nbohr1more

Reducing a "map _white" with an RGB value is one of the tricks that Rich_is_Bored has been doling out so I presume it works (But within the context of the new Ambient methods... who knows... )

Welcome back Ungoliant! Since your using an internal map for the specular I'm not sure that the v1.03 material batch converter will work but you should be able to workout the syntax by comparing to any stock v1.03 asset with specular. You would probably need to point to your specular definition from with the ambient method def: Presuming your specular is: textures/darkmod/specular_ungoliant_rail { blend specularmap map _white rgb 0.1 } // TDM Ambient Method Related { if (global5 == 1) blend add map textures/darkmod/yourname // Diffuse scale 1, 1 red global2 green global3 blue global4 } { if (global5 == 2) blend add program ambientEnvironment.vfp vertexParm 0 1, 1, 1, 1 // UV Scales for Diffuse and Bump vertexParm 1 1, 1, 1, 1 // (X,Y) UV Scale for specular vertexParm 2 global2, global3, global4, 1 fragmentMap 0 cubeMap env/gen1 fragmentMap 1 textures/darkmod/yourname_local // Bump fragmentMap 2 textures/darkmod/yourname // Diffuse fragmentMap 3 textures/darkmod/specular_ungoliant_rail // specular }

Okay, I went back to the Biker's original "Oldtown" beta map and tried it in v1.03. The one screen in the basement in the Moddb shot where Biker was concerned about the ground texture looking "wet" (and I noticed extra strong wood specular) looks much better in the older map. I suspect that is because of two things: 1) Some of the textures in the released St Alban's map were custom and therefore didn't have the new material stage definitions 2) Bikerdude appears to have followed suit and desaturated his lights in a similar fashion as Melan and therefore even the stove has a white light rather than the appropriate color. The other light source in the scene also is bright white even though the bulb is tinted. I think that the original effect made the scene moody but it needs tweaking now. The takeaway is that this isn't a mod issue. Mappers can avoid these these artifacts and, as Sotha's maps have shown, even less ornate scenes come alive with the new visual options.

If you are going to install Doom III mods you should create sub-directories for them in the install directory. (Instead of placing them in your Base directory.) Try removing the following items: C:\Program Files\Doom 3\base\Tested.pk4 (1619 files) C:\Program Files\Doom 3\base\omegalabs.PK4 (38 files) C:\Program Files\Doom 3\base\bja_lostfacility.pk4 (196 files)

That was one of the few things that seemed appealing about Moddb's Desura... Controlled Betas. That said, I would be grateful for a Fan Mission forum that isn't cluttered with Beta testing threads

You can copy them from the display by "View Frame" > Media... but it's a pain... If your mailbox can handle it I can forward all the archives that I have from AH (or he can if he still has them...?) Another option is to zip-up the images and post them as a txt file... (edit... not with a 500K limit... where is that Serpentine repository thingy when we need it)

I think I've dropped the ball on this. I should've create some thumb-nails of the Moddb pics earlier but my PC time has been pretty limited for the holidays and my new shift has me busier with "work" at work... I can link the Moddb pics as sets but I am hesitant to upload the thumbnails to Moddb as that would probably be a violation for the terms of service...

Where would these be posted? Would it be permitted to create a wiki article and use the wiki uploader tool?

I was quite shocked by AluminumHaste's "The Knighton Manor" shots (at Moddb) when I first saw them. The sad thing is my mail was so slow that I never posted them prior to the v1.03 release as he intended (I think he's still PO'ed at Moddb for the MOTY picks, so I haven't seen any more shots but I would certainly welcome more...) It also seems that missions where neither contrived lighting or grime decal usage show off the effects better. Plainer maps look great! It's kinda like a macroscopic version of the Doom 3 rule of not baking shading into the diffuse for your textures. So, paradoxically, the prettier maps in v1.02 like "The Rift" or "St Albans" might need to be tweaked to remove some of the baked-in shading and faked reflected lighting (or tone it down a little) to look comparatively better in v1.03.

