Jedi_Mediator

I would be glad to try making the shader, but my hardware doesn't handle Rend2 very well, so I'll probably still do most of my testing in the base game, unless that's a problem. The new sun shader uses new syntax. Will I need a different version of q3map2 so I don't get errors during compile?

Sadly, it seems my first WIP shots were lost to the commercial interests of Photobucket. Oh well--new WIP shots are finally here! -Enhanced most of the map's terrain to look more organic than the original -Added detail inside the ship Part of the detail I added in the ship is a pile of crates that toppled when the ship crashed in the canyon. I think this makes sense, given that it was a cargo ship, but on the other hand, the crates are obstacles that weren't present in the original game. Let me know if you think they should stay. Also, I obviously haven't worried much about fixing the phong shading, since the textures/shaders will be changed anyway. https://imgur.com/a/nkCVD7Q By the way, is there a reason I can't use img tags? When I try, it says "you are not allowed to use that image extension on this community."

The Making of the Bumpmapping Mod Section One: Introduction So here I am, writing a tutorial in Microsoft Word about how to write shaders and make textures for specularly enhanced models. There were a few of you that expressed interest in getting this tutorial in their hands, so here it is, at long last. This tutorial may be short, but for all of you that are fond of the “bumpmapping” effect my solution puts on the gun models, you will be delighted to know that the effect can actually work on ANY model in the game. Unfortunately, though, it doesn’t work well on all map textures, just…because. It probably has something to do with the tris…or…something. That’s the problem I ran into with putting this effect on the default map textures, in case you were wondering why I hadn’t lived up to that. Anyway! On to what I came here to do! Section Two: Making the Texture And now we come to the main purpose of this document. If you follow these simple steps correctly, you will soon have your very own “bumpmapped” model. DEFINITION OF SPECULAR LIGHTING: Lighting on a surface that is calculated by the game engine and can move—or be moved—across that surface like a shiny highlight. As you may have guessed, this is the method by which I have made this mod. I manufactured the textures in GIMP (a FREE alternative to the $400-$900 Photoshop program) using Lighting Effects and then used them as a Specular Map on a given model, using specialized shaders. A Specular Map is the texture that is overlaid onto the existing texture of a surface when the light hits that area. This is what allows the shiny appearance. Its shader keyword is “lightingSpecular.” However, we’ll discuss that later, in Section Three. For now, let’s just get through those steps of manufacturing such a texture. Follow me to the next page, where we’ll see the texture we’ll be modifying. NOTE: If you do not have GIMP or Photoshop, YOU WILL NEED THEM. This tutorial is written under the assumption that the user is utilizing GIMP. Download GIMP here: http://www.gimp.org/downloads/ . Click the link, press “Gimp 2.4” at the topmost download section, and you should have the program in a little while. Patience! THIS IS THE TEXTURE! IT IS THE SKIN FOR THE BLASTER RIFLE. Start up GIMP or Photoshop and open up this included image (blaster_r.jpg) that is contained in the “Bumpmapping” folder included in the .zip folder you downloaded for this tutorial. Once you have the file open, you can immediately begin lighting the texture with bumpmapping for the finished Specular Map. Go to Filters > Light Effects > Lighting Effects to get to the menu where you can apply the effect. Follow these steps… Step 1: The Menu Step 2: Turn on Bumpmapping under the Bump Map Tab Step 3: Decrease “Maximum Height” to 0.03 and then move on to the Materials tab and enter the following values, moving the blue dot in the Preview Pane to the shown position Step 4: Press Okay This was only a quick mock-up of what this kind of Specular Map should look like. If you want the finished effect to look more like my Bumpmapping mod does, you’re going to have to increase the “Shiny” value to something like 1.50 or above. After applying this filter with the settings shown in Step 3, you should end up with something that looks basically like this (turn to next page to see)… Does this look too bumpy for you—or, possibly, not bumpy enough? No problem. Just press Ctrl and Z to undo these changes and then go back to the Lighting Effects menu and tweak some parameters around. I don’t have that luxury right now, since I’m the one writing the tutorial, so…let’s get on to writing the Specular Shader! Section Three: Writing the Shader So now you’ve gone to all the trouble of downloading GIMP (well, maybe) and baking this texture with one of its many filters, right? Well, you should have, and if you didn’t, I command you to, right here and now, march right back to the beginning of Section Two and bake that texture. Honestly, it doesn’t really matter if you use this texture or not—you can use any you want; this was just an example. Well, all your hard work won’t pay off unless you write a shader file! Never written one before? Well, that’s fine—that’s not what this tutorial is about. In fact, I’m going