.. isn't ideal.

Back when i implemented it with ydnar, AO was a bit of a "novelty".

The main inspiration for this particular one came from "dirtmapping" shaders for Mental-Ray, where it was applied as a dirt mask and not really used for lighting, although it could be made to work with that too.

I believe someone later added a new Q3Map2 switch that only applies it on map-wide ambient light, which would be more correct.

That would be an option, on top of making lights able to opt-in for the AO ( "_useAO" key ? ).

That way you can make low fill-lights that act as localized ambients, while main lights are not subscribed to the AO and will act more physically correct. 

That sounds like a good way to go. Having an AO opt-in/out flag on individual lights would give us total control over the look. 

Cool, didn't realize you did the original dirt code rebb :)

Yeah, some sort of key to opt-in on a per-light basis sounds like a good idea (or opt out?) I don't know if would be overkill to have flags for enabling dirt on the minlight and dirt on the sunlight, too. 

I'd probably go for opt-in as the default behaviour (if none is specified) on all lights, as I think it looks good most of the time - it's really just the light-in-an-alcove sort of situations where it looks bad. 

it's coming along nicely, and also looks like it's straightforward to have adjustable dirtscale/dirtgain per-light, so you can have bigger AO shadows in outdoor areas, etc. Only the dirtmode and dirtdepth settings need to be constant across the map. 

I guess it depends what type of lights the mapper places more often, low fill lights or main lights. AO is mainly an effect meant for ambient lighting and can look strange when applied on main lights or sunlight. 

Did Tyrann disappear again? I ran into the same issue as digs just now when I was recompiling an RMQ map with these tools. At first I thought the litfile was all black, but then it occurred to me that the color parameter expects 0-255 now whereas Radiant and MHLightColored expect 0-1.

I have to search and replace all my light values now? Or can I use my old light tool with these? I really just want detail brush support. 

after compile i get the message saying 0 switchable light styles along with the time elapsed and the light data amount.

In fact, i have several of them in the map, and they all work as intended.

Only the compiler tells me otherwise. 

I've been in touch with him lately and forwarded him some patches, he's just really busy at the moment.

For now I'd suggest the version of tyrutils I posted in #129 of this thread: http://www.celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=60967&start=129

That one will automatically handle 0-1 and 0-255 color values. It also fixes a pretty critical bug Lunaran noticed that was creating cracks in sunlight shadows, and probably other lighting glitches. It also has a first attempt at ambient occlusion if you want to play with that! (still WIP though) 

Thanks ericw, I will try that.

AO in my experience needs somewhat light-coloured textures to look good, Quake's are pretty dark though (probably in order to hide the horrible lightmap resolution.) 

Working On This Now

Superb! What a great community this game has :) 

Messed around with detail brushes last night. As expected, all the fidgety detail that used to be func_wall now casts shadows. Nifty. Checking out dirtmapping now.

What I don't get is, why do you guys add all this stuff to Q1bsp instead of just switching to Q3bsp? You get shaders, mapmodels and patches for free with that one. Quite a few editors support it, too (although no worldcraft NOOOOO) 

The extremely simple answer is because only Darkplaces supports Q3bsp. 

ericw,

I tried the dirtmapping and I have to change my opinion. It works pretty nicely in Quake, really enhances the creepy shadows... I also have my coloured lights back.

https://runeofearthmagic.wordpress.com/2015/01/30/dirt/

Kinn,

well, OK. Few engines support it. FTEQW does, though, and it recently got a nice vanilla preset with square particles, netquake physics etc. FTE also supports most of the Q3 shader language (and custom GLSL) while DP only supports single-stage shaders. But I understand that you guys would rather die than give up Fitzquake (and FQ forks.) That's fine, everyone has their preferences. I shouldn't have brought it up again. 

 

You're as tactful as a rhino. 

I second the thing about lights in alcoves + dirtmapping. I'd say opt-out is a lot more reasonable than opt-in since you'll want AO everywhere in your level if you use it at all. 

...part of me says there's a programmatic solution to the alcove problem, the other part of me says full designer control is better. 

But I understand that you guys would rather die than give up Fitzquake

...

You're as tactful as a rhino. 

...because the engines aren't compatible with my laptop. Requiring a particular engine shuts people out, making things that work with all engines doesn't. It's not about loyalty to a particular engine, it's the opposite: allowing all the engines to play... 

and where was the need to stir the fire after I already basically said I was sorry? Massive grudge much? 

Plus, it just gets strange when you add support for really high-res things, but then still use them alongside original unchanged low-res things. A 2048 normal mapped skin looks stupid on a 200 poly monster animated at 10fps.


Quake perfectly reproduced in Quake3, targeted specifically at Quake3 engine budgets and resolutions, would be joyous. 

Massive grudge much?

...

(although no worldcraft NOOOOO) 

Moreso since I can't think of any post-Q3 engine that could pull off that goal successfully. Definitely not idTech 4 with its ridiculous portaling... 

Going off topic, but if you've tried Quakespasm 0.90.0 and it didn't run on your laptop, I'd be happy to look into it if you want. It should run practically everywhere.