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Sotha

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Everything posted by Sotha

  1. Thank you for your interest, but the skybox is still incomplete and -since I'm a bit of a perfectionist- I want to get it finished first. I've been building this skybox specifically for a mission I am currently envisioning. (Envisioning, not building.) I suppose the way I will proceed is that I'll finish the skybox and use it in the mission. I need it to be original for the mission. And after that I'll happily provide it for anyone to use. Estimated time for the above conditions to be met is 1-4 months. You could easily prepare anykind of special sky in a few days, as this thread points out. The information required to make one is cluttered in all of the following links: Theory: http://www.modwiki.net/wiki/Cube_maps http://modetwo.net/d...hp?title=Skybox Practice: For creating the scenery: http://www.planetsid...ent/view/16/28/ The skybox texture creation guide: http://www.doom3worl...opic.php?t=3571 And then you need to make in DR a room with the sky texture, place an info_portalsky there and place miniature buildings and objects at a position sligthly lower that the info_portalsky. Hey, would it be beneficial if I wrote a wiki guide on skybox creation? Would someone be interested if I tell exactly how to make this kind of box using terragen scenery?
  2. I am sure you will be pleased the way I improved it. I got some really good feedback on that one...
  3. Okay, I think that's it. I couldn't get the scaled models lighting to work, so I created my own toy buildings with normal brushes. They light up in moonlight quite nicely. Here is my artistic view, how the City might look from the outskirts. I'm planning to add later some more distant buildings on the hilltops right and maybe a keep on the left. Conclusion: it doesen't take very long to create a decent custom skybox. Plus, it was quite fun. I also have a sunset and crescent moon properly aligned.
  4. Leaves plenty of time for other activities. Mapping, gaming, doing the dishes, vacuuming...
  5. @stumpy: Worked! Turning the info_portalsky rotates the whole sky, not the compass. So the compass points to the direction it used to but the sky is rotated. By turning the sky I've got now the sunset in the west as it should be. @Fidcal: I've resolved the problem with a one click now. Changing the sky is a more tedious task. Is there any other grounds for doing it the hard way than consistency? Why is this consistency required? I'm slowly starting to understand how cool the skyportal system actually is. At first I was planning to learn some graphic editing and add the city to the skytexture by painting it. But then I remembered reading a wiki-article on model size scaling. I decided to put tiny toy building models in the info_portalsky -room. It ended looking like this: With scope: Looks really nice. Far better what I could probably do with graphics editing. I instantly started thinking about candlelight torches in the distance. With correct lighting the city would look really living place, only a few kilometers away. Now problem is visible in those images above. There is a light (with noshadows 1) in front of the church (scaled model) and the city wall (ordinary brush). The ordinary brush lights up as it should, but the shrinked are not lit by the light. You can see this most easily with the banner on the city wall, which is dark even the wall is bright. Any ideas why this occurs? Is this because the shrinking does something to the model? Can I get it to work properly somehow?
  6. That's what everyone keeps telling me, including my wife... Nope. I'm just playing around and doing everything-else-except-what-I-should-be-doing. .. But no maps for a while.
  7. Success! Thanks for advice. The forcehighquality parameter improved the textures nicely. Also I found out that terragen had its zoom parameter higher than 1.0. After changing it back to 1 and rerendering everything, I got the skybox working nicely.. Now the final problem is... The compass! Sunset to the north? Can I change the compass north-point by some spawnarg or do I have to change the skytextures accordingly? And then I only need the artistic ability to add some details to the skybox: a city in the distance. Well, not a city, but maybe a clocktower roof and a few rooftops sticking from behind the hills.
