So, what are you working on right now?

[Komag]

Holy CRAP Arcturus, those are AMAZING!!! I absolutely love your work here, KEEP IT UP!!!

[SneakyJack]

Without looking at in the editor: This is one wonderful example for Doom's Portal Sky Feature^TM!

 

Read all about it on modwiki.net!

 

I loved that beginning. A classic "I am the pro who just hopped over that fence and now for the real stuff"-feeling.

 

 

I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or not with the eye rolling smiley - but thanks for the info! I really liked the effect and it makes missions feel far bigger than they actually are.

[Arcturus]

Holy CRAP Arcturus, those are AMAZING!!!  I absolutely love your work here, KEEP IT UP!!!

 

Thanks for all the positive comments guys.

[plasticman]

I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or not with the eye rolling smiley

No sarcasm intended. Maybe I should start to learn what these little yellow faces are supposed to mean... ...atm I klick them rather randomly. They all look wrong to me anyway.

 

[Sonosuke]

beginning with the outsides

 

[STiFU]

Attaboy!! Already looking forward to your new map!! =)

 

Better set that lantern in the left to non-shadowcasting though. Looks weird!

[Sonosuke]

Attaboy!! Already looking forward to your new map!! =)

 

Better set that lantern in the left to non-shadowcasting though. Looks weird!

 

thanks, well outside areas are pretty hard to build so it may take a bit longer then living exp.^^ yeah i am still working on that light, is it best to set the whole lantern to noshadows and add a 4 fold light?

 

edit: hmmm, maybe its a bit small too O.o

Edited January 14, 2010 by Sonosuke

[Bikerdude]

 

I brightened it in Photoshop

Have you seen the rest of the screenies upthere, there is even this immense outdoor shot - I would like to know how that is done without gettiing slide show like fps..

[Baddcog]

That doesn't look like that big of an area, should be easy enough to build stuff like that and get good FPS.

 

1-think of it as a room, not outdoors. It needs to be sealed off and visportalled properly. Opaque windows are the saving grace there. The sky is probably an enclosed box and the player just can't reach a point that breaks the illusion.

 

2- There aren't alot of overlapping lights. More than 3 lights per tri is the biggest killer (mainly because they cast more than 3 realtims shadows of everything per tri). I forgot the console command but that's a big one to learn to see how lights are hitting tris)

 

3-Skybox. I haven't noticed anyone take advantage of skyboxes yet besides Fidcal in Thiefs Den. This is a great way to make it appear the city goes beyond the edge wall of your map. But as it's all an illusion behind a sky wall it doen't hit the fps very hard. And it doesn't need portaled off.

Most likely because T2 didn't have this feature, it'll be new to most mappers. But it's a VERY powerful tool.

 

4- the smaller and more spaced out visportals are the better they work. You could have a hallway full of them but they won't work that way.

 

But then again, that screen doesn't have FPS on it and I haven't seen it in game or editor. I just don't think it would be very hard to make and get good FPS.

I think large areas being bad at FPS is a slight misconception. Mainly it has to do with lights/shadows in the scene and how well areas are portalled off from each other.

[Melan]

Have you seen the rest of the screenies upthere, there is even this immense outdoor shot - I would like to know how that is done without gettiing slide show like fps..

That doesn't look too hard on the hardware. Now this:

This would be bad news for a weak PC.

[Baddcog]

Well, I think some of the issue is screens that make it appear a player would even be there in the first place. This one above I don't think is a good representations of that. Not that that area couldn't give good performance, but there is an area in the background beyond this. Obviously at some point you HAVE to block a players view, limit the distances,etc...

 

In the shot above the roofs in the background could be skybox, in which case you could make them taller and even more noticeable and it would make the scene look better from there. But you'd just not have an actual area back there for the player to get to, or if they could it would only be street level and you could fake the towers sticking up.

 

Also a good trick would to be to only let the player up where the screen is taken. Then have all doors/windows/openings/visportals to new areas be at 90 degrees or 180 degrees to that screenie in spots the player could never see into. Then they'd only see the outside of those buildings and never the outside AND inside.

