peter_spy
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Posts posted by peter_spy
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I think you mean Reshade. I used it a couple of times, it has a few interesting tricks up its sleeve
Also, maybe this will help to illustrate the problem better:
As you can see with image 2 & 4, the geometric complexity, whether with actual polygons or faked via smooth edges on normalmap, does matter. And I bet when most users think 'fresnel', they mean the last example.
Most TDM geometry is brushes and models textured with simple tiling materials. They won't look like the last example, until they have enough polygons.
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Btw. you know that fresnel on brushes and simple models that use tiled materials looks differently than e.g. models with higher geo density, or smooth edges faked on normalmaps? Might be hard to adjust it for all cases. Unless you meant the PBR-compatible calculations, I guess...
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On a slightly related note, why ambientrimcolor material keyword was removed in 2.11? Notes show that it was "unused" – was it even advertised to mappers and content creators?
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TBH, games from last two decades conditioned me to accept static mirrors and vampire player characters so much, that I don't even notice that anymore while playing
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Thanks for such detailed info!
12 minutes ago, stgatilov said:I'm not sure what exactly you want. If you want the mirrored view to be distorted by normal map, then yes: this is definitely not supported. The reflected texture is generated as if reflected by a perfect plane. Maybe we can add some kind of warp shader that deforms the image mathematically according to the normalmap, but this would be a new feature.
I'm not sure if adding that warp shader is worth the hassle then, the current state seems like a feature, not a bug
Personally I'm pretty happy with what I can do with a cubemap, and IMO that should be the way to go in most cases.
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On 1/8/2024 at 4:16 PM, stgatilov said:
There are some issues, but in general it seems to work fine.
Of course the performance on such scenes is abysmal.Since you're working on this, have you tried restoring the original functionality, i.e. ability to set up a resolution for these? That might help with performance.
Also, when I was working with mirrors, I noticed that they disable normalmaps in the material. See how a cubemap version has those damaged surface details on the mirror surface, while real-time mirror bypasses all that.
Last but not least, have you tried making mirrors work on convex
or concavesurfaces, not just straight flat polygons? That would open up possibilities for very nice material effects (if used with moderation
).
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11 hours ago, Wellingtoncrab said:
Are we supposed to pretend the original games are not a huge reason why most of us are here at all?
TL;DR version:
I don't think it was original T1/2 as much as the disappointment with Deadly Shadows and its shortcomings when it comes to levels, editing tools, and movement model. And since we're onto meme territory:
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I did play Thief and FMs, but I don't play it any more, except for major things like Black Parade. The clunky movement and antiquated Dromed editor is what discouraged me from interacting with it over the years.
I regularly play and sometimes make content for TDM, because it has much better movement model than Thief. I know that most missions don't use it well, but if you construct your geometry (gaps, ledges, distances) using power of two measurements, movement and mantling feels fast and snappy. There's no need for regression in that regard, in my opinion, there's a need for assets and missions made with the movement model in mind, to showcase its strengths properly.
Even if TDM originally intended to "simulate the stealth gameplay of Thief, many things will be familiar to veteran Thief players" the actual mod history was a bit different. The team came up with a mission platform that has its own identity when it comes to mechanics. The way assets were made might have been a huge mistake, but that didn't prevent the platform from growing.
Since you like anecdotal evidence, noone other Skacky once said that TDM movement model was super clunky, after playing The Painter's Wife. It was really hard to convince him that if a mapper places geometry this poorly, and isn't aware what spatial measurements play to the strengths of a movement model, no movement model will save his mission. And there is no fixing of this problem on the engine side, although it's not the first time when TDM team tries to address the asset problem with engine changes, which I suspect will ultimately lead to even more problems down the line.
In game development, things like core mechanics and player tools are locked-down first, in one of the pre-production phases, because all the levels will be constructed around them. Making changes in core mechanics in a project this mature is very risky, I assume you don't plan on going through all playable spaces in all released TDM FMs to check for errors.
Instead of making incremental changes in fundamental mechanics, I'd encourage you to create a fork, or some kind of major version bump candidate, like 3.0, where all things could be revamped: movement, player tools, UI, new frob mechanics, perhaps with UI contextual icons, new training map to incorporate all that, etc. Once all new elements fall into place and create something new, with a map or maps to back it up as relevant changes, it will be easier to convince existing player/author base that it was worth it. I assume the existing fanbase is already fragmented, as a result of all those heated discussions around the topic.
But with multiple versions available for download, the transition to hypothetical "TDM 3.0" should be easier. It could be similar to UE2 and UE3, and you could also use this as an occasion to draw the line for backwards compatibility. I know there are old systems and variables kept in place just in order not to break existing missions. This way you could e.g. redo the LOD system, implement lights using math functions instead of textures, etc.
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This looks (and sounds) sweet.
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Slightly offtopic, but I've been tinkering with differend UE engines lately, and it occured to me that current version of TDM is actually fairly close to UE 3/UDK in terms of rendering and graphics features. Have you ever considered adding lightmapping as an optional way of lighting maps? Given the way most TDM assets are made, it could provide a big boost in performance, while offering much better look. And that, potentially, would be a much, much smoother transition into a new level of visual fidelity than PBR, which requires remaking all textures, materials, and lights.
