Beleg Cúthalion on 24/1/2008 at 09:06
People also say that TDP was medieval and the TDS houses were too small; things that I can deny after looking through several (City) maps and searching for old artworks. TDP/TMA is definitely more modern (horizontal lines, more cubic houses etc. and just have a look at the cranes and railings you see in the cutscenes!) while TDS looks gothical because of many high gables and roofs (which can BTW be seen in a lot of the early artworks); plus, TDS's houses are usually higher. It's this imprecision that bothers me most. The funny thing is, I can rather accept someone's opinion who says: "Well, I don't know what it was, but it felt not so good."
Back to topic: After having almost nightmares about my idea of turning the City sections into the floors of a huge sky scraper (or islands in a huge ocean), I thought the best would still be to attach at least all maps that belong to a certain quarter (e.g. SQ+Garrett's home+Pavelock+maybe the Blue Heron Inn). Putting the maps together in the way that Flux did would most likely collide with the achievements of the MotC project. Of course, for the original missions we do not have the question of what-shall-we-do but only of how-will-we-do-it.
Judith on 24/1/2008 at 09:28
Quote Posted by jtr7
Really? I know the annoyance with XBox/console limitations in the PC version comes up, but I didn't know there were that many misinformed people thinking the engine itself couldn't handle larger maps. That was one of the first things looked into when T3Ed was released. If we ever saw someone make a statement about
engine limitations, as opposed to inherent T3Ed limitations (circumventable), or difficulties with learning to use the tools, then they should've been corrected.
I know it's a touchy issue. Let me say, it's great to see people pushing T3Ed past the console limitations and towards what may have been achieved had Ion Storm Austin had more time to work on T3Ed's hindrances to the original vision. Great job! Kudos to all!
Unfortunately there are a lot of people thinking this way, probably because there were no FM's yet to prove them wrong. Flux's Cabot is a nice first example, the rest is still in a phase of experiment. This is what I got so far:
(
http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=7548076)
Inline Image:
http://img2.putfile.com/thumb/1/2304213851.jpg1 square = 1024 UU
After exporting it into *.ibt file it loads fine, just a bit longer than OM map (while it takes ages to load it under the editor :bored:). All the room and object textures on are 1024 x 1024 and they look quite pretty. The performance is great, at least on systems with GPU's like GF 6600 or higher (max FPS limited by vsync and refresh value, 75 in my case; I haven't tested it on slower machines, unfortunately). So, decent rendering capabilities of Flesh engine are quite easy to prove. It might be a little bit harder with gameplay capabilities...
Flux on 24/1/2008 at 10:28
Judith, I see that your grid size is 1024. So I think it's safe to say that your map is at least 4 or 5 times larger than the pagan mission in tds. That's very good to hear, especially you're having 1024x1024 textures; which look very good.
Quote:
It might be a little bit harder with gameplay capabilities...
I wish we had more coders to hex around the editor. And more documentation about scripts.
Judith on 24/1/2008 at 12:53
I just hope it will be playable for people with slower PCs. I remember that TDS was almost unplayable for me having GF 5200 FX, so it will probably stay that way here. What is strange, I see frequent framerate fluctuations in OM's even now, with much better CPU & GPU. My FM in progress is more stable, actually...
There are probably 2 reasons for that: shadow-casting lights reduced to minimum and vestigial amount of BSP additive brushes. Most of them is substractive, only to provide space for static meshes, or additive converted to semi-solids (slight performance gain), while in OM's additives are combined with sm's quite frequently. That might be a hard lesson for a T3Eder: you want detailed environment and nice performace? Go learn 3dsmax 5.1... By the way, the upper limit for textures is 4096 x 4096, but I doubt that anyone sane would use such format :) Anyway, it would be hard to create such texture from images found on the internet, as most of them isn't bigger than 2000-3000 pixels :p
And you're right about the lack of documentation. Personally, I'd give a lot for a proper description of all Ion Shader properties in Max
Ziemanskye on 24/1/2008 at 18:27
If you're working on TDS, or any engine after about 2002 really, you need to learn a modelling program. We're in a poor position because we have no choice about which we use, but it's not like custom objects are that uncommon in TMA missions, and while DarkMod will ship with a whole collection, they simply can't be all-inclusive.
You can still do quite a lot with what's there, and with BSP (lack of holes permitting), but if you want detail, you need staticmeshes.
MH.TheFreak on 25/1/2008 at 07:16
Quote Posted by Ziemanskye
[...]but if you want detail, you need staticmeshes.
... and that means 3DS Max 5.1, which is quite unavailable. :( I tried to load the plugins which shipped with thief3ed in gmax, but no luck...
Beleg Cúthalion on 28/1/2008 at 20:06
If the discussion was just about the engine, I would feel fine. :D This engine is probably the thing you can blame the most, but still I think the game was not so wrong how all the people think. Seeing all the ancient artworks, the high roofs and so, I still wonder if TDS doesn't show how the game was originally meant to look like (left aside great maps); independent from the old Dark engine who apparently made everything a little "gross". After all, if you call the genre "medieval steampunk", TDS is closer (or more exact) to it: medieval buildings (but also something like art noveau with the Cradle) with pipes, gears and steam.
Anyway, the best I guess is to focus on what we can do to improve what the game gave us. So, after searching a lot of the threads about the vertices's pools, I wanted to ask if there is a palpable list of how far these values can be increased and in which steps...? The information is apparently scattered across this forum. :erg:
Flux on 28/1/2008 at 21:17
Quote:
Anyway, the best I guess is to focus on what we can do to improve what the game gave us. So, after searching a lot of the threads about the vertices's pools, I wanted to ask if there is a palpable list of how far these values can be increased and in which steps...? The information is apparently scattered across this forum.
Don't put 0 at the end as suggested in older threads. Gradually increase them, according to your level. I.e, in cabot I changed 314something to 414 then to 514...
New Horizon on 29/1/2008 at 02:05
Quote Posted by Beleg Cúthalion
After all, if you call the genre "medieval steampunk", TDS is closer (or more exact) to it: medieval buildings (but also something like art noveau with the Cradle) with pipes, gears and steam.
:
Hmmm, I would have to disagree with that. TDS ventured further in the generic medieval fantasy than steampunk. Steampunk was essentially missing in TDS. The Dark Project captured medieval steampunk the closest of them all.
