peter_spy

Btw. that might be useful to you Epi (and other modelers), because in the end I didn't need to add any loops to the corners of the model. I just exported it with the same smoothing groups I had, when I was baking the model (i.e. the picture above). This way the gradient in normals is no longer a problem. Good thing idtech4 recognises exported custom smoothing groups! Set the specular to _white here for exaggeration:

Nope, you have to use the nonsolid global keyword in your material. Otherwise the engine will use both. You can preview collision with g_showCollisionModels 1 to see if it works properly. The camera has to be close to a model though.

At first, I tried to bake normals without any Smoothing Groups on low res mesh, but that looks even worse, I get ugly sharp lines where uv islands end. But I expected that, the idea with 4 SGs was a better one, since there is some continuity in the frame, both inside and outside. Baking it with one SG would be a disaster too, the result would be averaged to an angle between all these surfaces, and all the lines would look distorted. I think you're right, adding a few edges is a best idea here. The model itself is exported with one smoothing group, and it's only 250 tris, so I can give the engine a bit more to work with, without breaking the polygon budget.

That's the hope, thank you Weird thing is, those pieces are on separate uv islands, and there are hard edges there on the high poly mesh. Maybe my choice of smoothing groups on low poly mesh had something to do with it. I had to re-bake it anyway, because I accidentally moved the front outer edge of the frame, so it was slanted. It looks a tad better now:

If those models use the same material, DCs should go down. In Biker's example there are many different skins and materials, so merging those models into a bigger one won't make much difference.

That's more or less what I had in mind Text(s) will be different but the frame and the materials will do.

These are just solid colors on to narrow down the look and shape. I'll show you the final version when it's done

Speaking of great interiors, these sunken ruins from Uncharted 4 could easily inspire a similar place in TDM. https://www.artstation.com/artwork/lZrO5

Everything looks clean for me, both for original TDM and my WIP FM shortcut. I don't use anything more than +set fs_currentfm though. You can use allow_console and other stuff in autocommands.cfg. Is +set fs_game_base darkmod still necessary for something? Never used it.

Wish they cleaned these scans a little, but otherwise it's a great source material. You could make many interior pieces and decorations based on this alone.

I've seen such signs with plaster frame and stone slate, but that was usually against a plastered wall. This one will be hung on a stone wall, like this: So I was thinking marble frame, stone slate, these folks are rich anyway But the whole thing made of wood could also be nice. I was thinking about metal too, but that might be too similar to Dishonored.

Something small with new frob on stock assets and tweaks for different lighting conditions would be easier than changing it for all the objects. I will be using this frob for all objects in my mission, but it won't be released this year, I'm afraid.

Recently I played stuff like MGSV: Phantom Pain and Dark Souls 3 in windowed mode, with Firefox and Spotify in the background, talking to my friends on Facebook. No problems with framerate at all. But I do like to keep my system clean, I don't have any unnecessary tasks in the background or in system tray (usually around 40 processes in task manager), etc. Anyway, it won't hurt to try. If you can get those 10 FPS without screen tearing, good for you Speaking of mapping-related things, the reloadimages command still makes the shadows disappear until you restart the game.

EDIT: NVM, looks like nbohr1more got this.

Plaque early concept: Letters will probably be carved, not sure about materials yet.

I agree, it definitely improves framerate. I play in windowed mode by default, because that's how I work with my map, switching between the editor and the game mode. Didn't know it forces triple buffering.

So it's actually better to play in windowed mode, as you get 10 FPS more and no screen tearing.

Yup, that's the culprit, just checked. In fullscreen mode FPS goes down to 30 with VSync On, so there's 10 FPS difference.

I don't have it enabled in drivers, is there a cvar responsible for that in darkmod.cfg?

This is not even a mission, it's my unoptimized WIP, it doesn't have any visportals. Vsync Off: Vsync On: What actually is rendered behind the room: Reason behind the fps drop here is shadows (350k tris).

I don't use triple buffering in TDM, I believe noone does by default, as it's not available in the game menu, and forcing it in cards can mess with other games' performance. So with usual settings, if the DCs or shadow tris go above typical thresholds, the framerate goes down to the same amount, on both of my machines.

There are no benefits of having VSync off. When an FM drops because of bad optimisation, it drops below 60 FPS anyway. The result is the same with VSync On and Off. Also switching to a 1440p or 2160p monitor resolves the high FPS problem

I could only achieve max FPS by looking down at the floor in a corner, and I don't play with Vsync off, as there's no reason to.

With Vsync Off and Uncap FPS On, I don't hear my footsteps when crouching around 235 FPS. Turning VSync On resolves the problem, as framerate goes back to 60. IMO it's not game breaking, because most people play with VSync On, there will be long before anyone will be able to maintain max FPS on average, and monitors with highest refresh rate available right now are 160-165 Hz.

Yup, no stutter on my end as well, great job!