[NightFright]

Looks like we may need to make a poll whether voxel rotations should remain activated by default in the next release or not. My favorite solution would be if you were able to toggle it ingame somehow, basically what Reaperman suggested. I know nothing about scripting custom EDuke32 menu entries, though.

[Borion]

ReaperMan, on 27 April 2019 - 02:42 PM, said:

Well, seeing the mixed reception I say just make the signs. Borion already worked on em anyway, so it would be a waste not to use them and they look nice. If we could get someone to code up something to switch on and off various aspects of the pack that would be nice and probably fix the custom map issue. Oh and we could make an option for spinning pickups.

I posted before seeng Your post ReaperMan. Thanks for proposing such flexible solution! I hope others will agree.

EDIT: changed wording for clarity

[Kyanos]

Borion, on 27 April 2019 - 02:56 PM, said:

I was thinking about all of this for better part of today, and I came to this conclusion. I would like to propose splitting this pack into two categories (just on technical level!!!). First one would be - lets say - CORE. So only 100% safe stuff, like pick-ups, small non-wall aligned objects, lamps …etc.
Other part of pack - lets say ENHANCED - would be easy to turn off. Everything that may be risky, but creates some new looks/possibilities would be in this part of voxel pack. That way people that are afraid that their precious 20 years old maps stop working can sleep well, and those of us that want “new candies” can get them. I propose this, because I think situations like this are unavoidable in the future. Today we talk about simple sexshop sign. I can imagine bloodshed that will happen when we will get to even simpliest of enemies...

About enemies, is there a way to do proper flipping for voxels yet?

[Phredreeke]

I recall back when voxel enemies were suggested it was said that it'd be too much of a performance hit. With changes to how Polymost renders voxels would that still be the case?

[Kyanos]

Polymost kicks ass at rendering voxels now! It can now handle the entire HRP -> voxel model conversion pack and maintain fps.

[Forge]

package the voxels in an installer

include a options menu that the player can use external to the game

[Kyanos]

Forge, on 28 April 2019 - 06:37 AM, said:

package the voxels in an installer

include a options menu that the player can use external to the game

^ This.

I've been thinking of doing an enemy pack, 1-1 no, it's not even technically possible to do a pure 1-1 from the angled sprites to 3D, some artistic liberties will be needed. I'm up for converting edited HRP model enemies to voxels, but with a much stricter artistic direction than the older pack I made. Something like a 1.5 scale across the board and doing much more changes to the models so that the voxel outputs better resemble the original sprites than the current HRP models do. I was sort of hoping for that golden beta dump to contain some original models but I'm not holding my breathe on that anymore XD... Opinions???

[Phredreeke]

Not a big fan of installers personally.

This is the approach I would take. Make separate DEFs, one base package (which is the kind of voxels we see in the voxel pack now) and one full package (including voxels such as the above sex shop sign), then have two BAT files (and Unix-like equivalents, bash scripts?) that launch eduke32 with respective def file loaded. Could alternatively add a small menu in the BAT file to let the user choose which package to use when launched, and this could be extended to whether or not to have rotating voxel pickups.

[Kyanos]

I think bat start is not acceptable for mod compatibility reasons and whatnot, the target is an autoload zip. Perhaps a setup bat file that uses the command line 7 Zip to make the appropriate autoload install ready to play? Just trowing ideas at the wall.

[Phredreeke]

Autoload got its own problems since you can only have one duke3d.def

My method works if you put the mod in a subfolder and select that in the launcher.

[Forge]

Phredreeke, on 28 April 2019 - 07:39 AM, said:

Not a big fan of installers personally.

This is the approach I would take. Make separate DEFs, one base package (which is the kind of voxels we see in the voxel pack now) and one full package (including voxels such as the above sex shop sign), then have two BAT files (and Unix-like equivalents, bash scripts?) that launch eduke32 with respective def file loaded. Could alternatively add a small menu in the BAT file to let the user choose which package to use when launched, and this could be extended to whether or not to have rotating voxel pickups.

Why not both?
the current hrp has two options for installation

main thing is to get an external method of selecting which parts of the package the player wishes to use.

[NightFright]

I will probably use InstallForge for the next release. It seems easy enough to use and is freeware.

https://installforge.net

Still we are missing some vital pickups before it can/should happen, and as long as Borion is on his voxel spree there's time to figure out which voxel pack setups would please everybody. I'd still like to have some ingame options, but I think you can't just selectively switch between different defs without restarting EDuke32 entirely.

