[Plagman]

If you just add a spotlight with that texture in an empty room, does it reproduce the problem? If so, please send me a map/texture that does that so I can look at it.

[Sobek]

Plagman, on May 14 2010, 11:39 AM, said:

If you just add a spotlight with that texture in an empty room, does it reproduce the problem? If so, please send me a map/texture that does that so I can look at it.

Hey there. I did as you said (created a new blank square room and left the default brick texture on it), put in the spot light, set RGB to 254-254-254 (pretty much white) and EXTRA to 100 (straight ahead), and sure enough it did the same thing.

However for no real reason I started testing various random textures - of which I've created quite a lot of so far - and after some testing, came to a conclusion as to what's happening... It seems the spot light projects whatever colour light you assign into the transparent sections of the texture. So in my case, where everything around the text itself is just plain transparency, it was filling that in with the white light (RGB 254-254-254) that I had set it to. The following picture is an example of what I tried. I created a solid green 512x512 texture, then just erased a circle in the middle. As you can see, getting too close to it causes the spot light to fill in that deleted (transparent) area with it's own light;



Is this intended behavior?

[OpenMaw]

Try changing the specularity of that default tile to 0. I think you'll find the solution there.

[Sobek]

Commando Nukem, on May 14 2010, 04:29 PM, said:

Try changing the specularity of that default tile to 0. I think you'll find the solution there.

I checked, I have specular mapping disabled altogether in Mapster, but that doesn't seem to affect it anyway. I tried firing up eduke32 and disabling specular ingame to see if that might affect things differently than in Mapster, but it made no difference.

[RPD Guy]

holy cow
the lights works in mapster?
i never see it!
:/

[The Commander]

Dk2, on May 16 2010, 01:30 AM, said:

holy cow
the lights works in mapster?
i never see it!
:/

CONSOLE: setrendermode 4
3D Mode: ' + X

Please don't PM me.

[3D Master]

I have a feeling cheat codes break the game. I wanted to play through E4 to look at the new Polymer lighting map hacks and give feedback on them, and that means saves and loads; which takes time, and I remembered something about those maphacks not getting loaded during loaded since the Shop-n-Bag and Duke-Burger seemed rather bare of these things.

So, I figured I just put on god-mode and run through the game. Ever since I started using the cheat codes, I have not been able to finish a single level correctly, and haven't gotten past Duke Burger period, where it more often than not exits to Windows. at the beginning Today, it took the cake, with adding brand new rendering errors: 1. partial enemies. Only the armor was visible of the trooper, and only the barrels of the Enforcer's chain gun. (All other, not a few, all other enemies were also invisible) 2. The Nuke button was invisible. 3. The background texture of the complete level status screen was white.

And here's the rub; the first three troopers behind the first door, were rendered correctly. I'm not sure, but if Duke pre-renders these enemies in directly adjacent sectors, then this pretty much proves it. Level starts, first troopers are pre-rendered correctly, god-mode is switched on, and crunch, all the other enemies don't get rendered correctly.

This is rather annoying given that I was using the cheat codes for what they were originally created: developer tools.

[The Commander]

3D Master, on May 17 2010, 02:36 AM, said:

3D Master's post that he keeps repeating about missing textures and models.

I just played right though Duke Burger twice (once with cheats, the other without) with the latest eduke32 and polymer revisions.

How about trying to delete your texture cache and/or turning it off and see if these issues still happen.
If it is, then something is bung on your system or something in the HRP has been installed wrong.

[Night Wolf]

When I now load "Duke Burger" eduke32 crashes lol
meh it will fix itself

[The Commander]

ozz, on May 17 2010, 03:30 AM, said:

When I now load "Duke Burger" eduke32 crashes lol
meh it will fix itself

First thing I always do is delete all .cfg files (tiles.cfg is fine) and texture caches.

[supergoofy]

Old cfg files will cause problems with latest eduke32 builds.

[Night Wolf]

3D Master, on May 17 2010, 12:36 AM, said:

I have a feeling cheat codes break the game. I wanted to play through E4 to look at the new Polymer lighting map hacks and give feedback on them, and that means saves and loads; which takes time, and I remembered something about those maphacks not getting loaded during loaded since the Shop-n-Bag and Duke-Burger seemed rather bare of these things.

