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Attaboy!! Already looking forward to your new map!! =) Better set that lantern in the left to non-shadowcasting though. Looks weird!

Do you guys have a psd file of roof\shingles_red or any other filetype with layers? I need it's background without the tile-structure, because I'd like to redo it, while maintaining its overall tone. I have never done any actual texture-drawing and I'd love to give it a shot. In its current state, it's clearly just a placeholder... (no offense)

Well I am really bad when it comes to history, so I can't give you proper advice here. But the game "The Witcher" and the books by Andrzej Sapkowski on which it is based present the most grown-up medieval world/society I have ever seen. There is no black or white, you always just have to chose the lesser evil in the game. And if it's not for the inspiration, it's still worth playing just for the joy of it. Awesome game!! Loved the shit out of it!!

Ahhhh, much better! The author of the original diffuse probably forgot to finish the vertical border, because he left a couple of bad cuts there while it tiled very well at the horizontal border. Here is the fixed version as dds and tga. Hehe, thanks for the acknowledgement. But this is really no big deal. Not comparable to the amount of work I put in the texturepack I made for the team about a year ago!! But that work is being rewarded by every FM I see my textures in... =)

It does look very nice. I especially like the lit roof on shots 62 and 64. But it could really become tricky for mappers, since it changes all the lighting in the map. A mission that is perfectly ghostable might not be ghostable anymore with this enhancement or vice versa. Maybe a little bit of tweaking and no overexaggeration of this effect could help here. Anyway, you mentioned postprocessing, which I am highly interested in. Things like Mapper-controlled screentinting and desaturation would be awesome. This would enable mappers to create missions with a seemingly whole new appearance. For those of you who know the Thief 2 Fanmission "Saturnine's Rose Cottage": I have been thinking a lot about what made this mission look so damn good and I came to the conclusion that it's the fact that those custom textures blend in really well together and that the whole map is presented in a certain colortone. My next question was, how one could achieve such a look in TDM and my personal answer was, either by creating a full set of textures or by using postprocessing, especially desaturation and screentinting...

So here we go. I added red_brick_dull02 to the material file and I also created a specularmap for the wet version of this material. Downloadpackage here! Everything is already in place. You basically just have to extract it to the repository. Specularmap is half the size of the original texture, stored as dds with dxt1 compression. It was generated by multiplying the heightmap with the original texture, so that only the stones are actually shiny, and further tweaking has been done in crazybump and photoshop. And a screenshot of the wet version, just to verify, you people are happy with it: By the way, the diffuse doesn't tile properly. If you hook me up with the uncompressed sourcefile I can fix that as well. I could of course fix it on the dds I have, but I guess dxt1 in no lossless compression, so that wouldn't be so nice...

Yes, Melan. You should definitely use crazybump or ssbump for creating normalmaps. Crazybump is simpler to use and has a 3D preview of your normalmap, but it's not free. You can only use the demo for a couple of days. Of course you can also create a heightmap manually in gimp and generate a normalmap from that. I am almost sure there is a plugin for that somewhere, but you'll find lots of ways to convert a heightmap into a normalmap. For example, I wrote a function in Matlab yesterday for this purpose and the less pronounced normalmap I posted earlier was created with that. But as Serpentine said, it's much more effort to go this way. Alright, one extended materialdefinition file with normalmap and probably also a wet version of the texture coming up...

Hmn that looks weird somehow. The normalmap looks partly inverted and partly correct, probably because the diffuse map is shaded. But in general I'd say, the mortar sticks out of the stone, but it should be the other way around. I had a go at it with crazybump myself now and you're right, without proper preprocessing the results are crap. So I generated a heightmap again and converted it to a normal map. The result is shown here: Before After But this time, I was feeling a bit like experimenting, so instead of having crazybump do the dirty work (unsuccessfully), I created the heightmap myself. I used a highpass filter on the texture to receive a detailsignal. Then I used thresholding and different brushtypes on the signal to make it wider, which resulted in a pretty good reconstruction of the mortar contours. I substracted the contours and the original detail signal from a white plane and used lowpass filters to generate gradients. Finally added a tiny bit of noise and voilà the heightmap was done! The downside of this method is, that I had to make the heightmap tileable manually. Also, the stones look a bit too round in my oppinion... Here's the link to the normal if you're interested... Here is also one version with reduced depth. I actually like it better... Man, I forgot how much fun I can have with texturework. Need anything else fixed?

I just found out the the very large details lever doesn't destroy small details, as long as sharpen is also active. I think you'll be quite happy with the result, as I am too! Looks a little dirtier again... It's still 1024x1024 though, so you might wanna scale it down! Only small details (before tweaking, just for the comparison): Very Large details: Downloadlink

Well I am working with crazybump here and I am almost certain the original normalmap has been done that way too, since similar results can be achieved with that tool. I could create more depth by tweaking the levers for middle, large and very large detail, but as soon as you touch those you actually lose small details. Everything becomes rounder and noise-like details are completely eliminated, which is why I decided to go with small details only. Also please make sure you've grabbed the most recent file. My post has been edited, because I tweaked the normalmap a little (didn't see you guys have already answered) to get even more details!! =) (Sharpen + peppernoise-reduction) The normalmap is 1024x1024 because I derived the heightmap from the sourcetexture, since I didn't want to start of with a crappy normalmap. I simply forgot to scale it down... The problem with the old normalmap is, that the cement grooves stick out, while the stones do too. It looked pretty awkward in my opinion, so I corrected it. Combining both normalmaps would be a bit of a dirty hack, for that reason. Better use my heightmap and tweak the levers in crazybump until you like it. You can use the demo of crazybump a couple of days if you don't have that tool already.

