Melan

And that's why adding the oil was such a bad idea. Sophomoric, cheap, embarrasing. Comedy has a place in every game, but that was just base pandering.

Fidcal: Sure. That's why I brought the issue up now. OrbWeaver: The problem in this case is that CGTextures doesn't normally allow the distribution of their assets in the form of texture packs, but has a permission for levels and full mods. To distribute new textures, I can either make everybody wait until I can build a level that uses them all (in which case everyone who uses my textures will have to incorporate that extra 10-15 MB they need to use at a time), or submit them to the team and let them select. I am on the opinion that the mod library could use more assets, and more specific ones in addition to basic materials.

I have just tested using a different path in my material file, and it works - the only thing that needs to be added is a subfolder in the line before the curly bracket, and DarkRadiant automatically creates the appropriate subcategory (in the case below, "shield"). It also works in game, as attested by the included screenshot (note, the textures represent fairly degraded stonework). The main question that remains is what people in the team think the subcategories ought to be - material files are easy to change, but it would be nice to hear something official.

Does that mean physical folders or virtual (Media Browser) folders as well? What I meant to point out was a matter of organisation; the "real" location of textures may or may not be relevant for this.

Here is an issue I have been thinking about for a while, and on which I would like to solicit input from the team and others. Unlike Thief, where textures were stored in the form of pallettised families in discrete folders, TDM sorts them by material categories and more specific subcategories. For example, the stone category looks like this: >stone/cobblestones (for rough, uneven blocks or flagstone textures) >stone/brick (for regular, rectangular bricks of any size) >stone/natural (rock walls, cave surfaces, gravel) >stone/flat (cement, marble, ceramic tiles, anything basically flat). Polished surfaces get the prefix smooth_. >stone/sculpted (for tiles or surfaces that have been intentionally sculpted or carved) ...and there are also editor-exclusive virtual categories such as >>nontiling and >>tiling_1d. As long as we are working with the core TDM package, which mostly includes textures for general use (such as generic walls and a few trims), this setup works nicely. However, as the mod expands, and more textures are incorporated into both the core and added by individual users, this structure might become overloaded -- as is, I am already scrolling a bit too much in the "brick" and "sculpted" category to find a specific thing I am looking for. There are textures which are always good to have on hand; others are probably used judiciously in some maps and not so much in others (e.g. a nice geometric trim), while some could be so specific that you would only use them in every fifth or tenth map, and then only once or twice (e.g. the bas-relief below - looks great in game at a higher resolution, but you wouldn't plaster every mansion with it - in the texture pack I am working on, there is also a collection of shields that's pretty cool for variety, but it's already 8 textures with probably more to come). I am thinking that it would not be a bad idea to eventually introduce some further subdivisions for textures that are good to have on hand (and I certainly think these give a map much of its soul) but if your editor were a worbench, you would keep them on a top shelf and only reach for them every so often. For example, staying with >stone/sculpted , >>trims and >>panels might be an obvious addition, but could "overflow" just as easily as any other shader category. Adding special categories such as >>shields, >>reliefs or >>architecture, although the team might believe these to be too narrow or maybe even confusing. I would like to hear what people think of this -- it is not an immediately pressing issue, but could have some important repercussions on the future state of TDM editing. Remember that it is possible to store textures just fine in the base folders -- it is the arrangement of the shaders in the Media Browser that matters most, and they can be placed under virtual categories.

I would like to see something like that as well.

If the game uses the Doom 3 scale, a player would probably have 100 hit points. You would need to eat the contents of a small warehouse to get fully healed.

Okay, that makes sense and even sounds cool, although it will need a lot of consideration from mappers, esp. combined with mantling and rope arrows.

What would they be for, however? I never thought they added to Thief 2 - they were just there to let Garrett climb up to high places in Mechanist complexes where there was no wood.

That's why you should use a Commander type manager (e.g. Total Commander) like all other decent people who would like to use their PC for more than Office, Solitaire and Outlook.

They are already in the editor, just not in released levels. Scary.

Probably upon your 500th or 501st post?

Springheel: thanks. Although, as far as I am concerned, they are cool.

aidakeeley: I think there is one cardinal rule for interaction in civilised company, and that's "don't be a dick". Right now, on this subject, you are breaking it, while elsewhere, you are perfectly capable of carrying a normal and mostly polite conversation. We would rather have the second aidakeeley than the one in this thread. Thanks.

Ooooh, very nice environment. Which reminds me, are belchers still in the "to be released" queue? I think they had models in old previews, but I haven't heard of them lately.

Granted, this forum has some 1,350 members and TTLG has 28,280. That's more than 20 times as big if we assume the same ratio of active users. It is generally impossible to have a community of that size operate like a small one, just like it is a different job managing a city than a village where everyone knows everyone else.

Well, this is the "Things That Aren't Fun" thread after all.

In the Chinese proverbial sense?

For the record and to know what we are talking about, here is one of the textures Serpentine is helping me with (superimposed on another new one): Serpentine has already helped make a good normalmap, but somehow the "stained glassness" doesn't come out -- the coloured portions remain a bit plastic-like even with the specular on it.

Nicely intimidating! The dull textures, mist and dark water make it a pretty sinister area.

Serpentine: I will zip them up and send you a link to the archive -- if you can solve the question without too much trouble, it would be great. Thanks.

The problem is, I have little skill in image editing apps (and this basically means GIMP and, oh yeah, MSPaint). Is there a quick way to reduce complex images like that into good-looking B&W? [edit]Increasing the specular helped a bit, however:

Here is a question that's not strictly about editing, but people here may know about. I have been working on additional textures for TDM this weekend, and am currently working on stained glass. The problem is, it doesn't seem to come out as I would like to. Here is how a few of them look in game: I generated the normal maps with SSBump, with one layer at Height scale 1 and Gaussian 1 and an added, modest specular map. I typically use three layers with more differentiated heights, but stained glass should generally be on the flat side with only the lead frame sticking out (this is how most of the stained glass textures were made in the mod). What should I do to make them more like proper stained glass? More specular? Slightly different heights? Anyway, here is a different one which looks very good; unfortunately, its settings (three layers, fairly prominent contours) don't quite work out on the others:

Is it possible to put up a prefabview image for them? Otherwise, they are great -- especially the two complete buildings.

Fidcal: what I have done so far has included tiled diffuse maps, normals (after some experimentation, it turned out SSBump is awesomely easy to use), the editor image, DDS files and the material defs. I will take a look at speculars if something that needs them comes up - by the wiki, they should not be too hard. Bump maps, I suppose, are another name for normals, but feel free to correct me. I will work up a batch as I have time, test them in TDM and send you a PM when I am done. Is that all right?