[The Commander]

http://forums.duke4....c/7412-e-craft/

[Mike Norvak]

Oh that's so cool, I didn't even know that existed.

I was referring to this:

DukeCraft

But yeah is exactly the opposite way.

[MusicallyInspired]

Ah.

[The Commander]

 Mike Norvak, on 29 July 2014 - 11:21 AM, said:

Oh that's so cool, I didn't even know that existed.

I was referring to this:

DukeCraft

But yeah is exactly the opposite way.

That's just a texture and sound replacement for Minecraft, lol

[MetHy]

Goddamn, Shadow Warrior's lighting system is great. Much more freedom and possibilities than in DN3D... You can control which surface the light affects, the timing and intensity of flickering/fading, you can have them with custom palettes, etc etc

It's like DN3D's effects are proto SW effects. Or more like, they improved everything from DN3D.

[Mark]

I never knew SW had any. When did this happen?

[MetHy]

I'm talking about the light system of the original game.

[The Commander]

zykov eddy, on 29 July 2014 - 06:19 AM, said:

... cuz, why not?

Ah I found an old image...

[Mark]

MetHy, on 30 July 2014 - 10:51 AM, said:

I'm talking about the light system of the original game.

OK. I'm going to assume you mean shading level effects not actual lighting. It was your wording that threw me off.

[Hendricks266]

Fox, on 15 July 2014 - 10:27 PM, said:

Code to generate directional shading. It's created on the fly, so it will respond to moving structures.

Could you post this code? I'll convert it to M32Script to show you how easy it is. And so Micky can use it.

[Micky C]

I can think of a few maps I can use this on right now. Coincidentally I PM'd Fox for the code a few hours ago for personal use through dndebug, but it'd be great to have something this cool for public use, especially within mapster.

I wonder how well it performs on maps that are already shaded. Fingers crossed it can be applied to highlighted sectors instead of a global effect!

[Hendricks266]

This first attempt has a "cool" factor on its own, but I don't think it's good enough for an icon...

[MetHy]

Speaking of Shadow Warrior, here is some more stuff of the SW map I'm working on (first post/screenshot on the previous page).

Asian restaurant I'm Building for the map :



While I was building this, as I wanted to implement interesting shading, I told to myself I did it all wrong again. I mean, I thought I got the ENTIRE building process wrong (and have been for a long time). I built the detailing too early on; and as a result, even though it's not UBER detailed, there is definitly too many sectors in this room to implement strong, more interesting shading.

(In the end, I resorted to SW's "fading" lighting : each 'stall' with a table has its own lightsource, which slowly and constantly fades in/out, but without too strong differences in the value of the shading, and the end result gives a rather warm and cozy atmosphere.)

But even if I like the end result, this got me to completely re-think the way I map. It's something I wanted to do for this map already, but old habits kicked in again (like when I built this restaurant room).
Basically, I used to build pretty much one room after the other, and detail each room to the max; and shading would almost always come at the end of the process, and I often had no idea how gameplay would be while building what I did.

Now, I have started mapping using a new process, doing overall layout of an entire area first alongside gameplay ideas (and I try not to be afraid to test the gameplay idea by implementing the enemies inside a rough sketch of what the final area will be, to test gameplay before detailing/shading or even texturing) ; then implement the light sources and the kind of shading I want, and finally detailing at the very last.

I believe this kind of mapping is more 'pro' and will make for better maps. Or at least, maps that feel more like the original games, which is what I'm aiming for.

Edit : BTW - I'm still constantly switching between Mapster32 and SWPBuild for this map so I hope I get to click on that icon soon!

[Mike Norvak]

Ta ta ta taan!

[Mark]

 Hendricks420, on 31 July 2014 - 10:53 AM, said:

This first attempt has a "cool" factor on its own, but I don't think it's good enough for an icon...

Looks like a "glory hole" for a Smurf you pervert.

EDIT: Great stuff Norvak but I was getting dizzy watching you zoom in and out through the whole video. After hearing the music it finally lit a fire under my ass to put back together all my instruments and recording equipment to the computer. I have everything I need except a midi adapter to the comp. Easy enough to find these days.

[Mike Norvak]

 Mark., on 31 July 2014 - 02:20 PM, said:

I have everything I need except a midi adapter to the comp. Easy enough to find these days.

Hehe nice to read it motivates you

 Mark., on 31 July 2014 - 02:20 PM, said:

EDIT: Great stuff Norvak but I was getting dizzy watching you zoom in and out through the whole video.

That was on purpose !

 TheGameZ, on 31 July 2014 - 03:26 PM, said:

That Really Nice any chances being ogg format? love to use it for megaton

I'm gonna release the entire album on ogg format, although I'm not sure about mp3 and FLAC.

[Hendricks266]

 Mike Norvak, on 31 July 2014 - 07:42 PM, said:

I'm gonna release the entire album on ogg format, although I'm not sure about mp3 and FLAC.

Come on man, ya gotta FLAC that.

[Micky C]

That's much better as a logo. I feel as though something could be done with the boundary of the darker blue and the white to make it less abrupt. Either way it's pretty solid.

[Lunick]

It's perfect

[MusicallyInspired]

Very nice, Norvak! If you like I can mirror a FLAC pack on sc55.duke4.net. Needs some FLAC for sure.

Very nice, Hendricks! I agree about doing a bit of shading on that icon.

[Mark]

Thanks again Norvak for the inspiration. I had the afternoon off from work so I took some scraps of wood and made a sliding shelf for the midi keyboard and a stand on the right side for the drum machine and multi-track recorder. I'll have it all cabled up this weekend. Over on the left, just barely seen is the guitar processor. I have been meaning to get this done for a long, long time.

