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Prenton posted:"Megatexture" is a gimmick name for a particular type of texture streaming, which a bunch of other engines (eg, UE3) also do. I honestly don't see the advantage it has for for end-users (as opposed to developers/artists). Megatexturing is more than texture streaming, it's a process of compiling every image and combination of images used in the maps into a single game-optimized resource so you can have an effectively unlimited total texture budget and aren't limited to reusing the same tiled images everywhere. The source asset collection for Rage was loving colossal because the artists could composite tons of unique images onto every surface and let the content pipeline deal with it.
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Jul 31, 2014 00:34
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Nintendo Kid posted:The problem with recommending MIDI soundfonts is that what everyone really wants is the nameless synth setup they had for 3 years as a kid. The other problem is that different setups sound better for different games. But it's still worth it because the default Microsoft GS Synth sucks badly and is often missing instrumentation.
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Jul 31, 2014 00:37
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(Luckily for me, that happens to be a legit SoundBlaster 16 and that's readily available)
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haveblue posted:Megatexturing is more than texture streaming, it's a process of compiling every image and combination of images used in the maps into a single game-optimized resource so you can have an effectively unlimited total texture budget and aren't limited to reusing the same tiled images everywhere. The source asset collection for Rage was loving colossal because the artists could composite tons of unique images onto every surface and let the content pipeline deal with it. Wolfenstein TNO really did make use of this. It's hard to notice but pretty much nothing in the game is an obviously re-used texture, apart from signs.
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Jul 31, 2014 00:38
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Dewgy posted:Wolfenstein TNO really did make use of this. It's hard to notice but pretty much nothing in the game is an obviously re-used texture, apart from signs. Yeah, megatextures need a bit of tweaking and tuning for optimal performance on modern hardware (SSDs and fast RAM will serve the tech well), but they're an environment artists wet dream. Not so hot for modding, but for creating worlds that look like worlds, rather than collections of pre-fab items with repeated textures, it's great stuff.
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Jul 31, 2014 01:28
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Mr. Fortitude posted:The other problem is that different setups sound better for different games. You can't really go wrong with the Roland SC-55, since a lot of '90s PC game music was written on an SC-55 and music played on a different sound set can sound poorly mixed or unbalanced. The Microsoft GS synth is a terrible, terrible imitation of an SC-55. You can find much better approximations as soundfonts on the internet. You really have to try various sound sets on and see what you like or don't like, but for babby's first soundfont for someone new to trying to spice up midi listening, an emulation of the SC-55 works decently with everything and would be my recommendation. The guitars suck even by midi guitar standards though. Woolie Wool fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Jul 31, 2014 |
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Jul 31, 2014 01:46
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Dewgy posted:Wolfenstein TNO really did make use of this. It's hard to notice but pretty much nothing in the game is an obviously re-used texture, apart from signs. It also suffered from the same problem that Rage had where a ton of the small details look very blurry.
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Jul 31, 2014 01:49
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Dewgy posted:It's hard to notice but I used to know a Doom mapper who was experimenting with making a map with a ton of custom textures so that nothing would ever repeat. IIRC he abandoned it because it was incredibly tedious and time consuming to make, would have had a relatively huge filesize for a simple Doom map, and didn't really make that big of a difference.
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Jul 31, 2014 02:05
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Reusing assets is only a problem if you're blatantly reusing huge chunks of areas, like how all of the city areas in Fallout 3 and NV seem to use the same handful of building prefabs or Mass Effect 1's planet outposts all using the same building.
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Jul 31, 2014 02:39
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Or The Library, full stop.
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Jul 31, 2014 03:18
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Or Destiny
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Jul 31, 2014 03:28
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Woolie Wool posted:I've seen the texture streaming thing in Unreal Engine 3 games (all of them) too despite UE3 not having megatexturing. Unreal Tournament III was the first game I saw that had it. I don't understand why UE3 can't display textures immediately like every other engine ever. At least Id Tech 5 has megatexturing, what's UE3's excuse? UE3 has an option to minimize loading times by only loading the smallest textures first, and then streaming in the full size ones as you play. With slow ram or disk read it can take a while, and most PC UE3 games have an ini option to straight up disable texture streaming at the cost of more loading screens.
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Jul 31, 2014 09:12
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Linguica posted:This is the real problem with it, sure the entire world can have no repeating textures but how important is that really? Is it really worth having, like, an order of magnitude more art data in the final version so that every metal hallway can have slightly different wear markings? Every game ever made has an order of magnitude more art assets built for it than ship in the end. Who cares what ships in the end, in the era of blu-ray and broadband? The whole point of megatextures is to make this frame of mind obsolete. Of course it's tedious to texture a game from 1993 that way, but in the Rage engine it's (supposedly) an absolute dream for the environment artists.
