Small Mod compilation

[Mugwump]

Monty, is it normal that your european server address starts with "newyork"? Somehow I doubt it...

[Das_Offertorium]

Hi,
thanks four your answer, i understand at this time it ist not possible to play smc in coop. Thats sad, it very nice mod.

Greetings
Das_Offertorium

[Mr.Burns]

Hi there

From speaking to Seven I know that the SMC mod was never intended to be used that way but a multiplayer COOP "extension" of SMC with all of the bells and whistles (and maybe a few more new ones in time ) might be a whole load of fun. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of RQuake and have to get my "fix" of it several nights each week, but we're always keen to keep Quake fresh and try something new

If such a thing existing existed, perhaps along the lines of the Rquake coop servers in New York (connect newyork.servequake.com:26001) and europe (connect Damage.servequake.com:26001), I'm sure Polarite wouldn't mind me adding an SMC Coop server (even if its just for testing or playing with ideas) and supporting website. Seven, please let me know if ever this idea appeals to you and if you want to try this out at some point.

Kind regards

Monty

[Das_Offertorium]

smc in coop?

Hi there,
at first thanks for the nice community that keep Quake alive. As a Kid i loved that game, now i can play at it again. The smc mod and the new monsters are awsome, thanks for your work.

Is there a way to start smcin Multiplayer. We will play this in coop, i have a dedicated linux server and the game starts fine but the Sound have a delay of ~10 Sec.

Is there a way to fix that?

Sorry for my bad englisch.

Greetings
Das_Offertorium

[Mugwump]

new SMC HUD-features. One of them is the original layout

Great! I still need to take the time to install the latest version but I'll sure take a look at it when I do.

It is maybe better to show some moving pictures

Cool, thanks!

Muzzleflashes: yummy!
LG: very nice but I'm wondering if it's possible to make it go more zig-zaggy, like the original polygon beam. And like real-life lightning.
Blood: awesome, both for player and monsters. I would looooove to see that in the new Map Jam 8 (but it runs in AD...)
Teleporter: I like the fast sparks, they remind me of lightspeed travel in Star Wars.

[Seven]

Thanks for the link, I'll check it out. I haven't installed the new HUD included in the SMC because I tested it in a previous install but didn't like its layout and icons.

There are 3 different layouts to choose from + the support for the new SMC HUD-features. One of them is the original layout, so I doubt you do not *like* it.
Adjust it as you wish/want and you can use its icons/textures additionally...



===========================================



Hello all,

I only showed screenshots so far from the new things I am working on at the moment for the upcoming SMC v5.53. It is maybe better to show some moving pictures (video clips).

The below video clip is around 6 minutes long. You can either relax, watch and enjoy the complete clip (recommended) or can jump to the following time stamps for these individual features:

0.00 - 1.15 min. Muzzleflashes / Weapon effects (including grenade & rocket launcher now)
1.15 - 2.00 min. Lightning gun beam effect #1 (which was voted the most)
2.00 - 2.35 min. Blood effects from explosives for player
2.35 - 3.00 min. Teleporter traveling effect #1 (randomly moving stars)
3.00 - 3.30 min. Teleporter traveling effect #2 (Fast moving particle sparks)
3.30 - 5.10 min. Blood effects from explosives for monsters (blood follows explosion velocity+direction)
5.10 - 6.05 min. New Blood effects when shooting enemies (Because people requested more blood/gore)


Be aware that I used the no_textures cheat, so that you better can see the effects. I also removed the rocket explosions because of that reason for the clip. Later on I used r_fullbright 1 as well to see all the details very clearly.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyhntSr7Jqw[/ame]

Have fun with the small clip.
Best wishes, Seven

[Mugwump]

I recommend to delete dopaīs quake.rc file.

Did that, everything's back to normal. Thanks.

