Hellkeeper's Archive

Hellkeeper, 06/10/2024, 02:17

Overhaul in progress

I added a link to UDN's UE2 section to my Links page as it no longer shows up in Google's first results, having been superseded by Epic's new help platform for their more recent engines. I hope it's not about to vanish from the Web.

Working with BSP-made meshes in UT2004, I've been relying on a perl script to automatically remove unneeded polygons from brushes before converting them into meshes (this fixes many lighting issues, which are caused by overlapping vertices, incidentally) by matching a specific texture. This was a tedious process as it involved saving the brush(es) in a separate file and manually setting the texture to look for (or sticking to a specific texture forever) each time. In order to do away with most of the process, I have scripted my own tool. A simple copy/paste of the brush in the text field will spit a list of all textures used. Select one and it will process the brush, removing any polygon with the corresponding texture reference.

I have tried to proofread most of Hellkeeper.net with only a few old updates to go through. I will not waste my time going over the whole list of tutorials as I plan to rework the entire section. I need to rewrite and re-illustrate almost everything, removing duplicates (as some tutorials written for Unreal-Design had quasi-clones written for Projet-3D) and ordering tutorials in a logical progression with clear categories.

This is a long-term project to make this place slightly more useful and useable. I already reworked a lot of backend stuff and I'm now trying to enhance and increase actual content in an effort to fight the current state of the Internet. Simplicius' small essay mirrors not only my impression but that of many: there are fewer and fewer interesting websites each day, time is spent browsing a handful of social networks and news articles, with very little content and a lot of technology dedicated to being as outright hostile as possible to the user. As I was lucky enough to build Hellkeeper.net with the help of forums and websites aimed at curious teenagers, I realize I have been an unknowing disciple of the Small Internet: in my ideal world, I browse pages which are mostly text, load instantly and focus on content made by actual people interested in the topic they're writing about. I feel a personal responsibility to make Hellkeeper.net this kind of place you only stumble randomly upon by clicking on a link at the bottom of a forum post dated 2008: the type of intimate web-space where everything looks janky, outdated and a little off, but with interesting links, articles and pieces of information about things you've never heard or thought about. Things like Amisa's antique site or someone's personal interpretation of Plato's dialogues. I miss those days.

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