Making DarkPlaces even MORE beautiful...

[osjclatchford]

better 'flame' skin (with transparency)

...and while I've been at it, I decided to give these aother go too;

flames
for those who dislike the sprite flame or just like to keep it oldskool

pic
as you can see its a remix of primevil's flame skin also converted for flame2 both featuring alpha layers!
they do come with bump/gloss but the usual error with parrallaxing will occur with my bumps, so as before; simply ditch the bump files if you use offsetmapping!

enjoy! or not...
Latchford

[osjclatchford]

alpha layered skins for k_spike and w_spike models

ok, sorry if this counts as a thread-hijack but I thought this might be better suited to this thread, than where I put it originally;

to explain; I was fed up with looking at the cruddy old skins on the k_spike and w_spike projectiles so rather than make new ones, I tweaked the old ones to be a lot cleaner and added alpha layers to further add some transparency to the effect.
grab it then!
sorry for the hefty 3.2mb zip file but I figured you'd prefer quality over tiny files

ok, the w_spike moves so fast you can barely see it but it bothered me that it would crop up in nice screenies now and again, ruining the shot, so I felt it should be done!
visual aid!
as you can see, while I was at it I revisited the re-skins on the ice projectiles (for kqp) I had done previously in the my 'high-res re-skins for classic mods' thread.

enjoy...or not

regards
Latchford

FYI, I just thought this was relevent as, of course, it was made with jorix's/jakub1's/seven's effectinfo.txt in mind.
It just seemed such a shame to have such nice particle effects ruined by a big ugly solid model, this way, IMO anyway, you get the best of both worlds...

[Seven]

Hello thechadisgr8,

it maybe was not explained well enough. Sorry:
Delete all NEW "TE_EXPLOSION" effects (= 2).
I edited them. You cannot miss them.

Leave the rest as it is to have the original DP visual

Regards,
Seven

[thechadisgr8]

i have an 8800gt, had to delete explosions :-( but seems it doesn't default back to the original dp ones afterwards just low quality ones which kind of sucks

[sb306]

This happens to me too, it's really annoying.. Well, let's work hard to get a better gpu!

Yep. I had this bad with the 4850. Decided to try a 5870 and it pretty much fixed the problem. Ill see it slightly every once in awhile.

[thechadisgr8]

cool, will try thanks

[DaniOcampo1992]

whenever i get hit in the face with a grenade shot by an ogre my game hickups (freezes) for a split second

This happens to me too, it's really annoying.. Well, let's work hard to get a better gpu!

[Seven]

Hello thechadisgr8

Effects are effects. Independent if they are near or far.
You cannot change them depending on their distance.

If they are near, they will take much more CPU + GPU usage.
Thats why you have fps issues then.

There is nothing you can do, except deleting all the "effect TE_EXPLOSION" effects.
But this effect is the most beautiful in the complete effectinfo.txt.

This master piece is done by Jorix.
I cannot thank him enough for this !

Seven

[thechadisgr8]

well, tried this out today and i love it, only problem is whenever i get hit in the face with a grenade shot by an ogre my game hickups (freezes) for a split second, what would i have to edit to remove new up close explosions so i could keep the rest of the effects love the new trails and the smoke effects after the explosions keep up the good work

[Seven]

Hello,

I just stumbled upon this explosion.



As I saw it, I had to think about the beautiful explosion, that Seanstar gave us here
Seanstar said, that the sprite frames are limited and therefore it is not possible to have a fluent explosion in Quake.
I just looked into QC (sprites.qc) and found that it is correct. There are only 6 frames hardcoded.
This can be raised by editing the QC file i guess...

This explosion (above) has 16 frames, but I guess every second can be skipped without a visable notice.
So it would be necessary to have 8 in the code.

Just wanted to post this new information.
Maybe it is interesting for someone.

Regards,
Seven

[LambentHammerBurst]

lol that's a screen from Halo, just how one should aim to emulate for the plasma gun explosion.

[seanstar]

Dear all,

Last night I had a dream...

Thinking about the plasma gun issues, which OoPpEe and I discussed about, made me want to add custom effects via "effectinfo.txt" to its projectile impact.

Also the fact, that Jakub asked me several months ago, if it would be possible to create custom effects via "effectinfo.txt" for the multi-grenade-launcher, made me search really deep in the code to be able to give him a positive answer.


