Small Mod compilation

[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 dopa´s 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]´s 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 dopa´s and smc´s 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 dopa´s 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]´s 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 .pk3´s.
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 .pk3´s, 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 SMC´s 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

[Mugwump]

You have several options here:

• Either edit dopa´s quake.rc file (add the line to load smc_config.cfg)
• Or delete dopa´s quake.rc file completely (as it doesnt contain any important things for you).
• Or load the SMC mod after dopa like this: -game dopa -game smc

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.

Whooow, finally someone who is using this SMC feature
It took some coding time to achieve it. I always use it and would not know what to do without it. LOL

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!

Yes sure. Find the download link at the end of this post. Replace the shader with the other one. Sorry to hear that you are using badly positioned realtime lights.

Thanks. Well as I said before, I'm currently beta-testing some RTlights made by Blood Vengeance and DOPA is part of them. He means well but it's pretty obvious to me that he still has much more to learn before he gets as good as Inkub0 (no offense, BV). The thing is, he told me that he made these RTlights for use with lightmaps set to 0, which makes shadows pitch black if there's no other light source around. Just by looking around us everyday, we all know that pitch black shadows are not realistic, right? Light bounces on surfaces and there's bound to be some specular light to brighten the shadows.

Now I have no idea how RTlights editing is done 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. 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:



Note that the last one isn't too dark but its size is still weird. To expand on what I said in my previous post, it seems that I was a bit wrong. Torches aren't always lit from above like this:

Note how the side that faces up is lit but the side that faces down is not, thus creating this large shadow on the floor. Conversely, that one:

has the side facing down lit and the other side not, thus projecting a shadow on the wall behind it. The second picture above even has a shadow cast on the side! It's as if the torches are not emitting light by themselves but instead have extra light entities placed near them.

I do love nice shadows in DP. Emphasis on nice. But in real life, a lit torch has fire all around its top part, therefore it casts little to no shadow unless it is also lit by another nearby light source, which is clearly not the case here. Hence my question.

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?

There is a saying in Germany: The customer is king.

We say that in France too, though TBH I haven't heard it in years and the practice seems a little less common than when I was a kid.

While we are at it, here are some features I am currently implementing into SMC v5.53:

Yeah about that, since "der kunde ist könig" I have some suggestions for future improvements:
- find a way to make flying replacement monsters not replace monsters inside water, and if possible not go in the water at all. Scrags are OK because they apparently have some anti-gravity power and can go anywhere, but seeing an afrit flap its wings underwater is very odd to say the least!
- by extension, not every monster fits in every environment and it would be nice to be able to select where they appear. For example, I'd like spiders to show up only in caves and outdoor areas. I have a feeling it might not be possible without extensive code modifications, though.
- add an option to have blood splatters appear on screen only when you're wearing the biosuit (and clean them when you enter a liquid): unlike the biosuit, Ranger's helmet doesn't have a visor so it's not realistic to have splatters at any time.
- add an extra particle in clean water that would simulate tiny fish or krill, with erratic moves somewhat similar to embers except in all directions (embers tend to float upwards).

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.

[gdiddy62]

Looking forward to the new features Seven!!

Thank you!

[talisa]

i had a random idea for an extension of two features.....

what about extending the burning-death animation feature from monsters to the player?
that if the player gets killed by fire-attacks from any monsters that the deathcam will show the player-model running around on fire for a few seconds before falling down?

just like what happens in blood when the player gets killed by fire


and maybe also extend the burning-death feature from monsters, to make it also get triggered when they get killed by fire-attacks.

.

also, would it be possible to add an option to enable/disable in-fighting with the afrits?
i know afrits would be very likely to cause frequent in-fighting, but imo thats one of the most awesome things about old ID-games:
the chaos that ensues when monsters turn on one another and start beating the living crap out of each other

i think its weird and feels kinda lame that the afrit as the only monster doesnt cause in-fighting and doesnt retaliate if a monster hits them either.


