peter_spy
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Posts posted by peter_spy
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Yup, and I had plenty of fun with T3, and with making maps for it, back in the day
Replaying it right now to see which parts I liked most
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The Unreal Engine 2.x, at least the rendering portion of it, was ripped out. The replacement was called Flesh, and IIRC the guy that implemented it was probably an external contractor who did his job and left, but noone asked him to leave any documentation on it, so he didn't. They also used the first implementation of Havok for physics, literally like version 1.0, which was buggy as hell, and they couldn't get water and rope arrows to work.
Memory constraints were an original Xbox thing, but it's hard to tell how PCs from that era would handle bigger levels or no loading zones.
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3 hours ago, datiswous said:
What makes it mod unfriendly?
Everything is closed source, there was a low property limit, and a mechanism slowly adding to that property count during mission making, so FMs don't compete with OMs too much (removed by Snobel years later), and the only way to make any custom content is to have a very peculiar version of 3dsmax (5.1) and other odd tools (e.g. MilkShape for animation).
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An entire FM is probably a no-go, since my spare time is focused on something else these days, but I thought about doing a tiled material pack inspired by T3 textures. Will post it, if I come up with something worthwhile.
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On 5/26/2023 at 3:29 PM, Wellingtoncrab said:
Thief: Deadly Shadows 20th Anniversary
Shit, we're old.
Too bad T3Ed and its workflows are way too unstable (at least for me, on win10) to even think about making something for it again.
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Just change the key spawnClass from idMoveable to idStaticEntity.
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It seems like it is impossible to kill an AI by dropping it. What I got initially was like some kind of physics glitch. It might be worth checking with more complex surfaces though, like rocks or some sharp spikes. With flat surfaces, the AI will pretty much land unconscious, even if dropped from an Angelwatch.
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I just switched to this version from 2.something, and I must say the difference is amazing. The window snapping system, 3d view supporting specularity and basic shadows, it all looks and works great!
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Because it's a visual tweak based on a personal preference that would actually make it harder to create maps and content for TDM.
Once TDM has PBR support, such tweaks won't be necessary, as fresnel response will be calculated correctly at material level.
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That would confirm my observations. I think that removing 1 & 2 might be beneficial as well...
1 – because it would give creators more of the specular texture color range to use. Currently, if I go above ~ RGB 190 intensity, the specular hotspot will look overblown (with no bloom applied)*
2 – because it increases the specular hotspot saturation at grazing angles, making it harder to control. You can compare that by using the dielectric specularity trick, where you invert the color of the diffuse texture to get white specular hotspot. This is how the result looks like:
At straight angle in the center, everything looks correct:
At grazing angle:
I guess that you might want to apply that to cubemap reflections, not specular hotspot.
*That said, this is my setup only, it's all relative to light intensity, radius, etc.
Edit: would it be possible to toggle the two HDRLite features via cvar? I would be interesting to experiment with this and see how it affects making materials, for both flat surfaces and models.
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In a long time, I don't think I've used photos for anything more than a source for a color picker, so I can get a gradient ramp, or a just a few colors to use for my base color texture. Photogrammetry is indeed useful, but in terms of capturing a photo-scanned 3d model and making it game-ready. Since most PBR materials are standardized and look similar, games tend to be slightly stylized anyway, as everyone wants to have some visual identity. Photorealism ceased to be a holy grail of games quite some time ago too, it's more of an arch viz thing (and maybe racing games, although that's mostly cars).
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Out of curiosity @OrbWeaver, how specularity works in this engine? Did TDM team use what was there by default with idtech4, or did you implement your own tweaks? From what I've been experimenting with, it's different than other non-PBR engines, as it's not just a straightforward add operation, am I right?
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But in general, the big problem with photos is that you either have to have ideal conditions when capturing them, or you have to do tons of editing, like removing shadows, getting them to tile, etc. And you'll still end up with some sensor noise, and they will be in one resolution only.
Procedural generators like Substance, or other counterparts, have the advantage of being resolution-independent, and all the components can contribute to generating proper height map, which in turn is used as displacement map for automatically subdivided mesh, which you can bake normals from. All this while being tileable at all times.
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Jeez, that's awfully time-consuming. No wonder photosourced materials stopped being a thing for quite some time now.
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10 hours ago, Epifire said:
The spec is basically on point with the original image (for overall tone). Really the only thing standing out to me now is that there's something funky going on with the normal map. The grout work was treated like a ridge, rather than a valley; so I'm assuming that has to do with the way the normal map was generated.Yup, there's something off with the normal map; I actually inverted at least one channel in order to get the chipped-off edges right. The normalmap looks like just generated from a grayscale diffuse, so the white edges were convex and dark bits were concave. Isolating the bright bits, copying them to a separate layer and inverting the color would do the trick, but I thought that might be a bit too much of manual work.
Edit: I tried to do this^ quick and dirty way, https://we.tl/t-jNZdpmkJtF
And this would be the result:
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32 minutes ago, AluminumHaste said:
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Now, that's a really nice floor!
