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So, what are you working on right now?


Springheel

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As far as how much 'white' it has...

You may not actually want any white. You'll need to do some blend tests and see how it is in game. Like overlaying/multiplying layers over an AO in photoshop, white could actually turn everything pure white/black. You'll probably want a bit more of a mid grey range with no extremes.

(that can always be tweaked in photoshop really quickly though)

If he's just going to multiply the AO he should strive for 100% white in completely unoccluded areas.

 

It might be a good idea to add a planematerial to occlude the base a bit. Also if you baked this in Blender make sure to apply a 100% white material (the default is 80% and might be the reason that your AO is so gray) to the models (lowpoly and/or highpoly not sure) before you bake as Blender bakes in the diffuse color in the AO for some reason.

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What am I doing? Fixing memory leaks and trying to move to CMake :3

 

Most of the big batch of cache/table fixes made it into the svn last night, some testing shows very noticeable gains (we're talking 15 fps -> 25fps; still a way to go).

 

Needs more posting of work in here! (Also, not imageshack pleaaaase)

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Nice beginning (especially the dramatic lighting in the third shot)! If you want to add some pizzaz to that arch, thicken the curved part a bit and texture it with a different kind of stonework - easy-peasy and looks great.

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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Very impressive. Simple, but with high impact.

 

Remember, the dramatic light you have will work poorly if the player has to avoid some AI. Also there is not much space. Depending how you aim the gameplay to run, that might be really tough area. Maybe add some crevices or niches to help player to hide?

 

I'd also check if the AI can navigate properly those very narrow corridors before proceeding...

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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@Neb: Have you given-up on your old "uneven streets" map?

The new screens look great. :)

 

 

@Serpentine: Glad to hear about the cache\table fixes :) Have you tackled the "interaction table overflow" behaviors then?

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

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If he's just going to multiply the AO he should strive for 100% white in completely unoccluded areas.

 

 

Well, I'll be convinced of that when I see the results of the blend in game. I have done some material blends (though I have to copy paste stuff because I don't really understand it all that well) and the blends can have strange effects, making things way darker then you imagine, or way brighter.

 

Yes, in photoshop having pure white might be better. But the render engine is not photoshop.

 

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Looking pretty cool so far Neb.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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post-3947-0-79519400-1334251393_thumb.jpgpost-3947-0-46874500-1334251416_thumb.jpgI started work on my second FM just after Xmas unfortunately some health issues made it just too difficult work on it for 2 months. As of now I'm feeling better than ever and working hard at my FM. I've only been working on the buildings so far. This is shaping up to be quite huge. I hope I'm not been too ambitious here.

"I believe that what doesn't kill you simply makes you... stranger"

 

The Joker

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Some really good activity going on here!

 

Ungoliant - the model is looking really fine!, I would say that unless your going for the full blown learning process here, and you want to use this as an excuse to learn, this looks like a very good model already and I would probably save more work/experimenting for a second or third variation model, its simple really, you cant use one model and repeat it around the whole cave (no matter how good it is), so it makes sense to spread that effort on a bunch of different types so their expressive strength would be in the group, when you see the cave in its erosion glory.

 

Serpentine - 15-25 fps? Very nice... The amazing work that goes on behind the scenes (the engine stuff) is an asset for every single player, so huge props for working on that front.

 

Neb - Very cool, I would listen to Sotha's advice, its solid. A very simple way of creating the arch body is to select that botton curved patch, stretch its sides equally on both directions a unit or two, and then just press thicken patch on the patch menu, give it the width you want, and your good to go (press s and choose the level of faces you want the curves to have (tessalation) while they are all selected). Might be a bit of work to texture them though, you will need to apply the texture on each surface using the natural option.

 

Sir - I like all the solid sculpting and the monastic look - my only suggestion, I would think about doing the same volumetric work on the streets!