  8. Haha. Here is the entertainment post of today: my pitiful attempt to make a sky-cube-map-whatever-thingy. Method: *Took Terragen and made a nightly plains with some hills in the edges. It looked decent. *Rendered the images. I -of course- used the maximum allowed rendering quality. I also used maximum allowed square image size. This is 960*960: not very far from 1024*1024. Might be okay, I thought. *I placed the terragen camera in a good spot. Roughly 2m above the ground. I turned the camera in 90 degrees and rendered the scenes. I paid special attention to pitch and bank so that they were zero at all times. Well, except the up and down images. Since the camera wasn't moved in between renderings and only the angle parameter was changed, the images should interlock just okay. *The images looked okay in the GIMP when I converted them into TGA-files with correct names. I checked that the images are correctly named according to the post #7 in this thread. Looked fine. *Then I created the material file and tested the sky-thing in game. It looked like this: This is probably the second most horrible thing I've ever created. The seams do not match. There are some grainy artifacts in the sky. Sheer awfulness. Here is how the image looks in GIMP Even I changed it to png for the imagehosting it is still not as bad as... that... that.. that horror in the sky ingame. Note that this image is in 1024*1024, because at first I thought that maybe the game uses some inefficient scaling to get the image from 960 to 1024. But it didn't affect anything. Any idea what I did wrong?
  9. With the free version you cannot render 1024*1024 images making this rather useless. It renders pretty views, though.
  10. Yes, I tinkered a bit with the prefab. I noticed the moon texture, but I never found out how to change the night stars etc. I mean the texture itself, which is pulled over the viewer. Basically I wanted to see if it would be easy to create a skybox like this But with the star night sky, moon, green fields, a lake perhaps and finally few towers in the City far in the distance. In principle, if I build this area with dark radiant, make some landscape features with patches, the towers in the distance and use the existing star sky prefab without the clouds and then use the envshot command, I might get something useable. Or awful. I dunno. Maybe I try it later.
  11. I've noticed that the default TDM prefab skybox selection is quite limited. I checked the wiki and there was simple instruction on skybox addition but no information how to create one. Is there a tutorial on skybox creation somewhere? How tedious a task creating one is? Does it require significant artistic skill?
  12. I would love to hear how exactly you did that. I tested myself, but I couldn't get outside no matter how hard I tried. Also I checked in DR that the area is properly playerclipped. I saw no problems. First I thought that the player start is slightly touching the playerclip, but that is not the case. I have no idea how that was possible.
  13. At any rate, I'm really happy that so many of you have enjoyed the mission!
  14. From "The Things that could me improved" -thread: In reaction to this, I've added a poll so people can rate this mission. If you've played this mission already, please take a moment to fill the rating. I'd be nice if the results would help new players to decide whether to play this mission or not.
  15. Many thanks, Fidcal, for your trouble. I've added the mirror links to the main post. Now I get to simply lean back and see how the map is received by the community. Enjoy, everyone! I'm also itching to see other entries for the contest.
  16. Are you sure you clicked the right place? It works for me, I tested the download.
  17. Okay it is now released. If someone would put it in ttlg as well I'd be grateful.
  18. The Glenham Tower is a small/medium sized map in which aspiring thief Thomas Porter sets out retrieve an old book from a derelict tower. Mission was created by me, Sotha and I wish to thank Melan, Fidcal and Bikerdude for playtesting. After I busted Lark Butternose out of the Old Town Jail (please see mission: The Beleaguered Fence) I hid and waited for Lark to regain consciousness. When he learned how he got out he was quite happy to offer me a significant portion of his share to our loot. After that our business was concluded and we went our separate ways. I heard Captain Godfrey Knighton was not at all pleased with the events at the Jail and was still looking for the people who robbed him blind. I decided to disappear and move north to a town called Braeden until things calm down in The City. After looking for work via the usual channels, I was approached by a bookstore owner named Victor De Grenefeld. He offered me a simple and entirely legal task of retrieving a rare old book from a derelict tower. The Glenham Tower was originally built by a wealthy family to provide a safe and secluded place to reside in the misty Glenham Moor. The family was disgraced by some kind of scandal and the Tower was later bought by a hermit scholar named Lord Morley who moved in with a single servant. Lord Morley, I learned, was doing some kind of research for the Builders. Some years ago the inhabitants of the tower simply stopped visiting Braeden anymore to buy supplies and food. The tower was found abandoned and sealed. The original residents, in fear of robbers, had installed an indestructible portcullis which was now closed and there was no way to enter the tower. Many have tried to force their way inside, but the portcullis is impenetrable. The windows are also made of this material. De Grenefeld told me that an skillful acrobat like me could easily climb the exterior of the tower to the top and gain entrance that way. He would pay a nice sum for a rare old book called 'De Vermis Mysteriis,' which he knows is somewhere inside the tower. I could keep all the other goods I find. The most dangerous thing would be the Tower itself: De Grenefeld told me that the tower is old and structurally unsafe, but I shouldn't worry if I'm careful enough to watch my step. The task sounded simple enough and the pay is extremely good so I agreed to De Grenefeld's offer. I need to buy some rope arrows and travel to the Glenham Moor. It is nice to do something legal for a change. LINKs: Use the ingame downloader to get it. WARNING! There are VISIBLE spoilers in this thread. I do not recommend reading any further until you've played the mission.