to GIVE YOU THE SHADER and just have you paste it in there! Sound easy? That’s because it is! Now open up Notepad. If you don’t know what THAT is, then you’re pretty sad. Still, I should probably tell you how to open it anyway! Press “Start” (that’s down on the big bar at the bottom of the screen right now, you know) and then go to All Programs, Accessories, and then click on Notepad. It will open up right away—it’s not that big of a program. Copy and paste the entire below block of text into the blank .txt Notepad gives you: models/weapons2/blaster_r/blaster_r { q3map_nolightmap { map models/weapons2/blaster_r/blaster_r rgbGen lightingDiffuse } { map models/weapons2/blaster_r/blaster_r_spec blendFunc GL_SRC_ALPHA GL_ONE rgbGen identity alphaGen lightingSpecular } } If the directory “models/weapons2/blaster_r” doesn’t already exist in the base folder of your JA directory, you’ll have to create it, then save the new Specular Map you just made into “models/weapons2/blaster_r”. The Specular Map needs to be named “blaster_r_specmask.jpg” for this to work, unless you change the Specular Lighting stage to refer to a different filename/directory. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then just leave your new shader as it is and save it as whatever you want. HOWEVER! You WILL need to save it as a .shader file, which means that in the Save window you will have to select the All Files *.* option and then type the .shader file extension after the filename (blaster_spec.shader , for example). If you do not save it in this manner, the mod WILL NOT WORK. After you’ve done all this, it is safe to compile it all into a new .pk3 using Pakscape and release to the community (if you want)! If you don’t want to release it, just put the .pk3 in your base folder and it will work as a new mod, and whatever model texture you just modified will, if all goes well, shine with specular brilliance next time you look at it. Hmm. Do you know how to make .pk3s? Am I being too cautious? Well, maybe, on both accounts. And, though it pains me to do so and this is NOT a tutorial on .pk3-making, I should probably put an extra section in here, anyway, just in case you DON’T know how to. Grrrrrrr…………………..Well, here it is! Section Four: Pakscape and Compiling the Mod You people make me really angry, you know that? Anyway, here we go. Step 1: Downloading Pakscape If you don’t already have Pakscape, you can get it here: http://jediknight3.f.../Pakscape;31681 Step 2: Create Your .pk3 Press File > New to open up a blank .pk3 template. Here is what it looks like: Step 3: Populate the .pk3 This is where you “fill the real estate” of your new template. There is one guideline you must go by, though. In order for any of your .pk3 content to work, you must make it refer to the original content it replaces. For instance, you want to place your new Specular Map in the right directory so it doesn’t show up as a missing texture in-game. So, you need to know which directory it should go in. See that second “paragraph” (it’s actually called a “pass”—each “pass” is closed off by a block of this: { and this: } so that it can be properly organized) in the shader code I gave you in Section Three—the one that starts off with map models/weapons2/blaster_r/blaster_r_spec? Well, that’s the paragraph that tells the mod where the Specular Map is located and what to do with it. Map, at the very beginning of the “paragraph,” tells what texture to draw there, so if that texture can’t be found, then there’s going to be some “black-and-white box trouble”! We’d better fix it so that doesn’t happen, wouldn’t you say? To do this you need to recreate that exact directory—models/weapons2/blaster_r/—to tell the game where to look for that special texture. Do this by first clicking on that little slash underneath “Untitled1” in the blank Pakscape template and then going up the “Object” menu and clicking New Directory. Name the new directory models. Double-click on models to enter it and then, once inside, create another new directory called weapons2. Finally, inside weapons2 you should create the folder blaster_r and you’re all set to import your Specular Map! So, go up to the Object menu again and click “Import File”. Travel in the new window that pops up to the place where you stored the image and double-click on it to import it. After populating the Specular Map directory and file, you also need the shader to make it all work. So click on that little slash under Untitled1 again, create a new directory there called shaders, and import the file you put my little block of shader text into. There! If you followed every step correctly, you should now end up with a .pk3 that looks basically like this in its directory tree: If it does and you have put everything in the right place, then your mod should WORK—just once you save it in your base folder! Yes, that’s where you put all your OTHER mods, as well—but this time you have made your OWN! Hoorah! Step 4: TEST AND ENJOY Once you have done all this, open up your game, switch your gun to the Blaster Rifle, and see it shine! If it doesn’t, you’ve done something wrong—or you just need to make the Specular Map shine a bit more intense. Congratulations! You’ve just made your own shiny blaster! Good luck on all your future exploits, whether they be in furthering your modding talents or using the talents you already have.

