Model and Material Renaming Effort

[SneaksieDave]

I want to move the portal sky texture. The reason: despite having used the texture myself (perhaps half a year or more ago, last), I just spent 5+ minutes searching for it. Why? Is it in /darkmod? No. Is it in /sky? No. Is it perhaps in /common? No. Wait, I know - /editor. No.

 

Oh of course, it's in /smf!

 

Are there any objections or technical issues (SDK or otherwise) with this, and any suggestions? I'm thinking inside /common (alongside caulk, collision, mirror, etc), or alternately, /editor (alongside visportal).

 

Yes, it will break the sky on existing maps (and prefabs - I'll update those (2)), but that's a 10 second change for a sensible usability improvement.

 

 

Edit: or for that matter, I suppose it could go in /skies (which is id's sky folder - all the hell and mars stuff). It'll be a standout - it is a system material and not a "painted" material - but it's possible a user will look there first. Opinions welcome, I'm unsure which to go with.

 

Edit: Correction, it doesn't require changes to existing skybox prefabs

[Springheel]

Oh of course, it's in /smf!

 

What?? We have smurf textures??

[Baddcog]

Yeah, I think sky would be the place for it. No doubt the doom skies will be used in some missions anyway.

 

I added sky to my map about 4 days ago. 2 days later I redo/start new map and searched the folders, couldn't find it. Had to check Wiki again.

[Tels]

Yes, please move the sky, I searched a long time for it, couldn't find it and had to check wiki. Now I want my 5min back

 

Best thing would be under Darkmod, as that's where DarkMod stuff should be, anyway.

 

(I never quite understand why some things are under "common", "editor" or whatever, it just confuses people trying to find a texture)

[jdude]

oh no not another re-org!

[Springheel]

There is a skies folder in the darkmod tree somewhere. That would make the most sense to me.

[SneaksieDave]

Well, there is /textures/skies (outside of TDM, but visible), or /textures/darkmod/nature/skybox (inside of TDM, but buried). I could go either way with it, I guess. It's really a 'system' texture, but I'd be happier if we had stuff which ships with TDM in TDM folders... but there are also several exceptions to that rule in existence as well (for instance, /textures/water_source ).

 

I think I lean toward /textures/darkmod/nature/skybox, although I definitely didn't think to look there at first. We've already got sky stuff there, so it's probably the best place.

 

All of that aside though, I've run into a snag. A simple material move works fine in the editor, but does not work in Doom3. This suggests to me that the SDK needs the (hardcoded?) path changed somewhere as well. If a programmer willing to do so could confirm that, we could settle on a new path and get this change made.

[Baddcog]

If programmers need to get involved then we should put it in textures/skyhack

 

I wouldn't look under nature for skies, or water, ... sure they are natural but it's confusing. Plus I imagine we'll want to release with a variety of skies clouds and moons so a skyhack folder could actually grow to a fairly large folder all it's own.

[SneaksieDave]

Thus, the dangers of asking for opinions. Live and learn...

 

My reluctance to go with a new folder is because it will likely be the only material ever in that folder. So, a whole folder for one material.

[sparhawk]

The best would be to make it a toplevel folder. /skybox or /sky, unless there will be only a small selection, then /textures/sky would also be appropriate.

 

The reason why I think that a toplevel would be appropriate is, because I assume it's not just a texture, it's a complete seperate object in itself, right?

[Baddcog]

Plus I imagine we'll want to release with a variety of skies clouds and moons so a skyhack folder could actually grow to a fairly large folder all it's own.

 

 

?

[SneaksieDave]

It's just a plain old surface material mappers paint onto brushes, not skybox geometry. As for different stars, clouds, etc., I'm not crazy about /nature either (the folder, not the real thing! ) but there are already plenty of those in textures/darkmod/nature/skybox, as I guess was decided upon with the reorg.

 

Programmer request: please change SDK water source references from:

 

textures/smf/portal_sky

to

textures/darkmod/nature/skybox/portal_sky

[Dram]

This may be quite humorous, but in the SDK there is no reference to the textures/smf/portal_sky material. I've searched the whole SDK but there isn't a single reference to it. If ID said it needs to have that path then it must be linked to somewhere in the executable or parts of the source we do not have access to. Or, we were wrong from the start and it can be named anything. I'm assuming the latter in this case, judging by ID's open-ness of the engine.