Attached thumbnail(s)

• 

[High Treason]

Not bad (Dig the CZ-101)... But my setup is better


On the stand top to bottom;
Casio RZ-1
Casio CZ-1000
Casio CZ-5000

In the background is a dysfunctional Roland MT-32, a Yamaha MU90R and unseen is the Athlon-based Win98 machine that I use for sequencing. This is technically relevant to the thread as I intend to write my own music for my next map, assuming I can gather enough motivation to work on my map.

Edit: WTF happened to my photo? For reference sake, it uploaded like this first time;

[Mike Norvak]

Nice Marked!

Hehe well my rig is only a Novation launch key 25 and pirated software

Quote

Come on man, ya gotta FLAC that.

Quote

Very nice, Norvak! If you like I can mirror a FLAC pack on sc55.duke4.net. Needs some FLAC for sure.

Well is not much of a problem to upload FLAC there's still many space left in the server, but thanks any mirror is always accepted. Gonna add loop points in that case.

[Micky C]

Before this turns into the "post your music setup" thread, I'm going to post some actual Duke related stuff.

There's some kind of beta version of the shading script for mapster, although it's pretty buggy at the moment (hopefully it'll get fixed at some point), but the in-game version is working.
I've applied the game version to a quick test-map I built; something that would have taken an excruciating amount of time to shade like this (I made some of the sand patches under the overhangs darker by hand, but the rest is the script).

I hope people can appreciate the subtlety of the shading here. Look at opposite ends of the map, and at parallel surfaces. To think this was done in a fraction of a second is mind-boggling. It's not the ultimate perfect shading tool, but it's flexible (different shades in different directions), customizable (more subtle or more contrasting), and as a shading first-pass it's pretty friggin' sweet and will probably save hours of work in the future.
Note that the two pictures below are fullbright.

Someone tell me I'm not the only one excited about this??




Wow, I just made my 1998 map from the DNF map have shade 0 everywhere, then applied the mod in a quick test, and it's amazing! If I had this thing when I was making this map, it definitely would have saved an incredible amount of time trying to pull off the natural, subtle terrain shading by hand. I didn't do any manual shading at all this time; it's all the script. With a few quick tweaks I can have these outdoor areas looking virtually identical to what I originally built (if not better), in a mere fraction of the time.

With the right settings, it will also work well for subtle, indoor shading.

It might not seem like anything special to non-mappers, but I hope mappers can appreciate just how powerful this thing is. (the sky thing is a quick fix)

[Fox]

I am glad you made some use of this stuff. That's something I have created a while ago for a Doom mod, since the walls in Doom are shaded by the engine. Recently I just prepared it for a more general use. Plus I always have tried to make levels with "mathematically" accurate direcional shading so I feel natural with this.

[Tea Monster]

LOL, 'vis' for BUILD engine games! Looks amazing. How do you handle changing geometry?

[Micky C]

 Fox, on 02 August 2014 - 01:06 PM, said:

I am glad you made some use of this stuff. That's something I have created a while ago for a Doom mod, since the walls in Doom are shaded by the engine. Recently I just prepared it for a more general use. Plus I always have tried to make levels with "mathematically" accurate direcional shading so I feel natural with this.

I'm glad you did. This is probably the most revolutionary convenience mapster feature since Helix's smart tagging system. I know there's the risk of mappers potentially relying on this automatic tool too much, but I hope the mapster version becomes officially included with the eduke32 download regardless; possibly in a.m32 in the special functions menu (that way for better or worse, it'll stop noobs from using it out of the box which forces them to learn hand shading).

Any news on the Doom mod btw?

 Tea Monster, on 02 August 2014 - 03:02 PM, said:

LOL, 'vis' for BUILD engine games! Looks amazing. How do you handle changing geometry?

What do you mean? The game-version code is run once at map load, so walls stay the same shade even if they rotate. I admit it'd be cool for it to detect rotating sectors and recalculate the shade each tic though
Besides the sky issue, I wonder how the game version works on sectors with flickering lights (which require that all surfaces in the sector are the same shade). Issues like this make the mapster version much more practical than the game version I imagine.

[Tea Monster]

The quake games all had to pre-render the lighting on their levels. Vis was a program that you ran once you saved your level to calculate how the walls were lit.

Obviously, it's not the same thing specifically, but it's something you run on a BUILD map to determine shading, which I thought was cool.

[Gambini]

 Tea Monster, on 02 August 2014 - 10:30 PM, said:

The quake games all had to pre-render the lighting on their levels. Vis was a program that you ran once you saved your level to calculate how the walls were lit.

Obviously, it's not the same thing specifically, but it's something you run on a BUILD map to determine shading, which I thought was cool.

Not to be an asshole, since your funny analogy doesn´t require precisions, but Vis, in the Quake engine, is for creating blocks of the map to then compare with eachother and know which part of the level is visible at once. For a part of the map to be drawn by the engine the visleaf it belongs has to make visual contact (a straight line should be traced between them) with the visleaf the eye is. All the required checks to know which visleaves can see which ones is all done on map compile, so it´s very effective way to improve performance. It is also used by PVS (Potential visible set) which helps with the AI since it tells an enemy whether the player is in a visleaf that can be heard or seen by the visleaf the enemy is. This system is still being used in games powered by Source.



Vis-ibility for Build instead is an exponent for which the shading value of a surface is multiplied, the larger is its distance from the player/eye/cam. If you shade two paralell walls with the same value but use different vis on them the farther you are from them, the one with higher vis will become darker in comparision.