Schatten

Ok, here's a draft of the new structure. If nobody complains, I'll mirror that structure on our ftp, update the sticky thread and point comp-music to it, so we can get this rolling: I have the latest beta build, so I can modify the shaders, gui and def files therein to the new mapping. I reckon the guis are currently being worked on, so we may have to adjust things once they are at a more stable state.

I like the model, but not the eye texture. It doesn't click for me, for some reason. Maybe it's because of the shape, or because the pupil is only faintly distinguished from the white. Could we try indicating some lids or skin with texture, to give the eye itself a bit rounder shape? I like the shape of the sockets, but just imagine the size of the complete eyeball - taking the curve and visible area as a clue, they'd be enormous, unless they are egg-shaped. Here's a (quickly googled, sorry about the watermark) pic of a crocodile's eye. Notice how the socket is roughly the same shape as that of our belcher:

For the record, since I'm a liberal hippie commie, I also jumped on the F=m*a bandwagon. I believe in anything you tell me!

I could live with a \bow\ folder, it's a good idea. We don't want to exchange a horridly long list of files with a horridly long list of directories.

Fixing the soundshaders is easy work, that's only a couple of minutes. As for direct linking def files, those would be a problem. How many sound files would be affected? In any case, if we want to change the folder structure it's a good idea to do that before even more sounds roll in. Edit: Depending on the implementation, I guess fixing def and gui files would be the same as soundshaders, meaning a search/replace job. Edit2: After browsing some gui and def files, search/replace is a definite option. Seems like the the file extention is sometimes omitted, but that doesn't make any difference.

As an afterthought, it might make sense to exclude the folder for metasounds from \sfx, and put it on the same hierarchy with \ambients and \sfx

As of January 2007, the earth's atmospheric CO2 concentration is about 0.0383% by volume (383 ppmv) or 0.0582% by weight. This represents about 2.996×1012 tonnes, and is estimated to be 105 ppm (37.77%) above the pre-industrial average. The initial carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of the young Earth was produced by volcanic activity; this was essential for a warm and stable climate conducive to life. Volcanic activity now releases about 130 to 230 teragrams (145 million to 255 million short tons) of carbon dioxide each year. Volcanic releases are about 1% of the amount which is released by human activities. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, the atmospheric CO2 concentration has increased by approximately 110 µL/L or about 40%, most of it released since 1945. This is from Wikipedia, so feel free to post your own numbers that debunk this. You're right about water vapour though, CO2 is only the second most-significant greenhouse gas.

I don't need to watch the video to know the impact of head-over-heels emission restrictions on the industry/economy. I'm not saying that we should OMG CUT OFF ALL EMISSIONS NOW. As I said, I have seen the arguments of both sides but - surprise - I have no option to verify them. Look, I think we can agree on that we've got a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere than any time since earth matured. Other times with massive volcanic eruptions produced also peaks, but nowhere as high as now. I wasn't at a pole and looked it up in core drills myself, so you could thwart me on that. Seeing how much of the stuff we pump into the air every day, I'm inclined to believe it. I can also see on satelite images that the forests are shrinking away, and unless some hippie photoshopped them all, I would regard this as a fact. My chemistry course and own experience have also teached me the properties of CO2, and I believe in a thing called dark reaction. I'm not a plant and can't do it myself, though. The verdict is, CO2 is toxic, and too much of the stuff in the air can't be good - so I think it might be a good idea to cut it down, for whatever reason.

My german heart yearns for order, my programmer's mind cries for modules. I really don't like the flat folder structure, because files will keep piling up in some of them. IIRC, there had been a problem with the depth of the folder structure, but this had become a non-issue, I just tested it with the footsteps. I propose the following adjustments: We add one additional folder layer to most existing folders, so that each subcategory gets it's own folder. For example: sfx\tools\lockpick sfx\tools\broadhead sfx\tools\food sfx\tools\flashbomb sfx\movement\footsteps sfx\movement\materials sfx\world\levers sfx\world\doors sfx\world\buttons sfx\game\menu sfx\game\hud etc. The benefit of this is that a mission author can easier keep track of his/her own additions, and it's a lot easier to browse a specific type of sound than to scroll through an endless file list. For sounds with a single instance that wouldn't warrant an additional subfolder, we can still create a \misc folder in each category.

Every time I see this debate coming up, I groan in pain. Why oh why had this to become a left/right issue? Politics fucked up the whole topic good, even to the point where otherwise open minded people become ignorant and stubborn. I stopped listening to polticians some time ago, I rather listen to sience. As with everything, sience has pro and contra groups on this particular topic. The best I can do is to read up on both sides and form my own opinion, because I didn't do the research myself. Some scientists say evolution didn't happen and some say it did, and I have no other choice but to look at the reasoning of both sides and think about what is more plausible. So I did, and I must say that afterwards one thing of the whole affair stood out to me: Would it be a bad thing to cut down CO2 emissions? I know that constantly shitting into my living room wouldn't be healthy for me in the long run.

