Makaveli

Hey all, Been a few years since i've posted - i have been reviewing some of the great content here, however. Anyhow, now that i've completed my BA and on break from working on my Paramedicine degree, i figured i would see i still had some of those photoshop skills left. Below is something i just began throwing together. Nothing too complicated, no details yet - just a base texture with a window. Ill post here as i find time to progress. Any and all feedback is welcomed. http://www.freeimagehosting.net/image.p ... a0b36f.jpg

its funny, it looks like Epic just sucked up any real competition lol

that looks hella nice, but Epic always finds a way to fall behind the pack when they make their engines, so i have this feeling that well see somthing better from another company soon

well, i dont think you can re-distrubute CS:S material seeing as you are paying for them, so you either duplicate CS:S material or its a no go, b/c thats surely a lawsuit waiting to happen.

zilla hit the nail on the head, without providing bait (some already completed work) your not going to get much of a response, espically from these forums. You have to prove your worth your weight in gold, otherwise those with the talent arent going to risk wasting time on a project that will never materalize, b/c what fun/good is that? I give you props for your efforts, keep trying, but just be realistic about it

someone has balls since half of the developers here are from gearbox It's not about having balls really. I hear comments like that all the time. If you could enumerate your issues it would help. From the way I see it BiA and CoD are two massivly different games... and aren't really in competition. Then again what would I know about it. I'm aware of the fact that there are a number of Gearbox members here, but why should that stop me from expressing my views on their work? If anything, i would think they would want to hear candid opinions from those who purchased their game. Wether or not BiA and CoD are in competition in the market place is irrelivant to me, i could care less about that. What matters to me most is the overall experience, is the game fun, enjoyable, and worth its weight in what i paid for it. Again, to be candid, BiA was, from where i sit, a waste of my hard earned 50+ dollars. Why? Well, for starters i was far from impressed by the graphical presentation. Overall, i think that it was rather dull and in places almost amature (the ground textures were rather bland, some textures didnt tile properly or were horrendously repetitive), its beyond me why they didnt offer more latitude to the player when adjusting his/her video prefrences. The AI, which was praised in articles and reviews, i found to be pretty retarted, espically the allied AI. I would command my squad or tank to attack or provide cover fire to a position well within sight and they wouldnt react, in fact i had to restart the game at points b/c i couldnt complete the objectives on my own and my squad, for some reason, wouldnt acknowldge my commands. The gameplay was far too linear, it was as if i was playing a Quake 3 powered game, being funneled down the same relative paths with very little choice in where to go and how to overcome the tasks at hand. Lastly, i have found the multiplayer to be deplorable. Severs are almost non-existant and some of the very basics of all multiplayer features had been left out in the orginal release. This brings me to the most disconcerting aspect of my entire experience. The release version of BiA, that is the version on the DVD, is plagued by a massive list of bugs and errors, many of which should have been discovered during a beta testing period, i would think. I can only speak for myself, but i do not pay 50 + dollars to have to wait for patches to be released so that i can get a game to a playable state. My tone may be rash, but we are talking about a decent chunk of money here. I think that alot can be done with BiA and it can probably taken to an entirely different level, but as it stands now i am not impressed. These, naturally, are my own thoughts and have nothing to do with Gearbox or its members, as someone who wants to enter the industry i look up to, and repsect, all of you.

it looks alot like the Far Cry engine, which isnt half bad, but cant really hold a candle to Unreal 3 in terms of lighting, shader usage, LODs

well...as far as the oh so over done WWII shooter...its probably leaps and bounds beyond Brothers in Arm.

Just a few pointers: 1) Be aware of contrast/saturation - some of those textures look far too contrasty/saturated 2) Dont use layer effects, the last one looks like it may have a dropshadow (?) 3) Dont use grunge brushes for textures, your better off hand painting in detials or useing a photo refrence and then hand painting ontop of that.

Well, it was a nice trailor. But, to be frank, i cant say i am all that impressed at the moment. Aside from the fact that the WW2 shooter has been beaten to death over and over again, the Unreal 2003/2004 engine just does not stack up to D3 and Source technology. However, im still trying to keep an open mind and look foward to seeing some more PC shots...hoping that they will look drasticly better than the Xbox shots.

Zaphod, i tried a few more things, and i cannot get specularity working in the alpha channel of the normal map. Is there a sepcial method? Right now ive just created a new alpha channel and threw the color grey i wanted in...and nothing happens when i test it out ingame. Any help would be great.

Well, when you convert .tgas to .vtfs they go from the materialsrc folder to the materials folder. If you havent created a sub folder, they should just be in the root materials directiory.

Heh, but still im not getting sepcularity like i used to...even with the specular map in "Alpha 1" channel and i did save in 32bit. Any ideas?

http://www.marshmonkey.com/tuts/shaders ... apping.htm Zaphod, that tut seems to be wrong. The colors, black and white grey etc dont flip when you add them to the normal map's alpha channel. I just tested it out in game and i had to switch the specular map from a light grey to a darker grey b/c the texture was far too bright. Just thought everyone should know :\

ok, some shader questions here. Ok, so, the idea here is to give a normal mapped texture specularity. Now, what im going for is to get specualrity like you would get on a regular texture (not normal mapped) with simply a specular map called upon through the VMT. Now, after much trial and error i figured out that you cant use a specular map with a normal mapped texture...i tired a dual VMT approach, same deal. So, i tracked down the tile texture in de_dust and opened her VMT and got the code version of implimenting the specularity, this is how my VMT is coded thus far: "LightmappedGeneric" { "$basetexture" "insurgency/sidewalk" "$surfaceprop" "concrete" "$bumpmap" "insurgency/sidewalk_normal" "$envmap" "env_cubemap" "$envmapsaturation" "[.0001 .0001 .0001]" "$envmaptint" "[.1 .1 .1]" "$normalmapalphaenvmapmask" 1 } Now, the main issue is, i cant seem to increase the specualirty of the texture, IE i cant reach the same effect i can whith a specular map on a non normal mapped texture. So, what values do i adjust to create this effect or what code do i have to enter and or edit? THanks alot ahead of time Zaphod. - Mak