[LeoD]

Phredreeke, on 28 April 2019 - 08:33 AM, said:

Autoload got its own problems since you can only have one duke3d.def

I think it is not asked too much to have only the currently required ZIPs in autoload. Packs which build upon other packs only need to have file name with a higher sort value to override other ZIP contents if necessary. A common misconception is that the packages are actually loaded. Better consider their contents a bunch of sheets laid over each other with, say, ZZZ-mypack.zip on top. EDuke32 will only 'see' the lower priority files where the layers above have a hole (=file not present in their ZIP). Priority from bottom to top AFAIK:

default GRP
-gamegrp GRP/ZIP
autoload GRPs
autoload ZIPs
-g GRPs/ZIPs in parameter order
-j [dir] files in parameter order
cwd files

[EDIT (4x):] priority order corrected/expanded

[Phredreeke]

Yes but you still need to define duke3d_voxel.def somewhere

[Forge]

Phredreeke, on 28 April 2019 - 10:54 AM, said:

Yes but you still need to define duke3d_voxel.def somewhere

problem with putting the line, "include duke3d_voxel.def" in the duke3d.def file?

or can there only be one include line?

[LeoD]

 Forge, on 28 April 2019 - 11:53 AM, said:

problem with putting the line, "include duke3d_voxel.def" in the duke3d.def file?

or can there only be one include line?

As many as you like. Or put put an amended duke3d_voxel.def in an additional pack which then gets used instead of the original one. Enough possibilities to get what you want.
The same goes for EDUKE.CON -> GAME.CON -> USER.CON include hierarchies.

[Phredreeke]

It works if the voxel pack is the only archive with a duke3d.def or if the mod being loaded also contains include duke3d_voxels.def within its def files. Actually looking at LeoD's list it seems that the duke3d.def in the last zip file in the autoload folder would override the one in the mod - unless the mod is loaded from the commandline. But if you launch eduke32 with -mh duke3d_voxels.def parameter you would ensure they were loaded.

[Borion]

+1 vote for an idea of installer.

 Photonic, on 28 April 2019 - 05:30 AM, said:

About enemies, is there a way to do proper flipping for voxels yet?

Good question, Photonic. Is this technically possible for voxel models to follow sprite FLIP X/Y parameter? In other words to mirror them horizontally or vertically?

 Photonic, on 28 April 2019 - 07:05 AM, said:

I've been thinking of doing an enemy pack, 1-1 no, it's not even technically possible to do a pure 1-1 from the angled sprites to 3D, some artistic liberties will be needed. I'm up for converting edited HRP model enemies to voxels, but with a much stricter artistic direction than the older pack I made. Something like a 1.5 scale across the board and doing much more changes to the models so that the voxel outputs better resemble the original sprites than the current HRP models do. I was sort of hoping for that golden beta dump to contain some original models but I'm not holding my breathe on that anymore XD... Opinions???

I think this is great idea. Fingers crossed for you going forward with it!

I have some ideas about voxel enemies too. I was thinking for last couple of weeks about angled views problem, that you mentioned. There is a solution, but it would involve some movie post-production tricks and couple other things...it is too early to talk about it. What really makes me worried, is fact that sooner or later we will hit a wall - 255x255x255 is max volume size for KVX format.

[ReaperMan]

 Photonic, on 28 April 2019 - 07:05 AM, said:

I've been thinking of doing an enemy pack, 1-1 no, it's not even technically possible to do a pure 1-1 from the angled sprites to 3D, some artistic liberties will be needed. I'm up for converting edited HRP model enemies to voxels, but with a much stricter artistic direction than the older pack I made. Something like a 1.5 scale across the board and doing much more changes to the models so that the voxel outputs better resemble the original sprites than the current HRP models do. I was sort of hoping for that golden beta dump to contain some original models but I'm not holding my breathe on that anymore XD... Opinions???

I'm just going to say this and I mean no offense but no converted HRP models, not the point of this project. Whole point is to make Duke 3D have voxels like Blood or Shadow warrior. I'm not against certain enemies like the egg pods and a few others but you don't really gain much from it. Besides even Shadow warrior dropped voxel enemies because they look like ass, somethings just look better as sprites.

Examples from SW beta:





Also this PigCop exists... looks terrible too.

[Phredreeke]

Voxel enemies would make interesting level decorations. Imagine a voxel statue of the cycloid emperor...

