Cloned Cube

Sneak peak at upcoming pictures for ModDB News article. Check here.

Screenshots I have taken from Dear Esther! Absolutely beautiful game. Worth the ten bucks! Warning spoilers.

I’m one of those people who can never decide on anything. So, I changed the theme from that spy-looking one to this new one. This theme has social icons and more customization which is better!

Recently, I discovered the amazing oilify effect in GIMP. It makes an image look as if it was painted with oil paint. So, then I took some screenshots of Cloned Cube and oilified those. 

Well today I took screenshots of every map in Garry’s Mod that started with the “gm” prefix meaning Garry’s Mod map. So that doesn’t include mounted content or other miscellaneous maps. Try to guess the map!

This map was very bright to begin with so the Softglow effect I used just brightened the top even more. Over all, I think it looks great!

The table texture in this image was very low quality so the oilify effect made it look somewhat better but it’s not my best image.

This map used a skybox that I didn’t have on my computer so it appeared in the void-style Hall of Mirrors effect that doesn’t look to good. Therefore I avoided having the skybox appearing, but you can see a little of the effect on the top right corner.

This map started out with no weapons and I was too lazy to look up the console command for removing the hud so I kind of just blurred out the health count and the rendering warning!

Hmm, wonder what this could be!

Repeating textures like the sand in this map start to look very ugly at far away distances but the oil effect basically removed some of the quality and made it look somewhat more natural!

This map had a low skybox so I couldn’t take a whole picture in the island without the skybox being black. It turned out great though!

Kind of obvious!

This map uses Half-Life:Source NPC’s which I don’t have so I had to make sure there weren’t two ERROR models walking around in the image!

Big maps like this use the illusion of having part of the rocks as the skybox so I changed the field of view to fit as much as I could without having to have a black skybox.

Doesn’t this kind of look like shaving cream on a space ship or something?

This is one of those “rat maze” maps without a skybox so I noclipped out of the level to try to get as much as I could.

When you noclip out this far in this map, the textures sort of look like what happens when you point a camera at a TV screen but the oil effect ironed the ugly details out.

The tree models normally don’t anti-alias that well in-game but the oil effect makes them look a ton better!

For whatever reason, the oil effect made the floor on this image look shiny even though it wasn’t in-game. Odd.

The stars were mostly removed out of this image because of the oil effect leaving just Earth and the spawn area, like father and son.

The FOV in this image makes the tower look almost cartoonish at a ridiculous height.

Many details of this image remained, however it still looks phenomenal!

Again, most of the stars were ironed out and the FOV and tilting effect makes these craters look like they’re actually on a spherical moon and not just flat.

I love this map because of it’s lack of lighting yet the great gaping wholes in the ceiling that allow light to pour in. Truly beautiful.

I don’t know what to say about this one.

I love this map and the oil effect makes the two stripes on the plane look just awesome!

One of my own maps.

This map has a problem with not displaying the grass ground texture on my computer, but the FOV effect again makes a cartoonish look!

Another one of my maps.

In the future I may post more screenshots of maps oilified, but for now I hope you like these and you can download them for your own use in 1680 x 1050 size here in a 7-zip file.

-cubis

Well, in the Cloned Cube mod, I am now the:

• Mapper
• Modeler
• Texture Artist
• Sound Effects Guy
• Cinematographer and Editor
• Public Relations
• Image Editing Specialist
• Plus More!

It literally is a one-man show here.

Modeling

In the past I have tried to create models using XSI which looked pretty cheesy and mediocre. Well today ends the streak of bad modeling! I have switched programs to kHED. It is simpler than XSI for those of us like me who get nervous when there are a billion icons and you have no idea what any one of these mean. In XSI, I created a flare model and a barrel model. The flare model was just a red cylinder with it’s texture hastily UV-Mapped onto it. Now, the flare has some depth. Take a look:

I also created a few barrel or oil drum models. The original models were just a cylinder with an Aperture on it. Look at it now:

This new barrel model utilizes phong shading, normalmapping, and specular reflections (envmapping) to create a nice shiny barrel that looks great in game. Right now I can’t tell you what the barrel or the flare is for but, you’ll like it!

Anyways, I hope you enjoy the new models and that you can’t anticipate the next release!
-

  cubis

In case you haven’t checked it out, I released the alpha version of Cloned Cube to the public! In case you haven’t already, you can download it here: http://www.moddb.com/mods/cloned-cube/downloads/cloned-cube-alpha-v01.

I have to tell you a new detail about Cloned Cube. The installation will hopefully use the 7-Zip compression format. That means that there will also be a version of the download that will quickly update new files for a new release. The .7z file is very lightweight (50-80 KB) and it decompresses easily. Hopefully everything will work all right and you’ll have a great game that’s easy to install.

A transcript for the banner image on the homepage of http://moddb.com/mods/cloned-cube. 

Cloned Cube is another story within Aperture’s walls. You are Chell #2, a member of the involuntary Aperture Science Cloning Tests.

Find out the secret of the new antagonist, Cubis. Run your tests with plenty of new testing elements and get to the bottom of the story.

Created by the first time modder, cubis, the game is currently being developed. It will be released with a good portion of custom textures.

As always, thanks to the community of users out there. Without you, I wouldn’t be anywhere!

Links

http://moddb.com/mods/cloned-cube

http://youtube.com/clonedcube

http://icubeomyst.tumblr.com/

The Portal Gun isn’t going to look bloody anymore, it isn’t as dirty now. There isn’t rust on anything anymore. Please don’t worry!