El Paso [Outlaws&Lawmen] (updated 17 jan)

[hydeph]

you couldn't have picked a better movie to base this off

(fistful of dollars)

[MrBaracuda]

What about those.. what do you call those rolling bushes pushed around by the wind? Maybe in the skybox. Tumble weed or something?

[Sa74n]

lighting is still the weakest part in your whole project as i mentioned a while ago already.

rest is nice

[R_Yell]

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.

[Wesley Tack]

We have a basketball in off limits, and it doesn't cause any problems.

So tumbleweeds would be the same model, you can make them thats for sure. The only sad thing when you shoot it, it wont roll away

But should be a nice map filler thats for sure.

[R_Yell]

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.

[JeanPaul]

You really need to keep the grounds lightmap at default (16)

It would look sooo much better

[FMPONE]

The shadows are clearly a problem.

But the one thing that really bothers me is the ground is like a vibrant orange plaster, I think you should really look into blending in some darker dirt inbetween the buildings where they would be most used. Also the wild west was a filthy place, some trails of mud and sewage etc running alongside the main dirt trail roads would be very authentic. On top of that you could throw some occassional horse-carraige tracks. Just something to break the monotony.

[R_Yell]

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?

[Meotwister]

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.

I would say maybe depending on time of day, very blurred shadows arent terribly realistic either.

... do you think contrast should be higher between them?

yes

[TeddyBear]

Meotwister is absolutely right, R_Yell. With a sunlit day like that, shadows on the ground needs to be very crisp.

[R_Yell]

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.

[Dodger]

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.

Right there, however R_yell you must stop discomposing about the map capacity and volume. Your map looks so forsaken, uninhabited still. Fulfill the map with bushes, shrubs. like in this screenshot example

[Meotwister]

I see what you're sayin about the height, I see in one of teddy's images a small building with pretty sharp shadows... I'll see if I can find a picture of larger buildings.

*edit* lol I found one of your pics r_yell, look at the building shadows in this pic http://server5.pictiger.com/img/389968/ ... re-318.php

so yeah I think you got some room to push that lightmap number down

[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):

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

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.