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Jul 31, 2014 15:36
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GENDERWEIRD GREEDO posted:It also suffered from the same problem that Rage had where a ton of the small details look very blurry. Or if you spin around too quickly poo poo has to re-load even on the highest settings with a buttload of memory. Segmentation Fault posted:UE3 is optimized so that loading screens are minimized. Being able to play the game faster is seen as an acceptable tradeoff for momentary ugly graphics. Not suffering from texture pop-in is probably the nicest thing you can say about Stranglehold.
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Jul 31, 2014 15:54
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Yodzilla posted:Or if you spin around too quickly poo poo has to re-load even on the highest settings with a buttload of memory. I liked Stranglehold so much I did an LP of it so v  v
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Jul 31, 2014 16:03
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Yodzilla posted:Not suffering from texture pop-in is probably the nicest thing you can say about Stranglehold. What? Stranglehold was pretty good.
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Jul 31, 2014 16:16
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Woolie Wool posted:As for modding, the standards of fidelity in modern action games produce a huge barrier to entry for modders no matter how good the tools and support are. The '90s were the golden age of modding because the engines were technically simple and amateurs could produce high-quality content on their own, not because of wonderful mod tools and developer support (Wolfenstein probably has the largest number of custom levels of any FPS ever, and all of its modding tools, even modern ones, are terrible). A competent designer with a clear vision can make a vanilla no-frills Wolfenstein map in a couple of hours. For every advancement in technology in FPS games afterwards, the amount of human labor required to make anything increases exponentially. This is precisely why minecraft turned into a hotspot of modding activity. That and its sandbox based nature. Hell of a lot easier to add stuff to the game when you only need some cubes and textures and it fits in with the rest of the game. If you've gotta match what Valve or Epic did, you're hosed these days. Prenton posted:"Megatexture" is a gimmick name for a particular type of texture streaming, which a bunch of other engines (eg, UE3) also do. I honestly don't see the advantage it has for for end-users (as opposed to developers/artists). Since games are a business, sometimes "good for developers/artists" is important, and even a deciding factor  The only benefit to consumers is that the levels may look better than they would have if the artists were more restricted. superh posted:The whole point of megatextures is to make this frame of mind obsolete. Of course it's tedious to texture a game from 1993 that way, but in the Rage engine it's (supposedly) an absolute dream for the environment artists. Not only does it make it trivially easy for the artists, it allows multiple artists to work on the same level in real-time and see each other's changes at the same time, without stepping on each others' toes or loving up the world data. Its amazing technology for artists all around. They really looked at the content creation pipeline and said "this sucks, how can we change it completely?" Of course the benefits to the end-user are less noticable, but you want your artists to be more free to do art, it makes for a better game. Comparing to Doom level design is stupid because obviously the content pipeline is going to be completely different and that's the whole advantage of IdTech5, not the rendering per se. Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Jul 31, 2014 |
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Jul 31, 2014 16:19
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I hope that UT4 uses a simple style or something easy to copy precisely for that reason. TF2 has so many custom maps and guns because it's style of basic shading and chunks of solid colors is super easy to copy. When you start having to get granular and detailed is when the amount of mods start to drop off.
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Jul 31, 2014 16:25
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RyokoTK posted:What? Stranglehold was pretty good. I thought the first level was pretty cool but completely hated it after that. I dunno, it felt like an unfinished mess to me (which it was, the development on that game was hell).
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Jul 31, 2014 16:29
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I think the solution is gonna be either procedural generation, or massive content libraries. Its just not really feasible for modders to develop all those assets. But there's already the start of these kinds of things, we just need the industry to come together and support it better. There's some tool on Steam already that lets you create all kinds of advanced 3D character models, using presets and easy GUI controls, and if all games could just now support that model format, you could use that tool to make your characters and then import them without ever having to touch 3DS Max or Maya or Blender. That's huge. We already have SpeedTree for procedural tree generation because even professional artists suck at making good tress and don't want to put in all the time. We just need SpeedEverything. A way to click and generate a bunch of random modifications, and then you can kinda pick the one that appeals to you and have it generate variations on that, so you can slowly home in on the design you're going for, or one that fits well enough. I think it goes beyond modders though. We're already at a point where lots of developers buy an existing game engine because working on the engine isn't what most want to do (they want to work on game logic) and working on engines just means re-inventing the same wheel somebody else already did. I think art is getting to the point where lots of studios aren't going to want to re-do every art asset either. Would you really notice or mind if you saw some sword from Skyrim pop up in another game, maybe with a slightly different texture or handle or something? Its not like game studios don't reuse assets from one game to the next internally.
