They're exactly what I was looking for.

In terms of tags, I think themes is good. Whilst some things do share, we all know what 'base' is. Elder is a bit more loose, but we all know more or less what belongs there.

And tags are tags, as mentioned :) 

Oh, and if anyone tried to download the vines but found the link was broken, it is now fixed. 

 

I was impressed by Preach's monitor.

In fact so much I reframed it and made it a three channel one.
The vertcount is not the same and this one has a larger resolution.
The simplicity of the verts changing is fun to see.

http://members.home.nl/gimli/oscill1.zip

I also made the Star field windows screen saver based on Ijed id.
But then I realized the max frames for animated texture is much lower
than what I had in mind. I thought it was 24 frames. 

Cool stuff, MadFox! It made me think a bit of those old Doctor Who serials where the evil computer would be giving a voiceover, and you'd see a monitor with sound waves syncing up with the audio. If you had a map with an evil, omnipresent machine like Shodan or GLaDOS, you could probably connect that model with all the different animation patterns to go with the audio.

As for the starfield, I think it's another one best done with animated polygons instead. I think I can see how to do it now, gonna take a shot... 

At the time I was also thinking of a game of solitaire - even the quake base monsters like to slack off now and again. 

I made a flipcard animation to see how much frames related to the skinfile could be worthwhile. A slide of seven frames that switch after eachother.
I could make more frames, but then the resolution of the skinn becomes smaller.
For simple forms it works, but anims like a surveillance camera it is lame.

The winscreensaver monitor I expanded several spots before a screen and flattened them. Maybe a bit too small for viewing.

http://members.home.nl/gimli/winscrn.zip

:P 

Here's another shot at the starfield:
http://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/2013/07/05/starfield-screen/

I spent ages trying to get round an awkward gmax issue. If you mirror an object, then the vertices end up in clockwise order rather than anticlockwise, and so the triangles on that object came out backwards in the model.

Also I finally added the mushrooms from December to the blog, but I'd already posted them here, so nothing new... 

Stars looking cool...
what shrooms? 

Does it have the reset xform option?

In the latest versions it appears as both a utility and a modifier. Not 100% that it'd fix the issue you mention though.

Thanks for the starfield :)

The shrooms I requested a while ago for my RMQ map where the player gets poisoned by spores and has to stagger around drunk... 

i really like how you're building animations with polygons like that. gives much better results than animated skins! 

mfx: The mushroom can be found in the model archive, or on the front page for the next few days.

ijed: I don't have a backup version to test reset xform on, but thanks for the tip - I'll give it a shot next time.

necros: Yeah, although the interpolation you get in modern engines is a double edged sword. It makes nicer visuals, but you can introduce glitches if you aren't careful. On the starfield it was important to keep the stars at 0% scale when they move from the edge of the screen back to the centre. Otherwise interpolation would give away the magic trick; you'd get away with it on simpler engines.

I may be taking it too far though, I was planning how to make an LCD digit display using just polygons. That's probably much better done as a sprite instead, no interpolation needed or wanted. So yeah, maybe time to take a break from all this base-tech content and make something other-worldly... 

does gmax have maxscript? cause it could probably be done with a bit of scripting and some funky rigging. 

Yeah, there's maxscript. The way I'd do it is model a plane with each lcd segment carved into it. Then inset a duplicate polygon into each segment. You can then scale this inner copy to 100% when the light is on, or 0% when it's off. It's just that's a lot of fuss and a lot of polygons to create something that appears to switch from on to off. A sprite would be 2 triangles, and actually switches on and off instantly, which might be more appropriate. 

Last time I posted about QME I included a teaser of a model, and I am aware I still haven't delivered on it. I'm gonna post a teaser for another model today, but I have a three-step plan for making it up to you guys:

Step 1: post the teaser along with a useful article on palette swapping your skins.

Step 2: release the newly teased model just as soon as a few more skins are done

Step 3 will be coming a bit later...

Here's the article and teaser:
http://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/2013/07/13/palette-swapping-with-qme/ 

So as teased, here is the button model:
http://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/2013/07/17/button/

It's a attempt to do the kinds of tricks seen on the monitor models, but in a way that non-base maps can use instead. I have a much more esoteric model which also satisfies that goal, I just need to resurrect it a bit... 

ohhh that's clever!!
maybe try using your normals randomizer on effect faces? 

It would have been great to add an extra layer, but changing normals don't have any effect on fullbright pixels as they don't have any shading you can change! A variant model which uses different colours on the Q would benefit though, and it would be pretty easy to script because the vertices you want to affect are easily located on the skin... 

Wow that is really nice, I am glad to see you do some medieval themed models. The only thing that bothers me is the light pattern on the buttons, I would prefer it to glow, the rotating feels odd because the button front lacks depth. 

The same method could be used for cracks with fire in them, for a trippy dimensional rip effect. 

Sock: Yeah, I was trying to go with two different animations to convey the different states - the back-and-forth pulsing animation is meant to be saying "I'm tapping my foot here - shoot me!", while the rotating animation says "I'm doing some work right now, try later". If you don't like the rotation then the pulsing animation should hold up by itself. If you do need a version which lets you switch between two different coloured pulsing effects, I could probably knock that up pretty quick... 

Ive once played a map/mod/game containing ogres with nail-shotguns + nice sprite-based animated explosions, any idea what mod is that? thanks 

The problem with your three state button is that players assume it works like a light switch, it is either on or off. Having a third state is just confusing because the buttons in quake are two state devices. I can certainly understand the frustration of wanting to show more visual information but the states really do have to be different. A glow or rotate effect are too similar and will be lost on most people.

I do like the design of the Q on the front panel, it look cool. :) I especially like the bottom two versions on your page where the Q is linked to seam edges across the front surface. 

probably bastion/marcher. 

would probably best be visualized with a lever, because you can immediately see that it has more than two states if touching it only moves it to the middle.

If you want to communicate that the button is unavailable for a certain time after it has been pressed, you should also keep it in the depressed state until it is available again. That is pretty clear I would think.