So, what are you working on right now?

[jaxa]

???

 

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/13471-bugs-in-training-mission-general/

[Serpentine]

Looks pretty similar to TDM quality really, it's just the lightmaps which are making it look nicer.

[Springheel]

Shadowhide, I warned you about the animated gifs in your signature multiple times. Remember how I said the next time would be the last?

 

It is.

[Springheel]

the work DrK has done is so good it should be considered something TDM should aspire to

 

To be honest I don't see what's so impressive about those shots. They're good, but nothing that you haven't already surpassed in some of your own maps.

[Tels]

To be honest I don't see what's so impressive about those shots. They're good, but nothing that you haven't already surpassed in some of your own maps.

 

The dirt is a bit too much for me, but it looks rather even and no harsh shadows. However, the lightmaps probably help alot to obscure the blurry textures.

 

Also, aren't we confusing content (textures) with engine (the renderer) again?

 

Btw, the improved Return to the City features in Fens video had me jawdropped. The spark gaps where just awesome, and you can see that the textures are high quality etc.

[SiyahParsomen]

Shadowhide, I warned you about the animated gifs in your signature multiple times. Remember how I said the next time would be the last?

 

It is.

 

I remember that. Too bad SH didn't remember.

 

Honestly I don't think SH'll leave here this early. I believe he'll strike back by trolling soon or later!

Edited February 18, 2012 by SiyahParsomen

[Bikerdude]

They're good, but nothing that you haven't already surpassed in some of your own maps.

Really, thanks Springs that makes me feel quite proud :-)

 

• The dirt is a bit too much for me, but it looks rather even and no harsh shadows.
  
• Btw, the improved Return to the City features in Fens video had me jawdropped. The spark gaps where just awesome, and you can see that the textures are high quality etc.
  

 

Thats more a screenshot issue then in-game though and where is this Fens video..? as I would liketo see my handywork.

[Tels]

Really, thanks Springs that makes me feel quite proud :-)

 

 

 

Thats more a screenshot issue then in-game though and where is this Fens video..? as I would liketo see my handywork.

 

His channel:

 

https://www.youtube.com/user/FenPhoenix

 

Video:

 

[Baddcog]

Yeah, they look good for T2. But I don't really see anything special there. It's just better textures than stock. The lighting was always excellent in T2, it's still just pretty blocky. Not that I mind, but other than textures I don't think anything really stands out.

 

I think they are too dirty too, it's almost hard to even see what's going on there is so much noise.

[Bikerdude]

when he is not being silly and hyper he has a good sounding voice..

[Baddcog]

Alright, I've been busy. Here's the run down.

 

Added new models:

Wine crate and wine crate worn, 3 window bar objects (under fencing), and fancy gauge needles (all made in DR )

That was just busy work out of town on the laptop.

 

MAJOR LIGHT ENTITY OVERHAUL

 

This was probably over 40 hours of work in the last week or two. I'm burnt, glad I'm done. Need to get back to mapping.

 

It was for two reasons, to make lighting easier on mappers, and to more fully polish the mod. It is fully backwards compatible, won't break old maps.

 

The list of fixes/changes. This is now on SVN so anyone can take a look if they have access. For everyone else it'll be in 1.08. might need some very minor tweaks, but I tried to really hone it down before I committed. This is basically digging in and finishing up everything Tels couldn't get to, I know he spent a ton of time getting most of it working.

 

1: All light models now cast shadows when turned off, (before they were mixed, some on, some off, some parts would, other parts wouldn't...)

 

2: Most lights cast no shadows when turned on. It's the best work around for lights diffusing their own shadows since the traced shadows are so harsh. There might be a few lights that could still use a light texture to add some soft shadows, but I need a break.

Exceptions would be statues (the torch shadows look cool), fireplaces, and hooded lamps, in the case of the street spot light it casts full shadows due to light offset, etc..

 

3: Only the older streetlamps have the loud hum. The newer ones still need a lighter hum (since they are new, plus good for variety). Indoor electric lamps do not hum.

 

4: The moveable torch's fire now spawns at the tip, not mid handle.

 

5: All models now have an entity. We probably had 20 models that weren't included in the entity list. This includes varieties of indoor gas lamps, sconces with spawned candles, sconces that had candles attached now spawn flames (be careful, a 3 candle sconce is 3 lights and 4 entities), The tall lamp that has cool particles (like in Melans maps) is now included as an entity, everything spawns with it.

 

6: In addition to #5, all skins for all models now have an entity. As they swap skins lit/unlit for shadows they need to have an entity so the correct materials show (ie: rusty metal instead of default dark steel). That probably adds another 20+ entities that weren't being used.

