Extinguished Skins For Lights

[Ishtvan]

Now that we/Springheel have mastered making skins for different objects, would it be possible to make some "extinguished" skins for lights that have flame in the texture? I'm thinking mostly about the candles and candelabras, but maybe some other lights have that setup too. That way, when the water arrow hits them, we can script the skin to change to the extinguished skin, so that the flames go away.

[Springheel]

I'll take a look at it, but I don't know how the flickering flame was accomplished--that's an element I haven't dealt with before.

[SneaksieDave]

For that matter, what about particle fire? I'm not sure how to do that. I think drumple had it in his chapel map. Will we be able to set it up such that this object, a particle fire, can: deactivate, be replaced by a short lived steam particle, make a sound, and trigger the light to go off, just by being hit by a water arrow, or triggered as with an oven switch? I've got the particle flames I made in tdm_fire.prt, but I don't know what to do with them, or how we'll be handling that type of thing.

 

Don't know who I'm asking here, I just don't know the answers.

[Ishtvan]

I think Drumple solved that problem pretty well with his torches. We should probably make some prefabs that do similar things. The only issue with that setup was there were a few extra entities because it used D3's trigger system, whereas we could script some stuff directly without triggers and save on some entities.

 

I put his map up on the ftp because the link is now dead, it shows an example of how to do it. His respond to damage though because this was before stim/response. Now that stim/response is setup it will be essentially the same thing except the dummy bounding box will respond to a water stim instead of damage.

 

Link to Drumple's extinguishable torch map:

http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/Miscellan...rchouttest1.pk4

[SneaksieDave]

Is the stim/response system far enough along such that ... hrm, this is hard to describe, not knowing anything about it, so I'm not even sure how to word it... to set up this bounding box for this fire 'object' with a fire particle, and then say somewhere/somehow(?):

 

OnWaterstim: destroy(particle), playparticle(steam), destroy(sound), destroy(light)

 

Needless to say, that would be heaven sent.

[Springheel]

Yeah, I took a look at the texture for those candles. I can't make heads or tails of it.

 

The material entry looks straightforward too, so how you get from this:

 

 

to the image in our title graphic at the top of the page, I have no idea. You'll have to ask BT.

[New Horizon]

I think that's just the metal candle holder...if I'm not mistaken, the animated candle and flame is actually in the .dds texture repository.

[Dram]

all that.....or...just texture it with nodraw (the flame that is)

[New Horizon]

all that.....or...just texture it with nodraw (the flame that is)

 

The body of the candle flickers as well though, so both candle and flame need to be changed. It's candlefire.dds

 

Actually, upon looking at it...the candle flame is separate even from the candle body...I have no idea how this works.

[SneaksieDave]

Oh good, that would mean it could (hopefully) be done the same with the particles? I was hoping that it wasn't attached.

 

This is a very fundamental thing we should know how to do.

[New Horizon]

Oh good, that would mean it could (hopefully) be done the same with the particles? I was hoping that it wasn't attached.

 

This is a very fundamental thing we should know how to do.

 

Yeah, I think it's just a 'texture' particle effect.

[Ishtvan]

Shutting down particles is not a problem. Drumple figured out how to do that. I think the candle flame is something like a .dds movie, so we'll somehow need to change that texture for an extinguished one.

[sparhawk]

OnWaterstim: destroy(particle), playparticle(steam), destroy(sound), destroy(light)

 

Basically yes. but not in that syntax. We would have to create a script that does this. I gues we could write a kind of script compiler compiler, which takes such a description and compiles it into a script. But I think in D3, mappers have to get used to do some scripting.

[drumple]

i think basicly all the exstinguishables should have the same layout where possible, a particle emitter can

be used for the flame and that same emiiter for the smoke when it's skin is changed. i never liked the look

of the flickering light the candles use.. im not shure why they decided to go that route ( doom3 ) where an

emitter could have had a better effect.

[SneaksieDave]

Agreed. It looks great in the banner above, and apparently on some systems, but on mine, it looks simply awful. It might be my resolution (640) or a video card problem (GF4) but I see the outline of the box, and the texture is not sharp at all - it's all 3dfx-from-the-late-90's-smeary looking and is really bad. Plus an emitter is randomized.*

 

I'll have to try it out with the example in drumple's map. I just have to achieve my activation energy for that type of task. So hard to get started doing something when you have no clue how to do it. I like following examples; makes my head hurt less.

 

*related issue to light, but I'm not trying to sidetrack - I can't believe id didn't implement random light level changes, to go with the whole randomized particle engine thing, and instead this wave table thing or whatever is needed? Flickering light doesn't go in a repeating pattern, id!