ungoliant
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Posts posted by ungoliant
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alright so I did some more stuff. scale(_white, 0.1, 0.1, 0.1, 0.1) = error. leaving out alpha or changing alpha to anything else, still error. create 256x256 white tga, scale that instead. works. yields same result as map _white rgb 0.1. use white.tga with rgb keyword, same results as _white.
I dunno, maybe using _white, or any flat color for spec map just yields garbage looking stuff, and theres nothing you can do about it?
but that just can't be right, because when the interaction shader is turned to default and it assigns an arbitrary uniform spec value, it looks fine.... i dunno, i dont get it.
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@ungoliant, can you upload the pk4 where you've made the above shots here for comparision?
its big. and its being overhauled into project form atm. and its supersquirrelsecretsortakinda. i think an easier route is to just make a room with a white light and a decal with texture: textures/darkmod/metal/grate/fence_iron_01. It looks worst when you are about the distance shown from the screenshot from a position tangent to the center of the decal. If you get up close and personal with the texture, it looks better, but not great. If you change the viewing angle, it starts to look a lot better as the decal gets closer to just being a thin line.
the rgb theory makes sense, and it doesn't make sense. how could it obtain a proper value when it makes the check for a specmap, but screw up when trying to display it?
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As mentioned, above 0.001 it starts mapping between specular power values.
0.002 maps to a very low powervalue. Low power values mean very broad specular highlights.
In the case of using _white as the specularmap this means you get a very broad and strong specular.
Note : Specular Power != Specular Strength/Intensity
It seems that JC Denton has disabled the actual use of the specular multiplier further down in the shader, which would normally cause the final specular to be toned down almost to invisible values when rgb 0.002 is used.
That could be re-enabled but may have impacts on other materials that have been authored since JCDenton introduced this shader.
well now you've officially lost me, my knowledge of specular contains nothing about power vs intensity. i guess i'll do some reading.
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if it simply uses the existing specular map value, then how does the arbitrary value it decides on look less crazy than a user-defined value of .002?
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yeah with that code snippet, I'm going to go ahead and assume you are correct on the rounding issue. So now issue is what the heck is this thing doing when "there's a specular map for this material"? Most of it looks like gobbledegook to me.
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The shader assumes that if the specular-multiplier ( your rgb 0.1 drives this ) value is below 0.1 ( floating point rounding error is probably causing your 0.11111etc value here ), that there is no specular-map at all and it then uses an artificial specular value instead, and not what you were actually supplying as your specular ( _white ). Afaik JCDenton introduced this so that everything has some specular to it.
It could be a rounding issue, but if that is the case, the problems start at a much lower value. I'm getting washed out issues starting at 0.001111, not 0.111111. after all the default value supplied is 0.1. So the acceptable tolerance on precision here is at least at the 1000's decimal place, and i have also seen it turn the snowblind effect on/off at .00111112 vs .00111111. My guess is that rounding is not an issue here.
And yes i'm going to try the scale thing, but i'm not very hopeful on it. I think serpentine replied about the randomness of using that technique a couple years back
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I guess with *washed out* you are referring to the fences (I think the wooden texture looks better with enhanced interaction)?
The only offender in the shot is the metal fencing. Things like the wood panels on the staircase have their own dedicated specular image, in this case, textures/darkmod/wood/boards/polished_shiny_large_red_s is the specmap used.
some unlucky materials like the iron fencing do not have such images, and used a scaled version of the _white image produced by d3. these ones seem to have the problems with the enhanced interaction shader.
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What is the exact problem again ?
What does "full blast" mean in regards to specularity ?
The shader program used for enhanced stuff is ambientEnvironment.vfp (unless I misunderstand you)!
I actually don't know in which cases the interaction.vfp files are used, so maybe you could repeat what you are actually trying to achieve?
OK, problem being specular totally washes out the entire diffuse when viewed from a head-on angle at a moderate distance (15m-ish?) or more.
With interaction shader set to enhanced:
with interaction shader set to default:
so "full blast" here basically means it doesn't even look like specular, the stage just completely washes out the diffuse with blinding white.
So a typical spec stage in a material that has no dedicated specular image looks like this:
blend specularmap map _white rgb 0.1
playing with the values, I've discovered that anything below "rgb 0.001111111111111" yields the same result as switching interaction shader to default. It's not quite off, but it looks much more reasonable. However, if you go above this number, even 0.001111112, you get the snowblind effect pictured above. There is no middle ground here.
