so wild.

[pallid shard]

Ye it was a pain to get working. I have no clue if it networks the sprite changes during the animation, but I could probably manually network that if not

[light pebble]

https://youtu.be/jZjyzpqwukA?si=fCiXhrh5o5XPEvpU I should probably put this hear aswell as we've just released our most recent dev log

[pallid shard]

Notifications Queue System (currently not accounting for things that would be in the way): https://i.gyazo.com/d36c8bc90c08300acd67ea60a3499d97.mp4

[pearl pendant]

this is looking bad ass

[pallid shard]

Thanks! The logic behind the code on it was a bit of a doozy. I got it somewhat working at first, but it was very whacky in its behavior until I switched it to its current queue system

[novel osprey]

Pretty cool 👍

[pallid shard]

Thank you. It's been changed up a bit by now, the transitions on the fade out are smoother and not so jarring. Also the colors are not so clashing too (depending on the type of notification sent)

I wish I had more to show at this point, but between being sick and doing other work, I haven't had much time to continue work on this project. I'm hoping that changes soon

[cedar briar]

@twin frost

That's going to interest you for your phone mod I feel like

[twin frost]

Yes it would…Yes it would…

[cedar briar]

:)))

[novel osprey]

Take your time looks like you've got a decent sized project on the go and it will be a seriously unique experience, that's what matters

[light pebble]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4tYhZGo5Dw We have another dev log for all those interested

[light pebble]

https://youtu.be/fMhfy9FQE0s?si=AwlgJa82Nw44qwm8 another dev log

[pallid shard]

"Virtual" items. Custom names, descriptions, and other info + unique ways to interact with the items. It's the same PZ item by ID, but different item logically.

https://i.gyazo.com/0477bc9ed70e076744a482a04155e56d.png
https://i.gyazo.com/0b2ba139c13646682e4be86792878b86.png
https://gyazo.com/7336acb6864579ed5db82a95966a085a.png

[cedar briar]

👀

Item descriptions is cool

[pallid shard]

Ye, I'm hoping this will open up a lot of possibilities. One personal example I could see this being applied is on a server I manage. We're using some random plant leaf as cocaine leaves for drug production, but it does break immersion with the unrelated name that it has. But with this you could use that same item (because it does sorta look like a cocaine leaf) and have everything fit the theme of it. Not to mention all of the different functionality that can be programmed given enough creativity

[cedar briar]

But you can already rename items to have another display name in the base game ?

Or at least create a copy of that item and just change the display name

[pallid shard]

Yes, but you can't exactly expand functionality on that item that has been renamed unless you go through a less than ideal process. I'm streamlining this process with the framework I'm making. For example:

local ITEM = ProjectFramework.Items:New("HL2RP_Suitcase", "Base.Suitcase")
ITEM.name = "Suitcase"
ITEM.description = "A sizeable container with all of your personal belongings. It seems to contain some food, water, and a few personal momentos."
ITEM.category = "Opennable"
ITEM.shouldConsume = true
ITEM.useAction = "Open"
ITEM.useTime = 5

function ITEM:CanUse(playerObj)
    return true
end

function ITEM:OnUse(playerObj)
    local character = ProjectFramework.Characters:GetCharacterByID(playerObj:getUsername())

    if character then
        character:GiveItem("HL2RP_Crackers", 3)
    end
end

ITEM:Initialize()

[cedar briar]

Or... you just create a whole new item which just utilizes the same textures and shit

[pallid shard]

And then you gotta write up the scripts for that on top of it all, like I said, less than ideal

[cedar briar]

What this makes me feel is that instead of utilizing the PZ API you create an entirely new one which I think is what is entirely less than ideal

[pallid shard]

Isn't that what frameworks are meant to do though? 🤔

[cedar briar]

No because frameworks expand upon the API but at least for this feature what you're doing is adding ways to do things that are already in the game

Hard to judge the work being done here with so little to see but this doesn't sound right and optimal at all

What this makes me feel like is just, why ? What's the need to implement something to create new items when you can already create new items ?

