gamophyte on 7/10/2024 at 03:17

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A small update. My new monitor is here, so I've been picking back up on this project.

However coming back to this with fresher eyes, I can see that my style of working on various aspects (to not get burned out), is creating incohesiveness as I tend to fall in love with a new idea and sloppily retcon it in. I'm in a vicious cycle of modifying each aspect to fit the next, so on in a circle.
https://i.imgur.com/Hhg2YnA.png

Before working in Dromed again, I am taking time to sort out my design docs; goal flows, ideas, story/plot notes. I have them mostly cleaned up now to reevaluate them and revamp the story and gameplay flow cohesion.

ZylonBane on 1/3/2025 at 22:04

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Here's a crazy idea for the custom light gem-- DON'T. Nobody cares. It's literally the least important thing you could be spending time on. Unless there's some overwhelmingly compelling lore reason for the light gem to be different, just... don't. The default UI is fine. People like standard UI elements to be standard. But for some reason a custom light gem has become this weird flex in the FM community.

gamophyte on 2/3/2025 at 08:04

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You're throwing a fit over a light gem, something you can just replace in seconds by dropping in your own. Are you sure it's me who's wasting time?

But if you're actually curious about my motivation; it is to learn and do neat stuff which bring me a lot of fun. This effort fits perfectly into that.

But, commmooonnnn ZB... look how dope this looks :)
https://i.imgur.com/TiZpGCZ.png
https://i.imgur.com/kXXj5Kv.png

gamophyte on 22/5/2025 at 06:46

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This project is on paused as I try to hurry and release a fan mission for the (https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152929) Thief Speedbuilding Jam #2. (Which I'm already missing the deadline because I can't stop tinkering). But still, it will at least push me to have my first and only fan mission release sooner than Buried Deed.

I figured it would be a good break to refresh my enthusasm for Dromed'ing and make it easy to come back to Buried Deed. The idea was it would be simple and less ambitious but it's already beginning to be ambitious in its own right. Such is how my brain works - you see all these fantastic missions growing up and feel like you know what you would like to see, or what should be 'good enough'.

I would say the biggest impediment for BD is the story and the plot that lives alongside the in-game goals. It has changed and it's getting convoluted and I haven't felt like untangling it just to get to building again. It kind of matters at this stage, to know how things will flow. I hope to get back to this after the Speed Building release.

For something to make this post more worthwhile, here is a video of my sparkle effect on a terrain texture of marble tile, that I've always wanted to achieve via newdark MTL file.

[video=youtube_share;gs8HgpocN7o]https://youtu.be/gs8HgpocN7o[/video]

Back story and essentially how I did it if interested:

While working on the speedbuilding jam I wanted to finally tackle more complex mtl creation with multiple render passes by making a metal fence railing that only shines (envmap) on the most shiny part of the tarnished brass railing. Once I realized the render passes are a lot like photoshop's layers I was able to do it, which then made me realise I could probably revisit an old desire to make the marble tile sparkle in a certain area of BD.

I originally just had an envmap of a sparkly texture but of course it just follows the player's head/pov and doesn't look like mica in sand where it would only seems to sparkle not move, though even tracking sparkles can feel like moving. But I achieved the effect by using a white noise layer over the base texture as layer mask to punch pixel small holes all over it. Saved that as a texture to layer over the default texture as already rendered, and again over the envmap - which itself is just white noise. The net result is a kind of shimmer because pixels leaving and entering the pixel holes.

The trick is to find the right tile value for the envmap, to make sure the pixels are near the same size to the player looking at the tile. There is a golden number for a 128x128 envmap, but I've not found it, but 15 is close and shows in my video above. I will keep tweaking to see if I can have more blinking/twinkle and less head tracking.

I have to stop for now, as this was for BD and I need to get back to the jam, but I think it would be interesting to also add an incidence gradient LUT that has hard steps, to create more visual sparkle popping as you walk toward facing down at the tile.

Stefan B. on 24/5/2025 at 15:39

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Wow.. I just came across this gem! Looking very much forward to it.

In case you still need a recommendation for monitors:
I was in a similar situation regarding a new one, realizing that screen technology has not advanced as far as I would have thought since the last time I indulged in the topic. But then I came across a really good one that offered much less compromises than the others - a Dell Ultrasharp 2724D. I am very happy with it! It has a special IPS-Panel which they call "IPS-Black", with a 2000:1 contrast ratio instead of the usual 1000:1. The difference is very noticable, especially for darker games like Thief!

I just had to make sure to deactivate auto-correction of the brightness, and lower the contrast setting (25% brightness and 55% contrast, down from 80 something), and it is the best image I ever had, especially for Thief.

They also have a newer, bigger one (which costs twice as much), with an even bigger contrast at 3000:1.

Hope that helps.