[Roma Loom]

The folder with stuff and sources for HRP I've created and gathered from other people is 44Gb ╰(°_°)╯

[Hendricks266]

NightFright, on 07 February 2024 - 12:00 PM, said:

It's sad that for a big project like this, it was forgotten to create a repository for source files. Especially important if so many people are involved who could (and did) disappear eventually, never to resurface. But well, at least we'll have a statusbar source in the end...

It was not really part of the realpolitik of the time. Getting volunteer (and sometimes amateur) contributors is one thing, holding their hand to ensure they shared their sources for preservation is another.

There are also circumstances like someone who stole one of Tea Monster's models and used it in a job application, giving him reluctance to share in the future.

I maintained sources for contributions to the NWinter and Vacation HRPs. I also have various pieces from Parkar and others in my archives.

Roma Loom, on 12 February 2024 - 12:58 PM, said:

Ok, the PSD contains some useful maps for creating any kind of variant from scratch using any metallic texture(s) found on the internet along with some variants baked in le painteur de substance.

Great work!! As briefly mentioned by others, is there any possibility of extending it into an (ultra-)widescreen asset?

Roma Loom, on 12 February 2024 - 12:58 PM, said:

Now back to creating all the rest duke3d fonts in vector as it seems I'll need them in my project

SwissCM already did this for gametext (bluefont), minitext, and v1.3D menutext (redfont). Here are the SVGs I have: SwissCM-duke3d-font-vectors.7z

[Mark]

For the handful of things I made for the HRP, I didn't make super high detailed sources to "dumb down" for inclusion. IIRC, what you see in the HRP is what I actually produced.

I suppose you could search this forum and see if TeaMonster's originals are still posted.

Thats a whole lotta HRP there Mr. Loom.

[Roma Loom]

Hendricks266, on 12 February 2024 - 05:42 PM, said:

SwissCM already did this for gametext (bluefont), minitext, and v1.3D menutext (redfont). Here are the SVGs I have: SwissCM-duke3d-font-vectors.7z

That's cool, this will save time, still have to convert to a b/w TTF file

[darkprince227]

So.... what's going on here?

[NightFright]

A small, almost microscopic spark in pitch-black darkness.

[Roma Loom]

@NightFright as I still have access to HRP SVN I can upload and define this new asset if it's a problem for you

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[NightFright]

Is it final already? But well... I have to see if I can still do anything with SVN. Personally I have completely switched to Github. For me it would be definitely easier if everything was there by now. But that's a decision I cannot make all by myself.

Side note:
Widescreen assets seem to be less complete than I remembered. We don't have stuff like the help/credits screens, for example. Which is a pain since they need to be composed of the background tiles + text overlays. And without templates, those have to be (re)done from scratch.

[Roma Loom]

I'm not sure if it's final, the more I look the more I start to have doubts, that's why I have posted a PSD file with variants, here's a variant with colors shifted into Duke palette tones (match color tool in PS)

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[NightFright]

It's a great piece of work. There isn't really anything I could think of to make it better.

Regarding SVN vs Github:
Are there any main advantages of SVN over Git these days? What speaks in favor of Git is you won't need any sort of client to download the archive. (And SVN clients are not very numerous these days, as I've noticed.) "Download to zip" is always available. It's also accessible for everybody, with the possibility to add contributors. Those would all need to have Github accounts for that, though.

[Roma Loom]

We had problems few times with large files on previous project in a company I have worked at. And by large I mean not some Zbrush >900Mb file or uber huge PSD, for those we still had SVN but for the project itself we used GIT and admins had few cases with setting up LFS addon to it or something like this as we still had some large binary files there.
https://www.perforce...w-git-lfs-works

[Mark]

Probably just because I'm stupid but it seems hard for me to navigate githubs. Many times I click myself in circles of pages looking for something. So I usually avoid them instead of learning to use them. I'm used to using SVN for at least the last 7 or 8 years.