[Jimmy]

I always wondered what the N64 Cycloid would look like as a voxel.

[Hendricks266]

I propose:

1. Keep the voxels in the mainline pack "safe" for all uses.
2. Make a second "aggressive mode" zip that when also placed in autoload enables anything like the sign voxel.
3. Skip rotation for now. Are the maps really set up for it to work?

An installer sounds like overkill and a pain for the source port devs to wrangle.

 Jimmy 100MPH, on 28 April 2019 - 08:49 PM, said:

I always wondered what the N64 Cycloid would look like as a voxel.

Fox made some conversions at one point.

[NightFright]

It would need to be determined which voxels exactly are considered to be "safe". I guess all the pickups are, switches probably as well, but props are difficult. Mappers have become very creative in using sprites as wall decorations or textures throughout the years. I dunno if we have anyone who can tell for sure which sprite has never been used in a "smart" way.

Other than that, I guess it's a good idea to have an override zip to unlock (almost) the full voxel arsenal. Actually I have already separated the signs into a separate folder (and def) which will make the whole process much easier.

And indeed: Voxel enemies look like crap. I wouldn't consider using these, you lose way too much detail compared to the sprites.

[LeoD]

 Phredreeke, on 28 April 2019 - 01:05 PM, said:

It works if the voxel pack is the only archive with a duke3d.def or if the mod being loaded also contains include duke3d_voxels.def within its def files. Actually looking at LeoD's list it seems that the duke3d.def in the last zip file in the autoload folder would override the one in the mod - unless the mod is loaded from the commandline. But if you launch eduke32 with -mh duke3d_voxels.def parameter you would ensure they were loaded.

Or completely skip/replace the default duke3d.def by setting the top level DEF file via CON code:

setdefname dukeplus.def
setcfgname dp.cfg
setgamename Duke Plus 2.40

include DEFS.CON
include USER.CON

[Borion]

Jetpack v.3
Colours look a little bit off because of GIF colour reduction.


KVX: https://mega.nz/#!Nr...kDXj3fOAowjW91k

[NightFright]

I know I wrote almost the same thing about the second version, but to me it looks like it can't get any better than that.

It works without scale adjustment, right?

[Kyanos]

 Borion, on 28 April 2019 - 04:03 PM, said:

I think this is great idea. Fingers crossed for you going forward with it!

Looks like a hard no.

 ReaperMan, on 28 April 2019 - 05:19 PM, said:

I'm just going to say this and I mean no offense but no converted HRP models, not the point of this project.

 NightFright, on 29 April 2019 - 12:22 AM, said:

And indeed: Voxel enemies look like crap. I wouldn't consider using these, you lose way too much detail compared to the sprites.

[Borion]

@NightFright
Thank you!
Yes, default scale is fine.

On a subject of voxel enemies that ReaperMan posted. Agreed, all posted samples look weak. But IMO it is not necessarly because they are made out of voxels. I think they were converted from 3D models with some ancient program that later became Poly2Vox. They are so damn noisy, that there is no way 3DRealms voxel artist would make them like this on purpoise. There are also clearly visible strange voxels appearing all around the models, and colours are downsampled in a really ugly way. They look really similar to stuff that I tried to convert with Poly2Vox few years ago. With all respect to this project „fathers”, IMHO those materials are not absolute proof that voxel enemies suck
At the time of its creation, there were no tools & know-how necessary to them better.
But one picture is worth thousand words, so maybe I will shut-up for a time being and get back to this subject with concrete proof(s)...

ReaperMan, do you have by chance KVX frames of this Pig Cop?

[ReaperMan]

 Hendricks266, on 28 April 2019 - 11:26 PM, said:

3. Skip rotation for now. Are the maps really set up for it to work?

It would be good for multiplayer

 Borion, on 29 April 2019 - 03:07 PM, said:

ReaperMan, do you have by chance KVX frames of this Pig Cop?

No, they were from the beta material of Duke 3d or DNF that the "new" 3D Realms was suppose to release before gearbox screwed everything up. I can't remember who posted the gif... I think it was Hendricks or Jimmy??? There were also these from the preview, these were done by Dirk Jones. Only thing we have of the originals is the Portable medkit because it was in Shadow Warrior.


Also not gunna brag but... my ripper and RPG are better.

[Hendricks266]

SW disagrees, and that would be putting the cart before the horse anyway.