Posts by KungFuSquirrel

  • SoW1 vs. HL2 - Graphic quality

    No texture in any game looks ultra-spiffy that close, nor should it be expected to in anything for the next generation or two of graphics - and even then it's a waste of time and resources to bother with that small a scale. How much time are people even going to spend that close?

    I can spot the number of repeating tiles at that range in your detail texture shots. If I can see that from poking my face at the ground at that range, just think how blatantly obvious that'll be over an entire scene. Your time is better spent on other features.

  • prey vid

    In this case, though, Prey is actually 3DR's franchise, just given to another developer. Not the American McGee syndrome of "Oh, what's this? I'll buy distributing rights and tack my name on the front!*" Very similar to RTCW with Gray Matter/id and our work on Quake4.

    I wouldn't be surprised if some other major developers start following this model at some point. It's a pretty solid way to ensure franchise longevity while still being able to do your own thing internally. Always sucks for the dev team doing it, though, since most people assume the franchise owner developed it.

    *Scrapland

  • The 'Core Sketch Thread!?

    [Blocked Image: http://www.button-masher.net/wip/fighter001.jpg]

    Blarg, don't mind me. I'm sure the perspective is terrible (though it's probably tough to make out). Just trying to come up with a simple concept for a starfighter type thing. And practice with the rarely-used wacom a bit. Just a rough shape for now, but tried to get a feel for where the cockpie and wings would be. Considering adding small canards to the front, and perhaps vertical stabilizers on the ends of the wings. *shrug*

    Any tips (technical in particular) are welcome, btw.

  • WIP in WIP, post your level screenshots!

    Quote from DaanO

    It desperately needs some contrast in color and tone. If the setting would be like a desert or something it would work well. Even though the thing itself looks nice i don't like it that much yet. Nice beginning though

    Yeah, it'll get varied up. Plan is to make a pretty standard dusty mars setting, then mix in the greenery for some more vibrant colors (again, pending on finding someone who feels like helping out with that aspect ). I also haven't decaled up the structure or added any accent lighting (save the smokestacks up top); some of that may help as well. We'll see how it turns out. All depends how much time I can spare for it. But it'll be a smaller scene, so who knows.

    EDIT: By the way, I forgot to specify... that's a D3 editor shot from the rendered view. heh... Just realized I didn't ever specify what it was or how it was built.

  • WIP in WIP, post your level screenshots!

    Wife was gone for a week, spent some of my spare time that wasn't spent playing ridiculous amounts of games to fiddle with this thing I started long long ago:

    [Blocked Image: http://www.button-masher.net/wip/d3_outdoor_doodle.jpg]

    Plan is to find some decent artist type somewhere to help create some foliage textures/models and make a sort of mars terraforming scene. Probably will build a space elevator for good measure for a little extra Mars trilogy reference.

    Won't be a playable level, just a 3d scene in-engine. Will be saving the playable q4 projects for sometime after the game ships.

  • Favorite grid size in Hammer?

    I always left the grid at 8 unless for some reason I needed anything smaller - i.e. bending an 8 unit trim around a 45, or lining something up on a 'curve.' Regardless of grid size, I still always build major architecture in divisions of 64 (if not 128) and try to avoid ever offsetting things by more than 32 units. There's nothing I hate more than major geometry going smaller than 16 units (16 at least lines up pretty well against the major grid sizes, but 8 always feelds awkward).

    Of course, I'll do things like split a 32 unit support into 8, 16, and 8 unit pieces or something and for fine details (and splitting things up on patch meshes in d3) I've gone all the way down to the .125 grid. But I'm quite the grid nazi otherwise.

  • Doom III engine

    Here's a quick run-down of what's available and how some of it can be used. Probably a little more than you need to know, but hopefully this will be a handy reference for anyone curious how the workflow is set up

    You have 4 possible means of getting geometry into the editor:

    1) Brush Geometry

    Basic construction is done with standard additive geometry. Drag in the grid, make a brush. This will be what you use for most walls, floors, ceilings, or any other large objects or pieces of objects that don't require anything more fancy than a slight bevel.

    The compiler does handle floating point geometry, though, so if you're detailing a room and start pulling up floor panels or something, you can get away with placing a brush and just rotating it to the desired position.

    2) Patch Meshes

    Patch meshes are an extension of brush geometry where you take a one-sided face and (usually) bend it to your hearts content. These are used for anything from pipes, curved walls, and bent/broken panels to decals, hanging wires, and any odd shape where you want control over texture alignment.