[Hendricks266]

NightFright, on 14 February 2024 - 11:44 AM, said:

Regarding SVN vs Github:
Are there any main advantages of SVN over Git these days?

For a project like the HRP where the data is large binary files like images and models, it is advantageous for the client to download only the current version of the data by default. Subversion was designed to do this inherently, you have no other choice (outside of a tool like git-svn). Git, by default, downloads the entire history. You can pass something like `--depth=1` to your `git clone` command to have the same effect, but that is not well known and not mentioned as part of GitHub's included shortcuts.

As Roma linked, Git LFS is designed to resolve this issue, and GitHub supports it for free (for files < 2 GB, which is no issue here), however it requires some setup on the repository manager's side, and can involve extra hurdles for users to get right.

NightFright, on 14 February 2024 - 11:44 AM, said:

What speaks in favor of Git is you won't need any sort of client to download the archive. (And SVN clients are not very numerous these days, as I've noticed.) "Download to zip" is always available.

This is a detail of GitHub as a service and not anything inherently present in Git or lacking in Subversion.

NightFright, on 14 February 2024 - 11:44 AM, said:

It's also accessible for everybody, with the possibility to add contributors. Those would all need to have Github accounts for that, though.

Just speaking from my own opinion, for my projects I preferred being the one to update the data in terms of filenames, defs, and txts, so I could be sure it met my standards for organization and documentation. The one time someone went around me to get SVN access from the site admins, they did this wrong, and I had to fix it later, which irritated me. That said, you can configure GitHub pull requests so that maintainers can edit the contributor's branch before merging. This is not the same as giving someone direct commit access, and still involves some level of attention from a maintainer, but it may be less of a burden than having files dropped on their own.

[NightFright]

Well, this doesn't need to be decided right now. Maybe Github could be set up as a second option, considering there's only little to do or add these days.
In the meantime, I did a comparison with the 8-bit widescreen pack and found that we are unfortunately still missing a few tiles to be fully widescreen compatible:

[ ] 2445 (help screen)
[ ] 2456 (menu background)
[x] 2462 (statusbar)
[x] 2492 (3DR logo)
[x] 2493 (title screen)
[ ] 2500 (Duke Ten screen)
[ ] 2504 (PP credits)
[ ] 2505 (DN3D credits)
[ ] 2506 ("Thank You")
[x] 3240 (tally screen: city)
[x] 3245 (tally screen: space)
[ ] 3280 (story screen)
[x] 3281 (level loading)
[x] 3292 (ep.1 end)
[x] 3293 (ep.2 end)

Especially #2456 is important since all menu screens are using it. The "Duke Ten" one may be redundant, which is probably why it hasn't been done at all so far.

Links to current 5:4 versions of the missing widescreen tiles:
#2445 | #2456 | [#2500 N/A] |#2504 | #2505 | #2506 | #3280

[Roma Loom]

I'll create #2456 soon, but for those with texts I need to go through Cheeseman's SwissCM-duke3d-font-vectors.7z to see if it has font like we need. If yes then we will have both screens and a ttf font at once.

[NightFright]

Outstanding. A pity we don't have the source for those text screens. Otherwise it'd be just about creating the background and slapping the originals right on top of them.

(Oh, and the "Play on Ten" screen is ofc useless since that was only available in the vanilla options menu. Modern ports are not even showing this, so we can simply forget about it.)

[Mark]

Back in 2017 iirc, I made this screen in 5:4 ? ratio to use in HHR. Some time after that there was a post here about widescreen versions of screens so I made a mockup of it not really knowing what resolution to make it. I posted it back then in case anyone might have a use for it. Here it is again.

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[Roma Loom]

Should I take the responsibility and commit this font to HRP SVN?

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[NightFright]

@Roma
I assume the new font is the one to the right. Looks more faithful, even though maybe a bit flat compared to the old version. Right now, I can't picture the 8-bit counterpart in front of me, but well... it's an improvement, one way or the other.