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Well, I'll be convinced of that when I see the results of the blend in game. I have done some material blends (though I have to copy paste stuff because I don't really understand it all that well) and the blends can have strange effects, making things way darker then you imagine, or way brighter.

 

afaik, the blend filter stage i'm using darkens the underlying diffuse by the inverted value of the filter stages image (the ao map). so if the value is stark white, it subtracts 0. so it turns out i never needed to add alpha test to the shader as i was originally planning.

 

 

It might be a good idea to add a planematerial to occlude the base a bit.

I thought about that a few days ago. I determined this would be a bad idea, because the ground underneath will not have any AO mapping, so the result would be a large contrast that would only serve to magnify attention to the seam where the model intersects with the ground. If I wanted to do this it would be fairly easy to bake. All non-active selection meshes are applied to the AO bake onto the low poly. so theoretically I could add a simulated scene of stuff (if they're close together) and just select it all with the lowpoly as the active selection and bake the WHOLE thing onto the lowpoly. I don't like this because the benefits are minimal and the AO map becomes useful for a single model in a single spot in a single FM. would be a shit ton better if dmapping supported an AO bake feature for the entire damn map.

Edited by ungoliant
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I thought about that a few days ago. I determined this would be a bad idea, because the ground underneath will not have any AO mapping, so the result would be a large contrast that would only serve to magnify attention to the seam where the model intersects with the ground. If I wanted to do this it would be fairly easy to bake. All non-active selection meshes are applied to the AO bake onto the low poly. so theoretically I could add a simulated scene of stuff (if they're close together) and just select it all with the lowpoly as the active selection and bake the WHOLE thing onto the lowpoly. I don't like this because the benefits are minimal and the AO map becomes useful for a single model in a single spot in a single FM. would be a shit ton better if dmapping supported an AO bake feature for the entire damn map.

Good thinking, I didn't consider that at all.

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Might be a bit of work to texture them though, you will need to apply the texture on each surface using the natural option.

 

Using the texture tool it is actually quite easy to touch up textures after using thicken. (ctrl-alt-T ??? damn, it's been like 2 months since I've really touched DR)

 

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@ungoliant, I don't think a little ao at the base would stand out too much. An author could always use a mild grunge decal (most of ours are still black though) to put some ao around the base same shape as ground.

 

Hopefully someone will find time/way to implement SSAO in the engine, it really could use it.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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Yes, in photoshop having pure white might be better. But the render engine is not photoshop.

What you do when you use the multiply filter in Photoshop and every other application is that you literally multiply the original color with the new one (converted to a set of floats between 0 and 1) and show the result. If it is called multiply it should be the same in all applications.

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@Serpentine: Glad to hear about the cache\table fixes :) Have you tackled the "interaction table overflow" behaviors then?

 

Yeah, it's not really all that complex - the engine doesn't get the full number of dynamic models/entities for the map, and as such allocates far too little memory, to get around that I just hardcoded two high values for now (not a large amount of mem anyway). When things are more stable, I'll move the allocation later into the loading, so that the numbers are valid and no longer magic numbers. Resizing it when needed could also work, but I'd prefer to keeping things simple as to avoid issues with runtime entity creation.

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Cool deal! That old demon will finally be slain. B)

 

That might just get NHAT (Forest) running well for me as that error is highly prevalent for that map.

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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What you do when you use the multiply filter in Photoshop and every other application is that you literally multiply the original color with the new one (converted to a set of floats between 0 and 1) and show the result. If it is called multiply it should be the same in all applications.

 

I totally multiplied that post on Facebook! +1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

:D

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

 

...

 

:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

 

...

 

:laugh: :laugh:

 

...

 

:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

 

Well, I've put hundreds of models/textures in the mod compared to literally single digits of other people, so if that's funny laugh away. I've seen tons of speculation and claims made but I know better than to accept them as truths until I see proof.

 

Multiply might mean it SHOULD be the same across platforms, but that doesn't mean results will be equal.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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