What are you working on?

[mankrip]

The ghost monsters idea seems pretty nice, Ajay.

[qbism]

http://earthquakemod.wordpress.com/2013/08/21/21_08_2013/ blog update

I can relate to the synopsis on why you make mods. Criticism is important but at its worst can be dismissive, and this is a good response to "why?" or even "why bother"? Sometimes it's about growth rather than conformity and competition. Then that scene "Stick to the Stuff You Know" from High School Musical popped in my head.

[goldenboy]

Ajay, about rain putting out the fire, it wouldn't necessarily do that if the fire is fed by gasoline. The flame would just go smaller, redder, and would smoke more.

[ajay]

Tried the rain globally. Too much slowdown, even for light rain. I am looking into more dynamic, localised rain though; future_stuff!
In the meantime, I've been playing with skyboxes: http://earthquakemod.wordpress.com/2013 ... 3_08_2013/

[ceriux]

ajay i bet if you were to open this skybox up in photoshop and mess with the hues/brightness it might look pretty nice.

[ajay]

I think you could be right. I need to have a play with it.

[frag.machine]

Good luck finding a city at night skybox. I've been looking for that a long time without success.
But I liked the ones with storm clouds, even if they don't set the correct mood for your mod. I suppose "london" with some thin, dark distant fog would look quite spooky.

[r00k]

i think ive seen a city scape at night unless im thinking of duke nukem

[leileilol]

Half-Life has a peculiar-looking cityscape-at-night skybox

[mankrip]

That is actually starting to look great. The only thing looking a bit odd for me are the lampposts, the rest is perfect.

Ajay, using MDL models for the lampposts would allow them to have gouraud shading, which would look better. They would cast no shadows then, but you can cheat around that by placing a thin BSP brush inside the places where the lampposts are placed (effectively turning the MDL models into clothing for the brushes). And then, you can use a larger clipping brush to prevent players from partially walking into the lampposts.

Up view example, from a random image I've found:


The inner square brush would be the visible one used for casting shadows, and the outer square brush would be the clipping one. The circle would be the lamppost MDL model.

[leileilol]

An issue with mapmodels is PVS - you don't want them to disappear if their origin is blocked from view, do you?

[frag.machine]

i think ive seen a city scape at night unless im thinking of duke nukem

Sorry, I should have made myself clear: the few ones I found were low resolution and had terrible scale issues.

Half-Life has a peculiar-looking cityscape-at-night skybox

Yeah, indeed

[Seven]

ajay i bet if you were to open this skybox up in photoshop and mess with the hues/brightness it might look pretty nice.

I like this skybox very much as well.
If this one is not spooky, which one is ?

And like Chip said in his comment on your site:
It is good that the sky has some colors. That is fitting very good to the rest of the scene.


EDITED:

Regarding the issue with .mdl models in maps:
I am by far no mapper and have no experience with that, but didnt LH added this extension to help in this matter ?

//DP_EF_DYNAMICMODELLIGHT
//idea: C.Brutail, divVerent, maikmerten
//darkplaces implementation: divVerent
//effects bit:
float EF_DYNAMICMODELLIGHT = 131072;
//description:
//force dynamic model light on the entity, even if it's a BSP model (or anything else with lightmaps or light colors)

When enabling realtime lights, as far as I know every .mdl model which is placed as a decorative in maps casts shadows, no ?
This is at least the experience I made with some decoratives I found on the internet...
But I might be wrong of course, because I am no mapper. I only like to tinker around with this.

[ajay]

Thanks chaps. The lamp posts are not models as you've guessed; they're the third iteration of them and the most complex and best so far and are not entirely unlike some uk lamp posts. I think the scale's off, but the generally shape isn't too far away. I would prefer them to be mdls, but, although I've dabbled with blender, I still suck at modelling. Oh for an easy .map to .mdl program.
As far as the mod goes, I've had a significant breakthrough, narrative wise, that's going to help me push on with the rest of it. There's some coding implications, especially some CSQC that I'll need to learn, but that's no bad thing Happy days

[Spike]

those lampposts can't be from the UK. there's too many of them. and too many of them are actually working. also they don't have nearly enough random useless signs stuck to them.