Interesting, I didn't know that about the cultural context of the first film. Also interesting to think of the very act of subverting clichès as a clichè of its own. From this perspective, returning to classic storytelling would, in some cases, be more original than coming up with another quirky twist. But I do think there's a difference between being quirky and writing archetypes with depth and complexity. You don't have to subvert a character type to make the character interesting. It seems to me that Obi-Wan in the sequels is an example of failing to add complexity to an archetypal character. Every human alive has at least one flaw in their personality, abilities, etc. Giving characters flaws in stories, then, is an important part of making them relatable and believable. But I can't see any flaws in Obi-Wan's character. Instead, he seems to be little more than the archetypal Wise Old Man, as described by Carl Jung. Lucas wouldn't have needed to mess with the archetype to make him interesting (making him the Wise Old Burglar, or Wise Handicapped Man, for instance). It would have been interesting enough to add flaws within the constraints of the archetype instead--maybe he's distracted by regrets, or pacifistic to the point of being passive, etc. These things would add detail without subverting any archetypes. But Obi-Wan in the sequels seems to be just a cardboard cutout of his archetypal role--no more and no less. To me, that makes him less than interesting. Do you see more depth in the SW characters than I do? Just to reiterate, I can accept that there's value in the franchise sticking close to the archetypes it's chosen. It only bothers me if a character isn't given additional detail, beyond their surface-level archetypal role.

I skimmed over a summary of Cambell's book, so correct me if I misunderstood anything. I've heard ideas before that are similar to his, in other sources about archetypes that were probably influenced by his work. I found it particularly interesting that Lucas apparently acknowledged Campbell's influence on the SW franchise. The story certainly follows the "monomyth" pattern that Campbell describes. In my opinion, as an admittedly young and inexperienced writer, is that 1) it is impossible to write a story without archetypes, and 2) there are creative and un-creative ways to use them. I recognize that SW uses archetypes to connect with its audience (Luke as the Reluctant Hero, Obi-Wan as the Wizard in the sequels, etc.), and I don't fault it for that. I just think it wasn't terribly creative in the way it used those archetypes. It played them pretty "straight," so to speak, throughout most of the movies, and I didn't see a whole lot of individuality in the characters, beyond their archetypal roles. It's fine for a character to be an archetype, but if they don't have many unique traits beyond that, they end up kind of boring. Luke, for example, doesn't have much of a personality beyond his "Reluctant Hero" tendencies. As an example, imagine if Disney spent tens of millions of dollars to create a movie called "The Knight and the Princess," featuring an all-star cast and spectacular special effects, and also featuring--you guessed it--a knight and a princess. For the sake of connecting with its audience, it uses archetypes we're very familiar with, especially in Western culture: a courageous knight who sets out on a journey to defeat a vicious monster and rescue the captive princess. Audiences will understand the story very quickly (which is a good thing), because they're so well-accustomed to those archetypes. But this strength is also the story's weakness: we've heard this story so many times that it will be boring, unless something creative is done with the plot or characters to set it apart. Without a creative twist, any discerning viewer will see it as "just another fairy tale." Maybe there is some value in the simplicity of such a story, but is it really worth millions of dollars to keep telling the same story, without variation, over and over again? It's that variation that's necessary to add interest to a story, to make it compelling, and to give it an identity of its own. Do you see this kind of variation in the characters and story of the SW franchise? Or do you see it as valuable specifically because it seems to stick so close to its archetypes, without adding much variation?

