rich_is_bored

I own a Wiz. It's a damn fine portable. It has an OLED screen so it's bright and vivid even outdoors and there are lots of ports since it's derivative of the older GP2X. There's even a port of Warcraft that uses the touchscreen. The processor is twice as fast as it's predecessor and it has 3D hardware acceleration that works in most ports. But even in cases without acceleration like Quake 2, the game still runs surprisingly well in software mode. It's also supposed to run Flash games if you copy the swf files on to the SD card but I've found that it only works with Flash 8 based games. The only game from that time frame that I would have wanted to take with me would have been metanet's N and unfortunately it didn't run very well. I don't care for the buttons on the right. They've arranged them like a d-pad and while that's great if you're left handed and want your d-pad on the left, as standard buttons they are too close. I can live without analog sticks but you do wish you had them when your playing an FPS or fighting game. Lack of wifi is another con but I don't know anyone else with a Wiz so I'm not missing out there. I can't speak for battery life other than to say I've used the thing for four hours straight once and it didn't die. In your case I'd probably stick with the EEE PC. It's a laptop so you'll be able to do everything a portable can and more. All you really need is a usb gamepad.

How about setting the object's time to zero? Time (script event)

The reason I haven't bothered with such functionality in the Dark Radiant ASE export plugin is because I don't have a use for it. I know how to use a modeling application and integrating Blender 2.5 into the pipeline has been my primary goal all along. Once this Blender export plugin is made available I can draft up a tutorial if need be. It's not difficult. Especially with the DR ASE export script absolving you the trouble of modeling and UV mapping. A plugin that automates the vertex painting process does not interest me. I don't have a need for it and I prefer people spend five minutes hand painting a model than settle for poor quality content. But don't let my opinion stop you. I made the plugin GPL for a reason.

I've nearly finished my ASE export script for Blender 2.5. How's this for a smooth transition... I'll make the plugin available in the next few days once I'm confident it works properly.

I've never tried it myself but it may be possible to pass entity parameters to the spectrum keyword. Something like this... textures/whatever/mytexture { spectrum Parm5 { map textures/whatever/mytexture } } With something like that in place for all the textures you could isolate geometry into func_static entities and assign them to groups.

An alternative is to run through the maps with r_showsurfaceinfo turned on and make a note of names of the textures that don't look so hot.

Don't get too excited. All those devices do is map inputs from the mouse and keyboard to the gamepad inputs expected by the console. I bought a similar device for my PS2 and I fiddled with it once. Now it collects dust. It turns your mouse into a joystick complete with a dead zone and limited turn speed. What annoys me most about the situation is that all the current generation consoles have USB ports. I just don't understand why developers making FPS games on a console can't be bothered to support mouse and keyboard input.

I'm not talking about writing an engine from scratch here. I'm saying that when the engine goes open source you'll have the code needed to produce a standalone game. The physics, rendering, and sound handling code will be there. The only thing you'd need from Doom 3 at that point are art assets. But the game doesn't have to crash if you are missing those assets. It simply needs to fallback to a set of proxies like black boxes, checkerboard textures, and in the case of sounds a beep. This isn't a problem for people who've purchased Doom 3. They simply copy over the PK4s and all is well. The difference is that people who don't have Doom 3 aren't shit out of luck. They can still experience TDM. They just don't get the full experience.

Given this "buy the game to reap the rewards" approach, might it be reasonable to release a standalone but handicapped version of the game? In other words, strip the game of all Doom 3 content and replace the things that break with nonsense like black boxes and checkerboard textures while those with Doom 3 would be unaffected. It's not ideal but it seems to be the best compromise between committing to a huge amount of work and doing nothing. As a side benefit I guarantee you people will start contributing towards the cause.

Perhaps a wiki page should be created so that work can be done now, while we wait for the source, to replace stock assets? Waiting till the source is released beforehand isn't required. You can override stock assets now.

There are two situations in the current exporter that result in seams. Multi-textured brushes are split wherever the texture changes and misaligned textures result in splits within UV space. Given the only way to apply a texture to a brush is through planar projection, you'll never be able to fully control where the UV seams appear because prior to exporting your ASE, no UV coordinates existed. The sphere greebo posted is a good example of what I'm talking about. Try making a sphere with brushes and then align the textures on all the adjacent faces. It can't be done with planar projection. Stretching and pinching the texture would be required and the map format simply does not support that kind of thing. Giving the user a option to toggle smoothing off altogether is a much more practical option. If more control over the smoothing of faces is required, the resulting object can always be loaded into a modeling application.

They should stumble into props and say "Oh. Excuse me maam. Didn't see you there."

Very cool. You can see it smoothing the faces where the texture is aligned.

Blender has video editing capabilities but given your past experience I'm not sure it's a suggestion that will be well received. If so then just pretend I didn't say anything.

There are no bugs I'm aware of. You're more than welcome to bundle it with DR. I should mention that the script does not produce valid vertex and face normals. At present it's exporting dummy data. It doesn't seem to impact anyone's ability to import back into DR or even Blender so I'm not terribly concerned with it.

From what I understand mirrorRenderMap and post process effects like heathaze both write to a texture called _scratch. You can apply _scratch to a brush and place it in that area to get a better idea what the engine is doing. Your best bet here is probably to forgo using mirrorRenderMap in favor of a cube map. You can create one comprised of six screen shots easily with the envshot console command. No manual image editing necessary.

It works with patches too.

The one in the first post is the most recent version.

Ah... Ah... Ah... Choo!

I already have the beginnings of a Blender export script in the works but it's not ready for use yet. I'll upload it and start a thread for it when it is.

I've decided to upload the latest version of the script for SneaksieDave. It exibits none of the problems he describes although it is WIP so there are probably bugs. The link in the first post has been updated.

You are correct. Also it's impossible to make a non-planar triangle.

So long as the light is on the side with "textures/common/shadow" it should work fine.

I appreciate the feedback but the functionality of the Blender import plugin has no bearing on whether or not the Dark Radiant ASE export plugin works. I'll test things on my end and keep you posted on here... http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/10941-ase-import-script-for-blender-25/

@Tels: I didn't study modeling so I could make chairs with less polygons than I have fingers and toes. Brushes are more than adequate if that's the level of detail you are aiming for although I think the chair was kept simple for the sake of the tutorial. But I hope people are striving for better than that if they're investing a month or more into learning a new skill. Otherwise then yes please, stick to DR and use the ASE export plugin I wrote. I'm not really sure how to make modeling more intuitive than it is already. The technical aspect is entirely derived from the polygon and they are pretty damn simple. Voxels are an alternative but they aren't any less foreign compared to real life 3D objects. What's the most intuitive way to instruct a computer to make a polygon short of plotting points in space and connecting them?