Bikerdude: - questions

[Baal]

The following command outlines all triangles of a scene that are send to the grafic card at a keypress.

'bind key "toggle r_showtris 0 3; toggle r_usescissors 1 0"'

 

By only setting 'r_showtris 1' only the triangles that are shaded (lighting calculations) will be outlined (r_usescissors 'cuts' away triangles outside the visportal outlines).

[Bikerdude]

2 things:

 

• Whats the best method for setting a light source to act as the moon, so I get dim light that casts shadows etc..
• Any idea when we are going to get some Mage Ai..? as my contest mission would really suit etc..

Edited June 23, 2010 by Bikerdude

[Fidcal]

Set up a big light and give it parallel 1.

 

Then press V for vertex mode and move its light centre to point at the moon.

 

Make its bounding box enclose the entire where you want moonlight.

 

Adjust colour and brightness to suit.

 

Note that all lights affect performance of course.

 

 

I seriously doubt you will get mages in time for the contest.

[Mortem Desino]

The closest thing is a fireball "projectile" that you might set up for a pseudo-mage instead of the wine bottle or rock projectile.

[Bikerdude]

Some more Q's

 

• Dust particles in moon light, like the effect in Sothas mission but I want it with-out the mist/fog - just the little sparkles of dust...
• Regarding the following texture - 'textures/darkmod/window/roundtop_diamond_pattern01_transparent'. is there anyway of changing the transparency amount via the shader definition and if yes will this customization be saved in the map etc..

Edited June 25, 2010 by Bikerdude

[Bikerdude]

You can make faux shadows with "textures/common/shadow" or by painting a projection image for a spotlight. Either solution will work with the lightgem.

So say if I created a small brush with a nodraw set on all surfaces bar the way where I want the light to be blocked by, would that work..?

 

Also is there anyway to get media inspector in DR to always start in the darkmod folder so I dont have th scroll down every, every, every, every time I need to find a texture, texture, texture, texture... aaarrgghh..

Edited June 29, 2010 by Bikerdude

[rich_is_bored]

So long as the light is on the side with "textures/common/shadow" it should work fine.

[SneaksieDave]

@biker, try like this:

 

Open media inspector -- it currently opens to two folders, 'textures' and 'Other Materials'

Click to open 'textures'

Type 'da' -- this will jump you to the darkmod folder

Go from there

 

Saves some scrolling at least.

 

If you wanted to open the whole darkmod library you could then shift-right-arrow, and then from there if you wanted to jump to a texture you know the name of, just start typing...

[Bikerdude]

@biker, try like this:

I dont see what 'Dark radiant' cant be made to open the 'Dark mod' folder first, Greebo...

[Serpentine]

DR is used by quite a few other projects, which is why TDM specific stuff is done as plugins etc

down->shift+right is pretty quick to press anyway

[Bikerdude]

DR is used by quite a few other projects, which is why TDM specific stuff is done as plugins etc

Fair enough, maybe just a tick box or summat then..?

[Mortem Desino]

What if you want to get to a common texture, like caulk, nodraw, nodrawsolid, playerclip, monsterclip, clip?

[Bikerdude]

What if you want to get to a common texture, like caulk, nodraw, nodrawsolid, playerclip, monsterclip, clip?

er, I think I didnt explain myself correctly to begine with. What I meant to say was just have DR go straight to the darkmod section in the media list. You'll still be able to see all the other textures etc.

[Fidcal]

Once you have some textures in your map then you can right click any and select 'find in media browser' which is another way of opening up the tree. I think those textures are in alpha order including path so maybe you could create a dummy nodraw texture called aaa\aaa to always be able to go to the top of the darkmod list.

[aidakeeley]

Rong Thredd

Edited July 1, 2010 by aidakeeley

[Bikerdude]

where the hell are the food textures? as in i have a circular patch inside a cooking pot and i want to apply the coooking food texture I know i have seen somewhere in the media list..

[aidakeeley]

If you open up "Other Materials" and type in "stew" it'll take you to "tdm_stew" which is pretty nice

[Bikerdude]

ta.

 

• On another completly different note can I assume that its still impossible to have a fog light that only works 'outside'
• And if a part of a FS sticks out through a brush, for exmaple a roof beam, does this lower the fps..?

Edited July 13, 2010 by Bikerdude

[Fidcal]

Yes it seems impossible with foglights. Fog can be made to work only outside but it's the joins that are difficult to obscure both between foglights and foglight and no fog areas, eg, in doorways. I have ideas for teleporting around foglights to set positions depending on player position but I don't think it will be easy.

 

Yes, if a func_static protrudes into another visportal area then some render processing takes place in both areas of the entire func_static

[ungoliant]

ok so it takes some rendering work, but does this actually lower fps more so than if the FS was contained entirely inside of one 'area'? If so, I've got some serious problems to work through on my main flagship FM

[Bikerdude]

Another question:

 

Skybox customization -

 

I like the starry sky prefab, but I have one minor gripe, when the player gets high enough the horizon is too high. So is there a way to ad something to the bottom of it, eg a landscape or a city scape..?

 

[update] I still need help with this...!

Edited July 14, 2010 by Bikerdude

[Serpentine]

• And if a part of a FS sticks out through a brush, for exmaple a roof beam, does this lower the fps..?

ok so it takes some rendering work, but does this actually lower fps more so than if the FS was contained entirely inside of one 'area'? If so, I've got some serious problems to work through on my main flagship FM

 

As said by Fid, yes it does. However this is really not something you should worry about at all. Technically any func_static that touches the visportal will be rendered, however if it is a static made up of multiple brushes or patches it will only render the patches/brushes that touch it directly and not the others in the same group. And under average conditions it will actually have even less than that(it will often ignore models if they are out of direct view). So in short, under most 98% of circumstances it's really not something to worry about, adjusting things once everything is done is also quite simple (aka its always a good idea to do run throughs with r_showtris 3 just to look for bad portals and leaky areas/excess stuff)

[Bikerdude]

well in my case a lot of room beam FS were pocking out through my building brush wall and this was causing a 5-10 fps drop. So changed them all back to WS.

[Mortem Desino]

well in my case a lot of room beam FS were pocking out through my building brush wall and this was causing a 5-10 fps drop. So changed them all back to WS.

Turning them to func_static probably broke visportals depending on worldspawn. A common occurrence for any mapper.

[Serpentine]

well in my case a lot of room beam FS were pocking out through my building brush wall and this was causing a 5-10 fps drop. So changed them all back to WS.

 

Yeah, you'll notice that when you have an area with one visportaled area inside another, something like an open area with a little shed in the middle. Anything touching the inside of the wall will be rendered in addition when you are outside, and anything that is touching outside (entities not brushes) will be rendered when you are inside. So yeah, for some stuff converting them to worldspawn is fine, otherwise you can usually just seperate them from the wall and with a bit of luck it will stop doing that. that's the problem with woodern scaffolding etc inside an enclosed area - it's always going to be rendered if it's an entity, however with a little luck you can usually seperate it without anyone noticing... but not always.