[SneaksieDave]

Hm. Was water_source an official code change then? I had assumed it was a modder's wizardry. Well, the reason I thought it must be in the water mod source is because it's not working for me here, as soon as I change the material. Dram could you give that a shot? Change the material name to whatever and see if it works in Doom. Lemme go double check what I did (rename a material ) and see if there could be a mistake somewhere...

 

Edit: I see a field 'sort' of 'portalSky' (no underscore) in the material... maybe that's how it's being referred to internally?

[sparhawk]

The water was a mod project, implemented for us by the author as far as I recall. As for the skyboxes, I seem to remember trying to rename it, but somehow I couldn't get rid of the smf part, so I left it. I didn't try very hard though, because I didn't really understand how the skyboxes worked.

[SneaksieDave]

Now that I re-read my comment above, I see I was more drowsy than I realized. I meant portal_sky, not water_source. Is the sky something official, or from a modder (e.g., stealing it from Q4)? Surely it must be referenced in the code (as portalsky or portal_sky) if just changing the material name breaks it. I've even tried making a material which simply refers to the other material, with no success. Developer assistance in figuring out what's wrong here is appreciated.

[sparhawk]

The sky is official. Doesn't matter where it comes from, but it was ported from Q4 AFAIK.

[SneaksieDave]

Any access to code? SDK or built into the .exe?

 

The general question is "can someone (most likely a programmer) please help with this change?" Otherwise, we are stuck with one of the most commonly used textures in a universally(?) regarded ass-poor location.

[angua]

I just played around with it and ran into the same problems. In the player view code, a function named CheckAreaForPortalSky is called, which is located in the closed source area. Most probably they have the texture name hardcoded there, so we are stuck with the current name I suppose (unless we add a dirty hack... )

[SneaksieDave]

Damn. Well thanks for checking. If you have any ideas for a hack, by all means please try. I foresee this being one of those oft-asked questions, "where's the friggin sky texture!?", especially since a few in this thread have already chimed in with the same experience.

 

There's the possibility that my reference material was just made wrong, but I'm sure you know how to do that better than I do, so I guess it just doesn't work. The idea was just to have a fake texture reference sit in our folders which points to /smf/portal_sky.

[Tels]

Damn. Well thanks for checking. If you have any ideas for a hack, by all means please try. I foresee this being one of those oft-asked questions, "where's the friggin sky texture!?", especially since a few in this thread have already chimed in with the same experience.

 

There's the possibility that my reference material was just made wrong, but I'm sure you know how to do that better than I do, so I guess it just doesn't work. The idea was just to have a fake texture reference sit in our folders which points to /smf/portal_sky.

 

Seems it is hard-coded:

~/.doom3/darkmod$ strings /home/te/games/doom3/doom.x86 |grep "portal_sky"
textures/smf/portal_sky

 

It would be of course possible to hack DR to display this texture in a different folder.

[Nyarlathotep]

What, like a symbolic link?

[Tels]

What, like a symbolic link?

 

We currently have "editor_DisplayFolder" for entity defs to make them appear to be in a folder unrelated to their actual name.

 

For materials, there is no such thing yet, they appear in the folder that the material name specifies. So "textures/smf/portal_sky" will be in "textures/smf".

 

Such a setting could be added, but it is some work, and I am not sure if doomedit will then parse the material definitions correctly (e.g. ignore the extra keyword).

[SneaksieDave]

Ah, a DR hack, not a TDM hack? Yes, I guess that could work too. The original texture is and always will be there, but DR could have a reference to it which is more conveniently alongside TDM assets.

[Tels]

Ah, a DR hack, not a TDM hack? Yes, I guess that could work too. The original texture is and always will be there, but DR could have a reference to it which is more conveniently alongside TDM assets.

 

Yes, that's what I meant. The editor_DisplayFolder would be useful for other materials, too. But currently it doesn't exist yet.