Hmmm, maybe we could contact this guy

ascottk on 15/6/2009 at 23:20

(http://www.linkedin.com/pub/mike-privett/7/232/200)

Mike Privett:

Quote:

Senior Technology Engineer
Ion Storm Inc
(Computer Games industry)
2001 — 2003 (2 years)
Developed advanced lighting engine for PC and Xbox platforms, supporting the following: Per-pixel lighting for multiple light types with attenuation, color and alpha settings. Per-pixel fog utilizing scrolling fog maps, and distance attenuation.

Projected textures, dynamic overlapping shadow volumes using vertex shaders for extrusion.

Real time material support for texture effects using bump, normal, specular, emissive, reflection and detail maps.

Wrote BSP / Portal system for culling of shadow volumes, physics checks, and lighting updates

Created in-house development tools for 3DS Max, including the following. Materials plug-in used to view and edit pixel shaders in 3DS Max, and export them to the engine with an identical appearance. Developed a normal map generator plug-in.

Created custom special effects shaders for membrane, night vision, thermal and video distortion effects. Added render-to-texture screen compositing with scaling, scrolling, offsets, and rotations

Senior Technology Engineer
Ion Storm Inc., Austin, TX
(Computer Games industry)
January 2001 — November 2003 (2 years 11 months)
Developed advanced lighting engine for PC and Xbox platforms, supporting the following: Per-pixel lighting for multiple light types with attenuation, color and alpha settings. Per-pixel fog utilizing scrolling fog maps, and distance attenuation.

Projected textures, with texture rotation and scrolling support. Fast, dynamic overlapping shadow volumes using vertex shaders for extrusion.

Real time material support for texture effects using bump, normal, specular, emissive, reflection and detail maps and I Wrote BSP / Portal system for culling of shadow volumes, physics checks, and lighting updates

Created custom special effects shaders for membrane, night vision, thermal and video distortion effects render-to-texture compositing with scaling, scrolling, offsets, and rotations, for post-processing effects like glows and bloom.

Maybe he knows who/what/how to get multiple skins into the AI.

Flux on 15/6/2009 at 23:56

Hehe, funny, I was exactly checking the same dude last week on linkedin. More than multiple skins question, I'd ask him how the hell he managed to write that renderer. I have yet to find an engine that truely supports dynamic shadows.

(Unreal engine 3 my arse, try to put more than 4 dynamic lights that cast dynamic shadows, see how your machine crawls...anyway...)

How do you plan to contact him ascottk? Maybe instead of sending individual emails, we can collaborate?

Actually, for fixing the gameplay, we have to still figure out how to fix "havok" problems. I checked on gamefaq credits list for both tds and deuex2 programmers, then checked all the names I could find on linkedin etc...but couldn't find the anything about who programmed the physics.

massimilianogoi on 16/6/2009 at 00:07

And you believe that he will answer? I've already wrote to Randy Smith, in his own site, but he never replied.

ascottk on 16/6/2009 at 00:16

Hey Flux, I ran across this guy who recommends Mike Privett.

John Harries

Quote:

Summary

Published game programmer since 1988.

Specialties
Physics, Collision Detection, Computational Geometry, Realtime Rendering, Motion Planning, Game Design, Project Management

Quote:

Mike (Senior Technology Engineer at Ion Storm Inc) worked directly with John at Ion Storm Austin.

That might be the guy you're looking for.

massimilianogoi on 16/6/2009 at 00:38

Make me know for any reponse.

ShadowSneaker on 16/6/2009 at 01:30

Quote Posted by Flux

1) How do I assign a skin to this mesh? By unwrapping it correctly, take one for body one for the head from t3_character matlib and assign in the add skin box in actorX?

Did this not work for you, Flux? If you wanted to add a new skin for an existing TDS character wouldn't you have to import it into Max and do the same as above?

Flux on 16/6/2009 at 09:19

Quote Posted by ShadowSneaker

Did this not work for you, Flux? If you wanted to add a new skin for an existing TDS character wouldn't you have to import it into Max and do the same as above?

Yes, that's what Abru said also. I didn't try it though, simply because I didn't have a new character model with a proper skin texture.

Judith on 16/6/2009 at 09:27

Quote:

Real time material support for texture effects using bump, normal, specular, emissive, reflection and detail maps and I Wrote BSP / Portal system for culling of shadow volumes, physics checks, and lighting updates

Detail maps? Now that's curious, and I thought I managed to learn almost everything about the texture materials... :) Also, it would be cool if someone finally sorted out what's going on with these specular slots, as they do something really really strange, certainly they're not creating a specular effect in the usual way/meaning...

Quote:

(Unreal engine 3 my arse, try to put more than 4 dynamic lights that cast dynamic shadows, see how your machine crawls...anyway...)

Well, in Flesh you can put up to 8-10 lights per a fully detailed scene and your machine screams for help :erg: Lightmapping or vertex lightning isn't that bad, really, at least you can have dozens of standard lights per scene and don't have to worry about the zone portals and vast open spaces.

Btw. Welcome back, Ascott! :)

massimilianogoi on 16/6/2009 at 09:33

Quote Posted by Judith

And this is really strange ideed, because in the original Unreal 2003 engine the specular effect works fine, i.e. rippled water surface.

Tiens on 16/6/2009 at 23:37

Quote Posted by Flux

...(Unreal engine 3 my arse, try to put more than 4 dynamic lights that cast dynamic shadows, see how your machine crawls...anyway...)

Try to use Spot-lights instead of Omni-lights. Here is an example. My maximum FPS is 60. As you see, FPS was good enough there.

By the way, all these lights cast shadows.

Inline Image:

http://i40.tinypic.com/5x696o.jpg