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plasticman

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Everything posted by plasticman

  1. Possible usage: see near the middle in Rich's Post over in the slightly derailed "Light Baking" thread.
  2. plasticman

    Foldit

    With Speedstep or Cool'n'Quiet at hand it is something I may consider only when this winter gets really cold...
  3. Here's what will be cutting edge tomorrow: Reminds me to these holographic comm-devices from deus ex... But why I really jumped in: I am playing with that stereoscopic photography thing for some years now, without ever taking it to a new level though. When working with a single camera there's always the limitation that your scene should not be moving too much. This means: avoid leaves, water, streets, people and anything else that could make an interesting subject. But behold -- there is SDM! While the site looks like crap, SDM (stereo data maker) gives you the propably most inexpensive way to shoot highly synchronous stereoscopic photographs! It is based on CHDK (Canon Hack Development Kit) which is a non permanent firmware hack for compact class canon cameras (Powershot models). You can get older ones cheap on ebay. The idea is to get two of the same model, solder yourself a remote switch (battery, switch, cable, 2 x mini usb), assemble both cams on a frame (like this) and use the SDM-Firmware to operate them via the switch and synchronise them as close as possible beforehand. You can get high quality pictures this way, CHDK enables RAW-support on those small cameras. I like to do this one day, maybe next year (when I finished my exams...). Where stereoscopic photography really rocks IMO is when capturing fast movement, especially falling things or water from a fountain -- things that are usually too fast for the eye, presented in a way as if someone pressed the stop button for the world and allows you to examine them from a close perspective. A little bit like in those Star Trek holo-decks...
  4. Yes. A material definition and one or two pictures. The post I wrote while you wrote yours: Unlikely. I'm not a good writer when it comes to writing in English... ...takes me always years to finish a sentence. Let alone the ground work: I don't think I got the stage where I master the technique well enaugh to teach it -- I would have to redo it in a new map to provide fancy screenshots. Something like this usually involves encountering unforeseen problems and invent a way to get rid of them, while -- did I actually mention this? -- I am still working on container sounds and really like to focus on it (in my spare time) till I call it finished. But I can have a peek in my doom folder to help you. My custom ambient light consists of two parts: 1. A hand drawn picture: base/lights/ambientk1.tga 2. A material: base/materials/kesambient.mtr These two are sufficient to access the light texture in Radiant's light inspector. Here's kesambient.mtr -- Just figured my shader is horribly wrong, posting a snippet from strombine_lights.mtr instead: lights/aa_3_sky1 { lightFalloffImage makeIntensity( gfx/lights/3_sky1_z.tga ) { forceHighQuality map gfx/lights/3_sky1_xy.tga red Parm0 * 2 green Parm1 * 2 blue Parm2 * 2 zeroClamp } } The guy uses two textures: one to control the light falloff along the z-axis and a "regular" one for x and y. Later he rotates the lights in the map just to confuse everyone. So the "lightFalloffImage" and "map" keywords point to the .tga-files in the lights-folder. I have no idea what all the other fancy words do, but I think that's all that is involved.
  5. As far as I know we don't have a trigger at the end of the move. Correct me if there are more options than snd_open, snd_close and snd_move, because that's the scheme I'm currently working in. You are right, the models in game look like there should be no opening sound. I also checked on some containers in real life, most of them are rather quiet. But would that be appropriate in the mod? -- I don't think so. These containers are a vital part of the thief-like gameplay, people spend time on picking the lock or searching for a key and should be rewarded with a cool sound when they finally open it. The "drawer" sound: it will get toned down if I decide to keep it at all. Thanks for your input!
  6. I 've seen that too but thought it's a bug not a feature. Still not sure about it. I figured when I look in the opposite direction of my skyportal camara (propably when the camera sees me through a visportal although it is in a void-separated part of the map) the sky occasionally vanishes and just turns grey. Didn't want to investigate further though.
  7. No? -- I haven't seen any lubricant in the mod ... Think of it as a placeholder for any move sounds. I hope the prefabs will eventually default to a very subtle non sqeeky move sound.
  8. I would like to raise the population in sfx/world/containers. While I am beginning to get used to it, I still think it is confusing to hear the footlockers open with the same sound like the doors. Can be mistaken for a guard entering the door you just closed behind you. (Yes, this made me jump a few times.) I spent a few days with recording, post processing and managed to get things working in game. Here is a sample of my WIP: snd_containers.pk4 (should install like any FM, links to uploaded.to) Please note this is not meant to be final. I am not happy with the timing yet and overall there will be more fitting sounds for the wooden chest. My overambitious plan is to provide six soundshaders for each chest in prefabs/containers: - one for snd_open - one for snd_close - four for snd_move: a. a very moderate non squeeky one, short so it fits a fast moving lid (< 1s) b. a moderate one, non squeeky, slow moving lid (> 1s) c. like a. but squeeky d. like b. but squeeky To give it some variety I am aiming for 8 samples per shader (any reasons to have more or less?). This would be four times (footlocker, wooden chest, old wooden chest, metal chest), so I will have 24 different sets a 8 samples. Maybe I skip some movement sounds, the old chest should always be squeeky. Please let me know if I am on the right track here. I am open for any suggestions. A few questions that occured to me so far: What about the "description"? At the moment I cannot see descriptions in DR while lines like "Made by XY" are not that descriptive anyways. Can I has something like ye_olde_footlocker_open { description "snd_open for ye olde footlocker. Don't ever use as a door sound or your map will break." no_dups minDistance 0 maxDistance 24 volume -4 sound/sfx/world/containers/ye_olde_01.ogg [...] } ...? With the description visible in DR? Needless to say this is not essential. Where can I learn more about keywords in soundshaders in general? How do I find out which sound events are supported by an entity? I read about snd_move here in the forum, but I can not see it in the inherited properties. Comments welcome.