I made an interesting discovery:
It IS possible to create custom effects to all these things via "effectinfo.txt".
As Jakub said, that he is actually kneedeep in his round 2 fight with "effectinfo.txt", it is perfect timing, that this is now revealed.


Just to show you what is possible, I made some quick screens with random already existing effects used for mentioned effects:

Original / with custom "effectinfo.txt"

/

/

These are just already existing effects, used for a quick demonstration, that it works. Nothing tuned/final here.


Also the other open effects are possible:
- Laser gun projectile impact effect
- Multirocket launcher rockets with LESS smoke in their trail (= No FPS killer anmyore)

Kind regards,
Seven


I also want to take the opportunity to THANK everybody here in this thread,
who gave feedback and input to make this all possible. 160+ downloads is a sign,
that people like the result.
So expanding it, is a logical step, that will and has to be done.

really nice looking effects seven and jakub1...i cant wait to try these out.

yeah ooppee that halo plasma blast looks sick

[LambentHammerBurst]

Would of been nice if the effect info supported "if statements" that way we could simply tag them with a existing effect but then the "if" statement would apply different effect.

Example would be the:
TE_KNIGHTSPIKE

I'd go into the whole qc code but I'll go into lamens terms:
TE_KNIGHTSPIKE
if classname = lavaspike
(apply this effect)
if classname = laser
(apply this effect)
else
(apply the current knight effect)

Then this could all be done without modifying the progs.dat for the effects relating the models.

[jakub1]

hi seven,
-
some months ago i tried to modify progs.dat to incorporate new te_* entities, but i failed. i guess you remember that unsuccessful experiment of mine; i sent you one long pm about it some time ago. when i comes to qc, i'm absolutely useless. i can read the code to some extent and i know e.g. what to change to alter the missile speed, but that's pretty much everything.
-
as for the voreball explosion - lord havoc once mailed me that new voreball explosion would be possible even without new progs.dat, but it would require some serious hack in dp code. quote from that mail:

"Unfortunately the network protocol does not have a separate effect for vore missiles, so QuakeC code is required to differentiate the two if desired - by triggering a different effect name instead. OR the engine could try to guess based on the presence of vore missile effects in the previous frame, but as a matter of policy I don't use such guesses in the engine."

so... unless the new progs.dat is necessary, i agree with your idea to incorporate this modification into your modpack. and an usual, there will be people who won't be happy that the custom progs.dat will be mandatory, but you can't please everyone :-)
-
jakub


edit - if i remember it correctly; telejano use a special lava nail trail... you should try, it looks beautiful, but i causes q1 to crash from time to time. telejano has really good particle effects.

[Seven]

Hello,

OK, now that I know that it is a Jakub / OoPpEe / Seven thing here, I want to give some more information.

First of all, I see that you are very creative and have many suggestions already.
Unfortunately most of them will not be possible (at least in my poor understanding)


What we have:
We have all the effectīs from original Quake QC. (TE_īs & TR_īs)
They can all be modified without any problem and without any change in QC via "effectinfo.txt".
That already has been done in the released custom effectinfo.txt in this thread.


What we need:
The Mission Pack developers have been very lazy.
They didnt create new effect in the DEFS.QC for the new weapons.
They mostly used the old ones, except "TE_EXPLOSIONS2", which brings another issue,
cause it is used for "hardware" effects.
So we have to edit the QC files to get new effects for the new weapons.


What issues we have:
1.) A VERY small QC change is only necessary to get the new effects for:
- multigrenade explosions
- plasma projectile explosion
These QC changes can be done by myself (cause we can use existing ID1 effects and spawn them)

2.) A bigger QC change is necessary to get the new effects for:
- multirocket explosion
- voreball explosion
- Laser/LavaNail/LavaBall glow
These QC changes cannot be done by myself; maybe OoPpEe can handle them.

3.) Not possible effects would be (but I might be wrong of course):
- multirocket trail new effect (multiple reasons)
- Prox Mine smoke trail (multiple reasons)
- LavaNail trail (multiple reasons)


As all of you know, a QC change leads always to a new progs.dat. (which is basically not good)
But, we have the advantage, that we could use the already existing custom progs.datīs for the mission packs from here.
People who use these mods will maybe be happy to gain new/better effects as well.

Regards,
Seven