Enhancing Duke's Spritely Appearance part 3

[Usurper]

Originally Posted by marked

Tile 128 has been on the list for a long time. It had been re-done before so I'm assuming we were not happy with it?

Here is my attempt using a higher resolution. It is used in so many places in different levels. In many it is mis-aligned and in others it looks fine.

EDIT: I noticed something happened during the save process leaving some square artifacts in the white lense parts. I corrected the problem and re-saved the tile without optimising this time. The one you see here is the corrected version.

I think instead of the rough craggy texture it'd look better with a brushed metal look.

[TerminX]

Originally Posted by alandog

marked, I found your texture better than the existent one, no suggestion this time

welcome back terminx!

Eh? I haven't really gone anywhere... was supposed to move cross country a year ago (and was gone from these forums for a month around that time) but it's taken longer to pan out than expected.

[Tea Monster]

Thank you!

[marked]

Usurper: Here is the tile 128 original and with a brushed metal finish. Either one looks great to me in the game. We can let Nightfright decide which if any to use if no one has any objections.

[NightFright]

I think the right one is more like it.

[Usurper]

Great fix, marked. Thanks.

[marked]

Tile 304

[marked]

Here is tile 278. The original looks like a stone texture to me so thats what I went with. In case I'm wrong I also saved a version with no texture applied yet. This tile is used in 5 or 6 levels but I could only find it in E4L11 so far for testing purposes.

[NightFright]

I must admit I haven't been able to find #278 on any Ep.2 maps recently, either, but it has to be somewhere. You could try #401 next, it's one of the most wanted tiles for Ep.2 (at least among those which are left to do).

[marked]

I tried 401 before and failed miserably.

[Piterplus]

Because it is hard to understand what kind of material this texture should be: scratched metall, patterned metal, some kind of fabric or plastic, etc.

Here is quick placeholder for it (just something vague):

[NightFright]

Not bad for a first try!

[marked]

I see 128 is still on the list. Do I need to fix something on it or did you forget to remove it?

[NightFright]

No, just a mistake on my part. I thought it was a remake. It's removed now.

[Tea Monster]

278 looks good, but I would have thought from the appearance that it was cast or heavily worn metal. That is as it looks like a tech wall of some sort.

[marked]

In all of the levels it is used in I could only find one place to view it in game. If I could have found it in more places I might have chosen a different texture depending on how it was used. I still have a version with no texture at all so it could be modified in the future. Or if someone wants to mess with it now I'll post that one. I have limited filters and still haven't figured out layers and masks to help in making that battered metal look.

[NightFright]

It will probably look best if we use your "bare" texture and apply detail texture onto it, maybe "metal_worn" from HRP. But you are right, the final touch is somewhat still missing.

It would look something like this:

[marked]

Its hard to believe I missed that floor use in the level. The only place I spotted was 2 columns on the wall that faces the space ship. Here is a version with a slight texture so it's not "naked".

Speaking of textures, I'll ask a question which never received an answer the first time around. What mode of filtering do most people use when playing the game. I have mine set to bi-linear filtering. I guess the amount of texture to apply would be partially dependent on the filtering used in game.

[Tea Monster]

Here is my take on 278. I went for a more metallic, but it turned out looking kinda stoney, so I'm not really pleased with it. See what you think. I used Marked's base texture for the shadow map.



Here is the larger version of 2920, which should fix the pixellation issues.

[NightFright]

I have to agree, your #278 approach looks "stoned". But eventually you may yet come up with a good "overlay" texture for the right look.

@marked:
I am using Trilinear Filtering, 8x Anisotropic Filtering, no Antialiasing.

*EDIT*
This message marks HRP v4 finalization contents. Anything below this message is stuff for following HRP updates.

[marked]

I'm fairly pleased with this version. It looks better in-game than it does alone. I added some extra shading on some edges and inside the seperate panels. And there is more than one type of texturing this time. It goes lengthwise for the long rails on the sides. It doesn't show up very well in the screen capture but looks better in the game. It has a very good 3D depth to it.

