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peter_spy

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Everything posted by peter_spy

  1. peter_spy
    That's a very good idea. I think building and level design is a topic so broad, everyone will have an opinion about it. But, specific technical areas like scripting, writing materials, defs, making and importing animated objects - a form of consultations or guided/step-by-step workflow would help immensely. The formula can be varied, if gathering all the participants at once is too difficult. You can have something like a Q&A session, e.g.: Or, maybe something like assignments + comments? I can offer my help in modeling (.ase) and texturing workflow and prototyping, as I know a thing or two about it (and frankly, that knowledge applies for other engines too). I'm not that good with materials yet, but I'm getting there. I was also thinking about making a modeling thread where anyone could ask about techniques and tricks to get the job done and exchange experiences, but I'm not sure how many people actually make custom models for their missions.
  2. peter_spy
    Dishonored 2 is still quite unoptimized, even for its recommended hardware, while Prey runs without any hitches. And it is indeed a very solid game. It's basically a System Shock 3 under a different name. Everything in menu and UI design is a reference to Shock 2. Gameplay is similar as well, more focused on survival than shooting, at least in early stages. If you like slower pace and thorough exploration, you'll feel rewarded for sure. The design is very clear, most rooms have at least two ways of entry. There arent too many enemies, but they are tough, so you either sneak around them or gather resources to fight them. On hard difficulty, fighting them head-on always results in death, and the combat itself is quite clunky. Fortunately, tougher enemies don't respawn. Mimics do, so you never know when a coffee mug or a banana peel will be your enemy, which adds to the tension a bit (I guess it will be mostly annoying after some time). As for the price, it's 30 EUR on sites like cd keys.
  3. peter_spy
    Already on it I'm in the process of making a test environment to demonstrate how models with clean wireframes, as few materials as possible, and actual low-poly modeling approach contribute to better framerates and better visual quality. The result will be a design doc in a thread similar to one I made here, and a "Builder outpost model pack" released either with the thread, or with the map I'm making it for
  4. peter_spy
    You're an excellent tester, when I'm going to need someone to try and break my mission in every possible way, you'll be my first choice
  5. peter_spy
    Hah, I'd say it's exactly the opposite, dialogues / monologues are like from cheap Stephen King wannabe story (that's the main character, basically), and the idea for gun / flashlight combat is weird, but the game is quite fun to play. Never finished it though.
  6. peter_spy
    That's... Weird point of view, to say the least. Yes, Unreal doesn't have this fast brush resizing by dragging mouse at the side of a brush. Also UE doesn't have patches, and BSP doesn't use surface smoothing, as it never did. Then again, BSP is used solely to block out basic environment/gameplay space these days, and then it's entirely replaced by static meshes, for both quality and performance reasons. And by these days I mean roughly since 2006.
  7. peter_spy
    It would be very interesting if you could elaborate on that.
  8. peter_spy
    On that note, I'd kill for some more Builder background and concept art
  9. peter_spy
    I'm not sure this analogy will work here, but here goes It's like you don't have to be an electrical engineer to "program" your washing machine. Or you don't have to be a programmer to use a computer. And, from the another perspective, it's like modeling by entering XYZ coordinates of every vertex by hand. Can I do it? Sure! Do I think it's a reasonable way of work? Absolutely not
  10. peter_spy
    That's why I'm not expecting TDM Team to write a sophisticated node-based material editor, or any material editor for that matter, I wish ID did it properly back then, just like other companies did (at least those who made their engines available to the public). And also, I don't need to dabble in code to understand, more or less, how scripting works, or how graphic pipeline works. Your perspective concentrates only on your approach and your particular experiences, which are not common, I think. Most people want to dedicate their time to practice one, maybe two specialties. Learning is fun, we get it, it's obvious. But not learning everything, and that also should be obvious. Level design already requires you to be a jack of quite many trades, and being jack of all trades, and master of none ultimately will be visible in your work.
  11. peter_spy
    I thought it was obvious that I meant average editor user, a level designer, who is used to do everything by the means of user interface, as opposed to writing code, learning syntax etc. And this is completely normal, other game editors out there have graphical user interfaces for as many things as possible. It's faster, it's one less obstacle to struggle with, and one less potential source of errors. Also, noone's expecting game editors to be modeling packages, just as noone is expecting it to be sound editing programs. This is where all aspects of game design come together, and while the external assets (sounds, textures, meshes etc.) are created in external programs, the way the engine handles them is internal. And those tools have to be accessible as well, to streamline work, to allow faster learning, and to minimize errors mentioned above. I know idtech4 is an in-house engine, and art + programming teams' collaboration in big studios is a normal thing, but defending code writing in this day and age is a bit ridiculous, especially for amateur personal projects.