Edit: I forgot that models would need to be re-saved with a dedicated uvw channel where faces are unwrapped in 0-1 space in order for lightmaps to work correctly.
So, it looks like any effort to get to next level of visual fidelity will require significant artist effort...
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Note: If there is no specular map then substitute _black, and if there is no bumpmap then use _flat instead.
This can be removed as well, you don't need to specify texture map slots you don't use. In some cases you even shouldn't.
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IMO that's more like a bug, rather than a feature. This is a property, not material keyword:
https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Light_Properties#Other_light_settings
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2 hours ago, Frost_Salamander said:
Unfortunately I completely missed it, as when I went to create weather effects in my FMs I just followed this (which doesn't mention it): https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=A_-_Z_Beginner_Full_Guide_Page_3#Rain_and_Snow
IMO there should be a warning of some sorts on this page. This tutorial was written by Fidcal ages ago, and there are possibly tons of things that might be severely outdated, and practices that would better be discouraged.
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It's not a material token. It's a property, so you can use in light entity def (using this light material).
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12 hours ago, datiswous said:
But why is it unavailable?
Those assets don't look good against stock TDM assets, they're like from another world. You'd need a complete package or a whole mission made out of these exclusively, to get a coherent style. That's years of work, unfortunately.
Second reason is something I saw mentioned a few times in Discord discussions – TDM assets got stolen and repurposed on more than several occasions. I know that there's no way to stop asset flippers from getting those, even from modern games, if they're desperate enough.
But since pk4 is basically an open door for such people, it made me reluctant to go on with this initiative. I put way too much work over the years to get to this level of craft (which is still not super pro, but quite decent, I think). From time to time, I still do single models, as requested from FM authors; but over the last few years, all my TDM-related modelling work has been sporadic, and mostly for my own amusement.
12 hours ago, datiswous said:I see these assets are removed as well
I lost access to my dropbox folders. I reuploaded those in one zip package and updated the first post.
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Right, I lost access to my dropbox folders. Here's a temporary upload of all these assets: https://we.tl/t-BOdrlNEXWJ
I cleaned up the material files a bit, since these were still using TDM ambient stages.
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6 minutes ago, HMart said:
Why? What did I miss?
It's been unavailable for quite some time now, and I don't want to have an ambiguous situation where it can no longer be downloaded, but selected people have it but others don't, etc.
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Thanks.
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This asset pack is no longer available. If you have access to it, please don't use it or redistribute it further. If it's a part of a released FM, please credit me by including The Builder Compound pack name and my TDM forum username in your readme.
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You keep using assets fom my Builder Compound pack that is no longer available, you could at least credit me for it. That applies to your other FMs too.
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It's not even that there are free asset sites or AI apps^. Models still need work as they have to be adapted to the game polycount limits, and textures need to be adjusted to work with game art style and shading system. Sometimes doing something from scratch will be faster. And with AI tools, it misses the point even more so.
And the point is, making textures, models, and sounds is great fun. It's an opportunity to grow as a creative person, and an occasion to connect and network with other people, even if it's hard to communicate sometimes. And TTLG in particular has plenty of creative people to choose from. By choosing AI, or grabbing stuff from other games, you miss that opportunity, and everything that goes with it. If everyone starts doing it, the community artists will disappear.
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Not this time though, the campaign is getting some PC press coverage, some major outlets like Rock Paper Shotgun included: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/the-black-parade-is-a-thief-mod-from-a-team-including-a-dev-at-arkane-and-an-original-thief-designer
The TDM / cgtextures.com situation made me think though; maybe, instead of worrying what future license might include, there could be a steady effort to replace photo-sourced textures with hand-made / proc-gen ones? That list is huge, but the peace of mind in the end is priceless.
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49 minutes ago, chakkman said:
I saw and heard a lot of stuff in The Black Parade which definitely isn't OK for them to use... sounds and textures from Thief 3 and a lot of other games.
Yeah, TTLG never had a great culture when it comes to copyrighted content, but BP is where things got somewhat ridiculous:
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Right, I forgot that's also a reason why TDM has every single texture from cgtextures listed in license.txt. But, according to current EULA, that might not be enough:
QuotePlease note that it is not allowed to release our images under Open Source licenses (even when the materials are modified). If you are working on an game that is released under an Open Source license, you need to release content that has been created using our materials under a closed source license.
TDM Fresnel Mod
in The Dark Mod
Posted · Edited by peter_spy
IIUC, fresnel uses view direction and surface normal vectors. This is a comparison between simple brush cube and one with chamfered edges on geometry, both using the same tiling material:
Brush cube is on the right; in the background you see a cube with chamfered edges. There is a thin line on the bottom of the brush cube, because it matches the normalmap, the mortar part of the bricks. But as soon as I change texture coordinates of the brush:
While the chamfered cube has enough geometry to work with fresnel shader, even if I change texture coordinates:
So it seems to work as described, it needs either geometry normals or details faked on normalmap. I think fresnel in other pre-pbr engines, like UE3, works the same or similar way.