So, what are you working on right now?

[Melan]

Those are good shots; if you can fill that big space with interesting, non-repetitive content, it is going to be great. Though I immediately started to wonder when I saw it if every room inside was occupied and active -- all windows being lit, it promises to be a hard job for poor NotGarrett.

 

WRT performance, if you can properly segment your level with visportals and don't go crazy with features like several lights overlapping or dozens of AI in a room, it can remain pretty good even with very complex scenes.

[STiFU]

How would I go about making the skybox brighter? Is there a line in a .mtr I can change, or do I adjust the levels on something in Photoshop? I don't want to author a whole new skybox, I just want to adjust this starrynight skybox to be brighter.

You could try to add a "blend add" stage to the mtr definition like this one:

{
  blend add
  map _white
  rgb 0.2
}

I am not sure such stages also work with skyboxes, but it's worth a shot I guess. The value defined by rgb controls how much white will be added. Just don't forget, that you'll have to ship the definition with your mission pk4.

 

Another thing worth trying out might be to add the rgb-keyword to the cameraCubeMap stage and use a value greater than 1. Not sure whether that stage keyword actually receives values greater than 1 though.

[Radiatoryang]

Go big or go home! Ideally this will turn into an Assassins-style city prelude, then robbing the mansion, then discovering Constantine-type craziness inside... But I'll start with Part 2 as a milestone first.

 

STiFU: thanks, I'll try that

Edited December 17, 2010 by Radiatoryang

[grayman]

I'm planning a series of FMs centered around William Steele, a mercenary who's been away from Bridgeport some years, and returns home to find things are irrevocably changed.

 

The first FM will be called "Home Again" and I'm shooting for a May 2011 release. I plan to begin this once TDM 1.04 is released, after which I'll split my time between mapping and bug-fixing. "Home Again" will be a small rooftop mission.

 

The FM I spent most of 2010 on, Cleighmoor, will be folded into Steele's story and released when the storyline calls for it.

 

Edit (7/2011) ...

 

"Home Again" has been shifted to the #2 slot in my William Steele series. I obviously missed the 5/2011 target date.

[Berny]

Uh grayman that's what I wanted to hear before sleeping

[Aprilsister]

Well I hope Tels is just busy, I'd really hate to think that he's still "annoyed" because in my obnoxious estimation he's a pretty cool guy and deserves tons of thanks.

 

(here's hoping I got the gender right, though, really it shouldn't be a big deal).

[Fidcal]

No worries. He can't get away. Security is very tight in the Dark Mod Team dungeon.

 

@grayman: Good to hear you're working on a new FM. Not sure if that's two being merged into one or two separate but anyway. Rooftops always good. I'd like to do one myself but don't know if I'd ever get to it with other things in the works.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

I'm probably going to completely redo this stairs grime. This small section has all leading edges of stairs grime scrolled away and all convex posts, struts, etc are using an inverse form of the grime so they fade to the edges.

 

[Aprilsister]

No worries. He can't get away. Security is very tight in the Dark Mod Team dungeon

 

 

Strange to say this to that but... that (along with what you "good to hear-ed") too is good to hear.

[STiFU]

"Home Again" will be a small rooftop mission.

That's cool grayman. That sounds all very promising. But let me tell you something about rooftop missions: If I have learned anything from witnessing the five years of development of the TDS Mini-campaign "The Cabal", it would be that creating rooftop mission is quite a sophisticated task in a visportal-based engine. Ziemanskye, author of respective mission in "The Cabal", had to be really canny with placing lights in his mission, because of the performance. My advise at this point would be to get a rough layout of your map, planning visportals etc., before you proceed. But I think you are a very capable (gray-) man, so I am sure you're going to pull it of nicely.

[grayman]

But let me tell you something about rooftop missions: ...

 

All noted. I expect to spend a fair amount of time roughing out the "rooms" before I go into details.

 

Thanks.