What about that issue with the uv-layout of the chair? It is a default TDM-asset, right? I am asking because you didn't add it to that list... When playing Melan's new FM yesterday, I noticed that one of the bricktextures had a pretty messy normalmap, because it was probably generated automatically from a picturesource. So I went ahead and converted the texture into a heightmap, which I edited manually afterwards in photoshop and finally converted back to a normal map. The result is not perfect, but I am quite happy with it. Judge for yourself: Before After In case you're interested in the normalmap: Download here!

I just had another playthrough on expert. This time 100% KO, all loot. And I succeeded. Man, some awesome hiding places... Loved climbing around the town!!

If you're updating it once more, pelease add the lantern to the players inventory... Or did I just miss it as a pickup? Edit: Oh well, I could also just spawncheat it. =)

Wow, what an architectural masterpiece!! Melan, congrats on that!! I am seriously blown away. The performance did suck quite a bit, but the graphics totally make up for it. This map is a dream for explorers. Secrets everywhere... Gonna have to try it again tomorrow to get all the loot. Only had 1285 this time. I finished the map on expert in 1:15 h. I played as ghost but got busted once. It was really hard to ghost sometimes... Fabulous FM!! Only downside: No lantern???

So I finally finished the mission now. Played on ghost and succeeded in the optional objective. I used two reloads though, but only because I died after being detected! All in all, it was very enjoyable besides my little problems with the secret hiding place. A little hint about it's location would've been nice. I searched the whole house over and over again. The scale of the house was a little weird to me though. The doors were so huge, that the doorhandles were on eye-level... =) Not a big issue though. Congrats on your first FM.

Thanks for a little more clarification. In Sons of Baltona 1 I also found two issues, not sure though whether it's actually TDM-specific. Link Maybe we should rename this thread to "List of graphicissues"... =)

Couple of issues: You forgot to put caps on the patches at the secret-stairs. The uv-layout on the back of this chairmodel is messed up. I guess this is a default TDM-asset, so it would need fixing in a future update of TDM. This alphatexture didn't work. Maybe also a TDM-issue.

Hmn I wonder why Tels' script didn't detect these? Have you fixed those already? Their editorimages aren't power of 2 as well, but that's not as important I guess. textures\darkmod\decals\dirt\long_drip_pattern01.dds (662 x 314) textures\darkmod\stone\flat\smooth_ceramic_tile_tan02.dds (236 x 236) textures\darkmod\stone\flat\smooth_ceramic_tile_gold01.dds (234 x 234) models\darkmod\props\textures\table_medallion.tga (580x593) models\darkmod\props\textures\table_medallion_s.tga (580 x 593) models\darkmod\props\textures\bc_stair01.tga (512 x 96) models\darkmod\props\textures\bc_stair01_local.tga (512 x 96) And since we're on it right now: I always wondered why textures have to be a power of two. Do you know the technical reason? I can only guess that it's because of the mipmaps, which are probably dyadic decompositions of the sourceimage and so a picturedimension not being a power of two would eventually result in non-integer mipmap dimensions. Assuming this is right, maybe the ATI drivers don't have some sort of exception handling for creating mipmaps dynamically, while nvidia drivers have. This should only be an issue with the tga-files though, since dds stores mipmaps as well, right? Also you've got an editorimage duplicated, but with different aspect-ratios: textures\darkmod\wood\boards\new_grainy_ed_tiling_1d.jpg textures\darkmod\wood\boards\new_grainy_tiling_1d_ed.jpg There are also two psd-files (I guess those shouldn't be in here as well, right?): models\md5\chars\townsfolk\wench\wench_dress_work.psd guis\assets\purchase_menu\purchase_image_template.psd (200x240)

Well then, as long as the chest is locked, the whole body could be frobbable and once it has been picked, only the lit is frobbable. I don't know exactly what you mean be "frobbing right through the side of the chest" though. Something outside the chest is frobbed, while you look at the chest? But do tell, about the crouch height tweak...

So far so good. I didn't finish yet, because I don't know how. Doom 3 crashed on me too when I tried climbing the roof. But I could easily recover through the taskmanager.

Woohoo! Finally something to do!! This has been a really slow Saturday...

Good idea. It's also a lot more intuitive this way... Sometimes I actually have to mantle crouched upon a chest in order to frob the desired item, because otherwise the chest is highlighted.

I think only Admin's can edit threadtitles. I also wanted to edit one of mine one time, but I didn't find a way to do it. Maybe the forumsettings could be adjusted to make threadtitle editing possible...

It might be good to write a wiki-article about how to fix that, considering how many people come in here with that problem...