Vegeta

I actually tried changing the "wake" shader first thing, but couldn't get it to work.  The game continued to use the old wake shader which used the still splash image.  Maybe I'm doing something wrong?

Anyways, here's what the shader file looked like when I tried to put it in game

wake
{
	cull	twosided
    {
	animMap 9 gfx/misc/splash gfx/misc/splash2 gfx/misc/splash3 gfx/misc/splash4 gfx/misc/splash5 gfx/misc/splash6 gfx/misc/splash7 gfx/misc/splash8 gfx/misc/splash9 
        blendFunc GL_ONE GL_ONE
        rgbGen vertex
    }
}

@@eezstreet
 
I already looked at the env water effects to make sure there wasn't an .efx governing the graphic, but after testing them all, I was unable to find any that simply displayed this motionless .jpg.  At this point I'm pretty sure it's just built into the multiplayer .dlls.
 
On a side note, the single player wading through water does appear to use an effect, and is capable of being animated using any method.
 
 
In case anyone is unclear as to what I'm talking about, this is what the effect looks like in the multiplayer game

And this is the animated version that I developed and am trying to get in game

Recently I've been experimenting with a more realistic water splash .gfx, since the multiplayer default is a still image that gets placed on the surface of water when wading in it.  I've tried a few different methods now, but none seam to be supported by the multiplayer code.

First I attempted to use an animmap on the wake shader, which by default maps that still framed image (gfx/misc/splash.jpg), to play through a sequence of .jpgs that complete a loop-able animation.  For some reason the new shader was ignored, and instead the still image was used.  I even attempted deleting the old splash.jpg from the base assets in an experiment, however when I tested it in game, I recieved an error when in water, caused by the image not being found.

After continuing to modify my animated shader with no luck, I attempted to replace the single framed .jpg, with a .gif as a sort of last resort, but of course this did nothing.  And now I'm considering using a videomap in the shader that links to a looped .roq video with the same image sequence as the .gif.  I really doubt that this will work though, and may not even try it, based on the results of my first tests.

If anyone else has any ideas of what I can try next, your input would be appreciated.  Thanks in advance.

Ah yes, I think you were right.  I ended up manually recreating the few triangles that were glitched, but I definitely think that using an 8 grid unit snap would have solved the problem as well.

 

 

Could you post a screenshot of the problem?

Added some to the end of my first post.

Hi, almost half of the time I export a terrain map from easygen and get it in game, I notice that a few of the triangles have shifted angles slightly, thus exposing the skybox below the map in some places.  I've always just dealt with it by covering those specific triangles up with other decorative brushwork, however sometimes that doesn't work so easily.  I was hoping someone who has experienced this issue before has any advice to offer, or perhaps even a solution altogether.  Thanks in advance.

Here are a few pics for those who are curious to see...

@@eezstreet

LMAO Okay, I will.  Probably overnight though.  Tried once before and it got stuck on one aspect of the lighting for several hours without showing any signs of change, and eventually I had to abort the compilation entirely...

I've never tried using the Q3map2GUI's "FINAL(long time compile)" option on any large scale maps.  About how long would it take on a computer with a quad core 2.8Ghz processor, and 12GB of RAM, for a map with over 4500 brushes and 730 entities (most being lights) ?

Just wondering, because I really feel like the more accurate light rendering might be worth the wait time.

I keep colors left on Maya/Max/Lightwave Emulation.  Lets the brushwork stand out a lot more against the background.

@@eezstreet

What method do you use for decompiling maps?  I made a simple .bat file that does it, but all textures get set to 0.5 scale, and most entities and models disappear completely...

Hmm...  I think I'll see if I can somehow make that removed effects modification work for now, and I'll also look into making a script for it to work.

@@Raz0r

Do you have any ideas on how the weapon pickup in that Sith Council map works?  If I try to decompile it to .map, it will lose all of it's entities anyways and I won't be able to reverse engineer the process...

The method of getting weapons in multiplayer maps seems very unrealistic and strange from my point of view, (with the holocron-looking box projecting out a weapon that bounces around and rotates) so I was wondering if there's a simple way in gtk to get rid of all of those excess features and just have the weapon laying on the ground like in any other game.  

Previously I've considered tagging the weapons to the player spawns in a way that would give the player some starting weapons, but I don't think I was ever successful.  Any ideas?

I see what you mean by this, and perhaps it would work in some situations, but unfortunately I won't be able to implement that method with what I'm doing.

Exactly my point.  I'm sure there's a simple way to make a copy of the model, and edit it so that it has a different shader path (similar to how textures and other features of a .bsp can still be edited even after it's compilation).  I may have to just retexture it through blender or something after all if that isn't the case.

@@eezstreet

Ah, alright.  Just thought I'd try because I noticed MBII used .skin files in a lot of their added weapons.  They must have programmed the mod to run that way.

Well, in that case, is there any way to just change surface shaders without actually editing the model?  By this I don't just mean making a new texture and naming it to replace the originals, I mean changing the path that the model surface uses to locate the texture.