[Serpentine]

I'm making an orange model, because I need to touch up on my model conversion before I can play with bottles... glorious bottles

[Melan]

That's cool grayman. That sounds all very promising. But let me tell you something about rooftop missions: If I have learned anything from witnessing the five years of development of the TDS Mini-campaign "The Cabal", it would be that creating rooftop mission is quite a sophisticated task in a visportal-based engine.

I do not think they are necessarily much more complicated than other FMs as long as the rooftop areas are neatly surrounded by a dense and meandering city backdrop. These two will ensure the player only sees parts of it at a given instance, and it can be visportalled to get good performance.

 

Ziemanskye's mission in Cabal is crazy-ambitious, because you can essentially see the entire map from almost any point, which sadly also means it is all being rendered at the same time (except maybe interiors) and little else of the intended content could be added. Still, it is very impressive even in its ruins, with some genuinely breathteaking vistas. The first build of RttC suffers from a similar problem, only on a much lower scale. But for example, ANooT from Goldchocobo's campaign doesn't have any significant problems.

[STiFU]

You're right Melan, but that's exactly what I was going at. You have to plan everything really good, so that you can portal the shit out of that FM... If you hear "rooftops", you directly think about "Life of the Party" and that's also what Ziemanskye thought about, but something like that is really not that suitable for these engines. It seems though that grayman is already on the right track, even without our advise.

[Melan]

Life of the Party was actually segmented very well, and would also work in TDM. There are very few long views; you have Angelwatch, but that's just one scene, and it accomplishes much of its effectiveness with scale, not detail. What the level does well is the illusion of openness, when you are really walking in large corridors that also have large chasms under them.

[grayman]

I ran through "Uninvited Guest" today, which was the T2 demo version of LoTP. There aren't a lot of long views, and the majority of the surrounding roofs are flat, basically encasing the areas in walls w/o any need to show the city beyond.

 

The only place where the city illusion falls apart is at Angel Watch. If you look back the way you came, there are no tall bordering buildings, so it looks as if the part of the city you came from has gone missing.

 

And there are no low roofs. Your rooftop path is so far above the streets that it's a long fall and you are most likely going to die. I fell off in one area and didn't die, and wandered around for a minute or so in dead-end alleys with no doors or windows or guards until the game realized I was not supposed to be there, at which point it gave me the death screen.

[Radiatoryang]

Figured out how to change the sky color -- put a light with a "spectrum 2" texture in the 3D skybox room, and it'll light only the background. Kinda cool.

[jdude]

[Bikerdude]

nice work on the sea there dude..

[jdude]

ARrr te matey It's mine and Biker's work btw Concept thanks to MR Lemony

[Serpentine]

*drool*

 

jdude

 

If you need any help with materials and such for those maps, please shout!

 

I can even make semi-crap models now, moving up in the world

[STiFU]

Figured out how to change the sky color -- put a light with a "spectrum 2" texture in the 3D skybox room, and it'll light only the background. Kinda cool.

That's cool. I always dislike it aswell, when the sky is plain black with stars. Looks so boring!!! I suppose the light is non_shadowcasting etc.?

[Tels]

That's cool. I always dislike it aswell, when the sky is plain black with stars. Looks so boring!!! I suppose the light is non_shadowcasting etc.?

 

That's cool for "not at the deepest night" skies. Could someone please turn this into a wiki article?

[Berny]

Nica wok jdude and bikedude. I like that.

 

@Radiatoryang: It looks a lot better now!

 

 

[Mr Lemony Fresh]

If everything goes to plan there should be some new objects and even a new character =)

 

I want to go through the level and try and replace some old assets like trees and textures and improve upon some too for the sake of this level if I can.

 

The character is proving to be pretty hard work for the attention to detail I'm trying to get, so while Jdude and Bikerdude speed ahead with the mapping I'm still chugging away at the models so it might be a while =|

[Radiatoryang]

That's cool for "not at the deepest night" skies. Could someone please turn this into a wiki article?

 

Added a section.

 

http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Skybox