ZDoom menus, my style.

Post by **Xaser** » Sat Apr 10, 2004 10:08 am

Sphagne wrote:A guy called Necros...

Hmm... I thought Necros only made MOD music. Heh.

Tormentor667 · Post by **Tormentor667** » Sat Apr 10, 2004 10:38 am

I will

Sphagne · Post by **Sphagne** » Sat Apr 10, 2004 10:32 pm

Hey, I have heard MODs of that Necros and he is really talented, but I don't think that they are the same. Actually, I have found a 3rd Necros as well.

Thanx, Tormentor.

Post by **Xaser** » Sun Apr 11, 2004 9:19 am

Heh. That's pretty strange. Maybe I should change my name to Necros just to confuse people.

Post by **Nash** » Mon Apr 12, 2004 6:51 am

Hi Tormentor, while this may not be the most efficient trick, here's a simple way to emulate those pretty optical textures.

First, build your city in your favourite map editor, build it like you would any other map. Try to make the area proportional, say a 512x512 map.

Then place the player start in the ABSOLUTE MIDDLE of the map. Have the player face north first. Run the map, don't move and capture the screen immediately. Be sure to turn off drawing of player weapon sprites so that they don't get in the way.

Then go back to the map editor and make the player face east. Capture screen, and repeat for south and finally west.

Assemble your 4 screenshots and place then right beside each other. You've created a panoramic texture.

To make life easier (or rather, to make "cut outs" easier) - when building the map, use a single colour as the backdrop or sky - say a pure white or cyan (wait - no cyan in Doom palette

) - this'll make masking jobs easier.

It's not the best way to do it - and you can probably do it easier by scripting a camera in that changes the view angle when you press a key... but it's a good start!

Post by **Nash** » Mon Apr 12, 2004 7:39 am

... or just put a skybox camera in that 512x512 map.

Silly me!

Anyone know how to make a texture have a 3-d view that can be applied to all six sides of a cube?

Sphagne · Post by **Sphagne** » Mon Apr 12, 2004 8:19 pm

Hey, nice trick, but it would take a lot of resources and make the levels bigger.

Post by **Nash** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 1:56 am

... no bigger than making that very same long texture you used in Elidor's skybox...

One thing I'd really REALLY like to know how to make are those super cool panoramic skybox textures like in Half-Life etc...

A Doom skybox would typically be in a cube space; you'd need six textures to fill up that skybox... the trick is to make your texture somehow rendered in a weird optical way so that your texture would somehow fit all six sides seamlessly... I wonder how they did it in HL etc.

HotWax · Post by **HotWax** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 2:25 am

Half-Life and other modern 3D games simply map 6 textures to the inner sides of a cube and then render the cube fullbright and non-scaled in areas marked with sky entities. The only reason it's seamless is because there's no difference in lighting to mark where the corners are.

Doom's engine (by default) shades walls differently depending on their angle and that will cause the corners to stand out. This behavior can be disabled via a MAPINFO lump property.

Also, there's no real reason to have floor/ceiling textures since there's a limit to how far you can look up or down. Just make sure the skybox room is tall enough that the player can't see the ceiling or floor and you're set.

Tormentor667 · Post by **Tormentor667** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 4:23 am

@Nash - Thx alot for this *g*

Sphagne · Post by **Sphagne** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 5:01 am

3d Max can make these 6 textures from a given scene and apparently the also Bryce as Necros made it with that.

Lexus Alyus · Post by **Lexus Alyus** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 7:13 am

I think, most probably, that the Quake 2, Half life, etc... sky's were originally made in 3DSMax or some high end moddeler... they do look quite lush

. As for Sphnagne's map... I checked it out and not only did I like the sky, or the nice menus, but the story and information that has been put into it is really fucking good! You have gona really in depth and if you keep this up then I think Elidor is gonna be one of the best mods EVER! No matter how hard things get, please, don't give this project up! it's looking so good!

As for the suggestion of skies... I think the idea of doing it in Doom makes a lot of sence... you could import the sacreenshots into PSP and add nice bluring filters and effects to make it look nicer, plus it will have Dooms pallet, meaning that it won't look that bad... Nice idea

.

I personally like to render the whole of the sky box, it makes it more seemless even when you have areas that have huge sky windows or something. If you use a sky texture, there are still ugly non-tiling graphics if you look lower than the sky texture...

I checked out Sphagnes map and I noticed that the floors were sloped in the sky box area... but from the sky box view it looks completely different and created a convincing 3D effect... it's a nice job, you've gotta keep this quality up!

. I'd offer to help... but I've gotten myself into too much mapping recently... I really should finish what I've started

. I can offer to make music though... this will either be in the form of MP3/OGG/FLAC or just simple Mods... your choice

.

Sphagne · Post by **Sphagne** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 9:08 am

Hey, I am currently making the textures and sounds and sprites and scripts..., but as soon as I reach the mapping stage, I would really appreciate some help, from mappers that would like to go into the details of the things.

Thanx lexus, I would prefer Midi or MOD musics, (because of size), but I keep the music selection for when I start to make the levels, to keep up the mood, but for now, I want some techno actions for the modern themed levels and some moody and ambient ones for the gothic areas of Elidor.

Cutmanmike · Post by **Cutmanmike** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 12:36 pm

Hey could I steal that skybox? For platform wad reasons only

Michty · Post by **Michty** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 12:58 pm

So, Cutty, I presume this means you have an idea for a new platformer

. What is it?