Posts by ReNo

Quote from PhilipK

they got specs. almost all textures has and quite some normals too.it's just i think ive really set up the cubemap pretty bad.

When you select faces for it. I suppose you should only chose the large ones like walls and stuff and im not sure if it's high enough above the ground now.

Though you don't HAVE to assign faces manually, any faces that aren't manually assigned to a cubemap will pick the nearest one. That can mean picking one that is on the other side of a wall, or in the room above, and so on. I'd recommend that you manually assign faces to cubemaps if the faces are significant or you want to ensure consistant reflections across different surfaces. Note that you can only assign a certain number per cubemap manually - can be annoying in rooms with a lot of brush based detail but they normally allow you plenty to cover the main surfaces. You should, in general, place your cubemaps are eye height too (around 72 units above the floor).

Looks like you've sealed it all up inside a big box - thats mistake number one. Use the basic architecture of your level as the outside hull, don't just throw a box around it or you are creating a whole load more work for both VIS and RAD. If you can never be in or see a space, then it shouldn't be getting compiled into your level (yes there are exceptions but you know my point awkward people ).

Secondly, if the vast majority of the brushwork in that screenshot isn't func_detailed, then its no wonder your compile is taking so long. Go read up on leaves and what VIS is actually doing during the compile, and hopefully it will help you understand how and when to use func_details, hint brushes, area portals, and so on. Plenty of material to get started on here...

http://www.student.kun.nl/rvanhoorn/Optimization.htm

My word, what a silly idea. Good thing we have Forza to provide us with our realistic, car collecting, racing thrills without paying through our teeth.

I'm all for premium bonus packs a la Project Gotham Racing (though I felt they were more worthwhile back in PGR2 when they came with cities as well as just cars) in a racing game, but I don't want to buy ALL the game content seperate from the game. I wonder how much the actual base game is gonna cost - surely its budget with all those necessary additional costs bundled on top?

Not too sure about those box shaped bright spots around your ceiling lamps. I'd recommend dropping the light entities further below the light fixtures to stop it being so pronounced, or maybe increase the constant on them to stop it being so highly focused. Loving the textures so far, though I can see squirrelly's point about the wooden panels looking a bit too noisy, at least from the distance shown in the screenshots.

For your sprite problem - sounds like you just forgot to add the .spr extension to me. Can't remember if it's needed or not actually, but that error suggests that it is.

Found an interesting snippet of news on Eurogamer today - the August dashboard update to the 360 will enable 1080p output from games and movies (obviously to tie in with the new HD-DVD drive). Not a big deal for, well, anybody, to be honest, but its interesting to see MS just "throw it in there" while Sony are making such a big song and dance about them being the only "true HD" system. Of course, whether MS or 3rd party developers actually put out any content to 1080p, or instead it just remains as upscaling and HD-DVD option, is still to be seen. But then given most dev's seem to be saying 1080p isn't gonna be happening for their games on the PS3, perhaps both of the consoles are in the same boat.

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=67753

With a light environment entity, be sure to enter your pitch in the seperate pitch field as opposed to the pitch section of the angles field - think the seperate pitch field takes presidence. Try something like -80 if you want something coming in through that skylight to hit the floor (or -90 if you want it straight down). If you want it to be quite signficant then bump the brightness up to around 200, or if you want it bright sunshine try something even higher like 500. Keep a fairly large difference between the brightness and the ambient brightness as well.

If you want to fake there being bright light coming in through that hole while retaining a different environment light setting for the sky's general lighting, then shove a light_spot above it and make sure it has its angles wide enough so that the projected light entirely covers the hole (turn on the helpers in hammer to see a visual indicator of the projected light). The hole will then clip the projected light into the right shape. Make sure you've got the brightness up in the 1000's if you are gonna do this or you'll probably not get much of an effect.

Changing the skybox (as in the name in the map properties field) shouldn't make any difference whatsoever.