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Jul 31, 2014 16:33
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Probably getting a bit off-topic here, but why stop there? With the massive amount of open world games right now, I always felt it was a shame that those world just got used once and then thrown away. If you've already got Los Santos/Skyrim/Steelport lying around, why not open it up to developers allied with the same publisher and allow them to set their own games there? Rockstar could use a small team to make some weird FPS game, and just throw it in the maps they've got lying around from GTA, for example. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if that is the model publishers will try to move towards in the future: dedicated teams of world builders on one hand that create a setting and engine, and smaller teams to create games for it on the other. The end results could probably even be sold in modular form. EDIT: Richard Cobbett also makes some good additional arguments for this approach here. A Worrying Warlock fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Jul 31, 2014 |
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Jul 31, 2014 17:13
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Sobatchja Morda posted:Probably getting a bit off-topic here, but why stop there? With the massive amount of open world games right now, I always felt it was a shame that those world just got used once and then thrown away. If you've already got Los Santos/Skyrim/Steelport lying around, why not open it up to developers allied with the same publisher and allow them to set their own games there? Rockstar could use a small team to make some weird FPS game, and just throw it in the maps they've got lying around from GTA, for example. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if that is the model publishers will try to move towards in the future: dedicated teams of world builders on one hand that create a setting and engine, and smaller teams to create games for it on the other. The end results could probably even be sold in modular form. Yeah, that's another really good point. After all the work put into making GTA4's New York, it'd be cool if another game could take that and build upon it, rather than having to start from scratch and reinvent the wheel. I as the consumer own all of these games, but I can't use the pieces from one in another. To a certain extent that makes sense, but on another level it'd be nice if things were vastly, vastly more modular than they are now.
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Jul 31, 2014 17:18
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Art direction is not necessarily consistent across games and that's generally a good thing from the standpoint of distinguishing different games. You can also tell when an item is modded in unless the modder goes to great pains in conforming to the original style guide. SO yes, I think it generally would be obvious when assets are reused unless they're both from games that have near identical art direction (i.e. Battlefield and CoD).
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Jul 31, 2014 17:40
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Zaphod42 posted:After all the work put into making GTA4's New York, it'd be cool if another game could take that and build upon it, rather than having to start from scratch and reinvent the wheel. 
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Jul 31, 2014 18:22
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Rockstar's plan (atleast last they said) is to add more cities to GTA Online too, so it's likely we'll see Liberty City return there, likely with a bit of extra polish and an accompanying story campaign to sell it.
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Jul 31, 2014 18:35
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Any idea what mod pack this is? it looks like doom but i couldn't find it in the OP or on a quick google search
ChaiCalico fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Jul 31, 2014 |
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Jul 31, 2014 18:36
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This conversation is terrible. Better modding tools would be nice but that last thing we need is more asset recycling and bland game design. Some of the best games are the ones that create their own unique visual styles.
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Jul 31, 2014 18:49
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madpanda posted:Any idea what mod pack this is? it looks like doom but i couldn't find it in the OP or on a quick google search The HUD and weapons are Project MSX (for Doom), but I'm not quite sure what he map pack is. Maybe Back to Saturn X?
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Jul 31, 2014 18:52
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catlord posted:The HUD and weapons are Project MSX (for Doom), but I'm not quite sure what he map pack is. Maybe Back to Saturn X? Woops, sorry got my wires crossed Malek fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Jul 31, 2014 |
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Jul 31, 2014 19:16
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Is there any way to make Quakespasm save console-set cvars? I hate having to set stuff like r_lerpmodels 0 and stuff on bootup.
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Jul 31, 2014 19:43
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Can't you make a autoexec.cfg?
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Jul 31, 2014 19:52
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Malek posted:Forum resident TerminusEst13 is the one that made that one. Also a reason I gave him flak for never finishing it because I really REALLY want it to go places. It appears to be authored by a dude named MagSigmaX (hence MSX) though.
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Jul 31, 2014 20:29
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catlord posted:The HUD and weapons are Project MSX (for Doom), but I'm not quite sure what he map pack is. Maybe Back to Saturn X? The map pack is UAC Ultra.