  19. -Thanks for the guide. Looks simple enough. I'll put my map in this evening. I thought also that verticality is more like a visual thing. Good decision, in my humble opinion.
  20. Sotha

    The Creeps

    [idiot disclaimer: ATTENTION! This is a JOKE and a free FM mission plot for someone!] *Sneak in their house and find out what they are hiding. *Collect 1500 worth of loot while your at it. *You'll be in trouble if they find you out: no blackjackings, do not raise an alarm. [/idiot disclaimer: ATTENTION! This is a JOKE and a free FM mission plot for someone!] But seriously: You seem to make this into a big problem. If it really bugs you so much, next time you see them go have a chat. Talk about the weather and such. Then make the move: subtly approach the topic you want to find out and try to learn something about their current situation. People usually love to talk about themselves and this kind of information picking is relatively easy. Just don't ask too direct questions, but maintain a casual but steady steering of the conversation to the direction you want. You'll probably not get direct answer to whether they are paedofiles or not, but obvious things may come up, for example why a kid at so old age. You do not have to get too friendly so do not invite them to your home. According to your CPU upgrade caper thread you should be accustomed to subterfuge so I sure it is easy to pull off. You could even prepare for the interrogation by thinking conversation topics and the general flow beforehand. OR you could just mind your own business and try to relax.
  21. Ok. The Glenham Tower is now finished and officially in release status. Now I only need "FM Contest Map Releasing for Dummies" -kind of instructions. What kind of poll? What questions exactly? What was the final conclusion with the verticality score? Can I vote my own work? I've no TTLG login, so I need help there. Once these minor issues are clear, it is releasing time. Same thing here, essentially...
  22. Font issue: I'd say its no point in substituting anything. There is a large collection of fonts for the mapper to select the ones he wants to use in his readable. Many of them are really easy to read. There aren't many difficult-to-read fonts there. The font selection builds immersion as the mapper can give an indication of the 'personality' of the one writing the scroll. If the mapper wants to make a hastily scribbled note written by an unstable lunatic, it is good to have an 'unstable' font. Substituting that to clear crisp easy-to-read font would remove mappers possibility to portray the lunatic via this handwriting. It is an art-thing really... Please do not decrease our currently available options. Entirely different thing is the scenario where mapper writes many long readables with an 'unstable' font. At that case the mapper should accept that the player probably does not want to bother reading it fully. The mapper can easily select typewriterish looking clear fonts for everything but it breaks the immersion in my opinion.
  23. Agreed! I vote that there is a "Greebo of the year" -prize, which goes automatically to the hero doing most of the coding.. I don't mind if there was a map of the year -contest around new year, but I think these FM building contests are more fruitful for the community: lots of new maps and lively community. In the end, without a steady flow of new maps, the fruits of the coders would go to waste since there was nothing to play. The coders DO play the mod, do they?
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