.

also ah yus.... the dreaded quake.rc....
i always immediately remove that file from the folders and paks from any mods/maps that i install

its a bad habit that some modders seem to have, to include this file with their maps/mods
causing your personal settings to get over-ridden and defaults getting used for settings that arent present in the quake.rc

[Seven]

when loading maps from another folder then the default ID1 folder, if no SMC_config.cfg is present in that folder it will load SMC's default internal values.

That is not correct talisa.

just simply copying your SMC_config.cfg over to the folder from which you're running the maps will solve the problem

That does not help for DOPA and is also not recommended with any other mod to keep the configs that are floating around in your Quake under control and keep their numbers small.
The custom/personally configured smc_config.cfg from SMC mod folder will always be loaded when you load the mod. Using the -nohome command will ensure that eventually existing smc_config or any other configs in your "My Games" folder will be ignored.



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

Hey Seven, I'm having some trouble running DOPA with the SMC. The episode doesn't have any progs.dat, not even inside the pak file, but it looks like it disregards my smc_config.cfg

The only reason why the smc_config.cfg is loaded from the engine at all is the tiny little quake.rc file. The mods progs.dat doesnt make the engine load the smc_config.cfg. It is the quake.rc file which is included in the SMC .pk3.
That is a very common way for loading additional config files. You can even call it bfg666_config.cfg if you want
And dopa also includes exactly such a quake.rc file, which of course doesnt load smc_config.cfg... It overrides SMC´s quake.rc and therefore a smc_config.cfg isnt loaded at all !

You have to know that the default SMC cvars are hardcoded inside the progs.dat.
That is why dopa uses SMC´s default settings and putting a smc_config.cfg in dopa´s subfolder doesnt help.

You have several options here:

• Either edit dopa´s quake.rc file (add the line to load smc_config.cfg)
• Or delete dopa´s quake.rc file completely (as it doesnt contain any important things for you).
• Or load the SMC mod after dopa like this: -game dopa -game smc

ammo/health boxes don't split their contents anymore

Whooow, finally someone who is using this SMC feature
It took some coding time to achieve it. I always use it and would not know what to do without it. LOL

On an unrelated note, is it possible to disable the shadow cast by the torch's handle? I'm using your torch-new.pk3 and the light it emits is positioned a little too high on the model. As a result, it casts a very large shadow and when I play with RTlights made for lightmaps set to 0, said shadow is pitch black and I can't see anything inside it (also because of the position of the light source, only the top of the handle is lit, not the underside, which is not realistic). So until this is fixed, I need a way to disable the handle's shadow.

Yes sure. Find the download link at the end of this post. Replace the shader with the other one.
Sorry to hear that you are using badly positioned realtime lights. Those shadows are what makes Quake spooky, no ?
This is how it will look (before / after)


I would recommend keeping the shadows but if they disturb you, you can disable them with the link below. I will add a cvar into the next SMC build that will work independent to the actual used torch model and will enable/disable shadows of all torches. That will be much easier for those who want to disable torch shadows.

I didn't request anything, I just asked how to set different transparency values for each type of liquid - but thanks anyway, this is great!

There is a saying in Germany: The customer is king.
So, the users wish is my command.




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




While we are at it, here are some features I am currently implementing into SMC v5.53:

New blood/gore effects:
I was reading in several threads that people love blood and gore.
The SMC has already a lot of extra gore. But can it ever be enough ?
To bear the bill, I added more chunks of meat that get spawned when shooting monsters as well as a special really gory blood effect when shooting them. Using more gibs as original Quake is already implemented, so that should be enough then.

Performance boost
Spike looked into Darkplaces code and found that effectinfo.txt syntax function: bounce is heavily performance hungry. Therefore SMC´s complete effectinfo.txt will be reworked on this behalf and performance will be gained. I guess that is always a plus.

Blood effects when shooting monsters with explosives
Everybody surely have noticed that original Quake explosions will NOT spawn blood from monsters/player ! Next SMC will fix this Quake missing feature.

New teleporter effect
A new very intense effect will be introdunced when traveling with teleporters.

Underwater effects
That is the feature from some posts above. But with some additonal settings.


Kind regards,
Seven

[Mugwump]

Tried that, doesn't work. I started a new game and I STILL have spiders and fantasy monsters replacing base enemies.