  12. peter_spy
    Slow but steady progress I decided to iterate a bit on the roof section instead of rushing to texturing phase, and it paid off. It looks better and it should be more versatile to use (more on that later ). I'm also pleased with the polygon budget (700 poly / 1400 tris). I managed to stay pretty low without compromising the silhouette too much. Althought that meant some tedious work and deleting faces player will never see. With proper smoothing and normalmaps, there will be a more complicated shape going along these edges and faces, so it will look more complex than it actually is. And, less polygons means easier unwrapping, so that's always a good thing. Using symmetry helps a lot in controlling the texture space as well, so I can see whether I'll be using mirrored UVs or not. Roof, sure, but arches and wall sections could benefit from more unique space
  13. peter_spy
    No problem HMart, I'm not an English native either, so maybe I wasn't clear enough I'll try that editor in the meantime, although previewing materials is not a big problem: I work on a source (.xcf) file in Gimp which exports flattened image to tga automatically, so I just iterate, pres Ctrl+E, and use reloadimages or reloaddecls command in game to see changes. You're writing from a perspective of a programmer who's used to that stuff, not an average user. An average user doesn't want to write anything, because: a ) it's super slow, b ) possibility of screwing something up is multiplied by 10 000. People would just want to plug in texture sources, fiddle with sliders or enter numbers using certain range, check the result, and move on to next task. IMO we should include ASE format for models in all workflows as well, as it's more common. People are more likely to be using Blender, Maya, Modo or 3dsmax, where formats like ASE, OBJ or FBX are part of standard export workflows (e.g. Unreal engines have been using ASE and FBX for years).
  14. peter_spy
    Thanks HMart, but I think there was a little misunderstanding here I was talking about material editor as a part of DR interface, like 3dsmax's compact editor: I think especially for new mappers lack of UI editor for scripts and materials is quite intimidating. Like, if someone's been using unreal engines up to this point, he or she may never needed to write a piece of code.
  15. peter_spy
    Gnomon just uploaded a ton of great videos on YT. These workshops are awesome, but pretty long overall. The presentations are like 20 minutes per person though, so you can watch it in smaller chunks too.
  16. peter_spy
    If you're talking about UE's terrain tools, that would be a huge undertaking. If you take a closer look at this, it's a whole subsystem, where you can control the height, density, throw in tons of material layers etc. Having DR turned into UE would be cool actually, but I hope noone's seriously expecting it from TDM Team And speaking about modern functions, there are more pressing matters IMO, like having GUI material editor for example. Although again, I feel that might be a bit too much to ask for.
  17. peter_spy
    Also, I don't know how about you, but I don't like just many assorted technologies just thrown in together. Like, mappers still have to familiarize with current state of the engine and the editor, and we're not even at the point of mesh tilesets done the modern way.
  18. peter_spy
    I thought it was caulk, and my first thought was to change it to a regular texture, but you probably tried that already.
  19. peter_spy
    This is just a wild guess then, but have you tried moving this scene around? Right now, it's nearby, almost behind the wall it's projected on, maybe looking at the wall and what's behind it causes this weird error? Again this is just me guessing, but if the scene was like on the opposite side of the map, so you can never look at it and the target wall simultaneously? If anything else fails, you could use an old trick from Dreamfall, where such "corridor ends" used just static images. It just has to be far away, and you could sell that illusion better by mixing static background with some meshes. Not to mention it would probably be good for performance as well. https://youtu.be/IzmKASiX0oI?t=5m22s
  20. peter_spy
    I don't know whether I get it right, I but see you have that camera in the same place where player can move around, and it seems the HOM effect occurs only when you look directly at it, regardless of the obstacles in the way. What about placing that camera and the view in a place that is completely sealed off from the playable area? Edit: Nevermind, now I see that it is in a sealed off area, but it still occurs when you look at it. It's like two skyboxes fighting for attention.
  21. peter_spy
    Last time I saw parallax effect in action, it made all things look like jelly. I don't think it's a standard effect in games, even nowadays it's used rather sparingly, as it's another texture, or at least additional channel for your GPU to process. IMO, more often you'll see mixed modeling/texturing techniques, like ground textures + clutter parts modeled on geometry and using the same material, because it looks better and it doesn't require additional texture. On my list of priorities, it would be more useful to add a fresnel effect for example, in a form of material stage keyword, so we don't have to use a program.
  22. peter_spy
    This may help you a bit, if you're burned out or struggle with your design goals or work schedule: http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/categories/level_design_tutorials/how-to-have-best-level-design-game-environment-year.php Also: I'll have to disappoint you on that front, I'm male. Judith is just a stupid nickname that was relevant to me around high school, but everyone on TTLG and Thief related sites knows me under that alias, so I keep it. I don't use it anywhere else.
  23. peter_spy
    Well, in practice it's not quite like that. If you open any UT3 or Gears of War map, you'll see tons of static lights, whether it's larger area lights, fake bounce lights, or light sources like lamps, with materials faking things like pulse or flicker. Dynamic lights are almost never used, except for flashlights or vehicles maybe. That said, I always kind of liked stencil shadows. There was something nice about them in Thief 3, and in the whole engine, however broken. I can back to playing T3 though, because of the movement. TDM really spoiled me on that front
  24. peter_spy
    Still, it all comes down to how it's done. If it's lightmapping, you'll need to take care of shadow quality settings for brushes and meshes, and pk4 size will go up because of baked lightmaps. If it's still dynamic lightning, what's the performance hit, etc.
  25. peter_spy
    Then this wiki page must be updated as soon as possible: http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Basic_Material_File I based all my materials on that info, and new mappers may do the same. Edit: But that's also a good news, since adding texture paths to this section was extra work.
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