You could just create a 8x8 image with the shade of your choice
I don't think serps advice here works, as i suspect using any flat image of some monochrome color yields the same result, but with a different rgb value as the threshold. its either snowblind or muted completely. using a black spec stage looks the same as turning interaction shader to default with any rgb value (actually i haven't tested default setting with something like rgb 1 or rgb 0.9 yet).
Soooo, i guess the point is, it would be reaaaally nice to have a middle ground between off and snowblind when using textures that don't have a dedicated specular image. they are few and far between, but they are out there.
also, i had assumed that the ambient rendering option used ambientEnvironment.vfp, and the interaction shader uses interaction.vfp, but thats a guess, really.
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so, back to work.
Referencing the specular stuff from page 3-4 of this thread, i went back and played with the specular values when using the enhanced interaction shader on materials that use the _white map for their spec. I still haven't found the cause, since i can't read ARB very well, but playing with the values yields a conclusive number.
The specular goes full blast when using values "map _white" and any value above "rgb 0.0011111111111" repeating forever. any value under this threshold and the specular yields the same visual results as if the interaction shader was set to default.
If Obsttorte is having any luck working through ARB i might throw this issue his way and see if he can pinpoint it. Its very likely located somewhere in interaction.vfp, interaction_102.vfp, or interaction_direct.vfp, depending on which of these files is being utilized by the enhanced interaction shader.
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It seems like the new thief team couldn't come up with many new ideas of their own, so they just copied everything over from other games.
This is exactly what I wanted them to do, for the most part. Problem is, I was hoping all the source material came from Thief games. Few and far between on that, though.
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trying to get back into the game. looks like startmap wiki page hasn't been updated in a long time, so i figure i'll just ask here. It seems if i want a project based editing workspace, I can now just dump all required files into darkmod/fms/mymission folder, TDM will install and run mission this way, then when done editing, zip up the necessary stuff as is to pk4 for distribution? Also doomconfig.cfg no longer required? Anything else new or interesting about editing setups i'm missing since 2.0?
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When you get spotted it blares Sherlock Holmes dubstep. (I'm not kidding)
So glad I read this. I don't think I can play this game now. Like, ever. I could put up with a lot of nonsense and trudge through it just to see how bad they mangled everything, but I have a zero-tolerance policy on this sort of thing after I dealt with it in Far Cry 3. It just ruins... everything.
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careful with those exterior floodlights, i've experimented with them as well, and found big performance drops from shadowcasting and multiple lightsources falling on the things that are inside the house on the other side of the wall. noshadowing those floodlights isn't much of an option if the inside is a playable area.
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Just drudgery, mindlessly following the big red arrow.
First it was "who has time to read" when you can see the movie. now its the big red arrow. I guess its a hallmark of the age of information, where all marks of "progress" relate to how quickly information and experiences can be processed, and the sheer volume of that content / data that you can fit in and store in as few brain cells / bytes as possible. more content that takes less time to process or experience is always better. right?
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I think the choke arrows appear only in the digital download Master Thief edition.... as part of the Booster Pack.
i will trade you choke arrows, focus, and all swoop functionality for the digital preorder ass rape edition in return for the bank mission and freejumping in the vanilla version. 3 for 2. good deal, yes?
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You probably get the extra-salvage if you kill the entire enemy crew even if their whole ship is on fire. Handy!
exactly right. the only ships i destroyed were the stupid cylon auto-scouts. However, with lv3 teleporter, you have enough time to get in and out and destroy 1 system with melee before they asphyxiate. nice for those 3-shield scout douchebags since their evade is high as hell.
Also, i didn't mention it, but I was lucky enough in my last run to pick up a crystal crew member who was a backup boarder, and would seal off their medbay so they couldn't get into it
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Got back into the game recently. Finally unlocked the rock cruiser, only need crystal now.
So my biggest finding with the rock cruiser is that the fire beam KICKS ASS. I finally got one of the hardest achievements, "some people just like to watch ships burn". The Type B ship starts off with a Fire Bomb and a shield piercing laser(not beam), and a large stock of missiles, which is basically a free ride through Sector 2 even in "Normal" mode, which is a big economic boon.