[pallid shard]

https://tenor.com/raj526GiUR6.gif

[cedar briar]

Because looking at just this, it looks like an expansion to the items, which is great but what you just told me is that you make something to create new items, which is already a thing in the base game and it's what confuses me why you're doing that

[cedar briar]

(great game btw)

[pallid shard]

Because it ties into the rest of the systems I'm developing, if I used all of native PZ to make stuff work the way I want it to it simply wouldn't work. Part of the system is being able to hot swap characters on a single user account instead of reloading with a new username login. That requires storing separate inventories/equipped items and all of the necessary info that goes along with it. As you don't really understand what a framework is/does:
In computer programming, a software framework is an abstraction in which software, providing generic functionality, can be selectively changed by additional user-written code, thus providing application-specific software. It provides a standard way to build and deploy applications and is a universal, reusable software environment that provides particular functionality as part of a larger software platform to facilitate the development of software applications, products and solutions.

*native PZ as in not writing a framework to go along with it

Think of NutScript, Helix, or Clockwork from Garry's Mod if you're familiar with those

[cedar briar]

So you ARE expanding the base game, not just creating a new way to make new items (which is already doable withs scripts)

I see a big difference here

[pallid shard]

Yeah... Like I said, I'm making a framework 😛

[cedar briar]

Yeah but I wasn't wrong on the part that a framework expands the base game abilities, which wasn't the case with what you described me for the item system before as this was just interpreted as a replacement for the current item system

[pallid shard]

I think you're still wrong in that regard, a framework just provides a different way of doing things, often easier. For example:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1343686691&searchtext=framework

You can create professions natively, or... You can do it a whole lot more easily with the profession framework. Just because you can do it natively doesn't mean it's easier or even efficient, hence someone made a framework for it

[cedar briar]

Yeah I see what you mean

[pallid shard]

In any case I'm glad you understand what I'm saying

[pallid shard]

Work continues, this time on character loading

(please excuse the naked men, character creation saving works but I haven't implemented loading those details into character selection in the loading menu)

[cedar briar]

👀

Looks amazing

[pallid shard]

Thank you! 😄

[pearl pendant]

this looks awesome!

[pallid shard]

Thanks!

[slow vapor]

Wow ! love it

[swift moth]

this is so cool!!! awesome job RJ

[pallid shard]

The character previews randomize every time I swap characters to load, but the general idea is there (it now grabs info from a created character instead of using placeholders for the name/descriptions):
https://i.gyazo.com/c8efd14974c71e85c69ef83d95c44b73.mp4

Next up is saving/previewing the character's actual appearance as selected in character creation

[pallid shard]

More progress, clothing now saves/loads:
https://i.gyazo.com/f8da7aa75e4502862b17a6eb5f8b684d.mp4

Appearance still randomizes a bit, so still more work to do on persistency between character creation and loading

[safe mesa]

Ehi, saw your work @pallid shard. Are you still working on it?

[pallid shard]

Ye I'm still working on it when I can. I've got some work put towards the character creation that I haven't shown but that was from last time I worked on it

[safe mesa]

can i talk with you on pvt?

[pallid shard]

Sure thing, send me a DM

[pallid shard]

Some code progress, but not much to really demo as of late from me. I've been working on a Plugin module for developers that might want to add in their own features/extensions to the framework (now renamed from Project Framework to FrameworkZ) and also a Logging module. Here's some code snippets to get an idea of that:

https://i.gyazo.com/d5dc9cdd7bd76bccc51d1da2be6c8fca.png
https://i.gyazo.com/2e94293add2f872ee025a2f1ff7e57e9.png

The idea behind the Plugins module is to not only cover PZ's events but also internal functions using hooks on the framework to have a wide array of hooks available for various things where applicable to offer many opportunities for developers to be able to take advantage of different ways to program things (e.g. when a character is created/loaded, when items are given/taken, ofc all of PZ's Lua events, notifications, class switching, entity interactions, etc.).

I hope to have logging be pretty extensive and to provide a readable interface accessible in-game by admins which will have controls available to make administration by admins easier, like in that picture it will track damage dealt/received and when a player dies (not yet implemented but soon[tm]) and allow for investigations of foul play to be conducted with ease. In said UI, there'll be those controls to teleport to the coordinates listed for each log entry if applicable (for example). Here's some of the things the logging should hopefully track: https://i.gyazo.com/d363174e889cf5d0337334b67fd98c41.png

[cedar briar]

Your param comments are interesting because I've never seen it noted that way. Also I'm not sure to understand what your hooks on every 10 minutes is supposed to be ?

[pallid shard]

The comments are formatted to be used with doxygen to auto generate a website to read documentation on, so that's why that looks kinda weird

The event in the plugin is just a placeholder, doesn't really do anything important. Unless you mean the upper portion of the code? If you're referring to that I can dive into explaining how that all works