Posts by R_Yell

Good find Meotwister, they are so sharp that I'd need a scale of 2 to match them I hope this will be enough (16):

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32 is a bit worse, but not much more, 64 is a much bigger gap.

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Your map looks so forsaken, uninhabited still. Fulfill the map with bushes, shrubs. Very Happy like in this screenshot example

As I told to you there are plans to include more stuff, but also take in mind that those props will fade out at certain distance.

Ah yes, shadows are crisper when sun is higher, but I have some doubts. Does an high building produce the same shadows at the edges than a small tree or a road sign. I mean, does affect height?

Anyway, I wasn't accounting quality only, the size of the lightmap also matters. I was worried about video memory as said, but I checked other maps and maybe I'm not on danger levels yet. Using 16 scale total texture usage was around 240MB, using 32 is about 220MB. I checked de_inferno and it's on 266MB, so I guess mine is okay at the moment.

Believe me when I say 32 is more adecuate, 16 is starting to look like sharp at the edges, and thats looks very unrealistic in outdoors. There are other shadow issues related to prop usage, but I'm not sure if that can be fixed. I'm not using complex collision models on the railings, palizade etc because could be overkill on multiplayer I guess. If I make the correct phys models but use box as collision method shadows would be correct? Hope so.

The ground could be improved but I won't make new art because of the high video memory usage. There are two different ground textures that look much of the same because of the tone, do you think contrast should be higher between them?

The idea behind the tumbleweeds was to inmerse players in the situation. If you hear wind in the background is okay, but if you see ocassional dust clouds comming to you and hear strong wind gust is better. If that's complemented with tumbleweeds then the inmersion is quite high. There is a small issue related to this: physic wind and dust puffs wind can't be coordinated, each one blows at its own direction. There is a bigger issue related to physic wind, the performance penalty is too high on some situations, so I'll need to restrict that effect to some areas.

Here is the new lighting with a -final compile. Unfortunately, I forgot to change the ground displacements lightmap scale to something lower. It was 64, 32 is the sweet spot, so very difuminate shadows in these shots. Vrad took 7 hours (and 5 minutes of vvis) so I won't repeat that expensive compile for the moment. This lighting is more in consonace with the movies I guess.

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That would be a smart move. That removes the conflict of interest issue and it would give Steam focus as a separate company.

I can't see where the problem is, at least looking from the surface. There aren't many independent neutral distributors, at least not the big ones. EA or Ubi as an example, they got internal studios, they also work with independent game studios. So there is a conflict of interest inside those traditional distributors? Is the Valve bussiness model so different from those companies?

Very nice, I wonder how long are their compile times with those low lightmap scales he he. Hope they aren't trying to convert the full game before release, because that would take an insane amount of time.

Tumbleweeds are meant to move around the streets, if they don't cause any issue in online test then I'll keep as is now.

Regarding lighting, I suppose it'll look better next week, when final compile is made. I'll increase ambient lighting.

BTW, do you want to know what's my time in full vvis compile? 3:25, minutes of course Not bad for an entire town he he. It was really easy to optimize with those big boxed buildings. There is also big saving in performance, it's not a crappy vvis.

Oh yes, prop shadows will come when ground LM is set to a final lower number. Also will be helpful -final compile, those proyected shadows are nicer when this setting will be applied. There will be some LM scale ajustments as well, thanks for pointing out.

Wind is always welcomed at outdoors scenes IMO, except if overused like hmm ¿Dust maps?

And hey, this is Wesley's chuck wagon in-game, very nice contribution!

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align those wooden supports in the foreground of that shot - I can see the gaps

he he, it's not easy to align those models (there is a truckload of them), but I'll try!

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How did you do this? Imagine it's a client side effect so shouldn't lag a MP game?

No, that kind of wind shouldn't lag, if done properly. The main entity is the func_dustcluod, set it to emmit very few particles per second (I'm using 6 now on average), and alpha should be very low so sprite contour can't be seen (around 20-30). Particle size is 50-350, and particle lifetime 6-18s. Also important: visible distance should be low, around 1000-1500 is ok I guess, it's just a wind gust.

Well, once you got all your func_dustclouds around the map, where every wind gust will be seen, you need a env_wind to move those clouds, and of course, some logic_timers to activate and deactivate the clouds (off by default).

To make a first class effect , set an ambient generic with a wind gust sound that will be heard from each func_dustcloud. So when the logic_timer activates a dustcloud for 10-15 seconds, at the same time it also plays its correspondent wind gust. That's all I guess.

Adding animals is not easy, they need animations, and that wastes lots of resources.

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wasnt el paso allready a texas map?Looks like you duplicate the themes from the aged el paso map..

don't understand this sorry, do you mean my previous level "Presidio"? Both are for Outlaws&Lawmen, same western theme.

In this map there is something like a fountain

Yes, I agree. The outer zone is almost empty now, when you make a map like this is quite unclear what final performance will be, so that kind of props must be added at the end.

Every western town needs a sheriff office, here's El Paso one:

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From For a few dollars more, you know. This was the last building, now rest some tweaking, fixes, optimization, game play issues, etc.

Yes, that sounds like a job for soundscapes. Make a soundscape definition .txt and then a copy of the cs:s soundscapes_manifest with your soundscape's name included there. Both will be bspzipped.

Ambient_generic should be reserved for sounds connected with some events in a map.

I found the issue , there was needed a trigger_wind to push the tumbleweed instead the env_wind, just remembered. Dust clouds+tumbleweeds will rock he he.

The old engine is still vacant, so if you keep interested won't be any problem.

He he, sure, here are some:

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Thx Teddy, hope our mod will be out in not too much time, still some work to do with characters and coding (and that's progressing slowly). Weapons and maps are okay at least for a first release. Textures are completed for this map, but thanks anyway

I was messing with wind today, there are random wind gusts and I was able to create a very subtle effect. I mean, no visible dust sprites, looks quite real and performance doesn't suffer too much. Also tried to add moving tumbleweed, but it doesn't work yet. I supposed it should work only with the env_wind and a very light prop, but something fails. Long time ago I did it just with a func_phys.

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There are open areas and close combat areas, to give you a rough idea: it's like GR:AW in the MP game mode where each team need to control several zones to win the map.

About that wood texture, I haven't too much freedom for texture usage now, the video memory usage is quite high so I'm reusing the same materials in several places.

Well, still some work to do here, but this map is in its last stages. This is a slaughter house:

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I like that idea too, but I'm not sure at all if those displacements'd look credible enough. I mean that all surrounding textures would need such dusty feeling as well. Implementing them over all the map is far from being possible now, not too much room to add more details.