[Radar1013]

^ lol. Your a little late, Mark.

[marked]

Then I guess this tile alone will keep people on the edge of their seat waiting for the next HRP update.

[Piterplus]

Originally Posted by Tea Monster

Here is the larger version of 2920, which should fix the pixellation issues.

When I mentioned about tileble textures 2920 and 2921 I meant it to be approximately like this:







It's not perfect match, but I hope you got the idea.

[NightFright]

Well, it's a nice idea in general, but look at it in original lowres mode, it looks exactly as in your first screenshot. Additionally, one cannot tell how your modified texture would look like elsewhere in custom maps or the like. We will have to stick to your previous version.

And marked:
We squeezed your #278 revision into the HRP as a last-minute update. But this is really it, now. No new entries till first v4 update.

[Piterplus]

I'm totaly disagree. We don't have to copy all mistakes of the game just because they are "original". I think we have to correct them, if possible. And we did it many times - not only textures and models, but code, maphacks, defs, and, btw Eduke32 itself is good example of it.
And , I remember you recently told in your post that our main priority is main Duke3D maps, and custom maps is second goal.

[NightFright]

Let me explain a bit why I will insist on my opinion. For example, let's start with just the opposite side of the very same ship on that map. With your modified texture, it would look like this... You will just exchange the glitch on the one side with one on the other.

[Piterplus]

Agree. Nevertheless we have to figure out how to solve that problem.
Maybe we have to vote, which way we choose....

[hightreason]

Was it not agreed that distributing modified maps was legal? cant the .map just be modified and included in the HRP?

[Parkar]

I think the main question is. Is it the textures that are missaligned or a problem with the map?

If it's the aligment thats in the map then we should not fix one instance by making the art correct it. It should be solved by a maphack or similar if at all.

If the textures simply don't tile correctly then the texture could be tweaked to make it tile.

[NightFright]

There are many places in the game where the textures are clearly misaligned. Unless we get hacks that somehow tell the textures how to be moved/placed/whatever, I doubt there can actually be a solution. I absolutely agree we should fix whatever is possible to do, but in such cases, I hardly see a way without referring to hacking, code manipulation or whatever. Of course, anything besides directly altering the maps.

[alandog]

maybe we should modify the 2921 to match 2920, and not the opposite...

[NightFright]

Hardly possible. What you see on top of #2921 *HAS* to be there, and you may not move this to anywhere else.

[Tea Monster]

@ Piterplus - that is what I assumed you meant by tile as I tried fudging the tile to match 2921 directly and got what Nightfright posted in post 1187.

When I started the tile, I was under the impression that the front of the ship was a third tile, exactly like 2921, but without the gunport. I thought you had discovered this before I found out.

Apart from babbing up the front of the ship, the back looks strange with railing running across the middle of it.

[Piterplus]

No problem, remove the railing. My point is - make it look natural as much as possible.

[marked]

deleted


EDIT: I am looking for a hi-res pic of duke from this position to re-make this screen in a higher resolution. I have the rough draft made but an internet search came up empty for this over the shoulder view I need. I'm hoping someone has a homemade pic or rendering of a model.

[Mr.Fibbles]

Wasn't that one done?
Using the Duke Model and the Pod woman from the game it shouldn't be hard.

[marked]

I don't have a program for loading and displaying models with the skins on and rendering a still photo output. Thats why I need the help. The screen is about 95 percent done and waiting to cut and paste in Duke.

[d3ad connection]

What about recreating the scene in Build and taking a screenshot in-game?

[marked]

That is what I did. In Mapster I created the console with all the electronics textures applied. Then I ran the game at very high resolution and took screen shots. I then touched up the screen shots in my graphics program. When you hit the F7 key to go into 3rd person mode, the Duke model is semi-transparent and not quite positioned for what I needed. Thanks for the suggestion anyway.