In the Shadows

[Seven]

Some more progress with the DP engine ...







Full size links - Image 1 Image 2 Image 3
EDIT: Added Links above

Hello sock,

Believe it or not, I wanted to post in your thread today and ask for status

You have perfect sense to catch beautiful parts of your maps in screenshots.
When comparing your older screenshots with the newer ones, I notice you have extended the usage of particles now:
- skill column
- teleporter
- fire
And also your lighting has been further improved. You have set their positions and properties extremely well.
It really shows, that you deeply studied realtime lights (as you mentioned the last time).
Also the water looks great.
And all the new textures...

You definitely are 'born' to make awesome maps.

Really great work sock !

[Guest]

Wow!

[sock]

@Dutch, yes I made Ivory Tower and Zendar quake maps, but these stealth maps were made long before them. This update is mainly about visuals, streamlining the gameplay and training mechanics so it is easier to understand what to do.

@Seven, haha, yeah I have been busy with other projects and only just got back to doing some more work with the MOD. As you probably guessed I am doing more DP eye candy with more particles and lighting. I was planning to do a mix of particles and sprites but DP renders particles much quicker so decided to switch completely over. I am reworking all the particles (standard quake and ITS) to make it all consistent with the visual style of the MOD. I am also adding more architecture and textures as these maps are very old and could do with an update.
@Mom, thanks

[Dutch]

Right on. Well it looks awesome. And I was floored by Zendar. The visuals were great, but what really impressed me was how you captured the atmosphere. Very ominous. Looking forward to your future work.
And talk about an "oh shit" moment when I'm told the Horde of Zendar wants me dead. Lol.

[Seven]

As you probably guessed I am doing more DP eye candy with more particles and lighting. I was planning to do a mix of particles and sprites but DP renders particles much quicker so decided to switch completely over. I am reworking all the particles (standard quake and ITS) to make it all consistent with the visual style of the MOD.

Hello sock,

I understand. I personally like the user-friendly effect-syntax from DP as well.
A big minus is the limited textures for particles though. 64-1 seems a lot at first seight, but can get short at times. Until now it was enough though. A process like FTE has, with unlimited textures would be nice though. I can imagine that this should not be a big issue engine coding-wise. Instead of "tex num1 num2" you could have "tex path1 path2", where pathx is a string that leads to the texture file.

But enough of that, your map-screenshots look great ! Only this is important

[sock]

A big minus is the limited textures for particles though. 64-1 seems a lot at first seight, but can get short at times. Until now it was enough though.

DP can have more than 64 particles per image sheet. You can define how many particles per sheet by using the particlefont.txt file. Download from here. The SVN has an example particlefont.tga file as well.

A process like FTE has, with unlimited textures would be nice though. I can imagine that this should not be a big issue engine coding-wise. Instead of "tex num1 num2" you could have "tex path1 path2", where pathx is a string that leads to the texture file.

Allowing particles definitions to reference multiple particles files is a really bad idea, it is much quicker for the GPU to use one particle file than multiple.

[Seven]

Hello sock,

Great news !
If the former is possible, then the latter is obsolete.

I always thought that the particlefont.tga must have 8x8 textures.
As far as I understand you, it is possible to extend it to lets say 16x16 textures via particlefont.txt.

The only thing I do not understand is, why the texture coordinates in particlefont.txt are as they are ?
Each of the 4 coordinates declare the 4 corners of the textures.
But why is the last one (lower right corner) not "1". It is "0.998046875"
And the first one (upper left corner) not "0". It is "0.001953125"
There seems to be a small border around the complete particlefont.tga which is not usable.

This way it will be very hard to detect which coordinates to use when extending it to 16x16 board... Or the slim border must be identical to the 8x8 board.

But good to know that if I need more textures, it is possible with DP.
Thank you for this valuable information, sock.

[Spike]

keeping inside the image by an extra pixel or so prevents linear texture sampling from reading outside of your actual image and into another.
the alternative of course is to simply not paint into the edges and ensure that there is a border which is fully transparent, but that's effectively just extra overdraw so not many people bother with it.
the effect gets worse with smaller mip levels.

regarding FTE, you can (and should) use the tcoords property to use a particlefont, although it does have the limitation that randomized image choices need to be in a single group on the same row. doing so will allow the engine to batch particle effects together.

[sock]

The only thing I do not understand is, why the texture coordinates in particlefont.txt are as they are ?

Each particle is defined with the co-ordinates slightly inward so that the particle edges do not have any of the adjacent particle textures.

This way it will be very hard to detect which coordinates to use when extending it to 16x16 board... Or the slim border must be identical to the 8x8 board.

I highly recommend you download the example particlefont.tga file in that SVN directory. The last 1/3 of the texture are beam particles. Remember this is just an example, you can create your own version if you want and there is nothing stopping you from creating different sizes (I highly recommend they are square in shape)

The beauty of this system is, you can define where and what size each particle is on the single texture page and it will all be sent to the GPU as one batch for all particles on the screen. This is much faster than several pages.

[MadGypsy]

That looks excellent, Sock! @ DP images

[NightFright]

Short question: Can this be played without stealth?

I have tried to play with it, but it seems it's not my type of gameplay. xD If I understood correctly, if you don't use the Amulet of Shadows, ammo boxes won't be destroyed and you can play the game like normal Quake?

[Spike]

aye, just don't pick up the amulet at the start of the map. Note that this doesn't apply in the tutorial bit of the first map, but there's no real stealthing there anyway.

[NightFright]

Yeah, I figured out that in the tutorial you can't get around the stealth training, but that's OK. Only thing that matters is that you can play the actual maps the "normal" way since their design is quite amazing. Don't want to miss them just because I don't want to sneak around. ^^ Thx a lot!

From what I have seen so far, this could turn into the next big "episodic thing" after Nehahra and Travail, so keep going, Sock!