If nobody has any objections, I will update the sticky guideline thread that ogg should be used in general, together with the wiki info and some general basic advices about sound format. Edit: Done so.

Of course we can only guess the total size of all sounds while they are still in production. It's however one of our goals to minimize the total size of the mod, and oggs help with that a lot. Consider that even before a public release, the files will be moved a lot - and a small size decreases the traffic and shortens download times. I'm not sure, what is your point? Are you opposed to using ogg files? Your opinion is certainly welcome!

Well, I don't have a problem with making an exception for them, since we're talking about a guideline for future additions. The loss in quality isn't very dramatic though, in fact, I didn't notice any. Btw, if you didn't already, get the fish. Still does the best encoding, imo.

comp-music, I'm not sure if I understood that correctly - are you thinking of the total size of all sounds? Anyways, I did some testing in test_footsteps and couldn't tell any difference between ogg and wav. I've converted all footsteps to ogg, changed the shader and I couldn't find any impact on performance, total loading time or access speed. I stress tested with mashing the forward button, which currently causes our Thief to perform a splendid tap-dance. NH, maybe it's because of the encoder you used, or the effect only becomes appearant in a detail heavy environment?

I'm going to do some testing with the footstep sounds - Ishtvan, could you explain to me where I have to set the "snd_" prefix for pre-caching? Key-Value isn't telling me much atm...

That's an absolutely sweet shot, ascottk!

Hmm, so the problem is the access time. If oggs lag, that's a valid reason to use wav files for time critical, short sounds. Question: If I convert any given wav to an ogg, and don't rename it save the file expansion, would I have to change anything in the editor? If not, the problem wouldn't be that big, since we could easily swap filetypes for any sound.

Bump! I'd like to discuss this, because we need to be clear about it, if we want to make a technical guideline for file formats. If we're going to keep wavs for small files, we should at least be clear about the approximate filesize of sounds that use wav instead of ogg. Ok, so in my opinion, we should stick with ogg. My reasoning is that both formats are streamed by the engine before they are processed (EAX), and the performance gain doesn't warrant the increasing mod size - I'm not an expert on OpenAL, but I can't really see it. Gildoran, if I'm terribly wrong, please correct me.

Very good, excellent quality overall. I especially like how close the sound of the breaking arrows is to the original games. I'm not too sure about the noisemaker and moss sounds, though: The noisemaker sounds are a bit too synthetic for my taste - maybe try something a bit more mechanical, think clockwork, wind-up stuff. The moss sounds are probably too subtle to be percieved in the game - getting this right might be a bit tricky, what kind of sound would a moss ball make on impact? A wet "splotch" maybe? The sound volume of the wav files is not the same as the volume the AI will "hear" it. I think it would be OK to make the sound louder for gameplay reasons. The other sounds are top-notch though. Ar-3 might be problematic because of the reverb, and I can't quite place A_s6... a magic projectile? Good work!

I know what you mean. I got hit by a car in early January, got knocked out and woke up in the emergency station of a hospital. I got away extremely lucky, just a mild head trauma, some scratches and a minor fracture in my shoulder, I was even able to leave after 3 days. Although I don't remember anything of the actual accident, I can remember distinctly thinking at one point "Why the heck am I dreaming? Just a moment ago I was walking home from work!" (which was what woke me up). The whole event, and especially that memory, made me strangely calm and enthusiastic. It felt a bit like a small rebirth.

I don't want to belittle sledge's effort on this mission, but Inverted Manse just wasn't my cup of tea, in neither playstyle offered. The architecture is gorgeous and the blue room trickery impressive, the overall DromEd handywork very good as well - but I haven't had much fun playing it. Somehow the gameplay didn't click. I had the same problem with other high-rated missions, like Calandra's Legacy or Deceptive Perceptions. The upside is that the wealth of FMs offers something for every taste - Into The Maelstrom, Equilibrium, Saints and Thieves and Rodamill were right up my alley. Oh, one little gem (if you like puzzles) is Temple of Tides by Nameless Voice, were he shows off what his scripts can do. Just be sure to get the patches or a fixed version and don't look at the spoiler thread on the forums.

Yeah, time for the yearly birthday marathon again. Doesn't stop me from wishing NH well, though. Happy Birthday, mate.

Thanks guys! I'm approaching 30, and I feel like it, too. Scientists should hurry up and invent easily applyable spare-spines already. My back is killing me right now.

I've learned black, red and gold represent gunpowder, blood and fire respectively. Fuck me if I know why the hell we would choose that, though.

Huh, interesting, I've never seen 24Bit PCM wavs. I can't even open them in audacity, although I can play them in winamp and convert them to oggs just fine - I guess Doom 3 should be able to handle them though. I like what I'm hearing, just one question: Are some of them supposed to loop? A few have a fade in, and some have a very nasty pop when looping (7 for example, left channel). Not sure about the bell, but very nice synth work elsewise!