vfig on 12/5/2020 at 01:49
Quote Posted by gamophyte
On mounting a ladder to go down a wall; I think it will be fine if you just change the height of the ladder object physics prop (not scale) so you for-sure hit it, being slightly higher. Versus, having it flush with the wall you're standing on, thus you have to creep out onto it.
If the player has jump-attach instead of touch-attach, then they have to creep out onto the ladder regardless. If you can't make the architecture around the ladder such that you can "fall forward" onto it in addition to stepping/creeping off the top ledge, then I'd suggest you're better off relying on the player being familiar with creeping onto a ladder when necessary, rather than introducing novel ladder mechanics that will be surprising (and, given Thief's physics system, very likely buggy). That said, extending the physics box dimensions to extend 0.5-1 unit above the edge works just fine—I've tried it—if you prefer not to have the ladder visually protruding. In my view, a visually protruding ladder is preferable so the player can more easily see where it is from the top ledge.
gamophyte on 12/5/2020 at 15:49
I don't know why I was being so precious about it, it's spoiler free even if light-bright was on, as it is before much will be added.
So here it is brighter, which now you see all the little cubbycorners.
[video=youtube_share;p24tlFW4LfU]https://youtu.be/p24tlFW4LfU[/video]
Other notes to consider is that the lighting in the end will be more grounded. The colored lighting now is just offering me visual lighting zones.
[HR][/HR]
Quote Posted by vfig
If the player has jump-attach instead of touch-attach, then they have to creep out onto the ladder regardless. If you can't make the architecture around the ladder such that you can "fall forward" onto it in addition to stepping/creeping off the top ledge, then I'd suggest you're better off relying on the player being familiar with creeping onto a ladder when necessary, rather than introducing novel ladder mechanics that will be surprising (and, given Thief's physics system, very likely buggy). That said, extending the physics box dimensions to extend 0.5-1 unit above the edge works just fine—I've tried it—if you prefer not to have the ladder visually protruding. In my view, a visually protruding ladder is preferable so the player can more easily see where it is from the top ledge.
Thank you for that input vfig. If it all works in the end, that will be important. It's funny I hadn't watched your Builder's lets play yet and I see some of the said issue appear lol.
vfig on 12/5/2020 at 16:30
Quote Posted by gamophyte
Thank you for that input vfig. If it all works in the end, that will be important. It's funny I hadn't watched your Builder's lets play yet and I see some of the said issue appear lol.
Oh, ladders have been a bugbear of mine since I first encountered Thief with the Unwelcome Guest alpha demo and died many times to ladder problems. It would be lovely if you could just put them in anyhow and they'd work fine and never kill anyone, but sadly not.
gamophyte on 12/5/2020 at 18:19
Quote Posted by vfig
Oh, ladders have been a bugbear of mine since I first encountered Thief with the Unwelcome Guest alpha demo and died many times to ladder problems. It would be lovely if you could just put them in anyhow and they'd work fine and never kill anyone, but sadly not.
It was always the general idea across all my potential FMs but really, I may not really have but 1 in this mission. So if you're good at rope arrows, I think you're going to be good here. I wish there was a way to fix the bounce back issue with them.
gamophyte on 14/5/2020 at 04:55
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/V84rDVH.pngHaving fun fine tuning the sky. This ended up being too cheery for BD though, but thought I would share it, and note that I added the "Distant Country" skyhw distant art among other tweaks.
I was building brushes, and after a while got tired of looking at the placeholder distant art. No knock to the actual art of course.
However now, I've got to make it more dreary and add a distant mountain, as well as some sharpening to the distant art. Perhaps even make my own using it as a template. I have a batch of vector shapes laying around some place. I'm sure to have trees and whatnot.
That said, let me know if anyone needs this sky, I will saved the COW at this state. I know how hard it is to get a good sky going, so I feel for anyone that can't get it to the level they want.
Edit: Forgot to note that the moon is getting hit with some bloom because of settings, but you can generally darken the moon for your city to avoid this, in case people turned on high graphics while installing t2fix.
gamophyte on 29/5/2020 at 23:10
Working on water a lot, you can see what I'm going for in the following video, the water is more or less just dancing lights, but it has its issues to still work through.
Other than that here is the worse thing that I know I had to build in order too to look and work like Château de La Mothe Chandeniers; the staircase in the right side courtyard tower. As I said in "What are you working on RIGHT NOW - T1/2 Dromed Edition" thread, this was kicking my butt. I had to chase down error after error as I exposed the inside to the outside via doorways and windows. The final product is just... good enough, and I dare not mess more with it as it will optimize now.
Now to add the decorating objects. Will add it to the side by side photo, with the real world counterpart.
[video=youtube_share;zAVQyVxmuHg]https://youtu.be/zAVQyVxmuHg[/video]
gamophyte on 22/9/2020 at 21:14
Hola,
I took a massive break from this project. Covid times have made me lazier than I ever thought possible. I thought it was going to be opposite lol. :P
Anywho, I reloaded the mission Cow, and again, glad I did all the layout planning early; it really helps to get motivated again seeing it in game again.
That said, the things that were just annoying me before, were full blown eye sores, by this gap of time, I knew they were the first to attack. Like one, the distant art; I realize I couldn't have pines from the OM distant art, because that's not the kind of trees that will be growing inside the chateau.
I tried to emulate how the newsky country distant art looked, with that "parallax" kind of feeling. I worked a long time place one photoshop brush three at a time. I tried to make layers with some cloudy wisps in the foreground but It wasn't looking as good. I was over it, for the time being anyway. Plus I was unhappy that if you climbed the tower it didn't look right. Why would the surrounding trees suddenly grow taller than they looked a moment ago from the ground level.
Looking at it fresh, I knew it would have to seem like it kept going into the distance, so if you do climb the tower, you just get the feeling like that is normal for this mountainous area. You're basically not-so-much looking at the most foreground trees, if that makes sense.
I finally opened the old PSD and realized I can just keep duplicating the line of trees I made, adding more layers that are 2x, or 3x the original tree line, so the distant trees are finer. To make it not look dup'ed for the layers close in size, I made some lines reversed in horizontal direction and warping with Liquify tool to make hills.
I did an additive brightness so the layers are distinguished. And man, I'm very happy with it now. I will post a sort of visual time line below. Note that these were shrunk for this post, If you want my final full size file and newsky settings in general, I will share them. I have some sky tweaking to do yet. I will post it here later. Soon-ish as I am working on it now.
Before the image I wanted to also say that I got a ton more done for the courtyard detail objects. I don't want to show how neat it is until I get some trees in there for full effect.
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/bqsPyYc.pngLast image was brightened, the darkness of the in-game view blends best.
trefoilknot on 22/9/2020 at 22:13
Looks cool!! Glad you've found some more gas in the tank for this project :)
skacky on 23/9/2020 at 04:55
Oh yeah this is a fine distant art! Good job!
gamophyte on 23/9/2020 at 17:26
Quote Posted by trefoilknot
Looks cool!! Glad you’ve found some more gas in the tank for this project :)
Thank you! Indeed, and I've done way more than this post, so we're cooking now.
Quote Posted by skacky
Oh yeah this is a fine distant art! Good job!
Thank you! There's so many gaps and large windows that show through to the outside. It comes together now.