Type: r_editlights 1 into your console. That is it. Now you can really *see* all light sources and use all the existing r_editlights cvars/commands to edit those lights to your personal liking. Find them all by typing: apropos r_editlights into console to get a detailed description.

Thanks for that too. Good to know.

A torch is a model like all other models in Quake. (...) If you want to have light, you must set a light.

Thanks for clarifying. I thought the light properties of a torch entity were part of the entity itself, but if I understand your words correctly, when you place a torch in a map editor, what the editor actually does is place a torch model AND a light entity that doesn't appear in the editor.

I do not understand why you post so many screenshots of torches that cast shadows, because that is what they do naturally when the realtime light has this property.
It is NOT related in any way to the SMC.
Posting so many screenshots with issues can make people think that it is a SMC bug. Please do not do this as i worry that it only generates doubts about the SMC mod.

Sorry. I posted screenshots just to show a few examples of what I meant. I didn't mean to harm this thread.

Did you download and try it ? (...) Why dont you post before/after screens ?

DL'ed but not tried yet. Awfully busy with a lot of different Quake-related things ATM.

The light physics of realtime lights are correct. You can test this yourself in real life: Turn off the light in your room, so that it is dark. Now turn on a flashlight and hold your hand very near to it.
You will see a huge shadow of your hand on the wall.

Yes, I know how real life works, thank you... But IRL, the shadow wouldn't be pitch black, and like I said the fire would surround the torch head and wouldn't produce this kind of shadows.

A realtime light source in Quake is always a point not a volume like in real life ! So you have to position it smart to *simulate* a real fire...

Oh, so that's why torches look like this! This was confusing because the torch's flame has a volume and light entities in Trenchbroom look like cubes. I guess it would need at least 2 light sources per torch placed on opposite sides to get rid of the issue.

On your screenshot I can see that you are currently using some of Moon[Drunk]īs HUD textures.

Must be from the QRP Items pack - I know it contains conback, conchars etc... so I wouldn't be surprised if there were HUD icons in there as well. Thanks for the link, I'll check it out. I haven't installed the new HUD included in the SMC because I tested it in a previous install but didn't like its layout and icons.

----------------------------------------

Oh, by the way, I like #1 lightning best too. I suggest you also replace the shambler's particle beam with this one. I reverted back to the polygon lightning for now (it looks much better than the current particle beam) but I'm looking forward to seeing this new version move in-game.

Edit: A short video of the new lightning and teleporter effects would be nice, if you don't mind.

[Seven]

Hello,
Thank you for your feedback.

So we have 3 for #1, 1.5 for #2 and 1 for #5.
Based on this, i learned that people like:
- the blue-ish color
- the higher res textures
- the small/narrow size

That is allright. I will continue in this direction then.


==============================



In the meantime I finished these new features:

- New blood/gore effects
- Blood effects when shooting monsters with explosives (main important, as it is completely lacking in original Quake)
- New teleporter traveling effects (see screenshots of 2 options below)
- Underwater effects

Now I am working on additional weapon effects, like
- sparks on the lightning gun diodes
- smoke out of rocket launcher barrel after firing projectiles
- some more crazy ideas
Lets see if they come out well enough to release them. They are tricky.


==============================



New teleporter traveling effects:
Both effects only last less than 1 second in-game !

1.) Matching the already implemented view_zoom distortion, I made a somehow fitting
particle effect. Fast moving particles sparks towards the player. The animation looks quite nice in-game:


2.) Following another idea was to spawn randomly moving stars around player. This effect I like even more. Hard to see it on a screenshot, it looks quite nice in-game:


Best wishes,
Seven

[gdiddy62]

1 & 2 have my votes!

[Blood Vengeance]

I like 1 the most, but also 5 is very nice

[talisa]

totally agree with you seven, #1 is definitely the best-looking.

#2 looks great too though, but #1 is by far the nicest-looking

[Seven]

Dear all,

I am currently working on some gfx extensions for the Quake weapons and need your help.