I'm fond of Star Wars mainly for nostalgia reasons. When I was a kid, I loved it because of the cool, flashy firefights and laser swords. As a result, I became convinced that Star Wars was cool, at an age when it's very easy to become convinced of such things. So I still like it today. But as I've gotten older, seen good movies and read good books, and started my own journey as a writer, there is also a part of me that has come to see past the cool battle scenes--and realize that, beyond the "cool" factor, the franchise doesn't have much substance. Sure, the story is okay, and the amount of world-building is certainly impressive, but a lot of the characters and concepts presented are pretty simplistic, and therefore not as satisfying or compelling as they could be. It's true that I've found a lot more substance in certain branches of the franchise, such as the novels--Matthew Stover's novelization of RotS makes Anakin's switch to the dark side MUCH more believable than the movies do--but since the franchise started with the movies, I think the movies should be the reference point for judging the franchise as a whole. And from a writing standpoint, the movies are just okay. Definitely cool, and kind of entertaining if you don't think too much, but not very compelling or satisfying in terms of storytelling. Even so, I think I will always be fond of SW. It's associated with my childhood, so it will always feel like a safe, familiar haven to return to. I can compare it to learning languages. I'm decent at speaking/understanding Spanish, but I'll never understand it the way I understand English. Just as I will always feel most comfortable with English, since it was my first language, I will always feel most "at home" with SW (and Pokèmon, and Harry Potter), no matter how many incredible movies or books I experience later in life.

You could also turn the patches into a func_group and give the group a key/value pair of "_cs 0" to prevent them from casting shadows on themselves (or anything else). I'm not sure if q3map2 is very good at rendering self-shadowed patches, unfortunately. Alternately, you could always use the "-filter" command in the light compile to add a blurring effect to the lightmap. I've heard that this makes splotchy shadows less visible. Then, if the terrain texture you use has a decent amount of visual noise, the splotches might not be noticeable at all.

I looked those up...both said they had 0 players, and both were running the standard ffa3 map. Are there certain times when these servers are likely to be populated and playing an interesting map?

But does anyone play any of these on actual servers these days? I remember years ago when I could discover new and awesome maps while playing with others...seems like those days are gone now. I would love to be proven wrong though.

Wow, that's great! I imported the .map file and everything is clipped quite nicely. A few observations: the first time I did a -meta compile with your clip brushes in the map, I got loads of "duplicate plane" warnings in the error window. But the map still played fine, and in later compiles, these errors were mysteriously gone. I'm sure they were just caused by generating clip brushes from my very weirdly-angled models. Also, I had to manually rotate one set of clip brushes into place. It was the top-leftmost model in the map, when viewed from XY perspective. It was just the wrong orientation compared to the model. It took less than a minute to fix, but it might be something to look at as you develop your plugin. Anyway, thanks for all the help! You will definitely be recognized in the map credits.

@@AshuraDX As far as I could tell during troubleshooting, all of them refused to be autoclipped, and all of them seemed to generate extra lights during compile. I was in a hurry because of the deadline, so I can't be 100% sure, but I'm pretty certain that they were all causing the problem. It would make sense, since all of them were exported with Noesis. Like I said, if you don't want to deal with the two extra models, that's fine. I can send you a .map file that only includes references to the first model you examined. But maybe having three different models would be helpful in testing/developing your plugin.

I used Noesis to export the .md3 files, either from .ase or straight from .bsp...can't remember which. Noesis is a tool I heard about on another thread here on JKHub. I thought it would be incredibly useful, allowing me (who is clueless about modeling programs) to make simple models using Radiant. But if this is the problem it creates every time, then it must not work as well as I assumed it would. Here's the link to a .map file containing every problem misc_model in my map. There are two other .md3 files not included in the first .zip I gave you. I included them in this one. Just unzip the whole contents of the .zip to your maps folder, and everything should work right. If you feel like it, you can clip the new models as well. Do what you want though, and no need to hurry, because I found a way to (kind of) work around the broken misc_models, even though they're not solid. So I will still be able to submit my entry even if you want to take your time with making the clip brushes. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5h3mw7Vh5k4eVZKVzZiU1g4SjA/view?usp=sharing Thanks again!

Haven't tried that yet, mainly because I want the models to be solid, and clipping them manually would be a big waste of time right now, with the contest deadline so close. Maybe I'll try it another time, after the contest. We'll see.

@@AshuraDX Hope this Google Drive link works. You'll find one folder in the .zip archive. Put that folder in your maps directory. The .map and .md3 files are inside. If you need the shader I'm using for the model, it's in the original post. Thanks! P.S. As you'll see, the spawnflags are 2, not 6. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5h3mw7Vh5k4VFZBUC1uczhaZUE/view?usp=sharing

Alternately, if you don't want to use an alpha channel, you could make that background gray instead of white (perfect gray, with exactly 50 value), and use the blendfunc used in the original example you posted. This blendfunc blends the colors with those behind it in a specific way, and all perfect gray values become essentially transparent. The advantage is that you can create a kind of transparency using a .jpg, which are smaller than .tga or .png. The disadvantage is that the colors of the decal itself will also blend with the colors behind it, making details visible from the texture it's placed on. If you don't want details visible from the texture underneath, you'll have to use an alpha channel.

