So, what are you working on right now?

[Bikerdude]

Well...

Tease...

[Melan]

Excuse me? You asked for a screenshot. What did you expect?

[Bikerdude]

Excuse me? You asked for a screenshot. What did you expect?

hehe, maybe one or two more screenies.

[Melan]

I don't want to spoil things.

[skacky]

Some really cool things posted here recently, I'm impressed, especially by Baddcog's map even if I feel the yellow light is too strong. Melan, I'm not a huge fan of the brick texture on the floor, flagstones may look better. Even with this teasing screenshot I can already see this mission will look grim.

[Moonbo]

Same shot with r_showlightcount 1 and r_showtris 1

The pink I believe is 4 lights hitting the tris (ambient world is one but it doesn't cast shadows). (black=0, red=1, blue=2, green=3, pink = 4... white is 5 or 6 plus)

 

Well that's a very convenient cvar, I'm just depressed with how green everything looks on my map...I was sure that I didn't have any overlapping light radii. How does the engine count lights hitting objects? Also, does it count lights behind closed visportals (i.e. if there's a light with a huge radius inside a building with it's entry visportal closed, does the engine still hit objects in its radius outside of the building)?

[demagogue]

As I recall, the engine has to do an extra render run for each light hitting a surface. That's why each additional overlapping light hogs resources so much. So that number (how many lights hit a surface) the engine basically gets for free; so it's easy to have the cvar work.

 

As for lights behind closed visportals, I think you're talking about only the center is behind the close VP, but the rest of the radius of the light still goes into a rendered room. It'd be like if you have a func_static with some of it in your area going and some behind a closed VP, the whole thing will still renders. So maybe a light extending past a closed VP should be like that too, still falling on surfaces on this side of the VP (but not the non-rendered surfaces on the closed side), then yes, it should render, even if part of the light is behind the closed VP. Of course it's probably very easy to test & just see.

[Baddcog]

Basically lights are always on (unless you turn them off) and they always hit everything that their radius touches.

 

With standard lights (right click >add light) and some model lights (electric ones mainly) you can see the bounding box radius in DR when you select it. Unfortunately the entity lights don't always show this, candle and torch models have a flame particle attachment and the attachment spawns in game. The actual light is attached to the particle flames, so you never see the bounding box. But the radius' for single light sources are typically pretty similar to each other. So you can place an electric light where a torch is in DR to get an idea of the radius.

 

visportal closings only effect rendering/sound. They don't effect lights on/off states. Imagine a light in a street right next to a portal. It shines around the corner where the player can see but the portal closes, if the light turned off the player would see it.

 

A torch on a wall might not seem to light up the tris on the other side of the wall but that is only because the wall is casting shadows onto them.

If you put noshadows 1 on a light next to a wall, then you'll see that light on the other side.

 

Of course the closed visportal does help still. If you are in a hallway with a torch on the wall and the torch touches tris outside, closing the portal doesn't stop the torch from touching the tris outside, but since those tris aren't rendered it doesn't effect performance. The problem comes in the outside most likely where there are high amounts of detail in a large space and that torch is one more light than you expected to be effecting the performance.

------

 

Basically I'm building winding streets with a building that can be entered here and there. So I'm not having an issue with lights on both sides of the wall. You can also use more noshadows lights because they aren't shining on both sides of the wall.

Then in the case where it may be a problem you just have to be careful about placement. Sliding a light down a wall a few feet might get rid of a bad overlap situation. Putting in a fake noshadows light can extend the bounds of a light and give overlap without performance drain.

[Sir Taffsalot]

 

I love RPGista's benches!

 

 

Edited February 17, 2013 by Sir Taffsalot

[Obsttorte]

Nice shots, especially the first one. I would add a bit more decoration to the alcoves and bulge the bottom a bit, but that's just me.

 

Is this Vengence II?

[Springheel]

I really like the look of that tavern!

[Sir Taffsalot]

This is Vengeance part 3. The already released version has been changed to part 2. As you start off in a prison cell due to stealing a diamond I thought it would make things nice and tidy if I made a manor heist where you steal the diamond and things go all wrong and you get aressted. That will now be part 1.

[Bikerdude]

Nice work there SirT, drop me a PM if you need a hand with the perf etc.

[Sir Taffsalot]

Things seem to be goot at the moment but thanks for the offer Biker. I will keep it in mind.

[Moonbo]

Well, built the interior of the church this week, still need to build out the gameplay & swap out the AI's w/ func_animates but would love to get some feedback on the general architecture/lighting. The big concern w/ the lighting is that the player needs to be hidden so the top and sides of the church can't be too light...I guess I'm just worried that things are too dark. Any recommendations or thoughts would really be appreciated.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 18, 2013 by Moonbo

[RPGista]

Very creative, unusual architecture/texturing! Looks like a fair amount of work too, good commitment... I would say, it seems like a very well detailed space; just dont be afraid of the lights, the player can sneak by very small shadow areas, so lit up your architecture, create though knots for the player to take some risks, leaving everything mostly dark not only makes places look flat, they also make it way too easy for players to sneak by unchallenged.

[Melan]

Things are never too dark. These shots are fine. In fact, they are a bit brightish.

[Bikerdude]

Very good Moonbo, I can see lots of effort went into the patch work and aligning all those textures. Drop me a PM if you need a hand or a look over etc.

[Obsttorte]

The big concern w/ the lighting is that the player needs to be hidden so the top and sides of the church can't be too light...I guess I'm just worried that things are too dark. Any recommendations or thoughts would really be appreciated.

This is something you have to test in game. IMO the player shouldn't always have the possibility to hide in the dark. So having some bright spots where the player can only pass during a certain time period when all AI are looking somewhere else isn't that bad. But this also depends one the level of tension you want to have in that area, the amount of loot that can be found there, etc.

 

I would adjust the lights in front of the windows a bit, so they fit the glass color more. A bit more blueish may be good.

[grayman]

Beautiful work! Looking forward to getting killed when distracted by oggling the scenery.

[Moonbo]

Wow, thanks guys for the thoughts :-). Biker - give me a few more days to polish things up and make the latest round of fixes you recommended and then I'll send it back your way.

[Baddcog]

You can always make moonbeams coming in the windows too (of course only on one side, moonbeams aren't omni-directional). That will making sneaking along the windows on one side a bit tougher (maybe put a good purse of loot on a bench over there )

 

Looks great though.

----

The shots above look great too, but the thing that bugs me about the tavern is too many ceiling beams. There are as many beams as there are wood planks across the top of them. I'd say get rid of every other one and it will look much better.

 

Love the fact that you used small pieces of wood for the railings. I hate when people use thick beams all along a railing. (it's just a railing, not a structural piece)

[Epifire]

Hey all. I hope this is the right place for this (since there were none in the models section) for posting work on modeled assets. Been really getting into working with the Dark Radiant and have recently been wanting to make some structural props. So I spent yesterday getting these modeled up and got the textures done today...

 

 

Got another that is solid, for those of us who may want the blocked view as an option...

 

 

With Bars rests at 378 triangles (for model) and 602 polys total for shadow/collision.

 

Without Bars rests at 266 triangles (for model) and 434 polys total for shadow/collision.

 

Source being my only engine I have made models for makes this experience a lot of fun. Looking forward to getting both of these in-game cause I have yet to compile them and get them running.

[Moonbo]

Nice, I remember wanting something like that and then having to make it out of patches because there wasn't a model in the standard download.

[Springheel]

Very nice. Those kinds of architectural models would be very useful.