• I’ve saved a game but now I’m not sure
where it is on my hard drive. How can I find it?
• The default location for saving files in your version
of Virtuoso is:
o C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\SourceMods\Virtuoso_95\h5\games
• But you can change the location in the Save dialog
to be anywhere you like. We recommend that you create a folder
called My Games on your desktop (or some place just as easy
for you to find) and save your games there.
• What’s the coordinate system like in Virtuoso?
• The games that you create in Virtuoso have a 3D
coordinate system that uses x, y and z coordinates to specify
locations and orientations of all objects in the game’s
space. The x and y axes lie horizontally along the plane
of the ground and the z axis goes vertically up and down.
• What is Save Early, Save Often?
• Save Early, Save Often is a way of working with
Virtuoso files that will reduce the risk that bugs in Virtuoso
will cause you to lose some of your work while saving games.
Currently, a bug in Virtuoso can cause some of your game
information to be lost during a save. To keep the data that’s
lost to a minimum, we strongly recommend that you do the
following:
o Save your work immediately after every significant change.
If you add a new object, save. If you add a new behavior
to an existing object, save.
o Each time you save, save your work to a new file. For
instance, the first time you save, save to filename1. The
next time you save, save to filename2, the third time, to
filename3. That way, if your save process is bad, you haven’t
overwritten your previous work. You can go back to the previous
file and start from there.
o Immediately after each save, re-load the game from the
newly created file. For instance, if you’ve just saved
your game to filename2.res, then click on Edit, select filename2.res
from the filelist and click Edit again to load the file
with your latest work. This way, you can confirm that the
saved file contains all the valid data by checking that
the objects all show up as you expect them too.
• I saved my Virtuoso game and now when I load it
up, all the objects are present in the Object Properties
menu but don’t show up in my game? What can I do?
• Currently, there is nothing you can do to recover
your objects. Even though their names appear, the data describing
them has been lost due to a bug in the file saving process.
Until we can fix this bug, please follow the Save Early
Save Often policy we describe above to make sure that any
loss due to the bug is kept to a minimum.
• I added a player.LaunchWeb behavior to an event
in my game, but the web page doesn’t open when the
event is triggered. Why not?
• Be sure you’ve specified the full URL for
the web page, including the leading http:// part. If you
have the wrong URL or a partial URL in the specification
for the behavior, it won’t be able to load the page
correctly.
• Sometimes I get an error when I try to save my
game that says “Error saving. Please try again”
What should I do?
• Try to save the game again. The error message should
go away. If it does not, try saving the game under a different
name.
• For every game file that I save, there’s
a file with the same name but ending in a ~ character. What
are those other files?
• Those second copies with the ~ in the extension
are “backup” versions of your main file. Every
time you save a game, the system makes a backup of your
previous game and stores it by appending a ~ to the end
of the file name. You can load those games if you need to
restore a backup, but you cannot save them. If you need
to restore a backup game, load it and then save it under
a new file name.
• What is Steam and why do I have to be running it
in order to run Virtuoso?
• Steam is a program that lets you buy and download
games and run them on any PC. When you start up a Steam
game, the Steam program running on your computer talks via
the network to Steam servers that keep track of the games
you’ve purchased under your Steam account. The program
verifies that your account has paid for any game you use
Steam to try and run. We built Virtuoso on top of a game
called Half-Life 2 Deathmatch, which is a game that is run
through Steam. In order to run Virtuoso, we run Half-Life
2 Deathmatch “behind the scenes”. In order to
verify that you’ve purchased Half-Life 2 Deathmatch,
you need to run Steam.
• How can I tell what keys and mouse input I can
use to navigate, etc, while in edit mode?
• Click on the ? button found on the far right of
the row of buttons on the bottom of the HUD. This will bring
up the help screen; you’ll find the full list of keyboard
and mouse inputs available for editing.
• How can I navigate in Play Mode?
• The same basic keys you use to navigate in Edit
Mode also work in Play Mode: W, A, S and D. Right-click-and-drag
changes where you’re looking, just as it does in Edit
Mode.
• How can I quit my game in Play Mode?
• Press the q key to exit Play Mode.
• Using the mouse to adjust the position and rotation
of an object can be tough for fine detail. Is there a way
that I can move or rotate objects small amounts for precise
control?
• Yes. Select the object that you want to move or
rotate. Then bring up the object’s properties panel.
Click anywhere in that panel and then use the following
keys to manipulate the object’s details:
o Use the up and down arrows to move the object up and down
by small increments
o Use the A and D keys to rotate the object around the z
axis by small amounts
• By dragging the properties menu to the side of the
screen, you can see the object move and rotate as you use
these keys.
• Sometimes, Virtuoso crashes and displays an error
message that reads “hl2.exe has encountered a problem
and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.”
What’s going on?
• Virtuoso runs on top of the Half-Life 2 game engine.
This error message is the one provided by Half-Life 2 when
it crashes. We’re not certain where the source of
the problem is that’s causing this crash, but we’re
looking into it and hope to have a fix available this summer.
• When I create more than one game in a single session,
Virtuoso seems to hang or sometimes crash. What can I do?
• There’s currently a bug in Virtuoso that may
cause the program to crash if you create more than one game
in a single Virtuoso session. To avoid this, adopt the following
strategy. When you want to create a new game, use Virtuose
to create a game, selecting from the list of Virtuoso templates.
Edit your game as much as you want to, saving whenever appropriate.
Then, when you want to start on a new game, quit Virtuoso
and re-start it from Steam. This way, you’ll only
be creating a new game once per session.