So, I figured I just put on god-mode and run through the game. Ever since I started using the cheat codes, I have not been able to finish a single level correctly, and haven't gotten past Duke Burger period, where it more often than not exits to Windows. at the beginning Today, it took the cake, with adding brand new rendering errors: 1. partial enemies. Only the armor was visible of the trooper, and only the barrels of the Enforcer's chain gun. (All other, not a few, all other enemies were also invisible) 2. The Nuke button was invisible. 3. The background texture of the complete level status screen was white.

Similar things have happened to me , but i found it I hit Alt Tab to windows .. then when back into the game the problems went away along with polymer lights.. for some reason minimizing the game kills the lights.

I think this is what 3D Master ment

There still there just covered in a black shading

this shit happens all then time and then just goes away one day , to be replaced by some other problem

[The Commander]

I have no substantial issues with Polymer...
(Excuse the poor Windows Movie Maker conversion)

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=UcqEZDgGrfY

[3D Master]

The Commander, on May 16 2010, 05:22 PM, said:

I just played right though Duke Burger twice (once with cheats, the other without) with the latest eduke32 and polymer revisions.

How about trying to delete your texture

No effect.

Quote

cache and/or turning it off and see if these issues still happen.

No effect.

Quote

If it is, then something is bung on your system or something in the HRP has been installed wrong.

Somehow I doubt it. I'm running an only very recently installed Windows 7 64-bit system.

The Commander, on May 16 2010, 05:33 PM, said:

First thing I always do is delete all .cfg files (tiles.cfg is fine) and texture caches.

No effect.

I found out, that if I run without DukePlus, the first level of The Birth runs at least without trouble (except that widely reported controls stuck problem on occasion). But Duke Burger still started with lots of white, including the dukes hands and weapons, no music was playing, PigCop Cars were invisible, but not the pig cops. Killed myself, restarted level to see if it solved the problem. Start level, bit less white, but then, crash, exit to windows.

[3D Master]

The Commander, on May 16 2010, 07:05 PM, said:

I have no substantial issues with Polymer...
(Excuse the poor Windows Movie Maker conversion)

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=UcqEZDgGrfY

Revision 1640? Where did you get revision 1640?

http://dukeworld.duk...ke32/synthesis/ only goes to 1638.

And where did you get the music. I'm pretty sure I've got the music pack installed, but I don't get that good music.

[supergoofy]

Hendricks266's also compiles binaries:
http://hendricks266.duke4.net/eduke32/


Currently I'm bored and don't have the time or the mood to provide compiled binaries.

But I have published fully working and ready to use compiling environments. If you read the eduke wiki you can understand how to compile the eduke32 source.

[The Commander]

3D Master, on May 17 2010, 06:03 AM, said:

Revision 1640? Where did you get revision 1640?

http://dukeworld.duk...ke32/synthesis/ only goes to 1638.

And where did you get the music. I'm pretty sure I've got the music pack installed, but I don't get that good music.

I still say it's something on your end then, because if IIRC you said you had a GeForce 9800 GT and that should own over my HD4650.

You have done the obvious and installed the latest video drivers etc, also have you overclocked your card at any point in time? Seeing white textures everywhere just does not sound right.

Also, the music is not from that Music pack. (why would I need that when I have a nice sound blaster pro card? )
It's from the Playstation version of Duke Nukem Total Meltdown.
There is a pack around here for the complete thing, don't ask me where though.

[3D Master]

The Commander, on May 16 2010, 09:54 PM, said:

I still say it's something on your end then, because if IIRC you said you had a GeForce 9800 GT and that should own over my HD4650.

You have done the obvious and installed the latest video drivers etc, also have you overclocked your card at any point in time? Seeing white textures everywhere just does not sound right.

I wouldn't know what. I have the latest video drivers and I have not overclocked my card ever. It seems to me it is eDuke32, as after installing r1640 over r1637 allows me to finish playing Duke Burger, although there are still many invisible enemies. I now have enemies without textures, but still visible, totally blue, and missing objects. Also, till now I've played DukeDC, Nuclear Winter, Caribbean, the first episode, and the fourth episode, and it only happens with the fourth episode.

