AngelModder

Wow rude...

Ok so I have a few questions concerning vis and the proper procedure I should take with the Titanic project. I've included a picture to better explain my question. Alright to get into the details of how and why this ship is the way it is. Firstly the ship has what is called a "sheer", to best explain this you would have to look at the ship from the side profile, it's higher at the bow and the stern (ten feet or so at bow), and about 5 feet at the stern, with the 75 feet where the engine sit between funnels 3 and 4 being the only level plane. The reason this detail is included is simply that NOTHING lines up right if you don't, it really messed with the layout as well as just in general how she looks. Alright so to pull this off the ship has been built in 50 ft long X 92.5 feet wide sections, all but the 100 feet where the engines sit (I upped it as the angle was so slight in the extra 25 feet it was useless).
The very bow is a 25 foot piece and the superstructure tail is 33.9 feet however that's not really important in this question, but the overall measurements are. So what I did was the keel (belly of the ship in your eyes), stays level, while the rest of the decks and hull slowly angle up every 50 feet, this was done by the power of two on grid size two to avoid any error while at the same time following her line plans to ensure accuracy. A Very effective visual effect. All of this information I am feeding you is so you better understand the circumstances being dealt with. All the floors and ceilings were 1 grid 8 thick, so ceiling 8 floor above another 8 and so on and so forth all the way down. this as to enable the use of hint portaling on the interior in her hallways etc.
Now, in this example you are looking at the A Deck Promenade area, this would be an external area of this ship, where passengers could walk from one end to the other without interruption. In this photo you will notice the basic block structure of the deck housing (structural bs for the interior), now the one selected there will be no interior, in fact allot of A Deck will have no interior, so the top beam work I've allowed for the moment to run through the said brush from one side to another to reduce brush count.
Now the question is how some things SHOULD be done.

A: should these beams be cut so that they don't go through the deck housing brush to disable the from side to the other drawing.
B:The floors and ceilings and deck housing are set to structural, the beams detail. Should in that case the deck housing walls, ceilings, and floor be cut down the middle to aid in the disabling from one side to the other drawing, since at this moment you'll be drawing both sides even while on the other?
C; If so is there any proper procedure or thing's I should take into account? To cut the said beams and etc will up the overall brush count (not too worried about that atm but am trying to avoid more then 12k for this entire project). If so taking into consideration how this is all built and needs to be built for this design to work, how would I hint this?

I'll admit I SUCK at vis work and am trying to grasp it as I go to make this project stable. So please try to term things in a lamens way.
One thing to possibly keep in mind is at this moment the outboard wall (far left wall in photo), is a patch mesh, this is so all the windows etc can be done via a texture and avoid hundreds of extra brushes that would suck up even more tris, and just honestly never look as good.

Does my grammatical structure meet your standards now? @@mrwonko
 

Example

Please note all textures and graphics you see are temporary as the whole thing is under construction.

AngelModder™

Well folks, i thought I'd take a break and give you all an update. It's been a pain in the A$$. As many of you know (Mappers), every step is a battle, especially when recreating a historical piece. On February 15th I will finally be giving another update, I am think possibly even a small video, it just depends on how much I have complete at that point. At this point an time I am working hard to catch the exterior up to the level of the interior. All of the interior area aside from one I may "Possibly" do have been fully laid out and many of the area's are already being fitted out wit there furnishings and fittings.
I am doing as much as possible to ensure each piece while true to it's sake is as FPS friendly as possible. Some how remarkably the map has yet to hit 4k brushes, this is a good sign at this point. Esspecially with the most detailed piece of the entire project (The Grand Staircase's) having already been placed and finished to a 95% mark. I'll say this much, the graphics I've displayed so far are a lie, the finish product will look even better then the shot's I have shown so far. It's a long road to April.
Tonight I am actually working on the exterior, having completed a new sky box for the main map. I've had to make a rather tough decision in the last two days that means the day time version unless we can come up with a better method will more than likely be replaced with a night time version. This come's down to the ammount of space the day time version requires in order to pull off the endless effect of an ocean, in basic it's to much for a VIS compile without getting the "max map visibility error". Tonight I am focusing on some rather important final touches before the real work begins. Plotting out the basic structures of A and Boat Deck, as well as placing all final doors for going in and out of the exterior. And hopefully before I get to tired I'll be able to finish up the funnel prefab. Mentioning the funnels I chose to cut out allot of the internal detail of them for the simple fact most folk's would have never even noticed the detail and therefore it was a waste of BSP and Tris. So I ask forgiveness of those who will go up above stuff and see down into them. In the name of Game Play it was a necessary loss.
A major step that will more than likely be taking place tomorrow is the final cutting of the decks, this means the forecastle, poop, as well as the forward and aft well decks will be fitted and shaped to the rest of the hull. cleaning up the last bit of constructive slop before the details start to roll in. The hull it's self will be receiving it's final illusion to ensure any far-plane leaks are hidden. See some thing I've noticed as many probably have about the quake 3 engine, is that over a distance it starts simplifying shapes especially patches. so some time's you end up with cracks at 200 feet away or so. Now on an 883.9 ft hull this can be quiet ugly at times. In order to ensure this is not seen I place a secondary layer of hull on the inside covered in black this allows any cracks that would appear due to Engine simplifying to be masked or blended in rather then letting you see through the ship and see some thing ugly.
Yes Ladies and Gentlemen, Titanic may have been the "ship of dreams", however it is a nightmare to build on any platform you choose.

