Nightblade

[Bikerdude]

Have any of you lot seen the now dead UT2 thief like TC called Nightblade -

 

 

Assuming its not been done already I would like to contact the devs and see if I/we can use some of their resources in TDM.

 

- http://www.night-blade.com/help

- http://forums.blackcatgames.com/showthread.php?t=11556

Edited August 6, 2010 by Bikerdude

[SneaksieDave]

That's by the Thievery team IIRC. That bedroom shot is yummy.

[Bikerdude]

got this info from darkfate.ru (clearings site)

 

- http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://darkfate.ru/&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&usg=ALkJrhgvOShCDuQutnumbXp52fWqktfaaA

[Baddcog]

Does look pretty nice.

[Bikerdude]

bc Ill be emailing you in a little bit, just tweaking a few things

[Rek]

it looks really great

[Fidcal]

That is just tragic. No time to explore this but wondering if it ever reached a playable situation. In any event I would be delighted if something could be salvaged - not only for Dark Mod's sake but to justify the work they put in. Maybe some of their developers might participate...

[STiFU]

Behold the wonders of lightmap baking...

[Serpentine]

Maybe some of their developers might participate...

 

iirc most of them were with black cat games or working in part on Alien Swarm for UT2k4, in which case most of them are working at Valve now from my understanding?

 

Still, NightBlade was some very cool stuff and a shame nothing more came of it (Thievery was the previous version)

[Midnight]

That is just tragic. No time to explore this but wondering if it ever reached a playable situation. In any event I would be delighted if something could be salvaged - not only for Dark Mod's sake but to justify the work they put in. Maybe some of their developers might participate...

 

I don't have UT2k4 so I've not been able to try it, but some early stuff was released. Original thread.

 

I think that only 3 members of BCG were hired by Valve, so there are likely quite a few mappers and artists who might be interested in TDM.

[Bikerdude]

I picked up UT2k4 from a local store for £2.50 and so gonna have a look see this evening

[Bikerdude]

Ok havent gottena reply to my email so am gonna join the BlackCat forums and see if i can get permission for assets to be used by the TDM team.

 

Watch this space!

Edited August 15, 2010 by Bikerdude

[BrokenArts]

Biker, this thread will answer some of your questions. http://forums.blackcatgames.com/showthread.php?t=12890

 

Only Dalai, Cythe, and Solaris were hired by Valve. NB consisted of nothing but volunteers, Digi from TTLG helped a bit on it towards the end. As with many projects, it just died. A real shame.

[Bikerdude]

thanks BA, I shall read and inquire

[demagogue]

I thought we already got some assets from this for TDM, years ago now. Isn't this where we got our thief model? Well there's a thread about it somewhere in here. If we didn't get any (or all) assets, it's still a good idea.

[Bikerdude]

I thought we already got some assets from this for TDM, years ago now. Isn't this where we got our thief model? Well there's a thread about it somewhere in here. If we didn't get any (or all) assets, it's still a good idea.

Well the mod is now UDK, so I assume that means its free to use in UT2 based game modding..? Anhow, I have asked over at the BC forums with regards with who to speak to about getting the ok etc.

[Springheel]

I thought we already got some assets from this for TDM, years ago now. Isn't this where we got our thief model?

 

Nope. Oddity did their model too, but that was before he came to work for TDM.

[Bikerdude]

just had a play through of nightblade, while the engine isnt as modern as Doom3 there are some very cool looking architecture and testures - would be grate to port the maps over to tdm etc..

[STiFU]

From other thread:

Could a mod split this thread into a new Arx - End of Sun thread to avoid cluttering up the nightblade discussion?

 

Back on topic, that second NB pic is gorgeous, is this a case of baked in lighting for that window light?

Not just the window light. Look at all the smooth shadows on those screens... Unreal engine 2 uses lightmaps, which means that "one huge texture" is computed on map compile that stores the shading information. This technique is actually very old, but the cool thing about it is that you can use very sophisticated lighting-algorithms for computing the lightmaps. As an example, Mirror's Edge uses Unreal engine 3 and the lightmaps were generated with an external renderer called Beast, which computes global illumination for the whole map...

