@Preach, the problem with sprites is they cannot be scaled and they are stupidly big if you want to do any fine detail. For my dot particles they are perfect but I still offer a polygon particle solution if people want it.

Organic plants need the ability of alpha textures, good lighting and easy scaling/rotation. The Fitz (+ code forks) engine does not offer any this as a single solution. You either have sprites which can be alpha textures and rotated but not scaled or models which can be lit and scaled but no alpha texture support.

If the Quake engine community could agree to fix this sprite/model issue then Quake levels could finally look semi organic. 

Sorry Sock, I wasn't reading your post in context and thought you were just interested in alpha textures in general. I suppose a decent way forward would be for fitzquake to support alpha channel tga textures on sprites, then you could create sprites with rubbish low-res fallbacks for very old engines and have proper high resolution tgas to replace them.

necros: It wasn't very automatic, it was just clever entity management behind the scenes. I'm still working on it, there might be some blog posts later in the year on one half of the technology - it's also useful for managing gibs, sprites, all those kinds of dynamic things - reducing the amount of packet overflow and keeping network traffic sane. The application to mapper-placed entities would be easier with arrays, yeah, but there's another way... 

Ah. I thought you guys meant alpha on bsp or brush entities. 

@Preach, no worries, I just wish there was an easier way to get all Quake engines to support a core set of features. I can understand why RMQ eventually decided to go with their own engine. For the moment I still want to support Fitz engines as much as possible.

When I released the new screenshots I was not expecting much of a reaction because it is not a huge impact thing (+weapon and test map) but I checked the stats for the MODdb page and was pleasantly surprised! A special thanks to spirit for pimping the link on facebook, it drew in a nice lump of traffic :) 

I just wish there was an easier way to get all Quake engines to support a core set of features

Winquake was last patched in like '97, so it may be too late for that.

This tongue-in-cheek post contains a kernel of truth... 

Been playing around with large brick to small brick transitions as the player goes deep nnderground to investigate the crypt ... 

technically, rmqe IS a fitz engine. :P
using fence/alphamasked textures will at least still run in any engine. if anything the use of the feature will encourage its adoption - so long as the engine is still maintained.
fence textures are required as a core part of halflife bsps, so any engine with support for that should also support fences.
its a pretty trivial feature to add to an engine (glEnable(GL_ALPHA_TEST), and replacing index 255 with a different alpha value), but you should generally ensure that you only use such textures on func_walls etc unless your qbsp explicitly supports them.

as a side note, hexen2 (and thus fte) does support certain .mdl flags for different alpha modes, which can allow alpha testing or paletted alpha, but its not well documented and will likely need tool tweeks to do it properly.
32768=blended without culling (some weird 4-bit palette with 4-bit alpha value, quite quite horrible and likely unsuited to quake's palette)
16384=alpha tested (palette 0 is transparent)
4096=blended (odd palette indicies are 50% transparent)

one thing I like about making features compatible with other engines/games is that you can blame other people for terrible apis. :P 

As per usual. 

opening at top, is it possible to not make it square? Or at least not totally square and perhaps a diamond from the player's prespective? 

Maybe make them a rougher / darker texture like rock4_1? 

using fence/alphamasked textures will at least still run in any engine. if anything the use of the feature will encourage its adoption - so long as the engine is still maintained
It would be awesome if QS/MarkV could support this feature, it would be a step in the right direction for mappers. :)

@nitin, the top is a large metal frame around a hanging grate (recently added). It should make more sense from above because that is where the player is coming from.

@ijed, yeah rock4_1 is an awesome texture, I will give that a try. 

ok I see what you mean. I thought the map was going to be set inside and that was like a 'viewing window' opening. 

Just looked at the code. MarkV does already have fence texture support. So no excuses. :P 

It supports masked textures. You just name it with an open curly brace like in RMQ.
It doesn't support it on anything other than bsp though. I use it on brush entities (so you could make cobwebs and stuff for example). 

I don't think anyone understand what I am after. I want a model to have an alpha mask/texture, I am not interested in alpha texture for brushwork or sprites. Organic vegetation is really about models and the ability to have gradually faded edges. 

what you meant. If any engines support it on quake .mdl files then I have no idea which ones do. It would be great if they did though, foliage would be brilliant and you could make animated torn up flags like they have in Quake 3. 

http://kneedeepinthedoomed.wordpress.com/2011/05/31/iqm-grass/ 

That's "just" sprites again :P 

 

Can you not just apply an external tga skin with an alpha channel to get selective transparency on a .mdl? Or have you tried that and had sorting issues occur? 

Don't forget fq doesn't support external skins. 

New location - Baramous Keep Start Crypt Entrance 

To see the zombie knight making his debut, and all the support you're getting through moddb.

Looking forward to the release :) 

Having a MODdb page is very good idea, it gives you a chance to spread the word and gives you a central location for news updates.

Got some more news about the MOD progress. If anyone here has played the MOD, please remember to vote on the Moddb page. 

This is fantastic stuff, sock! Keep it up!