So, what are you working on right now?

[Geep]

More from Stolen Heart WIP.

So late at night, and pretty quiet in the casino's kitchen and dining room... but what's that sound?

 

[grayman]

Nice. Love the menu board.

[Geep]

Thanks. There's a second menu board, not shown, with additional "supper" items. Some of the offerings on the menu boards reflect the TDM food models shown in the kitchen. Overall, the listings riff on historic foodstuffs from the tables and diets of rich and poor, chiefly in England, France, and Germany.

The menu board texture started with a photo of slate, then laid a Photoshop font atop. The text characters were wavered and scratched to suggest chalk handwriting. The item listings alternate subtly between white and light yellow "chalk".

 

[Jedi_Wannabe]

Very nice, Keep it up!

[stgatilov]

Meahwhile on trunk... static collisions work for snow!

P.S. Ignore the FPS number: it is debug build, and overall number of particles is too large.

[grayman]

Sweet!!

[Springheel]

Awesome!  I love the winter aesthetic.

[demagogue]

Cool. Just so I understand that, does that mean you can have one big snow emitter across the level, and put in some buildings, and the particles will not pass through the roof so it snows inside? If it's that, that'll be really handy!

[stgatilov]

4 hours ago, demagogue said:

Cool. Just so I understand that, does that mean you can have one big snow emitter across the level, and put in some buildings, and the particles will not pass through the roof so it snows inside? If it's that, that'll be really handy!

Yes, exactly. One particle deform patch over the whole level.
That what you already can do with rain in 2.08.

Keep in mind that particle count is not infinite. Snow looks less dense than rain, so making such a heavy snow everywhere can be bad for performance.

[JackFarmer]

3 hours ago, stgatilov said:

Yes, exactly. One particle deform patch over the whole level.
That what you already can do with rain in 2.08.

Keep in mind that particle count is not infinite. Snow looks less dense than rain, so making such a heavy snow everywhere can be bad for performance.

I hereby award you with the new title "The Weather Maker" !

Very cool, you've elimintaed all problems coming with rain and snow effects that prevented me till now from using the related features.

Edited December 5, 2020 by JackFarmer

[Dragofer]

Very nice @stgatilov
 Would this also support LOD in some way? One of the advantages of having multiple smaller rain emitters is that you could apply hide distance spawnargs to them.

[Anderson]

33 minutes ago, Dragofer said:

Very nice @stgatilov
 Would this also support LOD in some way? One of the advantages of having multiple smaller rain emitters is that you could apply hide distance spawnargs to them.

Do you mean limited field of vision that covers everything nearby like in Silent Hill 1 in order to help performance?

[stgatilov]

1 hour ago, Dragofer said:

Would this also support LOD in some way? One of the advantages of having multiple smaller rain emitters is that you could apply hide distance spawnargs to them.

Not yet.

Actually, if you have one patch over whole level, then it gets splitted into one surface per visleaf area. These surfaces should be culled by camera and portals individually. So such approach should be OK as long as there are no large outdoors areas.

However, you are not forced to use one patch. You can have many patches/entities with same particle deform material, it should work just as well. As far as I understand, your workflow consists of making one quad patch with proper settings, then copy/pasting it over the whole area.

 

I would say simply hiding distant rain/snow is a poor solution. The many tiny particles in the far look like a "snowy texture", which would be missing if you hide them. The better LOD system for particles should switch between different particle systems, where the most detailed system has one snowflake per particle, and the less detailed have many snowflakes packed into one particle.

I guess it is possible to implement something like this right now with a script, using workflow similar to what you describe: configure one patch, then copy/paste it over the whole level. Of course, it is possible to implement such system in the game code, but I'd probably avoid it if a good script plus copy/pasting is enough

 

[Dragofer]

@stgatilov the LOD system also supports changing models based upon distance, so it should be possible to switch between particles just by applying spawnargs. And DR lets you select entities with the same classname, so these spawnargs can be tweaked after the patches have been created. So mappers would be good to go with multiple smaller LOD-enabled patches and without scripts involved, just spawnargs.

The only remaining hurdle to your approach would be to have new particles that contain multiple snowflakes per sprite. I'm guessing that'd require a fair bit of manual labour, i.e. making textures with multiple snowflakes and increasing the size of the sprites. Might be more feasible for a busy mapper to just switch to less dense snow particles in the distance.

[JackFarmer]

 

I have decided that the @Springheelzombies will have a different background story in the next mission. More details will be clarified with  @Amadeusasap. The mission needs a new name...

@Dragofer: It normally takes me days to instruct AI how to use the elevators. The chaps you've extracted from Sotha's "Genesis" mission do not need that - during the last test run they came after unseen opponents without specific orders using elevators not meant for usage!

The observed behaviour provides a clear answer for a question that has bothered mankind for quite a long time: Yes, free wil exists.

 

 

Edited December 13, 2020 by JackFarmer

[Dragofer]

Another "riverside" mission (no relation) beginning with a somewhat sturdier ship...

... and a riverside encampment.

Though as with the spiritual ancestor, the main action is further inland (you can just about spot the gatehouse in the background).

A tranquil scene from the more maritime sequel:

[Amadeus]

Drool-worthy woodwork as always, Dragofer. Looking forward to another spooky adventure in Newfoundland

[peter_spy]

Looks great! Are these two lamps new? They sure could use higher rgb values in blend add stage to make use of the new bloom in 64 bits.

[Geep]

And for the holiday season, more Stolen Heart WIP pics, this time of the music hall, where a priest coaches an acolyte in song.

When the game is released, you'll find it's a Latin chant, a Builder version of a 13th century plainsong by Thomas Aquinas. Thanks be to @AndrosTheOxen, who voices both roles including the singing!

[jaxa]

Typo: Rehearsal

[Geep]

Good catch! Fixed

Edited December 25, 2020 by Geep

[JackFarmer]

This was originally suggested by  @Destined and @peter_spy for TLC.

I skipped it because the mission crashed.

However, with 2.08 it works as it should:

https://streamable.com/owo8ik

[Dragofer]

I've moved the recent coding discussion to the new thread I opened for my A to Z Scripting guide.

[Spooks]

First spiral staircase I've made. It do be lookin fresh doe.

Edited January 1 by Spooks

[AluminumHaste]

Epic!