That would be an interesting project... Replace Doom 3 assets by highest percentage of use in FM's (At least you guys don't have to reverse engineer a bunch of missing hard-drives worth of source code )

(Had to look at the images on my cellphone to get around workplace filter) I would say that the extra bright highlight on the guard next to the torch would be an example of the edge detect. If I understand the Fresnel effect explanation in the original HDR thread correctly, these effects are primarily at the very edge of geometry but will affect the Normal map in proximity to the edge. Which looks terrific in most cases but I've noticed some wood and stone textures that seem a tiny bit too shiny. It doesn't bother me that much. I am just more curious about the artistic power of having true Gloss Map support. The "plastic" look of Doom 3 speculars has mostly been fixed by the Bloom in the HDR-lite post-process but the ultimate solution is full control over Glossiness and JC Denton mentioned having this type of support in his general HDR solution. I just want to know if it was added or not. Edit: Looking at the test.vfp it appears that glossiness and specular are both largely supplanted by the fresnel calculations so a uniform low specular value would likely fix those subtle edge cases (or simply relying on the shader assigned specular that is added in the absence of a spec map)...

I've been sleepless since the Vertical Contest when you announced your optimization fix so being groggy and out-of-it for a little longer wont be too bad (I will be refreshing my mission downloader like a maniac )

I like the new options overall. My only concern is that the new Interaction Shader's edge detect specular seems a little strong in places. The HDR-lite post process softens this new effect so together they look terrific but without the HDR-lite softening it is occasionally slightly too shiny looking. What I would really like to know: Does the new Interaction Shader support Gloss Maps or does it only have the ability to interpolate Glossiness via the Specular strength? If it can only interpolate glossiness, textures with very very subtle specular might be better off with no Specular map unless there is some way to bypass the Glossiness stage in the material definition? Edit: Maybe uniform specularity for subtle speculars would suffice (a shame that the extra detail would be lost but the trade-off seems acceptable...)?

Thanks. I thought I had a couple of ducks in a row. Yeah, that whole texture verses math conflict was part of the reason for the Humus Doom III fix. I get the impression that John Carmack is still pretty shocked about how quickly things transitioned to FP heavy hardware. He seemed to have anticipated having to keep on hacking away at texture units while the IHV's moved to FP units at a glacial pace.

This "shader instruction count" discussion reminds me of an interview with the creators of "Serious Sam the Second Encounter"... They were explaining that the added Shader instruction counts for newer Shader Models (SM 3.0 at the time I believe) were not always as important as they were being promoted as. They were explaining that they could create multi-hundred instruction count shaders that ran well on even low-end DX9 parts but also could create shaders with less than 20 instructions that would break the back of any modern GPU (Geforce 6800?). I think someone went on to show that Everquest II had exactly this problem (small shaders that still tax the GPU way too much). The Beyond3d consensus AFAIK seems to be (worst performers): 1) Too many texture fetches 2) Too many branches 3) Too many Floating Point blends 4) Too many transcendental unit (complex math heavy) 5) Too many instructions

Sikkpin claims to have found a way to activate the use of Cubemaps with lights!!!! Also, 3D light attenuation!!!! http://www.doom3worl...&sd=a&start=520 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (I'm trying not to get too excited... This will be a monster if true!!!!!! ) Chester Copperpot quotes "I have found the key to One-Eyed Willy" ... Edit: He has a picture of it working! (my workplace filter stripped it out)

It looks like the FOV was a little narrow... (I will see if I can collect a better shot...)

This doesn't work for you then? http://www.moddb.com/mods/classic-doom-3

Yep. Minecraft consists primarily of user created content, does that mean that Minecraft has not been released? Edit: You could consider Minecraft to be the dumb-down-for-the-masses version of Thief\TDM fan mission creation culture.

Tracker: http://bugs.angua.at/main_page.php

Thanks again Rebb. I will keep this in my pack o' tricks.

Does this disable the water post-process effect? Can this be applied universally without any artifact? (I think my autoexec.cfg is about to be updated ...) Cool tip Rebb!

For what it's worth, I have posted a v1.03 release article: http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dark-mod/news/the-dark-mod-version-103-is-out It appears that only the "Player's Choice" has an honorable mention area so keep crossing those fingers and toes.

From my understanding, the Quicksave crashes are due to uncertain memory states in the internal id filesystem. If that ET:QW file or another workaround can move this out of the proprietary area these crashes could be diagnosed and fixed more easily... (Crossing fingers that this is not a dead-end that has already been tried...)

Why not go all-out and get an original AMD Phenom so you can have rare math errors...