An exception is statues, the skin doesn't swap when torches go out, so you just add a skin to the statue.

 

7: I have added/fixed some textures of mine and tweaked, will tweak a few models.

 

8: Cleaned up the entity list. ONLY LIT light entites are now in the main list. It was a bit confusing before with variations of lit/unlit/and vice versa per light. Now any light in the main list = LIT.

Base lights that were only meant as a base for other model entities are now in a sub-folder called DoNotUse and they have a lightbulb with a no sign around it as the model.

So torches/DoNotUse contains a base torch flame only.

 

Unlit lights are now hidden in the DoNotUse/Deprecated folder. They shouldn't be used (but are still intact so old maps don't break). Instead, if you want to add an unlit light to your map, just create a lit light. (ie:streetlamp or streetlamp_lit [the confusing name thing] and check start_off=1, if it's a flame light (ie: torch or candle) then just check extinguished = 1.

That will give you an unlit light in less than 1 second (those properites are in inherited props). These lights toggle as expected, link a switch to them and they will turn on with first flip. Or a candle, torch or fire arrow will light them.

 

It also keeps the light entity list a lot cleaner.

 

You can still use the unlit entities, but why would you?

 

9: a map called light_entity is in the maps folder. You can load it up and look at every single light in game, they all have switches, fire and water sources to test with. There are some 100 lights so the performance is probably bad, lol.

 

10: I changed my newer streetlamp lights to a more white light with an almost unnoticable hint of blue. Every light in game is yellow/orange so I thought it would be nice to give other areas a slightly different feel. This is the only 'game breaker', but they haven't been used in too many maps, so I hope nobody minds. I think it is a needed change that should have been done to begin with, but I wasn't really thinking along those lines.

I think maybe the inside electric lights should get this change too.

I also gave my desklamps a more white hue.

 

-----------

I'd appreciate if anyone with 1.08 access can take a run through the map and editor and let me know what you think. I don't want to do any major changes and really don't think they are needed. But if there are any small tweaks it would be good to have them done before 1.08 goes out the door.

 

There are a few pagan items that have candles all over them that I'm not touching. The candle flames are a part of the object and are animated/illuminated so they can't be extinguished, not sure what to do with them really.

[AluminumHaste]

My GODS MAN!!!! That is an amazing list! Have a beer on me

[Baddcog]

thanks, crackin one now

[grayman]

Great work, Baddcog. Maybe a run through the lights map will give me ideas for changes in my WIP. Change, changes, changes. They nevah stop.

[Melan]

To be honest I don't see what's so impressive about those shots. They're good, but nothing that you haven't already surpassed in some of your own maps.

To me, it is amazing for its art direction - both the way DrK uses custom resources, and the way he uses architecture. Engine-wise, of course it has all of Dark's limitations.

 

[edit]Holy crap, it is Shipping and Receiving, reskinned and slightly modified![/edit]

Edited February 19, 2012 by Melan

[SiyahParsomen]

That's one superb list.

[Tels]

Alright, I've been busy. Here's the run down.

 

Added new models:

Wine crate and wine crate worn, 3 window bar objects (under fencing), and fancy gauge needles (all made in DR )

That was just busy work out of town on the laptop.

 

You know, this is nothing personal, and I don't want to diss your work in any way. But I made wine crates in DR, too, and they were rejected by IIRC Spring (I forgot whatever the critism was at the time, but IIRC it was the usual silly "the critism is only tanget to the topic at hand" like "oh mappers can make them easily themselves, and they are a bit simple". Yeah, every mapper wants to spent an hour to design their own basic winecrate...

 

So, getting my work rejected without any chance it being changed and accepted completely discouraged my from modeling whatsoever and the few hours I spent making wine crates were completely wasted. After that, I never really modelled again. Why bother if it gets rejected anyway? So I am a bit sour that 2 years later someone comes along and remakes the wine crates and simply adds them - that now feels my time was really wasted.

 

I guess the lesson we learn here is just make stuff and add it - and completely ignore any team "reaction" whatsoever except using to make things better after they have been added. If you ask, you will be shot down. Seems all the other people work in that mode, anyway.

 

Can't find a screenshot right now, but I still have the map with the crates build in DR.

 

Anyway, horrah for finally getting something like that in, tho.

[Tels]

Btw, very impressive work on the light entities and all the rest! It makes all maps better, which is a big plus!

 

Edit: One remark: It is start_off and ticking this alone should make the light be unlit on mapstart. Ticking "extinguished" will work, too, but only one of them is nec. If you tick "start_off", it will set extinguished to 1 for you automatically.