  9. Or try terragen classic. IIRC you can take six seamless pictures with a camera fov of 90° and typing the appropriate angles somewhere... Tuts are on D3W: here and there.
  10. Yes. If you scroll down in the thread Rich mentioned above you can see it done properly. Looks like Lunaran used some 2d light projection in Photoshop while working from screenshots he took in the editor. My own foolish attempt back when I fiddled with DoomEd had this light texture as a result: ...as you can see it is a crappy hand painting in deed. The grey area is where my room is, the black areas just mean the light radius is way bigger than my room. Guess I didn't know how to resize a light (no dragging in DoomEd). For some reason it is mirrored and upside down. The light spot is where in the scene the moon shines in through a window. Here it is in game: There are only two light entities, the ambient and a slightly blue parallel light shining through the window. While I did this really sloppy, it still looks quite decent IMO. This is why I always raise a hand for this method. It doesn't have to be perfect and still can result in something nice. The downside is of course that you fill a light volume (3d) with flat texture (2d). There is a falloff alongside the z-axis, that's all. Works well for bright beams shining in a dark, empty room -- but beware of a table that is supposed to have a shadow beneath it, but none above itself. I haven't tried anything like this, but a possible solution that came to my mind was ambient light slicing: multiple layers of ambient light volumes stacked on each other. Maybe one day there will even be a way to automatically have a light map calculated, sliced up and converted into light shaders... [/mad_scientist_voice] ...guess it's sleeping time for me.
  11. I think there is no baked lighting in Strombine. I encourage everyone to have a look at the custom ambient light shaders that are used there (even if you don't have Q4). When I did I tried to paint some myself immediately beause it looked so easy... In fact it is way easier than that baking stuff. No modelling app needed, just your favourite paint prog and a text editor. And it works with the lightgem. Ouch!
  12. I love your work and did not mean to offend you. Sorry. On Topic: I think the idea is a little strange. Most people wouldn't want their doors to operate only one way. Would be something for rare occasions where extra security is needed. However. Wouldn't it be easier to make the door unpickable and place the key right where the lockbox is now?
  13. Yes. Constantine's Sword had no effect on the lightgem -- I forgot about this.
  14. ...the spelling, mostly. (just kidding) I wonder what it is you are trying to achieve with a setup like this. What's wrong with a normal locked door?
  15. What a nice example for a failing security policy.
  16. Think about it. There may be loot. Plenty. Interested?
  17. No. I meant most dogs are just too monstrous so there is not enaugh space for them in a comparatevely small universe like the TDM one. This is not true for Chihuahuas of course. edit: replying to Diego, but I'm too slow.
  18. Just like to add my opinion about the dog topic from pages earlier. I wouldn't like to see any kind of dog in TDM. Even the distant barking sound that's already in there distracted me. Cats would be fine (if done well) but dogs just don't fit in the universe. This is due to my personal taste without any reasoning behind it. I JUST DON'T LIKE DOGS. Thank you. Apart from that there always occurs a problem when adding animals people know well from real life. The better you know the behavior and kind of the animal's movements the more you will notice the lack of it in game. I don't play many games these days but as far as I remember most animals were not at all convincing. Think of pigeons in DE:IW. They looked more like a battery driven toy. Someone already posted the cat from TDS. You can not get much farther from a real cat's behavior than this. Horses in Oblivion just are robotic. As a conclusion it would be more feasable to add animals that are not so common to most poeople, rare exotic animals or fantastic creatures. If you don't know an animal you don't know what to expect from it (someone already said that: Burricks worked fine because of this). Just think of the possibilities. A sloth is easy to animate. One more thing to suggest for the dog: do a dog bot instead. I lost track of the forum a little but it seems there is a lack of cool steam beasts atm, plus any attempt to animate it and supply an appropriate AI will likely result in something that is perceived by the player as something machine-like anyhow for the reasons stated. I know nothing about animating but I think a natural fluent animation is harder to do than choppy robot-like movements. Found a video on tube with a . Maybe something like this in a steam punk disguise...
  19. Ha, since I can post anything here... Most of you already know about the Boston Dynamics Big Dog and have seen . Now look at this " ".
  20. Thanks, here's the output: I wonder what's wrong. As far as I remember I didn't change anything with the vanilla perl setup except the addtional package mentioned before. It is a 32-bit Ubuntu 9.10 upgraded to 10.4 edit: added a package called libconfig-tiny-perl. Updater seems to work now but I'll have to wait for the DL to finish... edit2: seems to run fine now, briefly checked the training mission. The Menu says TDM 1.02. So I think the problem really was that the updater depends on something from the aforementioned package which seems to be not included in a vanilla Ubuntu install.
  21. Update continues to fail for me... My System is Ubuntu 10.4. I tried several updaters linked via the front page and the forums, including the perl-script. I installed the libarchive-zip-perl package. Here is what tdm_update.linux (from April, 30th 2010) says: Maybe it is worth mentioning the files on my hardrive are still TDM 1.00 and I moved them temporary on a ntfs-drive while building a new machine. Any ideas?
  22. plasticman