Also you start with 3 rock crew, which is, quite frankly, the best starting lineup in the game. The extra health lets them fight on par with a mantis, no repair nerf, and they are immune to fire. 3 of them.
So about that fire beam. Priority 1 is purchase a Crew Teleporter for 75 scrap at the earliest convenience, which is pretty easy since you can freeroll through sector 2 without a ship upgrade (except maybe a weapon slot). With the fire bomb you can now start wreaking havoc while you wait to find a fire beam, at which point, its pretty much game over as soon as you find some kind of shield-busting laser like burst II, and even then maybe you don't need it if you can destroy the shields from the inside. The key here is to use fire from the fire bomb / fire beam as an insertion point for your 2 rock crew. Your crew never puts out enemy ship fires, and is invincible to flame. Enemy crew always fight your crew before putting out fires. So they spread faster, and makes it almost impossible to defeat your boarding party. So usually, situationally dependent, i start a fire in either shields or weapons, insert crew, and wait for that system to be destroyed. Shields and weapons rooms are always 4 squares, so if you can defend the room, when its said and done, you've got 4 fire squares and 2 rock crew in the most important room on their ship. At any point when their shields are down, continue to punish with firebeam to spread more fires, especially to things like medbay. avoid arson in the oxygen room, it will put out your fires, and enemy crew will rush to fix the 02 as soon as its clear of flame, essentially putting out all that beautiful fire.
Once you get some nice lasers, a fire beam, and a crew teleporter, the game almost plays itself until the last boss, but its sure as hell fun to watch.
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if it were mine, I might even scrawl my name into the hilt texture in some fancy script thats hard to read.
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should be able to retrieve them as long as you don't fire them into stone or metal. ....or that white plaster stuff everything seems to be made of. i hate that stuff. i guess rope arrows would be too beefy if you could do that, but i think noise and broadheads should stick or not break.
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ah, well that is a relief then. never liked those mspaint lookin things.
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Unless these got fixed a while back and I just never noticed, the rooftiles_ceramic series, and shingles_blue/red have always looked really bad.
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would you like a nice gate to pop up in the archery section blocking your progress until you hit the target 20 times? sounds like you want the training mission to force repetition on you. i'll pass.
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if that rooftile is highres it might make a nice replacement to that garbage we are still working with (last i checked). It looks pretty shadowy though, which i understand is not a good thing.
seems like this source could certainly be a wealth of goodness in any case.
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I'm not talking about radical changes. I think there's a big difference between hand holding during a tutorial to explain how to play the game and hand holding during the game to explain how to win the game.
The changes I'm suggesting aren't really big. For example, I think the structure of the hub should be changed to suggest a certain order for the tutorials. I tried the archery one and they told me to use the spyglass. But I didn't have any spyglass. How am I supposed to know what a spyglass is, how to use it and whether the fact that I can't use it is a bug in the game or not? This is an example of a flaw in the tutorial.
Freeform exploration is the name of this game. Even if the changes you suggest are not radical, they conform to a trend towards linearity and "handholding" to a degree. If your ideas are implemented sooner or later other people straight up say "just put them all in the 'right' order and eliminate the guesswork so I don't need to 'waste my time' ".
A line in the sand needs to be drawn somewhere, and the training mission is practically the holy embodiment of all that is good about TDM in its root foundational form. I like where the line has been drawn, and I like which side of it that TDM stands on.
If you take the time to explore all of the training mission, all issues like "whats that spyglass thing" are answered. We should be so thankful that we are given the opportunity to go do something else instead of having the FM say to us: "it is now time to learn about the spyglass".
So yeah, your ideas aren't hardcore radical supernoob linear handholdy, but the disease spreads like wildfire, and sometimes the seeds just need to be stomped out and crushed into dust. imho of course.
Ungoliant's mapping questions
in TDM Editors Guild
Posted
i dunno, you want me to run through all the stuff in TDM with _white specs and just change the values randomly? is the team going to implement that dirty fix to the mod? i guess i can just do it for my stuff, but people are going to run into that problem more than once. i'm sure its already happened and nobody commented on one weird overly bright spec past a certain distance in maps before. if there is a vfp fix that can make _white not look like garbage, its probably the best thing to do other than make spec maps for everything that is missing it. the problem is minor, admittedly, but real.