et:qw, level design and stand alone server question.

(mortis) #21

awesome, I was hoping that was the case. I had fears that megatextures might be the only way to make things work.

(kat) #22

I take it you’re not a modder then!? :rolleyes: lol

Knowing what file formats can be used is of fundamental importance to the modding community, it’s the big question modders have been wanting to know because up until now no one really knew (except from the odd comment in passing provided by Wils). Without knowing what formats are support you can’t know what tools you can use, and without knowing that, you get no custom content.

The other issue is one of legality, personally I think it’s important to mod ‘legally’ without the use of warezed 3D applications like Max or Maya, knowing the formats mean I can use any cheap assed 3D app to produce what I want… legally.

Most people may not care about that or indeed think it’s important, I do; but then I’m old fashioned and don’t think it’s cool to use warez. You get where I’m going with this …

(kat) #23

So long as the ASE file doesn’t report any errors (missing textures polygons and what have you) it’ll be a fully functional model.

There’s no reason why you can’t build a terrain mesh in GTK (for example) from patch meshes or brushwork and then convert that to an ASE for use in any game engine that supports the format (I’ve done this a couple of time with ASE models initially built from brushwork).

Obviously the disadvantage is the lack of control you have over brushwork versus what you can do in a modelling app so if you can import the result ASE into something for further tweaking you stand a pretty good chance of producing a semi decent terrain object.

(PS. You could get the tutes from FileFront? I’ve only got one mirror for them atm becasue they take soo long to upload - I normally have a mirrored copy on PCGamemods but that site has been broken for the best part of 9 months or so for me so I can’t upload files)

(mortis) #24

mortis wrote:

The real issue is not going to be the supported file types but rather the immense size of the megatextures

I take it you’re not a modder then!? lol

I’m a mapper, but raised on unrealed. Radiant has been a steep learning curve for me…but I’m good at scripting! I know that textures get bundled, so I had these 510MB file size nightmares…in unrealed they are bundled into the myLevel package, in radiant a texture folder but meh…I don’t have time for such crazy things these days. 2 kids + wife = time when you can get it, if you’re lucky. :slight_smile:

I do my script debuggings on my lunch hour at work for the most part…heh

(kat) #25

I doubt most people will be adding as much detail to their maps as the official ones to constitute 500MB just for the terrain but… we’re definitely going to see the need for a fair amount of screenshots and as much info as possible being posted before downloading custom maps, none of this “new map, download here now” guff!

(iwound) #26

Yes kat in theory it sounds like it will work, i guess I’ll just have to wait and see if it works, I just prefer useing Terrain Generator.I worked out how to do it in blender, its just toooo slow for large areas.
As you import the ase with no texture and then apply it in the qw editor Im just curious how this part works. As there is no tiling, are the textures used specific to that terrain and i would have to create these myself in a seperate paint program. Or is there a base grass, dirt , rock already in the editor that i just paint on. But im patient so I’ll just wait.
[flash back edit]never mind i remember it being in a similar way to terragen I think. with the ability to touch up areas.
As for file sizes, Im sure there will still be plenty of basic small maps without terrain.

just for ref: carmack quote:

To create all that, you obviously can’t have an artist go in and paint four billion pixels, so there are two pieces of technology that combine to let you build all that. There’s a procedural base creation tool, which is kind of like various commercial landscaping technologies, where you’ll say as angles tip up, we’ll get more rocky here, and the grass will be down here…. But instead of doing the dumb blending that you have to do in real-time, they can do sophisticated things like have the grass petering out and going into the cracks between the rocks, instead of looking like you spray-painted it on. Then they’ve got the ability to go in and have an artist at any time, anywhere in the level, and to say: “That doesn’t look quite right – that tree is just sticking up out of the grass� – which is what you will see in every other game. But what you’d like to do is scrub away a bit of the grass there, so there’s dirt showing, and you could maybe draw a root. So that’s the other freedom they’ve got.

It’d be nice if they could intergrate a tool like Nem’s Terrain Generator directly into the QW editing tool. Would save a lot of hassle.

(Dangerdog) #27

Hmm I wonder if there will be any video tutorials included with ET:QW SDK, that would be really nice just to help people get up to speed quicker, just a basic run through of the tools even.

(Got Haggis?) #28

http://www.world-machine.com/ is a pretty nifty tool - used it for creating some terrain for Tribes Vengeance (as did the developers) (imported into max, maya, etc of course)

(kamikazee) #29

The megagen tools will probably do the same.