    Piracy

    What Fidcal says... ...I could hardly agree more. Yup, that's how it works nowadays. The making of games, films, scientific research etc. becomes more and more tied to making money (as a precondition). I was trying to make a point that there have been (and hopefully will be) eras when things were (and will be) different. Oh, and if it wasn't for making money, Thief III would have been cool and done by LGS. Good thing is, noone can be forced to read all that stuff... ...so there is really no danger. It's not even a big chance for the authors. I have been thinking about this when all the web-2.0-hype started some years ago. Artists are free to publish their work through new channels circumventing traditional publishers who always check first if the work has a chance to meet the making-money-condition. It looks like you can trick that condition at first glance, but in the end it comes back through the backdoor, ex negativo. Artists still need to earn money elsewhere, leaving only spare time for their art. And they don't have a big budget to compete with culture industry, so it's unlikely they hit a wider audience.
  23. plasticman

    Piracy

    For a possession which is not diminished by being shared with others, if it is possessed and not shared, is not yet possessed as it ought to be possessed. (Augustine -- On Christian Doctrine, Chapter One) The concept of intellectual property is quite a young concept in the history of mankind. To get the full picture it helps to shift the focus from "downloading stuff" to the other field where it applies: patents. Unfortunately the present age suffers from laws that artificially keep knowledge away from people or at least forbids them to put it to use (as long as it can be turned into money). To me it is an entertaining idea to imagine an Archimedes argueing with one of his contemporaries "Hey! How the Zeus dare you stealing my idea?!" or Homer beeing angry about someone reciting the Odyssey without paying a fee. Intellectual property is one of the most absurd implications of the prevailing economic system. You do right to rack your brain over it.
  24. Thanks for saving the day. I was able to build this in a 32bit Ubuntu-VM, transfer the packages to my "real" system and FINALLY got rid of DR 1.1.0! Now I can select multiple brushes even with other brushes behind them without having to reboot to windows. Isn't life beautiful again?
  25. Nice to see things constantly progressing... As for the card drawing sound: may be an option to drop it? I don't think you'd really hear it in RL except you get really close.
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