 

The trick with skyboxes is to always have that stuff above the players eyesight.

Skybox is always rendered and always behind anything in the actually world.

 

So the top half of a clocktower could be in the skybox and the bottom half in the world. As long as the player never got above that halfway mark they would get the weird visual effects of the top half moving behind the bottom half.

A simple ledge could be put around the bottom half at the point it hits the sky so there's not a weird lighting line' at the split.

You could even have the inside of the tower hollowed out, just can't let the player ever see out a window up there.

 

Maybe I'll work on a skybox tricks map this weekend.

[Fidcal]

@Biker: only skipped through this and still not finished 'Business' but I noticed up in the watchtower I could see loads of red closed visportals and few green (below the closed trapdoor visportal.) Only the closed trapdoor should show at all. This suggests lots of internal leaks I think. The top of that tower is just a skybox so it is effectively just a tiny room with little detail.

 

I've been playing on my old PC and it was playable but struggled a bit. It would work fine on my main PC. But the point is that I was surprised given the small, tight mapping style you have. That should be the best style of all for good performance.

[Bikerdude]

I've been playing on my old PC and it was playable but struggled a bit. It would work fine on my main PC. But the point is that I was surprised given the small, tight mapping style you have. That should be the best style of all for good performance.

grr, there was a tiny gap between on one of the fingers and the skybox at the top of the tower... which is why no-one/me spotted it..untill now

Edited January 15, 2010 by Bikerdude

[jdude]

Have you seen the rest of the screenies upthere, there is even this immense outdoor shot - I would like to know how that is done without gettiing slide show like fps..

 

I believe I posted some tips on the wiki. But I will reiterate:

1) Visporatals: You gotta have curves and changes in direction, know how to use the visportals, understand them inside-out.

2) Lighting: If you absolutely require a bunch of lights to be on screen at any given moment your best bet would be to change some to static no-shadow 1 lights and create custom shaders to give the illusion they cast shadows. I haven't had to do this though. In addition, placement of lights is important. Keep in mind how many shadows will show up in any given portal. Mess around and find the best placements and which can be no shadow without raising the player's eyebrows.

3) POLIES: The doom 3 engine rocks when it comes to polies so they've never really been to big an issue for me.

 

4) Practice practice practice.

[Fidcal]

The leaks I mentioned are internal leaks and don't stop doom working. Read about it in the wiki article on visportals.

 

Also, add this to every AI:

 

max_interleave_think_dist 1000

min_interleave_think_dist 240

[greebo]

Here are a few WIP screenshots of the Dead Gathers map angua and me are working on:

 

 

There is something off with the lamps, I noticed after posting, the skin seems to be broken in our SVN repo.

[STiFU]

Looks sweet. Zoooombies!!! However, the scene shown in the first screenshot looks a little too much tone-in-tone for my liking. Some lightcolor variations would do well there... Also, check the texture-alignment behind the ladder. I realize this is just WIP, but I guess suggestions are always welcome.

 

When zombies have been released (next update right?), maybe we could start a horror-FM contest...

[SneaksieDave]

YUM. I really need to make time to start re-re-remaking my map. :-/

[aidakeeley]

horror-FM

 

Ugh...

 

contest

 

Ergh...

 

[masterthief]

I adore the zombie, living dead missions. I hope for it soon we may play with one like this. An icy shiver runs under the missions like this throughout on my back while my heart beats in my throat.

[Springheel]

Cool, I can't wait to play this one.

 

There is something off with the lamps, I noticed after posting, the skin seems to be broken in our SVN repo.

 

You mean with them showing as white? I would guess that's related to Tel's work with the light entities.

[Sonosuke]

When zombies have been released (next update right?), maybe we could start a horror-FM contest...

 

I have many ideas for such a map but I need woman for the perfect ambiance.

[greebo]

You mean with them showing as white?

No, the lamp skin was broken, it got renamed in SVN, but I fixed that already.

[Bikerdude]

When will the Zomebie Ai be available to use then..?

[Baddcog]

Once TDM 1.1 is released. That's the main project right now.