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Jul 31, 2014 20:47
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Malek posted:Forum resident TerminusEst13 is the one that made that one. Also a reason I gave him flak for never finishing it because I really REALLY want it to go places. I'm afraid I didn't have a hand in that, sorry. It was made by MagSigmaX. e:f,b TerminusEst13 fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Jul 31, 2014 |
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Jul 31, 2014 20:52
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Zaphod42 posted:If you've gotta match what Valve or Epic did, you're hosed these days. What. 3D modelling to that caliber is so easy these days that even teenagers are starting to figure this stuff out in a matter of months. poo poo is easy! (Far easier than the days of unwrapping a UV by literally splitting a model apart and flattening it BY HAND.) It's honestly baffling that anyone made mods back then, the tools were far harder than they are now.
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Jul 31, 2014 20:53
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Bouchacha posted:Art direction is not necessarily consistent across games and that's generally a good thing from the standpoint of distinguishing different games. You can also tell when an item is modded in unless the modder goes to great pains in conforming to the original style guide. SO yes, I think it generally would be obvious when assets are reused unless they're both from games that have near identical art direction (i.e. Battlefield and CoD). As the developer of the game Love was pointing out awhile ago, its much easier to make your visual style come from shaders and use very simple geometry than try to do everything with just geometry and textures. Love uses models that are just like Minecraft, but it looks vastly different because everything is rendered "fuzzy" using lots of shaders. It saves you tons of artist time and would allow for asset re-use without customers even noticing. Its not effective for all game styles, sure, but it can work for an awful lot. Wadjamaloo posted:This conversation is terrible. Better modding tools would be nice but that last thing we need is more asset recycling and bland game design. Some of the best games are the ones that create their own unique visual styles. You're missing the point. Anyways it was just a thought. Colon Semicolon posted:What. Did you miss the first half of the conversation? The tools were impossibly hard back then, but you were competing with this:  Which doesn't set the bar too high. Just moving some pixels around on the skin and whala, its a whole new design! Part of why Doom has such an active and awesome mod scene is because everything is 2D, so its trivially easy to add something and maintain the level of quality expected of you. (That said, some mods still stand out like a sore thumb) It may be easy for somebody to throw a couple primitives into 3DSMax, but sculpting, retopologizing, etc. isn't exactly straightforward, and if you don't go the whole nine yards its pretty ugly compared to the things around it. That's what we were talking about. Animating is really hard, and modern games have more and more hoops you have to jump through to bake assets into the required formats just to see them render in-game. Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Jul 31, 2014 |
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Jul 31, 2014 20:55
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Brovstin posted:The map pack is UAC Ultra.
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Jul 31, 2014 21:00
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Zaphod42 posted:It may be easy for somebody to throw a couple primitives into 3DSMax, but sculpting, retopologizing, etc. isn't exactly straightforward, and if you don't go the whole nine yards its pretty ugly compared to the things around it. That's what we were talking about. Animating is really hard, and modern games have more and more hoops you have to jump through to bake assets into the required formats just to see them render in-game. I dunno man that stuff is handled natively by alot of the programs kids end up using like Zbrush and then texture tools like Ddo (which is now free) can make good base textures you can screw around with in no time. Like, a good character can take a month, a simple gun a week, so on and so forth. taking a cursory glance at Polycount (one of the main hubs for modellers for games that STARTED with Quake 2 and UT modding) shows that even a typical 16 year old can figure out hard surface modelling and churn out AK-47s and combat knives to their heart's content. That's the same thing that was happening back then too! (why is that still a thing?! Why only those two things???) So while yes, it is TECHNICALLY easier to make content for old games because the fidelity was lower, even back then it was hard to match what the big guys were doing with the limited tools we had. The only real bad spot was the point of UT3's release where the tools were simply not that great for the level of quality needed to make something look good. That was the biggest mess ever! Diabetes Forecast fucked around with this message at 21:45 on Jul 31, 2014 |
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Jul 31, 2014 21:43
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Segmentation Fault posted:Is there any way to make Quakespasm save console-set cvars? I hate having to set stuff like r_lerpmodels 0 and stuff on bootup. I thought it did? It certainly remembers the filter mode I set via the console (GL_NEAREST_MIPMAP_LINEAR, and anyone who uses anything else is a filthy deviant)
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Jul 31, 2014 23:43
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Prenton posted:I thought it did? It certainly remembers the filter mode I set via the console (GL_NEAREST_MIPMAP_LINEAR, and anyone who uses anything else is a filthy deviant) It doesn't want to remember certain things. r_waterquality and r_lerpmodels weren't remembered, but the filter mode and scr_conwidth and such were. (I use GL_NEAREST_MIPMAP_NEAREST)
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Aug 1, 2014 00:06
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9vFSIaJvAg
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