For example, this weapon replaces the heavy repeater, so one surface on it has the path "models/weapons2/heavy_repeater/m203", with "m203.jpg" being the applied texture.  What would the easiest way be to make a separate copy of the .glm that has (for example) the path "models/weapons2/blaster_r/m4"

I've been experimenting with some new weapon models, and I was wondering if I could make a .skin file for a weapon .glm.  More specifically, I was attempting to switch "off" certain portions of the weapon model without having to edit the model itself.

Here's what the .skin file I made looks like

drum_mag,*off
barrel_hub,models/weapons2/heavy_repeater/m4.jpg
barrel,models/weapons2/heavy_repeater/m4.jpg
charging_handle,models/weapons2/heavy_repeater/m4.jpg
main_body,models/weapons2/heavy_repeater/m4.jpg
buttstock,models/weapons2/heavy_repeater/m4.jpg
scope,models/weapons2/heavy_repeater/scope.jpg
forward_sight,models/weapons2/heavy_repeater/m4.jpg
flash_suppressor,models/weapons2/heavy_repeater/m4.jpg
trigger,models/weapons2/heavy_repeater/m4.jpg
ejection_port,models/weapons2/heavy_repeater/m4.jpg
203_option,*off

After Making the file, I realized it didn't just "activate" by default.  Any advice would be great.

Actually, I got the shaders working finally.  I overlooked one small detail in the tutorial, which involved moving a section of the shader file from the end to the top.  Thanks for the help everyone.

After using the rgoer template, and compiling the terrain in a map, it appeared as though the shader didn't render at all, just a white and grey grid indicating a missing texture. I tried manually editing the shader after that, and at least got the textures to show up again, but they're still shrunken to that minimum size.

The shader file after exported the map with the rgoer template looked like this.

textures/01/terrain_0
{
	q3map_baseshader textures/01/terrain_base
	qer_editorimage textures/2_terrain/grass.jpg
	{
		map textures/2_terrain/grass.jpg
	}
	{
		map $lightmap
		blendFunc GL_DST_COLOR GL_ZERO
	}
} 

And after I edited it, it looked like this.

textures/04/terrain_0
{
	q3map_baseshader textures/04/terrain_base
	qer_editorimage textures/04/terrain_0
	{
		map textures/2_terrain/grass
	}
	{
		map $lightmap
		blendFunc GL_DST_COLOR GL_ZERO
	}
} 

Oh, cool.  Thanks for the link, I'll try it out right now.

huh...  Do you happen to know anyone that has the template, or anywhere else I could find it?

@@mrwonko

Yes, any non-terrain textures show up fine after compilation, the only ones that decrease to that extremely small size are the textures that are supposed to show up on the terrain brushes.  As for the shader templates, I've tried using both standard and q3map2.

Standard ends up producing a shader file that has something like this

textures/01/terrain_0
{
	surfaceparm nolightmap
	q3map_novertexshadows
	q3map_forcesunlight
	{
		map textures/2_terrain/grass.jpg
		rgbGen vertex
		tcmod scale 0.533 0.533
	}
}

And q3map2 produces something more like this.

textures/03/terrain_0
{
	qer_editorimage	textures/03/terrain_0
	q3map_material ShortGrass
	q3map_lightmapsamplesize 64
	q3map_lightmapaxis z
	q3map_texturesize 2048 2048
	q3map_tcGen ivector ( 960 0 0 ) ( 0 960 0 )
	{
		map textures/2_terrain/grass.jpg
	}
	{
		map $lightmap
		blendFunc GL_DST_COLOR GL_ZERO
		tcGen lightmap
	}
}

Although, unfortunately neither one seems to work for me.  Is there any way I could manually edit the shader file to make the textures appear larger than that?  I've already tried adding "tcmod scale" in a few different ways, but nothing seems to work so far.

So, I ended up quitting my mapping a while back after feeling as though I would never be able to successfully incorporate terrain, however recently I made another attempt.  Unfortunately, I ran into the same strange issue that I had before, and figured I should ask for some help before just giving up on it.

Basically, the issue I'm having is texture size in the compiled map.  They look fine in easygen, and I've tinkered with the shader files quite a few times now, but with no success.  To better understand exactly what happens, I've taken a few screenshots of in-game vs. easygen.

Easygen:

In-Game:

Any help or advice would be extremely appreciated.  Thanks in advance.

P.S. The mountains in the background are just a temporary model I made for the skybox, no terrain or shader issues there.

Anyone still interested in that Cato Neimoidia map?  I haven't really been able to work on it much yet, I've been really busy lately...  I'm still working on the textures right now.

I'll be able to start work on the map in a few days.

@@Psyk0Sith

I tried using that tutorial, but I can't find wear to download the XSIImporter.dli plugin, vmdexp.dle plugin, or the assimilate tool with carcass.exe.  I'm pretty sure I already have the assimilate tool, but nothing else.