Mandrake on 14/3/2005 at 19:36
Quote Posted by Dario
:laff: :thumb:
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I won't be using T3Ed or making an FM with it, but here's a little lighting tutorial I'm working on - just a picture on how to do radiosity without decreasing performance.
(radiosity = bouncing light, to soften those ugly hard shadows, where even if a light is burns like the surface of the sun, it still casts pitch-black shadows, and you can't see *anything* in them.)
(
http://www.deefrag.com/Files/Thief/Radiosity1.jpg)
(test room and screenshot of it with radiosity)
(
http://www.deefrag.com/Files/Thief/Radiosity.zip)
Not to be too picky, but this is not really radiosity is it ? Radiosity is when a light source can strike a surface, and then reflect/refract off it, and light other surfaces which don't have direct line of sight to the light source, which is what happens in real life.
As far as I know the Thief3 engine doesn't support true radiosity ? In other words this is not radiosity, but simply filling in the shadows a bit to prevent pitch black shadows ?
And what happens if the dynamic shadow casting light source is turned off ? Is there a way to link the ambient light sources to it so they too turn off ? (Probably, using trigger scripts etc)
Another problem with your map is that the ambient light sources cause the light gem to be almost full brightness in nearly every position in your demonstration map, even when the surroundings look like you should not be very visible. Bit of a gameplay killer that :laff:
Perhaps there is a property that can be applied to ambient lights so they don't affect the lightgem ?
Mandrake on 14/3/2005 at 19:39
Quote Posted by Stardog
You can lighten the shadows from LevelProperies then AmbientBrightness too of course, but too high a number will make your level look washed out.
Please please please DONT do this people. Using the AmbientBrightness setting looks SO awful, no matter what level you use.
For a map set during the day time, an ambient light level like this is legitimate to some extent, but for a game set in the dark its not. Instead, please use non-shadow casting omni's for fill in in areas where the shadows should be softened a bit.
One of my grips with TDS original maps was that many of them simply have too much ambient blue lighting and it really detracts from the atmosphere of the first two games. 0 ambient level and just enough fill in light sources looks much more atmospheric, like the original games...
van HellSing on 14/3/2005 at 19:40
*lurks around, sees Cat Squash, puts OrbWeaver on personal kill list*
Ahem.
edit: duh, wrong person on list. edited. sorry.
OrbWeaver on 14/3/2005 at 19:51
Quote Posted by Mandrake
And what happens if the dynamic shadow casting light source is turned off ? Is there a way to link the ambient light sources to it so they too turn off ? (Probably, using trigger scripts etc)
That should not be a problem. If you can link a switch to one light, you can link it to more than one light at once (unless there is some limit in the scripting system that prevents this, but it was certainly possible in Dromed).
Mandrake on 14/3/2005 at 20:25
Quote Posted by OrbWeaver
The Department of Stupid Missions presents...
Operation Cat Squash!Classic :ebil:
Care to put the file for that map up ? :sly:
A question though, where did the barrels go in the last picture ? Did they all break, or roll out of sight ? And did you try it with guards ? Heh. In one of my test maps I had a large heavy pillar at a lean set up to fall when a guard touched it........
Donnerwetter on 14/3/2005 at 20:43
Quote Posted by Mandrake
Perhaps there is a property that can be applied to ambient lights so they don't affect the lightgem ?
Yes, there is:
Properties - LightLevel - LightLevelWeight
Turn it to zero and it's done.
Mandrake on 14/3/2005 at 21:02
Quote Posted by Donnerwetter
Yes, there is:
Properties - LightLevel - LightLevelWeight
Turn it to zero and it's done.
Great. I thought there must be something like that. :thumb:
So ambient light sources used for shadow filling probably should have this property set to zero or at least right down low, otherwise when you walk "through" or really close to it, your light gem is going to be really bright for no good reason.
Also looks like careful attention needs to be paid to testing out the light gem visibility of garrett in all the different areas of the map to make sure that what the lightgem says is realistic and appropriate compared to how the level actually looks....
I can think of a few places in the original missions where this is not the case, and there are lightgem readings that seem out of whack with the visible appearance of the map...
So be careful to get this right all you Taffers :cheeky:
OrbWeaver on 14/3/2005 at 21:07
Quote Posted by Mandrake
Classic :ebil:
Care to put the file for that map up ? :sly:
A question though, where did the barrels go in the last picture ? Did they all break, or roll out of sight ? And did you try it with guards ? Heh. In one of my test maps I had a large heavy pillar at a lean set up to fall when a guard touched it........
I'll put it up if you can find someone to host it...
I think in that run through, all the barrels broke. They will break if they fall on an AI, and sometimes two or more of them break together. On other attempts some or all of the barrels survive (even the cats do sometimes :ebil: ).
I think it would be quite cool to see more of this sort of thing in serious missions. Perhaps a stack of precariously-balanced barrels or crates that you could push onto a guard, or whatever, like the heavy gear in the Pagan Sanctuary. Or maybe they could be all lined up behind a grate, that you could open with a lever.
Krypt on 14/3/2005 at 21:18
Quote Posted by OrbWeaver
I think it would be quite cool to see more of this sort of thing in serious missions. Perhaps a stack of precariously-balanced barrels or crates that you could push onto a guard, or whatever, like the heavy gear in the Pagan Sanctuary. Or maybe they could be all lined up behind a grate, that you could open with a lever.
We tried to do this in DX:IW and could never get it to work right. We tried setting up a big stack of cylindrical barrels with a little breakable bar holding them in. When you shot the bar, the front barrel would roll out and the rest would just shift a little bit and sit there :rolleyes: It was really lame. Something like this may be possible with a lot of tweaking of physics settings, or by making new, more rounded collision hulls for the barrels. The collision hulls for most of the objects had to be made sort of blocky to save on performance, which doesn't make for very good rolling objects.
ProjectX on 14/3/2005 at 22:02
is that the bit in the ravens loft (name?) level where there's the guard in front olf the entrance. I shot at him, he chased me, I shot some more, accidentally hit a wooden beam and the whole load of barrels came crashing down on him. aye, 'twas funny.