[RPGista]

Added new models

 

MAJOR LIGHT ENTITY OVERHAUL

 

Very good to hear, nice seeing you guys going over things like that and steadily increasing the overall quality of the mod, things no lone mapper would be able to understand and do by themselves (also referring to the sounds overhaul by Springheel). Awesome work!

 

@ Tels: Release that material man! A post in the submissions topics with a screenshot and a download link would already be a good way of making it available to the community. I intend on doing that with a lot of the architectural details I came up with for my map, soon as it is released.

Edited February 19, 2012 by RPGista

[Baddcog]

Whoops, one too many s's.

I don't recall seeing start_off on flame type lights, but I'd have to look...

I did accidentally have extinguished =1 on a light entity, and I set start_off on it for testing and was getting some weird behavior. But it was an electric type light. So I wouldn't recommend checking extinguished on electric lights.

 

About the winecrates, idk man. I'm just used to adding models that I make right away without some major internal discussion. I agree things can get picked apart, that's why we never got any more steam bots. I worked on a lot of concepts and every single one got shut down because of this or that whether it made any sense to me or not. I was just thinking of stuff we could use and I figured a wine crate that a couple bottles could be thrown in would be good and different than what we have.

Models don't take much space, especially if they use existing textures so I personally don't see any reason not to have a good variety.

[Tels]

start_off and extinguished:

 

Grayman added code that turns of any light if it has start_off (I overlooked start_off, that's why I added "extinguished". My bad). However, I am not sure that all the interactions between start_off and extinguished are well-defined, the code (in the script and the SDK) might have bad interactions and/or bugs. We really should these sort out, tho, as the mapper should not have to worry about it.

 

My recommandation is as follows:

 

* if start_off = 1 => the light gets turned off, regardless on the state of extinguished or not, at map start

* if start_off = 0 => the light gets only turned off at map start if extinguished is set to 1

 

And this should work for all lights, regardless on type (flame, gas, electric).

 

One source of error that you could check is that all the light entities that you created inherit from our base light entities, and that they have (either via inheritance, or otherwise manually set in the entity def) the spawnarg "scriptobject" "tdm_light_holder".

 

This script object is important for these lights, as it governs the turn on/off, skin swap etc etc.

 

If this is the case for all lights, please post here a specific light example that ill-behaves when both start_off and extinguished are set to 1. I'll look into it then.

 

 

-----------------------

 

winecrates/models: Yeah, I don't mind you doing it, I was just complaining (as I am so often doing it seems)) that the process is broken. Contributions only go in after either a (rather arbitrary) commitee has "mangled" them, or after someone just goes ahead and adds them. Personally, I have given up fighting this system for art assets, the only thing I am still interested is the code side, because I have the moral feeling/obligation to finish my work. But on the code side the process is basically the same. Commit, and then defend, or perish with a lot of wasted time.

 

So, basically I am saying I have a lot of respect for people who can go to the great lengths to bring their contributions inside after a forum discussion

[Baddcog]

Well, I see no reason to not just set start_off for electric or extinguished for flame lights. It works, it makes sense.

 

I'll jump back in the light map today and give start_off a try on fire lights, though if extinguished works and makes sense why not just stick with that?

 

 

 

 

So, basically I am saying I have a lot of respect for people who can go to the great lengths to bring their contributions inside after a forum discussion

 

I'm sorry you don't have much respect for me because I threw a couple wine crate models in without a huge internal debate. I've been doing that since I started working on TDM. Contributing models.

 

If there's a problem they can be removed. Sorry Springheel hurt your feelings two years ago about it or whatever, I still don't see a reason to debate a little wooden box that just adds to useful assets for mappers.

[Tels]

Well, I see no reason to not just set start_off for electric or extinguished for flame lights. It works, it makes sense.

 

I'll jump back in the light map today and give start_off a try on fire lights, though if extinguished works and makes sense why not just stick with that?

 

Consistency. We can't remove either of them, so both of them should work. However, the entities need only one of them set, so we should stick to one, so mappers can learn that one, and not wonder which one to use. Did that make sense?

[grayman]

Wine crate and wine crate worn, 3 window bar objects (under fencing), and fancy gauge needles (all made in DR )

 

I added the worn wine crate to my WIP. Threw in a couple bottles and straw and it looks quite at home.

 

Thanks!

[Springheel]

But I made wine crates in DR, too, and they were rejected by IIRC Spring (I forgot whatever the critism was at the time, but IIRC it was the usual silly "the critism is only tanget to the topic at hand" like "oh mappers can make them easily themselves, and they are a bit simple"

 

Yeah, quality control is silly.