Here's how I'd do it: https://we.tl/t-clZCfdyxda
I resized textures to 1024 for faster upload, I hope you don't mind.
Tested the whole thing with both player lantern and strong lights, without bloom.
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22 minutes ago, AluminumHaste said:
And bloom does make it way worse, thanks.
Turning that off helped a lot.
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Do you have a photo of that floor when lit, at an angle? I think the generated specular map is wrong: the raw stone bits should be more porous, while the orange bits should be smoother and more shiny.
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Btw. unless you're working on glowy bits (light bulbs, etc.) I'd turn off the bloom entirely when testing a material. It's adjustable by players, so you have no control over it. IMO it's more important that your specular hotspot looks right without any bloom in the first place.
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IMO this is fairly normal phenomenon in non-PBR engines. If you have bright diffuse texture, it will contribute to specularity. You check this with e.g. grey vs. full white diffuse, on the same plane and with the same light.
You can counter this by keeping your diffuse texture outputs in certain range, but it will largely depend on how bright your lights are. In general, there is no way to make materials look good under all lighting conditions in a non-PBR engine.
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IMO Deathloop won people with the style and quasi-comedic delivery, which I also liked. But while im-sims might look like they've regained popularity, it's not that many people finish these games (although that seems to apply to all games in general). For example, first Dishonored vs Deathloop on Steam:
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I sort of bounced off first Amnesia, don't remember why exactly. But SOMA grabbed me very quickly, the man/machine despair, and both gameplay and setting being what first bioshocks sadly never were. I haven't played Subnautica yet, which is praised for its depiction of underwater adventures, but I still remember the dread of going further and further down the seabed. There is this section where you can fall off an edge, and into the deepest, darkest depths of the ocean a human can imagine. And when you do... The noises you hear while you are getting crushed by the increasing pressure – that memory still brings the shivers down my spine.
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55 minutes ago, chakkman said:
Thus I'm always surprised again that modern games are held in such high regards by you guys.
 I think most of them are absolutely bloody awful.
We're not in disagreement here
E.g. I'll probably never understand why Ass Creed games are such a thing. In general, any Ubisoft game after Far Cry 3 makes me lose will to live after a couple of hours. And yet, they sell like hot cakes. But what other people buy should not be my concern. I'm just happy if find games that speak to me, 1-2 a year will do.
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The thing is, the games I mentioned are not "my" great games; they are considered cult classics by players, game historians, critics, both mainstream and small media outlets, etc.
Dead Space is sort of Resident Evil 4 in space + Even Horizon vibes. It basically brought back space horror in times when nobody was doing any of that. Prey 2016 basically is System Shock 3, translating some of the classic SS2 goodness into more modern era. Dishonored is somewhere between Thief and sort of "pacifist Hitman", as it's not really about stealing stuff, first im-sim game in a really long time. FNV is "the proper Fallout 3", as some say: by original creators, with the mix of wackiness and retro-futuristic techno-horror stuff you had in Fallout 2. Bethesda did lay the groundwork with 3d assets and systems they made, but it was nowhere near as imaginative. You could argue that it's a similar situation as with Thief 1 & 2, the Metal Age is not really genre-defining in comparison to Dark Project, but it improves on it in many ways.
Also, it's easy to romanticize the late 90s and early 2000s, but it's also worth remembering many of these games sank the companies. LGS went bankrupt because of Thief 2, Ion Storm was closed after Thief 3 (which I also like, and made a couple of mediocre maps for, ages ago). While I don't want the cinema-popcorn-like entertainment, because I don't have much time for it, I certainly don't want developers to bleed for my pleasure, or for some kind of higher art goals.
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So, you want each game to be as genre (re)defining as Thief, SS2 or DX? Very reasonable, indeed. Not to mention that you're acting as a group I just described: you demand someone to do a research for you, and hand you results on a plate, so you can easily dismiss it. Still, a few examples, in no particular order:
Mainstream: Dark Souls, Resident Evil 7, Dead Space, Alien: Isolation, Fallout: New Vegas + DLC, Spec Ops: the Line, Dishonored 1 + DLC, Prey 2016 + Mooncrash, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
Indie(-ish): Brothers: Tale of Two Sons, SOMA, Return of the Obra Dinn, Disco Elysium, Her Story, Talos Principle, The Stanley Parable, Pyre, Life is Strange
You could easily write an essay on why each of these is already a cult classic, although game critics probably have already done that, in one way or another.
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It's also an easier route^. It's not that there are no good games, movies, and in particular, no good music these days. It's just that the goalposts have moved. Quality stuff that used to be on national radio, tv or in major magazines, have moved elsewhere, to their respective niches. But there is an enormous group of people who would rather complain that things went downhill, and still demand that good stuff is spoon fed to them via mainstream media, rather than do some digging.
Thief: Deadly Shadows 20th Anniversary Contest
in Fan Missions
Posted
I've been working on a small moodboard as I go through the missions. A lot of stuff still holds up IMO, especially the outside lighting.