Any ways I bid you all ado, I must return to the dry docks and continue my work.

AngelModder™

JKA toons will begin to slide at 55 degrees.which does make sense as I can (though struggling) walk up till about then even, of course even the theatrical never got that high till after it split. Any ways I kind of agree with you Laz, to avoid any errors Ill just tie a script to a trigger always that instantly rotates it to where it'll need to be during the load.It'll also allow me to keep the aft ends enterior which will add more area for the dueling and more to the theatrics. The honest accepted angle is 23 - 25 degree's, sort of open to ipinion on the exact figure but really it was that port list of 13-15 degrees that really screwed wit the ship. And again I think it'll make for an interesting duel platform.

Alright so the debate I am throwing out is for the Titanic package I'll be releasing in April, one of the versions is a duel map where the ship is as she was just seconds before breaking. The debate is whether to go theatrical (45 degrees down by the head no port list) or the commonly believed end (24 degrees down by the head wit a 13 degree list to port).

The pictures below show examples of the two different scenarios.

Theatrical - 45 degrees as seen in 'James Cameron's' film "Titanic".

Commonly accepted theory.

Since it's for MP, you should make this a rend2 map.

Wth is Rend2?

It's rather easy, I'm not self promoting but I have a ghost vader skin in my pack, it's very easy you just adjust the textures to the blue / greeinish tint you desire, then apply the shader you'll find in my pack to it (changing the names and directories of course) and wallah, ghost dude !

You can rip through my pk3 and take a peak at ow I did it.

http://jkhub.org/files/file/1776-darth-vader-angelmodder/

Yea mis model's are your friends, less compile time, but a better result, and they don't count against you... It's a triple win.Here has been a question I've had for a while.now scripting my ship to sink, no problem, scripting models to move no problem, but what do you do when your ship's origin is say more towards the stern the models ofcourse have there own origins, this becomes VERY difficult if not impossible to make them move in sync..

Well theirs nothing wrong with a personal project, to be honest while I will be releasing Titanic, the community is not why I've built it. I've built it simply to have my own mid poly model of it to put through what ever I chose (tastefully) and simulate the sinking etc as a learning and demonstration tool. While it has been fun in the past to play in it with others don't get me wrong, mainly it is for me to witness what happened and to feed the information in to create a simulation of that event. I've been asked why do I even bother with Titanic Honor And Glory being made, well quiet simply put, I was here first, and that's theirs, this is mine, this I can adjust, theirs I wont be able to. This I can script out influences like the pump's that when used right add time to the sinking based on there outtake of water vs the ships intake. It is for me to test theories and see the answers to what if's.
Long story short, never be ashamed of your work, but I do understand some thing's are better kept for our selves.

Sincerely AngelModder™

LOL any time, just seen that sort of thing before. Whats your map gonna be of exactly, looks interesting.

Building with misc models is fun, I considered doing that with Titanic, just modeling it all out and clipping it. However in the end some time's this creates more work for you and more strain on the engine. It can only handle so many models. For a smaller project it's fine but some of them meh.. Any ways good luck!

Holy Sh*t! I love Doctor who stuff! whats the texture bitmap look like? If it's well laid out this would be a breeze to texture once some one has the right sources. Which version are you going for technically it's slightly different in each season.

I believe there was a command that allowed you to see what entities were running at all time's, it combined with Developer 1 of course. Not some thing I've used so, I'm not sure what the command is. Their's a list here on Jkhub that covers all the in game commands. Might look around in that.

