Making DarkPlaces even MORE beautiful...

[DaniOcampo1992]

whenever i get hit in the face with a grenade shot by an ogre my game hickups (freezes) for a split second

This happens to me too, it's really annoying.. Well, let's work hard to get a better gpu!

[thechadisgr8]

cool, will try thanks

[sb306]

This happens to me too, it's really annoying.. Well, let's work hard to get a better gpu!

Yep. I had this bad with the 4850. Decided to try a 5870 and it pretty much fixed the problem. Ill see it slightly every once in awhile.

[thechadisgr8]

i have an 8800gt, had to delete explosions :-( but seems it doesn't default back to the original dp ones afterwards just low quality ones which kind of sucks

[Seven]

Hello thechadisgr8,

it maybe was not explained well enough. Sorry:
Delete all NEW "TE_EXPLOSION" effects (= 2).
I edited them. You cannot miss them.

Leave the rest as it is to have the original DP visual

Regards,
Seven

[osjclatchford]

alpha layered skins for k_spike and w_spike models

ok, sorry if this counts as a thread-hijack but I thought this might be better suited to this thread, than where I put it originally;

to explain; I was fed up with looking at the cruddy old skins on the k_spike and w_spike projectiles so rather than make new ones, I tweaked the old ones to be a lot cleaner and added alpha layers to further add some transparency to the effect.
grab it then!
sorry for the hefty 3.2mb zip file but I figured you'd prefer quality over tiny files

ok, the w_spike moves so fast you can barely see it but it bothered me that it would crop up in nice screenies now and again, ruining the shot, so I felt it should be done!
visual aid!
as you can see, while I was at it I revisited the re-skins on the ice projectiles (for kqp) I had done previously in the my 'high-res re-skins for classic mods' thread.

enjoy...or not

regards
Latchford

FYI, I just thought this was relevent as, of course, it was made with jorix's/jakub1's/seven's effectinfo.txt in mind.
It just seemed such a shame to have such nice particle effects ruined by a big ugly solid model, this way, IMO anyway, you get the best of both worlds...

[osjclatchford]

better 'flame' skin (with transparency)

...and while I've been at it, I decided to give these aother go too;

flames
for those who dislike the sprite flame or just like to keep it oldskool

pic
as you can see its a remix of primevil's flame skin also converted for flame2 both featuring alpha layers!
they do come with bump/gloss but the usual error with parrallaxing will occur with my bumps, so as before; simply ditch the bump files if you use offsetmapping!

enjoy! or not...
Latchford

[Seven]

Hello osjclatchford,

I only looked at the pictures.
But doesnt it look weird, that the flame is not visible in the lower area ?
This way it hovers far above the torch and gives an odd look.
It looks a bit like a "ghost-flame".

In my opinion, if you want to use transparency on the flames, it should be just the opposite way.
Fire and flames are bright, yellow and opaque in the lower area and get more and more transparent in the upper area.

Maybe use a less transparency ontop of that.

But as always, this is just my personal opinion.

Regards,
Seven

[LambentHammerBurst]

I do have to agree with Seven on that part. Usually the only time a flame is transparent or invisible at the bottom is with some gases powering them and that's only due to the the gases igniting later.
I would reverse the it like Seven said - semi-transparent areas at the top of the flames and opaque at the bottom.

[osjclatchford]

I know, I feel the same way in that respect but, there is method in my madness, when reversed the arse-end of the flame model clips through the 'torch' very badly, plus the top of the model has the most detail so it would be a shame to fade this out anymore...
(in fact i did it the other way round on the first attempt but changed it because of the aforementioned results)

I suppose the fading on the bottom edge could be lessened to an extent but please bear in mind that the current version does look much better when animated of course...

To be honest I don't even use these myself, I use the sprite torches (still waiting on a better sprite though... ), its just an experiment that had an ok result and I felt I should share.
By all means feel free to do as you will with them, in fact improve on them and post 'em! , still you don't need my permission to do this anyway, they're not mine, they're primevil's LOL!

regards
Latchford

[NightFright]

Regarding the nice water effects/shaders:

I have a strange issue with them. After 3-4 seconds or so, the water/slime surface kind of "resets", i.e. it jumps back to a previous animation state, looking like some kind of "hickup" in the animation of the surface. It this an issue with the shader or with more recent versions of Darkplaces? I am using June 28 build.

[Seven]

Dear Jakub,

Regarding the possibility to create custom effects in DarkPlaces:

It is possible to create a custom effect for EVERYTHING (examples):
1.) When you pick up a weapon/ammo/armor/item you can spawn a custom effect.
You can even spawn different effects for different items !
2.) You can even IGNORE the models flag totally !!
DarkPlaces gives you the function: DP_SV_MODELFLAGS_AS_EFFECTS
You can then spawn (even dependent on the map), which effect the vore�s rocket should have or any weired idea you might have.
3.) LordHavoc kindly implemented on 26.06.2011 even one more function into DP: DP_ENT_TRAILEFFECTNUM
This will even allow you to add effects to moving entities !
Imagine, a grunt which is on fire.

When I speak about "custom effect", i mean you can give it names that you want (in effectinfo.txt):
effect jakub01
..
..
effect jakub02
..
..

Inside the QC, you can then call this effect wherever you want.
I already did this for the "Relieved souls of the enslaved" and also for "Vengeance of the deceased".
As well as for the flames (torch or big flames) in the game.

It will all be in the next "small mod compilation".

So, please tell me what ideas you have and I will implement them if you want.

We all know, that you are one of the persons with the best effectinfo effects.
There is no doubt about it.

Regards,
Seven

[schlichte]

@NightFright
I had the same issue. It is within the shader. Seven posted this link in another thread: Quake III Arena Shader Manual - Index

Under the tcMod scroll section there is a note:
"This should be the LAST tcMod in a stage. Otherwise there may be popping or snapping visual effects in some shaders."

I went through Sevens water.shader and swapped tcMod scale and tcMod scroll orders and the "hiccup" went away.

I wonder if anyone else has had this experience.
I am running DarkPlaces engine Windows 64 OpenGL build 20110628 on win7ult64
Pretty_DP_Water_Pack_V0.32___Seven

@Seven
Is this something you can adjust on your end and maybe update the link if it is in fact affecting others?

[Seven]

Thank you schlichte for investigating this.

I will update the "DP pretty water" download shortly with:
- the shader fix
- slight texture modification (which I did some month ago, but never released it)

Regards,
Seven

[NightFright]

@ schlichte
You rock.

@ Seven
You rock even more.