Playing around with the lightning gun beam at the moment. I do not know which way/path to go. I have several effects/textures, can you please give feedback which one suits best in your opinion ?

There are some low & high resolutions and some narrow & wide ones as well as some colorful & colorless versions to choose from.

Please click on the thumbnails to see the details/differences:

1.)

2.)

3.)

4.)

5.)


Thank you.
I personally like the 1st one the most at the moment.

Best wishes,
Seven

[Seven]

Hello,

Thank you all for your feedback, new ideas and requests for the next update.
I will look into them and see what can be realized.

1) I have no idea what that line should be.
2) What does it contain and why is it here in the first place if it's so useless?
3) Would this work with the SMC .pk3 in \id1? I was under the impression that for multiple gamedir commands to work, mods had to be put in separate folders.

You can open quake.rc files with notepad just like you open config files.
Open the original Quake quake.rc file, then compare it with dopaīs and smcīs and you will quickly find the answer for your question 1 and 2.
For your question 3: Yes, you can also use -game id1 but that is somehow silly, as that is the default folder and will always be loaded. And if you want to start mods you usually want them to override id1, no ?
Put the SMC into its own mod folder, because it is a mod
That way you can have it totally separated from Quake and only use it when you really want to use it.
Thanks to Darkplaces multiple -game command feature you can mix whatever mod contents you need/want (except progs.dat of course, but this you already learned).

I recommend to delete dopaīs quake.rc file.

Yeah, it always bugged me to not be able to do that, especially when there's a pickup you'd like to grab later because you're almost full, but you don't have a choice because it stands in your way. So no-one is using that? Huh!

Well, I do not know how many people use it or not. I use it
This feature is disabled (as it could be counted as a cheat) by default and knowing that people tend to not like to read through the long smc_config.cfg file, I *think* that not many people enabled it. But I might be wrong of course.

Now I have no idea how RTlights editing is done

Type: r_editlights 1 into your console. That is it. Now you can really *see* all light sources and use all the existing r_editlights cvars/commands to edit those lights to your personal liking. Find them all by typing: apropos r_editlights into console to get a detailed description.

but I'm learning to map and I know that you don't need to add light entities to a torch because its flame already has built-in light properties, and I would assume you don't need to either when editing RTlights.

That is not quite correct.
A torch is a model like all other models in Quake. It does not automagically cast light, nor particles, nor smoke or anything. It is a regular a model that runs a hardcoded polygon flame animation loop (look into QME to learn more about it).
Original Quake qc makes it static, so that no more data will be transferred between server/client.

If you want to have light, you must set a light.
A realtime light CAN cast shadows, if you set this light property (see my comment above). And due to the fact that torches are regular models they will cast shadows like all other models do.
I do not understand why you post so many screenshots of torches that cast shadows, because that is what they do naturally when the realtime light has this property.
It is NOT related in any way to the SMC.
Posting so many screenshots with issues can make people think that it is a SMC bug. Please do not do this as i worry that it only generates doubts about the SMC mod.

I also posted the cure for this (even though it is not related to the SMC) in my post yesterday. Did you download and try it ?
A simple shader with dpnoshadow key word fixes it. If you use my fix from yesterday all your issues should be gone 100%. Why dont you post before/after screens ?
You will find a similar shader fix in THIS threat. As it is not SMC related and also happens in regular Quake with all torch models when enabling realtime lights. You will find a fix for the regular torch model there as well.

Which is why I'm surprised that these torches are so badly lit and cast these huge black shadows. I took a few screenshots to show you what I mean

The light physics of realtime lights are correct. You can test this yourself in real life: Turn off the light in your room, so that it is dark. Now turn on a flashlight and hold your hand very near to it.
You will see a huge shadow of your hand on the wall.
That is exactly what happens in your screenshots. The realtime light sources are placed very near the torch model and therefore cast a huge shadow and only one half of it is bright (the side towards the light source).
Again, the fix from above post will fix this behavior 100%.
A realtime light source in Quake is always a point not a volume like in real life ! So you have to position it smart to *simulate* a real fire...

