SneaksieDave

Congratulations. I say that's because you don't know how to use DR.

There, there, and there. (X| !!!!!!!!?)

Personal preference aside (which everyone is entitled to), your post is simply incorrect.

I'm not sure it will get stickied (or should be; there's only so much sticky real estate, but it's not up to me to say yea or nay), as it already has a link in the already stickied FM thread. Gets a bit redundant y'know? Edit: Perhaps the subject of that thread could be changed to reflect that it contains info on both existing and upcoming, with links to both in first post.

Looks good (as deeply as my wiki-noobness comprehends).

Yes, it appears to be still orphaned. Check the "What links here" link to see. @nbohr1more?

Interesting, Midnight; thanks.

No real specific use in mind atm, just wanted to get lights to butt up against each other without a gap or special measures, if possible.

While I can see a difference in the edge (looks like no antialiasing with nearest) there remains the gap. Rats.

My take on it: Mapping with existing (on svn already) soft shadow lights (they're in the /shadows folder) doesn't take away from progress on 1.03. It's not stopping anyone else from plowing ahead at lightning speed while I work on a map for 15 minutes. And if someone doesn't want me to spend that 15 minutes of my free time doing that, I believe that's tough freakin' noogies. Heck, I've spent more time replying to these posts than I did in the map. Every time a mapper marks an entity noshadows 1 it's basically flipping the same bird to dynamic lighting. "Real life" contains both soft and sharp shadows, depending on the light source and scene. Anyway, I'm not the salesman for this. Just trying it out. Use it, or don't. Based on your opinion(s), I strongly recommend you don't.

No worry, I know all about complaining; it's my line of work. <------------- Help is needed, though.

I'm not sure how to take these last few posts from you, but they sound like they're aiming to call down two optional means of providing ambient occlusion or soft shadow to a scene simply because they have limitations. A mapper needs to recognize the limitations and work within them. For example, * Don't put AO or soft shadow on a moveable box. * Do put them on and around a big ominous statue which darkens a room with its size and otherwise looks poor with a single razor sharp stencil shadow jiggling behind it.

Here's the def: lights/ambientlightnfo { ambientLight lightFalloffImage makeintensity( textures/lights/ambientlightnfo) { forceHighQuality map textures/lights/ambientlightnfo_amb colored zeroClamp } } Unfortunately it seems zeroclamp is essential. Without it, it gives that view aligned clip-into-everything rotating sprite effect: (Which oddly I had to use printscreen to capture because the screenshot command made this out of it: A path of gold! Err, silver! I wonder if that's ambient or HDR adversely affecting all screenshots.)

Hear hear. Gratitude in the "Things that could be improved" thread, instead of complaint. +1 for class

6. Don't forget to help keep your wiki entry updated

Just a reminder that when missions are updated, we need to make efforts to update hosting to the new versions and if necessary update the FM download wiki page. I believe so far at least two (or three?) summer vertical contest missions have been updated, and there might have been other independent FM updates recently too, but either it didn't come to mind to update the page or the means wasn't there (I can't update hosting sites and rapidshare and mediafire suck). We need coordinated effort to keep links up to date: the author announces and posts the update, hosts grab it and mirror, any of us update the wiki if necessary. Authors: if your updated versions are not reflected on the wiki, please speak up (loudly if necessary) to bring it to attention (here, or in the appropriate thread). Example updates exist on the wiki; see Heart of Lone Salvation or The Tears of St Lucia.

They seem to be grid snapping here... both the origins and the dimensions. I'm guessing that even though it's called NFO, there is some smoothing that's done to it causing it not to reach the full bounds.

Huh. Well there ya go then. So we can fake-a-bake, and have your dynamic cake too.

Someone mentioned butting ambient lights up against each other recently, and it reminded me to try it out from long ago. Here are the results: From lining ambientlightnfo (that's supposed to be no falloff) entities side by side: Looks great in DR. In TDM, there's a pretty bad gap. Bump the grid size down to 1 and try overlapping them: Now there's an overlap in TDM. Bump grid down to 0.5 and there's a smaller but still present issue. So you get the point. I'm wondering if there's a way to address this better than settling for a thin line no matter what grid size you try? Maybe a keyword (or one that's missing) in the material causes this apparent rounding of the edges even in a NFO texture?

No worries, it's not my personal method or anything. Just that the last several posts all said they didn't like it. Okay, guess it's not for everyone. Yup I'm sure this will make for decent AO simulation, and other subtle effects. Not in the forefront, having to stand up to realtime stencil scrutiny, but in the background, adding a touch to the scene to make it look better. I think that nightblade bedroom shot really got to me. (Now that I look at it again, it's pretty over-done IMO. Still pretty though, and it like it. For the record, I guess pretty much all of that could be done in TDM as well. But not dynamic. Is it dynamic in NB, or baked? I don't know the tech even.) I kept it low to the ground so it wouldn't darken the couch or table. The chair one was the hardest to place because of a light rotation bug in DR (that I mean to look up and/or report).

Surprise, a couple of tech demos thrown together quickly to demonstrate didn't win some over. Only three objects in the scene are noshadow; the light still casts. With the lantern it looks fine. An AI shadow standing right over it causes some incongruence. But to repeat, it was thrown together without interest in taking all day to make a simple point. It could be made to look much better of course, and more tuned to this mixed approach. Well, one bonus about it is you don't have to use the techniques. They're there if you want or need it for a particular scene. If you don't want to mix stencil and soft, dynamic and lightmap, you're going to have to wait for light engine modifications, and thus wait for the source. Hope. Or... try merging in that D3 soft shadows mod.

Here's one that just leaped out at me for the first time ever (despite using it before). HDR really brings the problem out. Nonetheless the problem appears to be aberration in the UV map, and not HDR's 'fault'. textures/darkmod/wood/panels/thin_panels_with_trim_dark in tdm_wood_panels.mtr No HDR: With HDR:

!!

Okay here's a quick shot of a room with soft shadows by faking it with blendLight shadow textures. -make the furniture noshadows 1 -create a blendLight light entity and adjust it manually (there's an entity rotation bug or two in DR that can make this tricky) -target them with an extinguishable light and they'll toggle with it That's it. Didn't upload the map because I have a custom square texture which isn't currently on SVN, used for the couch and table. But it's all pretty straight forward, but can take a few mins per light to get correct. Will need to make a wedge too. With circles, wedges, squares, rotated and sized light entities, this is another method to achieve the 'light bake' look. Obviously there are limitations: -self shadows are still sharp (mostly minor) -mixing 'dynamic' items (a moveable, an AI) with fixed items (couch) can be touchy; should be used when appropriate

Not quite; a shadow texture. Not a light texture with a shadow. The candles casted both light and shadows on the ground and the ceiling. This is placing a shadow only, and is not connected to any light. For the candles, you could also have two projected lights, one for light and one for shadow, or you could have a light texture and a shadow like the one I'm using here, but then that ends up using two lights for every candle, so there's a resource and performance tradeoff to be considered. Anyway, we should try to keep discussion for that in the candle thread, I suppose.