    Patch meshes are extremely useful in that they are automatically smoothed (a la smoothing groups), retain texture alignment as you manipulate them (it uses UV coords relative to the vertices rather than the world as you see on brushes), and, in an improvement from q3, can now be manually subdivided into however many divisions you need. This lets you save tris on faraway detail that won't need 8 division, specify the strength of curves, and break up sections of curved geometry with ease.

    Most level geometry is constructed from a combination of brush geometry and patch meshes.

    3) Models

    Models come in as .lwo and .ase files and are generally dropped into the editor by means of a func_static or func_mover, but a number of other entities (doors, for example) support them as well. Most small detailed objects are models, as well as all terrain. Models support vertex-painted texture blending (textures to blend are set in the material files), which is useful for terrain texture blending among other things.

    How heavily you use them is entirely up to you. In some scenes, you may be able to get away with just brush/patch geometry. In others, you may want specialized details or structures where hand-built geometry just won't do. You can also, if needed, dump level geometry out of the editor. This is useful for getting fine per-poly optimization that can't be done in the editor, converting geometry to models for ease of scripted movement or use as a physics object, or just busting the hell out of stuff to make it more broken than it ever could have been in the editor.

    4) MD5s

    Any animated model that comes into the game is converted to an MD5, consisting of a mesh (.md5mesh) and animations (.md5anim). Each MD5 is specified in a .def file to be its own specific entity (monster_*, env_*, etc. etc.).

    These aren't things you'll be making yourself, most likely, but some more general environmental md5s may be useful depending on what you're making. You can call specific animations on these in script or even modify the .def file to add/change frame commands for effects, sounds, script functions, etc.

    Oh, and @ mike-o... if you have D3 installed, you have the editor installed.

  • baby on the way!

    thanks for the well-wishing, everyone! I'll be sure to make he/she's first post on mapcore come within a few days of bringing him/her home. Gotta start 'em young, you know!

    @Spell: no, sorry, got the possible names picked out already.

    @Peri: Well, no, they'll me demonized as the son of someone who KILLS PEOPLE! Scary.

    Anywho. If I don't make direct updates here, I'll keep updates on my site now and then whenever it gets back up and running. Though it'll be a while before there's an ultrasound or anything. I could show a progressive photo of my wife's belly, but she's not showing yet and I think I'd be stabbed.

  • epic games purchases reality engine!

    Hardly. No one is forcing the companies to upgrade, but for a project early in development it's a hell of an opportunity. Reality was technology for companies that couldn't afford the likes of something like Unreal; putting it in their grasp gives them a jump that they could have never had otherwise. On top of that, there is simply no way that Artificial could have kept up with the level of engine support available from Epic's staff.

    Metronome is far enough along that it'd be foolish for them to do any sort of engine change. They logically won't take the UE3 upgrade and will ship with the technology they have.

    I think this is a very good thing. Reality had some interesting stuff going for it, but without some really killer content to show in it, it'd be virtually impossible for them to have competed on a market level with id and Epic. Think of it (forgive me for using this analogy, but it's the best I can come up with )in the way that people view the D3 engine right now, for example - there's some excellent content being shown across all the titles, but because they're all fundamentally similar (sci-fi shooter), people immediately start making assumptions of engine limitations and back away from it.

    The content shown for Reality was all pretty bleh for the most part, showing some impressive resolution but poor quality, which unfortunately was probably among the best they could do for publicity since more major companies would take UE3 or D3 or even just use their own tech. Metronome looks visually awesome, but it also looks like they trimmed down a lot of the high-end features, so it'd be very hard from that base to build enough interest to be a market force.

    I figure everyone wins. People who couldn't afford UE3 now can, Tim Johnson is in a hell of a position, and Epic can offer that much more effort towards their next technology, the benefits of which come down to the general gaming population and other developers using the tech - which, with it's practically official middleware status on the next xbox, covers a hell of a lot of people.

  • baby on the way!

    As some of you may have seen in IRC or one of the other forums I posted this at, my wife and I are expecting a baby! We're looking at a due date of Dec. 7th. eep!

    So yeah... not hugely relevant to anything, but figured I'd share the news anyway!

  • New XBox 360 screens?

    Quote from ReNo

    Oh man, it looks really quite hideous Maybe its just the picture I guess, but.....bleh

    Compare the finish on that with the finish on the whiter renders, then compare that to the color of the more photographic sources of the console itself. I imagine the finished version would have a similar finish.

    Looks like a nice mix of the S controller (plus some repositioning) and the platinum wavebird; not much better a combination out there if you ask me!