Moonbo

So you're basically re-creating the lighting model on the CPU and then feeding in the necessary data to reproduce what lighting for that pixel would look like if it had been handled by the GPU. That sounds like an impressive amount of work. How'd you go about it? Read the shader code and reconstruct it using CPU instructions? Regardless, really neat job.

Thanks!

Wow, so it's possible to run the full render pipeline for a specific pixel even if it's offscreen? The thread you linked also mentions casting shadow rays. Do you know where in the source code this is all done? Might just be easier to look at it.

I read the release notes for 2.13 and was really impressed with the new AI lighting detection. I'm really curious how exactly it works - the notes mention a stochastic sampling of light pixels but what does that mean in practice (and why couldn't it be done before)? Are the light pixels on objects whose shaders are recording per-pixel lighting stochastically and then sending them to the CPU via compute shader? If so, does that mean values are only updated when they're being rendered on screen when the player looks at them? So many questions!

Glad you found something to help Oleron, and sorry if the lack of light caused you some grief :-).

Yipes, well I give you (and anyone else) all the permission in the world to make any bug fixes (and the EAX stuff too). Thanks for helping keep the level accessible to future players Datiswous!

Haha, you're welcome tib! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

If anyone wants to fix that I give them permission .

Hey @stgatilov, sorry for the late reply. In looking at the tdm_weapon_arrow.script in A House of Locked Secrets, there is a comment line that says "Adjusted to stop the raising and lowering animations during a realm transition." From what I remember, when the player was switching between the physical and spiritual realms, if the player was holding a bow the lowering animation would play upon starting the switch and the raising would play after it. And so we modified the script to disable those animations during a realm switch. That was the only adjustment that should be present. I think if you look for the line "if($info_player_realm.getKey("transiting") == "0")" it should be quick to spot where those checks were made. Thanks! -Gelo

For A House of Locked Secrets, I'm fine if someone wants to update the implementation - if I remember correctly the current implementation is changed to allow the switching of inventories between the two worlds so the mission will break if it's simply nuked.

Yep, using Unity - so far I've had a good experience with it. I came in knowing no coding so the fact that there were a ton of tutorials, and a lot of very well supported third-party assets, has been a big plus. The game (shameless plug: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1461150/Shade/ ) is 2D, but it uses a 3D camera for some effects so having that was also a nice benefit.

Ack, sorry you ran into that. Yeah, the coding for swapping inventories is somewhat complicated, but if you've tracked the bug down to being caused by switching inventory items during the swap then it should be pretty straightforward to finally fix (just disallow item switching during the transition). If anyone wants to fix and test, like any other bugfix they have my blessing!

Yipes! Thanks again for spotting these things. Obviously I am fine with someone updating the mission package to fix.

It'll probably just be easier to include it in the materials folder. Thank you for all this future-proofing work!

Glad you enjoyed it datiswous, and thank you again for the subtitles! Most of those bugs you found are just simple mistakes I made (or are inherent in the mod), but the two related to light textures are bugs that were introduced due to the game updating - you can see the proper textures on earlier let's plays. Alas, thankfully they're not too bad.

Yeah, a few people got stuck on that one:

Hah! Well, if anyone wants to fix this and any other bugs they have my blessing too!

I think I mentioned it before, but I'm 100% fine if someone wants to re-dmap and upload the corrected version of the map :-).

If anyone wants to re-dmap the file and upload it to the official server you have my blessing :-). Same w/ subtitles.

A review of the game from a YouTube channel I follow :

Hey chakkman, glad you're enjoying the mission! The safe is def in the same room as the journal. I'm writing from my phone and forget how to tag things as spoilers, so if you still can't find it I'll be more explicit. But, check low to the ground :).

Hey Stephan, So, as to why I abandoned the octahedron method, it was mainly because Unity's dynamic lights are really expensive from a performance perspective. If you have more than one or two on-screen at any given time performance starts to tank. Most Unity games get around this by mixing up dynamic lighting with baked lightmaps + light probes to light up dynamic objects. But that would mean having to create two separate lighting detection models: a octahedron-esque system for dynamic lights, and a "raycast down to get lighting info from lightmaps" for baked lights (which is what the original Thief games did). And then what about light probes? I would probably include their impact in my dynamic lighting stream, but then I would need to be REAAALY sure that I had placed all my light probes the right way in every instance to make sure that they were properly lighting up my octahedron. So it was a choice of sticking with either just dynamic lights (poor performance) or just baked lighting and not have any light probes, which didn't match with my vision for the game. Thankfully, my game is 2D which meant that rolling a custom solution that I could tailor for ease of getting lighting data wasn't overwhelming. What I ended up doing was making all the lights in my game actual meshes (something like this: but I generate them using an optimized clipping algorithm instead of blasting out raycasts. It's then just a matter of checking the uv coordinates of all light meshes at the player's location. This turned out to be a really fast calculation, so worked out well in the end :-). Here's some footage of the system in action - the little circle indicator above the player's head shows their visibility, a mix of their movement speed and lights hitting them: Hope this helps and let me know if you have any other questions! -Gelo

Technically what I would ask is: "someone modified several of your textures and shared them on a forum. Is it okay if I use them, or do I need to download and modify those textures from your website myself?" And honestly, given the website owner has responded positively in the past he might just respond positively here.

Oh you're absolutely right that Xorax is technically violating the terms of the license by sharing derivative textures, but these clauses are there to stop people from downloading and redistributing as a competitor (thus the 'competing product' language), which isn't Xorax's intention. It does depend on how prickly the rights holder is, so if there is a concern I would reach out just to make sure.