Or maybe eDuke32 and 64-bit windows 7 don't play well together. Anyone else have 64-bit Windows 7?

[Micky C]

Yes I have 64-bit windows 7 with a Geforce 9800 GT and the only problems I've encountered so far have also been experienced by the wider community. Though the lastest one I used was r1633, it's probably time for me to update that.

[Plagman]

Sobek, on May 13 2010, 06:34 PM, said:

Hey there. I did as you said (created a new blank square room and left the default brick texture on it), put in the spot light, set RGB to 254-254-254 (pretty much white) and EXTRA to 100 (straight ahead), and sure enough it did the same thing.

However for no real reason I started testing various random textures - of which I've created quite a lot of so far - and after some testing, came to a conclusion as to what's happening... It seems the spot light projects whatever colour light you assign into the transparent sections of the texture. So in my case, where everything around the text itself is just plain transparency, it was filling that in with the white light (RGB 254-254-254) that I had set it to. The following picture is an example of what I tried. I created a solid green 512x512 texture, then just erased a circle in the middle. As you can see, getting too close to it causes the spot light to fill in that deleted (transparent) area with it's own light;

Is this intended behavior?

Since Commando Nukem brought it up, I'd like to point out that disabling specular mapping won't disable light specularity, just the specular maps themselves (textures affecting the per-pixel specular material of objects they're mapped to).

Also, the alpha channel of the light map you attach to a spotlight shouldn't affect anything, and if it does, there's a bug somewhere (though the GPU isn't even supposed to sample that channel at all, so I doubt this is the issue at hand). To be clear, black pixels in a light map should result in no light shining through at all, diffuse or specular. If that's not what's happening (and it seems like it), then it's also a bug. Can you please attach that greenish texture you used? Is the circle you erased full black?

[Sobek]

Plagman, on May 17 2010, 09:48 AM, said:

Since Commando Nukem brought it up, I'd like to point out that disabling specular mapping won't disable light specularity, just the specular maps themselves (textures affecting the per-pixel specular material of objects they're mapped to).

Also, the alpha channel of the light map you attach to a spotlight shouldn't affect anything, and if it does, there's a bug somewhere (though the GPU isn't even supposed to sample that channel at all, so I doubt this is the issue at hand). To be clear, black pixels in a light map should result in no light shining through at all, diffuse or specular. If that's not what's happening (and it seems like it), then it's also a bug. Can you please attach that greenish texture you used? Is the circle you erased full black?

*edit* It looks like I managed to sort it out... I must have been doing something wrong in my process of creating the alpha layer in photoshop. But what I've done is create a black 512x512 texture, thrown my text over the top, copied the black layer into the alpha channel, merged the text layer with the background, flattened the layer (the combined black background + text), and then saved as a PNG and it's working just fine now.

I HAD tried this same process previously, but I think it has something to do with the order of all those things - I may have flattened without merging the two layers at one stage, which could possibly have stuffed it up... somehow.

Either way, it seems I've ironed that issue out. But I appreciate you offering to investigate that further for me

[Parkar]

Sobek, on May 17 2010, 03:15 AM, said:

*edit* It looks like I managed to sort it out... I must have been doing something wrong in my process of creating the alpha layer in photoshop. But what I've done is create a black 512x512 texture, thrown my text over the top, copied the black layer into the alpha channel, merged the text layer with the background, flattened the layer (the combined black background + text), and then saved as a PNG and it's working just fine now.

I HAD tried this same process previously, but I think it has something to do with the order of all those things - I may have flattened without merging the two layers at one stage, which could possibly have stuffed it up... somehow.

Either way, it seems I've ironed that issue out. But I appreciate you offering to investigate that further for me

What is probably happening is that you have pixels with alpha 0 (black) which as an optimization causes the color of those pixels to be thrown away. Since you can't see them anyway when alpha is used for transperancy it makes sense when used that way. You can get a similar propblem with normal maps if the hight map in the alpha channel has perfectly black pixels.

As Plagman says you shouldn't even need an alpha layer at all though if all you want to use the texture for is lights.