@Mark
I'd say by now, anything below 1080p is probably to be considered low res these days.

[Roma Loom]

NightFright, on 16 February 2024 - 08:04 AM, said:

@Roma
I assume the new font is the one to the right. Looks more faithful, even though maybe a bit flat compared to the old version. Right now, I can't picture the 8-bit counterpart in front of me, but well... it's an improvement, one way or the other.

Here's the original Duke3D

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[NightFright]

OK, that's as flat as it can get, I guess. Well, the new shapes are definitely more faithful to the original, so from my side, this certainly wouldn't be a downgrade.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm still looking for a usable SVN client. Preferrably portable. Most of those are discontinued by now. I intend to avoid TortoiseSVN as it screws too much with my system for my taste, considering its Explorer integration. I don't need that.

[Roma Loom]

Hmm.. just noticed the shape of the squares in HRP version isn't like in original

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[NightFright]

Yeah, they are slightly cone-shaped for some reason. There was actually a time I thought they were supposed to look like that. Could also be fixed, after all these years. Plus we actually kinda need new versions which go with that new statusbar.

Currently I'm experimenting with SlikSVN. It's command-line based, but at least binaries are up-to-date. Basic stuff like checkout and commit is easy to do, so it's something. Still need to test whether my old access is working, though.

Btw, your statusbar blows the one from Megaton out of the water with ease. For comparison:
https://images.cgame...ion_2597757.jpg

Btw, part 2: For anybody who's been wondering, I'm indeed intending to issue a new HRP release once all menu-related tasks have been completed. It's not going to be much, but at least it'll show it's still not completely buried. That and widescreen support is definitely overdue since ages.

[Mark]

command line programs...

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[NightFright]

@Roma:
You can commit that statusbar whenever you want. While you're at it, maybe also create a 5:4 version and replace the old one, so everything fits. Regarding widescreen assets, I think it's best to have a separate dir where we put everything and load that with a new def (widescreen.def, obviously). Like this it can just be loaded on top of the 5:4 assets for easy replacement.

[Roma Loom]

I'll try to figure out where it should be put. That tiny font on those helps screens, some letters from it will be pain in le arse to recreate, but it's doable. Meanwhile the base plate for those is in progress

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[NightFright]

So I did a short test with the new statusbar in Rednukem (should be the same as EDuke32). The problem: Dimensions don't exactly match.


What I did:
- Resized the bar to 1920x174 (Megaton: 1920x153)
- Use these definitions:

texture 2462 { pal 0 { file "hires/tweaks/hud/hudfin1920_roma.png" orig_sizex 428 orig_sizey 34 artquality } }

This works fine with the Megaton statusbar, but not with the new one. I've tried messing around with orig_sizex, but I can't find a setting which quite does the trick. As soon as the numbers are more or less where they should be, the background image on both sides is showing again.

[Roma Loom]

NightFright, on 17 February 2024 - 03:28 AM, said:

This works fine with the Megaton statusbar, but not with the new one.

You mean if you place megaton's statusbar texture into Rednukem instead of mine it works?

We need expand definition flags then, like the offset from where to draw the status bar or whatever... That's why I like blueprints do the math and draw what you want

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[NightFright]

Yeah, Megaton's statusbar works. Again, if I just resize your bar to a width of 1920px, dimensions don't fit. Height shouldn't matter here.

Numbers are always drawn at the same spot, regardless whether you are in highres mode or not. Maybe the best idea would be to use the Megaton statusbar as a template and trace over it with your own gfx, just to know where the frames (and maybe also everything else) have to be.

Here's the Megaton statusbar for reference. (Can't attach files here any more, exceeded my upload quota.)

[Roma Loom]

Crap, I don't like this idea - those long useless parts both on methadone and world tour make me sad. But I can prolong those parts, it won't take much efforts

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