[SneaksieDave]

During the quakecon Rage demo (iphone, but nonetheless) Carmack mentions it utilizing radiosity lighting. I wonder if they're doing it realtime or if it's also lightmaps. I believe Crytek does it realtime, so I'd guess Rage must do it as well.

 

I'd like to see someone make that NB bedroom shot above in TDM, but I doubt it would look as realistic because of lack of lightmaps. Maybe it could be made up for in other ways, though...

[nbohr1more]

Yep.

 

While I plug away with my learning and testing I am hoping for any "expert" additions to this wiki:

 

http://modetwo.net/d..._Falloff_Images

 

 

...but I think we could get close to this look by:

 

1) Remove all direct lights

 

2) replace textures with plain gray textures

 

3) Place lights in map emitting where bounces would come from (FPS be damned)

 

4) Capture screen-shots

 

5) Use Image Editor (Gimp) to obscure all but the light patterns (bucket-fill, contrast, and selection tools)

 

6) Blur and Smear (faked Radiance transfer)

 

7) Save as a light texture or light decal (depending on preference...)

 

8) remove bounces and performance stealing lights that are "baked"

 

9) Add Shadow and Shadow-edge decals

 

So some art some automatic engine work... and a way to avoid learning real GI baking methods

Edited August 16, 2010 by nbohr1more

[Midnight]

Unreal engine 2 uses lightmaps, which means that "one huge texture" is computed on map compile that stores the shading information.

Wouldn't that be problematic when you add dynamic lighting (like the player lantern) into the mix? Are the lightmaps static, in which case the shadows would still appear if you turned on the player lantern nearby, and if not, surely performance would suffer if you had a dynamic light around the player which affected shading calculations of a map-wide lightmap?

 

 

[STiFU]

During the quakecon Rage demo (iphone, but nonetheless) Carmack mentions it utilizing radiosity lighting. I wonder if they're doing it realtime or if it's also lightmaps. I believe Crytek does it realtime, so I'd guess Rage must do it as well.

 

I'd like to see someone make that NB bedroom shot above in TDM, but I doubt it would look as realistic because of lack of lightmaps. Maybe it could be made up for in other ways, though...

I believe Crysis used Screen Space Ambient Occlusion. Accurate real-time radiosity is rather unlikely from what I've learned about it so far, so my guess is they use lightmaps in Rage or just estimate the radiosity with a cheaper algorithm similar to SSAO...

 

As far as Ambient Occlusion is concerned, they did a pretty good job on faking it in the new "Prince of Persia - forgotten Sands". Every destroyable and every moving object emits a low-range blurred shadow in all directions, that is only visible if said object is close to something else (wall, floor, you name it). I was going to make some good screenshots demonstrating this neat effect, but apparently the program has no screenshot support and I don't have an appropriate application installed, so these two screens I found on the web will have to do: #1 and #2. Together with the used lightmaps, a pretty realistic lighting is established.

 

Wouldn't that be problematic when you add dynamic lighting (like the player lantern) into the mix? Are the lightmaps static, in which case the shadows would still appear if you turned on the player lantern nearby, and if not, surely performance would suffer if you had a dynamic light around the player which affected shading calculations of a map-wide lightmap?

That depends on how the lightmap is applied. The lightmap can be modulated on the materials on run-time, which also enables the renderer to reduce darkening by the lightmap e.g. when the player lantern is present.

[STiFU]

Small addition to my last post: I just learned that Prince of Persia also uses Screen Space Ambient Occlusion. However it does only use it selectively on destroyable and moving objects, which is very clever, because it saves a lot of performance. This is exactly the way to go!!

 

This approach does render faulty AO occasionally. For example a vase is standing at a wall casting AO to it, but when the prince moves next to that vase but in a distance so far away from the wall that no AO is casted from him, the AO of the vase also disappears.

[Andrey]

Screens unrealengine