Either something in your map has changed (eg. used higher resolution lightmaps, you have a leak, etc...), something in your compile settings has changed (eg. you previously used -noextra, or you added -final or -softsun or something), or something in your computer has changed (eg. running too many background programs, removing RAM, CPU speed throttled due to overheating, etc...).

I'd wager you have a leak, therefore none of your backfaces are culled, and so you've got a whole load more faces to start generating lightmaps for. If you definately don't have a leak, post your compile settings for us to check.

You always had it coming dude - one of the most deserving people I've come across. Good luck with the new job, sounds like you'll be in good company

File sharing from Zune to Zune sounds really rather limited though - 3 day/3 play limited samplers of songs? I don't think it stands any chance of being a true iPod rival either - iPod is too established now. That said, I think it looks like a lovely bit of kit and, depending on how good it turns out being, I'm very much a potential customer. I just don't think that for the mainstream market it will ever be much more than a credible alternative, much like the Creative range.

Not so glad the £115 rumour was wrong though £180 is about what I'd been expecting though - £150 was the magic spot I was hoping for but really, £30 isn't exactly gonna change my purchasing decision. And the fact it comes bundled with a game makes that additional money all the easier to bear

I read in Metro this morning that the Wii is going to be released in time for Christmas and priced at £115 here in the UK - ridiculously low, yay!

But then I remembered that they aren't confirming their euro release details until this afternoon. A quick check on some of the major game sites doesn't reveal any other claims of this tiny little price point, so to be honest I've no idea where Metro got their news from. Only that isn't quite true - I've a sneaking suspicion that they may have taken the information about the Japanese launch and simply converted the price - which comes out at a pretty close £113. If so, somebody needs to tell whoever wrote that article that it doesn't work like that!

So hey, maybe they have an actual source and today all us Euro's will be in for some pleasant news, but something tells me the price is gonna be closer the £150+ mark since we always get a little shafted for price here.

Quote from Mojo

Have all your mp3s in a library (I have a really massive collection) and being able to find certain songs without having to dig through layer upon layer of folders is really great.

Thats something you can do with Winamp too though. I love their filtering system and way of displaying your library - makes it so simple to hunt down songs, albums, or bands from a huge list.

I'm sure I could get into iTunes, and maybe I will at some point as I do need a new mp3 player and one of the new nano's might fit the bill, but for now Winamp does everything I need really well.

You guys ride round the office on scooters? Fucking ace! Wish our office was big enough for that - think I'd rather piss of my co-workers if I did laps of our giant table

Wow, good job on getting the interview, and good job on doing a good job in the interview by the sounds of things Hope it works out for you man, what a great opportunity working at IO would be!

I think the texture mighta been better if it had covered two panels horizontally - as it stands those sratches tile really obviously.

You have Squirrel allies? This is a frightening revelation.

I think it deserves to be on the list because it was really the first successful transition of the FPS genre onto consoles, which is a pretty remarkable achievement and IMO, fits in nicely with the point of the article (the games that moved on the genre). Halo, in a sense, did the same thing for the genre by kickstarting the successful inclusion of vehicles (yes I know it wasn't the first, but it WAS a huge catalyst in their mainstream inclusion). That said, I think that most of the games on that list are far more deserving of their place than Halo would be. Might have been nice to have seen a pioneer or landmark Tactical FPS on there like Rainbow Six though.

I'm waiting for Vista and DX10 - pretty much to the day. Doubt I'm gonna buy top spec stuff, but will probably buy one or two pegs down. I'm very tempted to jump on the Core 2 Duo bandwagon rght now as they seem to blow everything away CPU wise, but making that jump means going from AGP to PCI-E, and that means getting a new GFX card at what is not such a great time to buy one. I'm really banking on Vista and the DX10 cards hitting in January as MS are claiming - I don't wanna be forced to wait another few months on my aging system

Would be nice to see some wires of that Warby - hard to tell what is mesh and what is just texture in places.

I think she looks a bit like a Brazilian Katie Holmes.