Personally I think most folks should stick to GTk 1.4 for one reason, GTK 1.5 is good, but it'll allow you to rotate brushes without (seemingly messing them up), the truth is that 9/10 they do become messed up. This is very apparent when you open a map you've built in 1.5 in 1.4. you'll see allot of thing's 1.5 deceptively let you think you got away with become messed up. This is why I build thing's like Titanic's hull etc in 1.4 and do my main work entities and normal detailing and such in 1.5. Ad you're are right, the Bobtoolz in 1.5 is broke, it will repeatedly every time you use it tell you it has removed 'X" amount of messed up brushes, but without actually doing it, nor does it select them like 1.4 will. Also make sure you try to stay at grid 2 or higher during building and every once in a while, set your grid down to w/e the lowest size brush you built was, (for me its grid 2 quite often), and press "I" then Ctrl + T, what this does, I of course selects every thing, Ctrl + T snap's it to w/e grid you chose (in this example 2). This will not mess up any brushes built on grid 4, 8, 16 and up etc. but if it got messed up (bad normals) or accidentally knocked to grid one etc, it will snap them back. At the very least you'll be able to see what is messed up using this. This is how I do such bug work in 1.5.

Ditto use gold wave if all else fails, just adjust the volumes via a 3rd part program and drop em in your pk3.

Func static can not be used  like a door to toggle area portal even though  they're similar entities. The func static rotating door triggers a bogus caulk normal door via the script, that in turn toggles the area portals effect. As for hint portal's, just be sure none of them can see each other, other wise you end up with a dreadful effect.

Would do but you cant call an ase with misc model static. I did try the _cs 0 and _rs 0 though, didn't change any thing. Oh well.

Just so now thinks I've gotten lazy today. I've been redesigning my hull texture from top to bottom. Finally starting on the portholes! I still haven't decided on the method I'll use for the portholes in game. As theirs a day and night version of the map's it's hard to choose which way to go. the night will undoubtedly use a glow, but for the day it would look better as an alpha with a env behind it.

This is a conflict between the pong shading of curved meshes vs the vertex effect of fog. The only way to fix this is to apply a vertex lighting only shader to those curved surfaces, sure they'll look a little less smooth, but it'll take care of the shadow problem. The vertex shader will overwrite the engines normal action vs this type thing (the path mesh).

See even without a phong shader directly being applied (written by you), the engine will automatically phong these sort of surfaces it's self, it's just how it's programmed. Although normally it doesn't cause this sort of reaction. In case you don't know what a phong is, that's the smoothing shader/effect applied to curved surfaces or even brushes can be phonged manually to create a smoother looking surface such as terrain etc. The question would be is IF this is a base texture/shader being used on those meshes. Normally I've never seen this reaction on patches or brushes unless it has a pong shader on it via a shader file. So check that first before writing a new shader for the said texture. If so then it's simple just put it in a custom directoy (and if you want one) write up a new shader, but if it was a base one, it'll fix this.

Basically, phong shaders don't mix well with fog.

AngelModder

Well it's not the textures or shaders :/... hmmm I dnk. Oh well.

LOL

Thanks, but it's just that it's not suppose to have that odd shadowing. I guess all else fails call it good enough hm?

Yes we have tried several different shaders I'll post the current one in the spoiler. We've tried different texture methods including flat colors to really see what was going on, with and without shaders. We've tried adjusting the lights even. This shadow simply wont go away, it's not even ON the texture or the glow map. I even tried switching to a flat white for the glow map and the texture still showed up. We thought it was bugged faces on the model but even after a little tidying up it made NO difference and the model tests clean and perfect.

OK, this is rather odd and we can't seem to find a way to fix it. We've even adjusted the model and so far can not find a way to get these odd shadows to disappear. I've even tried throwing a shader on it with a no lightmap command, switched to flat white's greys all sorts of colors, we've tried allot, and yet they wont go away. we've also tried different lighting/colors, nothing stops them from showing up.

In gtk it of course seems fine.

Well it wasn't that I was worried about the number of sound effects as much as I just don't like clutter in my map files. So you can make a new sound set but some one else's will replace it? that's odd, I mean if my sound set has a specific name and the sounds have there own unique directory, how would some one else s overwrite it?

Ok so here is the dome in place ! Now to move on to the rest of it finally! Having a slight issue wit some odd shadowing on it, I think it's an issue mesh wise because I've even thrown a no light-map line on it and still it's there. Different textures every thing, nothing gets rid of it.