BrokenArts on 2/9/2010 at 14:38
Judging a game strictly on screen shots, good show!
New Horizon on 2/9/2010 at 16:06
Quote Posted by BrokenArts
Judging a game strictly on screen shots, good show!
Well, the screenshots should be a fair representation of how the game looks...but...this 'plastic' stuff doesn't make sense to me.
The common misconception is that the Doom 3 'Engine' makes everything look like plastic. Well, it doesn't...not if you don't design your assets to look that way. The plastic look is in the hands of the designers and when the designers were making Doom 3 they went too heavy on their specular textures. Our specular textures are less intense, and there are many cases where we did not even use a specular texture.
lost_soul on 2/9/2010 at 17:48
Yes, Doom 3 relied much more on Specular and Normal mapping than TDM does. For example, turn on r_skipspecular and r_skipbump and notice that the characters in Doom 3 look completely terrible.
If you do this in TDM, they still look decent (particularly the faces). The D3 models were very low poly and didn't even have 5 fingers IIRC. The ones in TDM do though.
SubJeff on 2/9/2010 at 17:53
Don't dignify carbuncles like this with a response.
Schwaa2 on 2/9/2010 at 20:49
Lol Yandros, is that what a carbuncles looks like?
A cross between a Leperchaun and a turkey?
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I don't get the plasticy comment either. But then again I HAVE played the maps made and have seen all the resources.
Maybe some earlier screens had some wood in them with too high specular, I know at point there were some. There still might be, but that's one of those things, the further we tweak everything the better settings we find, the more fixes are made...
But other than an odd texture here and there I really can't say I've EVER felt that in game it looks plasticy at all.
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QUOTE:
lost_soul
Yes, Doom 3 relied much more on Specular and Normal mapping than TDM does
I don't think they are relied on less, but I think specular itself is indeed used more sparingly. If something is clean metal or wet it probably has quite a bit of spec, if not it probably has very little.
Most stuff also has normals for details, it's just that poly counts are generally better so silohettes are better. Also, Doom textures weren't that good really and I think our AI tex are much better, so yeah they still would look better without normals.
d'Spair on 2/9/2010 at 20:51
Quote Posted by New Horizon
Well, the screenshots should be a fair representation of how the game looks...but...this 'plastic' stuff doesn't make sense to me.
The common misconception is that the Doom 3 'Engine' makes everything look like plastic. Well, it doesn't...not if you don't design your assets to look that way. The plastic look is in the hands of the designers and when the designers were making Doom 3 they went too heavy on their specular textures. Our specular textures are less intense, and there are many cases where we did not even use a specular texture.
This is probably one of the reasons why some textures in The Dark Mod (and enviroinments overall as the result) look boring and flat.
lost_soul on 2/9/2010 at 21:10
Geeze, you really can't please everybody. Somebody wants shinier, other people want "dull and boring". Simple solution, go into the console and type "bind g toggle r_skipspecular" and "bind h toggle r_skipbump" (I think that will work). Now when you see a "plasticy texture", you can just press g and h to turn it off and then press them again to re-enable said features.
Schwaa2 on 2/9/2010 at 22:15
Quote Posted by d'Spair
This is probably one of the reasons why some textures in The Dark Mod (and enviroinments overall as the result) look boring and flat.
I guess so, if specular is the only thing that can make textures delicious and yummy.
The fact is that they have been balanced pretty good to have specular where it needs to be and not where it doesn't.
For instance.
Polished wood: shiny.
Unpolished wood: dull
clean metal: Shiny
rusty metal: dull
But still, as stated above it would be nice to have an example to compare too. If it's a screenshot from 5 years ago, yeah there are probably ALOT of things that looked wrong. If it's a screenshot from next week and something is wrong we'll try and fix it.
But just to generally say the screenshots look plasticy or boring and dull doesn't help anyone at all.
It seems like people almost have the same conception of TDM as they do of a released game. Looking Glass isn't around and they aren't going to fix things like the coathooks that always fall on the ground.
However TDM team IS STILL ACTIVE, still adding stuff, still fixing stuff. And still listening, so if you need something fixed speak up, and show a screenie, be specific.
New Horizon on 2/9/2010 at 22:25
Quote Posted by d'Spair
This is probably one of the reasons why some textures in The Dark Mod (and enviroinments overall as the result) look boring and flat.
No, normal maps control the depth of textures...speculars only contribute to their shine...or look of wetness. As I said, D3 made them too strong on EVERYTHING...skin, metal, plastics...and the result was that everything looked like plastic. We've reduced the intensity so that doesn't happen.
