The Watcher

While fiddling about making normal maps for materials I ran into the issue where the Lightwave normal map baker plugin generated normal maps with inverted y normal components. Starting up Doom 3 to use renderbump[flat] whenever I want to regenerate a normal map is a pain, so I decided to just write something to fix the files for me (along with writing other tools to help with various things I need regarding normal map manipulation). So, on my thief files page you'll find archives containing a windows binary, a linux binary (should work on any remotely modern distro), and the source for it all if you want to build it yourself or gawk at my code. The idea is that you just run the program on a targa file with inverted y normal components and it'll correct them, it will also check whether the image origin is at the top left, and if it is it'll vertically flip the image so that the resulting TGA has its origin in the bottom left. Works for me, may or may not be useful for you *shrug*

For indexed gif or pcx textures used on objects and terrain, correct. However, Dark will support .tga object textures, in which case it uses the alpha channel for transparency information. Thanks guys, I've got a handle on what's needed now.

This is a quite exceptionally noob question, but I've exhausted 30 minutes or more of googling and haven't found a straight answer for it yet. I'm fiddling with making an object (actually, converting my ornate streetlamp), part of which involves a piece of ornate ironwork (you can see it on this image). In Thief2 I've done it using the alpha channel in a .tga to make the ironwork opaque and the spaces inbetween transparent, will the same technique work with textures applied to objects in TDM?

Sounds good! Given I have lightwave on my side, too, I suspect this might be quite interesting...

Heh, I'd use analogies involving camels and backs, but it'd have the wrong connotations Well, as long as they're documented somehow, and programatically fixable I'd be fine - I'm a coder in Real Life, among far too many other things, so I'd be okay with writing a script to wrangle it, provided I know what I'm wrangling.. Well, I have it, now I just need to learn it Ooh, shiny. Does it behave in a similar way to T2, or?

This may or may not be the best place for this, I went back and forth about the most appropriate forum, please move it if it's in the wrong place. Anyway, so, I have been Thinking (always a dangerous thing) after sparhawk's comment over on the release thread at TTLG and the bottom section on the Saint Lucia wiki page, and decided, what the hell... I've been considering trying to fiddle with TDM related stuff for a while, and I'm at a point in Shadowed Mayfield where I'm not only stretching dromed's abilities, I'm having to resort to custom object trickery and arcane incantations just to stop it falling over. It's frustrating and occasionally disheartening to have to reign in my intentions because of the constraints of an 8 year old engine, and I'm wondering how much else will have to go to make it work. I'd be interested in seeing if I could pull off remaking the geometry I currently have using dark mod's facilites, and do the things I've had to leave out because of Dromed throwing a hissyfit when I push it too hard. I know for certain that Tears of St. Lucia will not include all the assets I'd need to do this, and I also know that, even with the assets removed from the ToSL release, I'd need to make more, but I'm curious about how much difference there really is - how substantial a portion of omitted assest are there - and whether it is actually really worth me making any serious effort to remake Shadowed Mayfield using TDM. I would be frankly quite spectacularly displeased to invest significant quantities of time and effort in making something, only to find that it breaks horribly when TDM is finally released - is this, realistically, not likely to be the case? On connected matters, at present I've built several dozen custom objects and textures for Shadowed Mayfield, excluding ones that are needed just to support my engine-stretching. You can see many of the custom objects in my object development gallery and in my Shadowed Mayfield gallery and as you might be able to tell, I have some experience using Lightwave (although, admittedly, much of my practice has been with other subject matter...) If I did end up remaking Shadowed Mayfield in TDM, I'd need to make higher quality versions of most of the objects, I suspect. Would the team be interested in the objects, textures and so on I'd need to make?