The person who places the realtime light source did this most probably for the original torch model. Its shape is a little bit different to the custom torch model. That might already be enough to create these shadows.
You do not need to use a custom torch model when using the SMC. You can choose between original torch model or several others if you want. Everything is customizable via smc_config.cfg.

Oh by the way, in the first pic, if you look closely you can see that the backgrounds of the armor and ammo icons are not completely transparent. How do I fix this considering the HUD alpha is set to 0?

The SMC download contains HUD and Menu icons/textures with 100% transparent background. You are not using them, so it is not the SMCs fault again
If you do not like the SMC HUD icons (you can choose between several HUD icons and even HUD layouts with additional features by the way !) and want to use your personal ones, you are absolutely free to do so, as they are not SMC related. You simply have to delete the background of the icon texture and make it thereby fully transparent.
It is a 1-click action in your favorite texture editor.

On your screenshot I can see that you are currently using some of Moon[Drunk]īs HUD textures. I remember a discussion with him, where he said, that he used a texture editor which did not fully delete the icons backgrounds and he didnt notice it at that time. With the introduction of my "Fully transparent HUD" project we stumbled upon this fact and I had to delete all HUD & Menu textures manually by hand.


Sidenote:
My highest priority is to keep the SMC compatible with every existing replacement content.
The core SMC .pk3 file replaces as good as no original Quake content. That is important to know.

Everything else:
- weapon set
- monster set
- HUD & Menu set
- custom map particles (like weather effects, …)
are included in the SMC download as separate .pk3īs.
That is very important to give the user completely freedom of which replacement content to use, if he wants to use any at all...

Of course I highly recommend to also use the optional SMC .pk3īs, as they make use of all SMC features, but they are not mandatory. Take your time and browse through the SMC download file and you will be suprised what nice things you will find

Additionally, I use Capnbubs' dog exclusively. I find the SMC's new dog very ugly (sorry) but I like its new animations very much, so here's my question: would it be within the realm of possibilities to add the new animations to Capnbubs' model? I'd love to see it howl and bark. If you're not skilled enough to do that on your own, maybe we can find an animator like Dutch or Madfox willing to undertake that.

I think that we already spoke about this point.
Capnbubs dog is inside the SMC already. It is called dog.mdl. So there is no need in putting it into the SMC mod folder a second time.

The SMC has a feature which is called: Extended new dog
It lets you set a percentage chance to replace the dog.mdl model with another dog model (it is a converted model from dawn of darkness Quake 2 TC). That extended dog has additional abilities which are not gameplay relevant, like barking or howling. If you set this feature cvar to "0", you will never see him in game.

You can of course hand this model to anyone you want to take its additional animations as reference and add them into the regular dog.mdl or capnbubs dog.mdl. If that is done, you can use the dog in the SMC and have all of its abbilities in game. The SMCīs qc takes care of it automagically


Best regards,
Seven

[Mugwump]

place your images in between [img] & [/img] to make them get embedded in the post

Yes, I got the tag right, it's the file extension part that I was missing. Thanks, I'll correct my previous post.

[talisa]

i have the lossless_ammo_pickup feature always enabled too myself

its very usefull to be able to grab just a few shells from a box instead of the entire ammo-box just being gone despite just being able to grab 3 shells from it

its usefull that ammo-boxes will remain if you dont empty them and you can go back later to grab the rest of the ammo that was in it

.

@BFG666
place your images in between [img] & [/img] to make them get embedded in the post

also, make sure your link is to the actual image-file itself, and NOT to the album with the picture.
easiest way to make sure is rightclick the image and select 'view image' so that you get the image shown full-screen, and then copy the image's adress from there

example
[img]http://i.imgur.com/KOpUrkC.jpg[/img]

will result in