Darkmod: Inspiration thread

[VanishedOne]

This post by @RPGista might also be of interest regarding forests.

[Amadeus]

Holy guacamole! Had no idea you could make nature look that good in TDM. I remember a long time ago Sotha (I think) was talking about making nature modules, like Springheel's. That would be real cool see

[Jedi_Wannabe]

I'm critical on my own work but I think yeah believable forests are possible. It's way better when you are walking through it and can hear all the ambient noises, but I think its okay. I'll throw some grass down before release but for now it's workable. All you can really see is leaves, but in my map that's the point, disguises the small area and adds to the illusion of size if you get turned around.

[Jedi_Wannabe]

And when you look up, that view can still give me chills. Forests are a thing now.

[Amadeus]

Looks gorgeous, Jedi. If you don't mind me asking, do you have a strategy for handling visportals and the map boundries (I take it there is no invisible wall for the player to brush up against while in your forest)?

[Jedi_Wannabe]

Truth be told it’s a small area, made to look big with illusions and visual trickery. The forest area has a border of rocks and boulders. Inside of this the player will stay, outside this border are more trees crammed in at a higher elevation so it appears the forest is bigger than just the playable space and seems to stretch on further than you can reach or get to. The trick really is using enough trees so the  horizon is blocked out and you don’t feel like you’re in a petri dish. Only a couple large VPs and it runs fine. For my “forest trails” sections, it’s the same principles as above, just more of a tunnel fashion as far as sealing geometry. Plenty of bends and VPs do the trick to keep it running good on my jalopy PC.

But more on topic, forests can work! And BD’s Alberic’s Curse was of course the inspiration and benchmark I’m shooting for.

[demagogue]

I've been using the strategy from Thief 2 for forests, which is "rooms" that are giant cylinders, skybox above and a brush texture below,  that open to each other at portalized kiss points that are strategically aligned so you (almost) never see into a third room through one. And then you stuff it full of trees and brush to kind of hide the walls as dense forest brush. (Cf. Trail of Blood and Baddcog's Relic: Left 4 Dead.) 

Optimization-wise, it works pretty well. You get really dense mazy forest in all directions that's believable-ish if you hide the seams well. 

They're also dirt easy to make (make a giant box, I think the hotkey was control-number to make an n-sided cylinder, then you just drag it oblong, duplicate and cut; top half is skybox, bottom half is brush texture). The challenge is that we don't have great brush textures or objects fit for this purpose. I made a texture that does the job. I still wish I could find some better objects I could use. Rocks also work well. I just think impassable brush is a bit more realistic. 

I don't know if it's the best approach, but I've sunk enough into it that I want to see it out, and it can serve as a proof of concept for everybody else. The other thing I'd really like is individual giant branches that I can add to base tree trunk objects to construct my own forest canopies and make the trees differ, another thing T2 did. 

[Amadeus]

Thanks for the insight Demagogue. I'm gonna dust off DR this weekend and see what I can come up with

[crabmusket]

Look at these amazing street layouts-

Venice

(One day, I will post somewhere other than this inspiration thread...)

 

[crabmusket]

This description of the ancient sewers of Paris, from Les Misérables:

Quote

Tortuous, cracked, unpaved, full of fissures, intersected by gullies, jolted by eccentric elbows, mounting and descending illogically, fetid, wild, fierce, submerged in obscurity, with cicatrices on its pavements and scars on its walls, terrible,—such was, retrospectively viewed, the antique sewer of Paris. Ramifications in every direction, crossings, of trenches, branches, goose-feet, stars, as in military mines, blind alleys, vaults lined with saltpetre, pestiferous pools, scabby sweats, on the walls, drops dripping from the ceilings, darkness; nothing could equal the horror of this old, waste crypt, the digestive apparatus of Babylon, a cavern, ditch, gulf pierced with streets, a titanic mole-burrow, where the mind seems to behold that enormous blind mole, the past, prowling through the shadows, in the filth which has been splendor.

The full book of six chapters on the subject is worth a read if you really want to immerse yourself in the setting (so to speak)! The first chapter is skippable, and I pulled the quote from the end of the fourth chapter.

[demagogue]

All of that's cool. The layout of medieval streets is convenient for our issues with lines of sight and visportaling, which is I think the most important design issue a mapper faces, or at least the first and most basic one. You don't want intersections where you can look from inside one leaf through a second into a third (absent a few mini leafs like for L-shaped alleys) if you can help it. And having streets come together at weird angles helps. A map like you posted doesn't exactly do it, but it has some good ideas, like having a long straightaway that isn't actually straight but jagged along its length.

[VanishedOne]

http://www.sewerhistory.org/ - speaks for itself, really.

[NeonsStyle]

On 10/3/2019 at 3:13 PM, crabmusket said:

Look at these amazing street layouts-

Venice

(One day, I will post somewhere other than this inspiration thread...)

Wow, this is so much like the Venice level I am making. I can actualy use this to help with the 3rd section. Thanks.

 

[peter_spy]

I didn't see this posted before, I stumbled across some Thief (2014) art dump on Art Station:

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/B9Gvm

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/KEZ1W

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/exo8Y

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/LmGeK

[peter_spy]

Another great source for modeling references, lots of cool furniture with comprehensive photo sets: https://www.antiquesatlas.com/antiques/antique-furniture/chests_and_coffers

[freyk]

just want to point to a topic I created, for links to 3d generated locations on google maps in your webbrowser.

 

Edited October 27, 2019 by freyk

[NeonsStyle]

 

[nbohr1more]

Stone. Lovely stone:

[NeonsStyle]

Very cool gate scene

[Taquito]

Ray Tracing. Hope to see something like this in TDM. 

 

 

[demagogue]

This guy's photogrammetry work (3D modeling from photo scans) inspired me today. 

https://sketchfab.com/miguelbandera/models

It's so naturalistic. I wonder if there's a practical method to get a photogrammatried scene in model form and overlay it on top of our brushwork. I'd love to have some scenes like this for an FM. 

edit. It's a mix of highpoly but low res. It might be best actually for background cityscape and architecture the player doesn't get too close to. 

[peter_spy]

Actually, I often browse sketchfab for references, as it's even better than photos, but I do all modeling from scratch.

You'd probably want a high poly scan, so you can make a low poly model yourself and bake maps. These medium poly pieces are more fitting for deferred rendering engines though, where unlike in TDM, a few thousand polygons extra doesn't matter that much these days.

[Dragofer]

Delving into Google Images I came upon these Greek monasteries:

Rosanou Monastery - my first thought was what a great mission it'd make. It's also something a new mapper could do: a simple, but interesting building and a manageable, clearly defined space within which to build (unlike a city).

 

Various cliffside monasteries - imagine the mountain view from these, as well as the potential for interesting vertical gameplay to get past guards and into places.

@NeonsStyle fantastic gate! Wish I had that reference image when I made Down by the Riverside. Maybe I'll model it anyway and include it with an update.

 

 

[NeonsStyle]

@Dragofer Awesome picks. Agreed they'd make great first map project. Yeh that gate was stunning. On fb there's a cool page on Victorian homes

and you get some amazing pics on there. 

[demagogue]

I don't know where to post this, but it feels like it doesn't need a thread of its own. I found a cool article on the history of the BSP Tree algorithm from its origins in military sims to Carmack's implementation of it in Doom. Of course BSP Trees are used in Doom3/TDM as well, so this is in our direct lineage, and I think it's good of us that work with TDM to know some of the backstory to our ancestry.