[Night Wolf]

I think the engine sound have better sound options ... there's no sound effects volume.. only game volume which ads of subtracts both music and sound effects.
I would like to be able to make the music a higher volume then sound effects or Vice-versa

[Night Wolf]

*edit*I think the engine should have better sound options*

[Luigi]

ozz, on May 19 2010, 05:05 PM, said:

I think the engine sound have better sound options ... there's no sound effects volume.. only game volume which ads of subtracts both music and sound effects.
I would like to be able to make the music a higher volume then sound effects or Vice-versa

I don't know which version do you have, but you could change both the sound and music volume separately since the original dos version.

[Night Wolf]

Luigi, on May 20 2010, 04:07 AM, said:

I don't know which version do you have, but you could change both the sound and music volume separately since the original dos version.

well that's funny because I sure can't

if I fiddle with game volume it turns down everything sound effects and music
wtf

[TerminX]

There's currently no way to have music that's louder than the sound effects because .ogg music gets played back through the main sound system. It might be fixed someday but it's not really a major problem. Reducing music volume so that it's lower than that of the sound effects remains possible.

[Sobek]

Personally I find the sound options to be more than adequate. A lot of games STILL only offer 'master Volume' levels, so you can't even adjust music levels... Just look at Modern Warfare 2 for the latest example. I'm more than happy with Eduke32's music / sound effect volume controls, they work fine.

I had a quick question about the 3d skyboxes that are supposed to be introduced into Polymer one day... Will these skyboxes allow you to put models in them as permanent map objects? Think of the Source engine, how you can put low-poly simple objects in the 3d skybox and project it over the map area, allowing you to introduce buildings or objects that are permanent fixtures of the world.

I've had an idea for a level for a very long time now that pretty much requires the ability to do this, and since recently I've started making a lot of progress, it's come up again. I just wanted to know if I should scrap the idea, or if it would be possible... I'd essentially need to put a massively scaled model in the skybox, and use blocking sprites to build a level based around it. That seem feasible? Or am I just dreaming.

[Danukem]

Sobek, on May 19 2010, 06:33 PM, said:

I had a quick question about the 3d skyboxes that are supposed to be introduced into Polymer one day... Will these skyboxes allow you to put models in them as permanent map objects? Think of the Source engine, how you can put low-poly simple objects in the 3d skybox and project it over the map area, allowing you to introduce buildings or objects that are permanent fixtures of the world.

I've had an idea for a level for a very long time now that pretty much requires the ability to do this, and since recently I've started making a lot of progress, it's come up again. I just wanted to know if I should scrap the idea, or if it would be possible... I'd essentially need to put a massively scaled model in the skybox, and use blocking sprites to build a level based around it. That seem feasible? Or am I just dreaming.

I think you may have gotten the wrong idea about how the trick works (either that or I'm going to tell you about something different which may work for you).

First of all, you don't need Polymer, and I'm not even sure if this would work with Polymer at the moment (although I'm sure it will work eventually). What you do is build a big room that contains the model, and a starfield above the model, and whatever else you need (maybe some little ships flying around the big model or docking with it?) to make the scene appear the way you want. Then you put a camera in the room looking up at the model (or you could have it looking across the room at the model with the starfield and whatnot projected on a wall behind it, but position things so that if someone saw the view from the camera it would appear to be looking up). Next you pick a special tile for the ceiling in the outdoor areas. In game, that tile will be replaced with a projection of what the camera in the big model room is seeing. It requires CON code to make it work, but it's quite possible to do right now.

[Sobek]

Definitely something different. That's really interesting, sounds like it would work perfectly. I've been reading up a lot on CON code recently (I was trying to create my own AI for my borg drones - it failed miserably but I learned a lot in the process), are there any examples available of this trick? I'd love to give it a whirl. Also, can it be used to 'scale' the projected camera view? And by that I mean take something relatively 'normal' sized that the camera is looking at and project it, say, double sized around you? That would be a good way of doing things without having to try and upscale models really big and - potentially - risk them hitting the clipping distance and starting to vanish.

*edit* I'm probably getting ahead of things here, but it's just nice to know