Can you explain more about this "background layer that isn't drawn?" If it isn't drawn, what function will it perform? As that base decal shader demonstrates, you can have a transparent decal with only one shader pass. You don't need another "background" pass unless it will serve some other purpose. Also, for the blendFunc, I would recommend GL_SRC_ALPHA GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA, instead of the one in that example. It's the one I use for pretty much all my transparency.

My misc_models are failing at life. Problem #1: They aren't solid in-game. I'm trying to use the autoclipping feature that is accessible by entering "spawnflags 2" into the model's properties. This has always worked for me with other models in other maps. But for some reason, I can still walk through the models in-game. Problem #2: They seem to be, all on their own, dramatically increasing the number of lights in my map. The shader applied to them has no light-emitting properties. Nevertheless, when I compile with the models in my map, the light stage reports processing 900 total lights. When I delete the models and try the compile again, changing NOTHING else, the light count plummets down to around 100. This means that something about these models is increasing my compile times, yielding no visual improvements whatsoever, and wasting precious minutes that I need to meet the deadline for this project. Honestly, I didn't think misc_models were capable of emitting light in the first place, so I don't see how they could be having this effect. Here is the shader I am using for each model: And yes, this is the map I'm making for the Halloween contest. I didn't see a rule anywhere saying that I couldn't ask for assistance with my entry. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on this.

Just to be clear, does the oct. 23 deadline mean that we can still submit entries on the 23rd, until the end of the day? Or do we have to have our entries in before 12 a.m. on the 23rd (as in, the 22nd is the last day anythIng can be submitted)?

I think this is a simple issue of a runaway loop. You have a loop value of -1, but there are no wait commands outside the conditional statements. I think this means that the game is performing a near-infinite number of conditional checks every second, thus causing it to crash. I'd be very interested to hear what happens if you stick in a small wait command, like 50 milliseconds or something, before or after the if/else statement. Everything else about the script seems promising.

They will be available indefinitely after the contest, just like any other file. For instance: https://jkhub.org/files/file/3100-last-night/

When I was running Windows 7 and using radiant 1.5, I had to use the "disable desktop composition" compatibility option to prevent a buggy UI. This option is no longer obviously available in win10, but some seem to think it is still possible using a registry edit: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/b49de36e-d36f-4f7c-a63e-b70c49c86efd/compatibility-administrator-and-the-old-setting-disable-visual-themes?forum=w8itproappcompat Otherwise, are you running as administrator? Have you updated your video drivers recently? Have you tried the compatibility troubleshooter that comes with win10? Not sure how good it is, but maybe it's worth a shot.

In JKA multiplayer, is there a limit to how many script commands can be executed per second, or how many scripts can be running at the same time? If too many script commands are happening at once, will this lead to client-side or server-side instability? I have a very "fast" script that affects 4 entities simultaneously, executing 10 script commands per second on each one. That comes to 40 script commands per second, just for this one script. I don't notice any lag or anything when I'm testing it out by myself, but I'm wondering if it could cause issues when the map is run on a real server, with real players connected. Of course, I'm aware that runaway loops will always cause problems. That seems to be an example of too many commands happening at once. That's mainly why I'm wondering about this. If runaway loops bog down systems, is there a concrete limit to keep in mind when making scripts "fast" in other ways?

I never got shaderED to work right, and now I find it pretty easy to write shaders manually. But I have always used EffectsEd to make new effects, and I've always found it very useful. Have you had issues with it?

Hey thanks for the PM @@Ramikad! Well, it looks like I should have cleared up something very obvious right from the start: I'm trying to get this to work in MP. When I loaded your map in MP and it still didn't work, I wondered if you had been using SP instead...sure enough, in SP, it worked just as you described. So it appears that toggling a func_rotating in MP does not work the same as it does in SP--if it works at all. Does anyone know of a way to make it work in an MP map? So far my best solution is to not use a func_rotating at all, but to make a func_static and use a script with an infinite loop to repeatedly rotate it in 90-degree increments. "If" statements are then used to check variables at each increment and see if rotation should continue. The script is continuously running in the background during gameplay, so that it's ready whenever a variable changes. Very clunky, and very tedious to script, but it does basically work. I'm hoping for a more elegant solution...thus, this thread.