[REL] OpenArena Community Mappack - Volume 1 - FINAL

[Akom74]

@Gig: for the flowing water shader use the texture and the shader that you find here:
http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=4759.0;attach=4348

See also this thread: http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=4759.msg47014#msg47014

[Gig]

@Akom: Thank you very much, my friend.

I just tested the tn_river map you linked. It's a nice simple tech test. Of course, it is clear that in some places there are some "odd" changes in water direction, but we cannot ask too much to id tech 3, I suppose.

For my map, I suppose that shader would fit well: I already "hid" under a floor the place where the water in the aqueduct would change direction!
Before applying that shader to my map, I suppose I will wait a few days to see if Hitchhiker will be able to add nice GLSL effects to it.

PS: Why did you post that file with .zip estension instead of .pk3? People have to rename it to try the map....
By the way: creating that shader, did you start from a GPLv2 shader and GPLv2 .tga images, right? Are those TGA files from OpenArena, and placed into that .zip just to be easily available for who (like me) is using Q3Radiant for mapping? Sorry for annoying you, but this is important to know before re-using such stuff, and considering you did it just with a "tech test" in mind, you may have used not-free Q3 stuff... so I ask.

@Hitchhiker: what do you think about Akom's moving water?

@All:
For UDESTRUCTION map, lately we have been talking about "graphic" aspects. Now I want to ask you a thing about GAMEPLAY (I don't remember if I asked you this before)... I need your opinions.
At the moment (Version 7), the three central jump-pads bring you to the megahealth, which is placed just above the third jump-pad. Human players can also use the push of the third jump-pad to optionally reach the roof of the temple OR the roof of the warehouse, if they decisively use their direction keys... unfortunately, bots are not so smart, and after a few vertical jumps towards the megahealth (available or not), they will simply return to the ground.
Do you follow me? I said various times that this map is mainly thought for Elimination and LMS modes... so I asked myself "Considering that in such modes the megahealth does not spawn at all, what's the meaning of a jumppad where bots go to do nothing but a couple of vertical jumps and then return to the ground?".
Hence, I wanted to know your opinions:
- Should I modify the third jump (changing target and megahealth positions) to "automatically" reach one of the nearby buildings after getting the megahealth? In this case, which building? This would probably mean to lose the ability for humans to choose the destination building (who knows, maybe pointing to somewhere between temple and house could allow to choose on which one landing?)...
- Should I let it as it is now? Maybe the wider view of the whole arena you can get while you are jumping vertically on the third jump-pad could be a good thing that may justify that jump-pad existence by itself?

I'd like to know your opinions about it.. Pelya, Akom, Neon_Knight, Jan, etc. etc.
Thank you in advance!

[pelya]

I could never reach neither temple roof nor warehouse using jumppad, my gaming skills suck 

[Gig]

I could never reach neither temple roof nor warehouse using jumppad, my gaming skills suck 

Just look at one of the two buildings and keep pushing forward, since when you just begin the third jump. 
You have to control the jump since the beginning...

[Akom74]

@Akom: Thank you very much, my friend.

I just tested the tn_river map you linked. It's a nice simple tech test. Of course, it is clear that in some places there are some "odd" changes in water direction, but we cannot ask too much to id tech 3, I suppose.

For my map, I suppose that shader would fit well: I already "hid" under a floor the place where the water in the aqueduct would change direction!
Before applying that shader to my map, I suppose I will wait a few days to see if Hitchhiker will be able to add nice GLSL effects to it.

PS: Why did you post that file with .zip estension instead of .pk3? People have to rename it to try the map....
By the way: creating that shader, did you start from a GPLv2 shader and GPLv2 .tga images, right? Are those TGA files from OpenArena, and placed into that .zip just to be easily available for who (like me) is using Q3Radiant for mapping? Sorry for annoying you, but this is important to know before re-using such stuff, and considering you did it just with a "tech test" in mind, you may have used not-free Q3 stuff... so I ask.

Of course it is all free !! The water.tga (and also the water2.tga) are from OA original pk3 (or a patch ? Dont remember).
The shader file it is also free, it's easy to do !!
Create a normal txt file and see this guide: http://toolz.nexuizninjaz.com/shader/
You also have that guide in your quake 3/docs folder if you have TA istalled.
You need a lot of tries, but i think you can do a good shader.
I have take some inspiration from original shaders of OA and try to emulate some things, after all work fine..... a mess trust me....XD....

For your Undestruction map, the gameplay is strange, too much open i think... and the buildings are too small. By the way, it's a good massacre map for online play.

[Gig]

Hi guys, replies from other people?

PS: About flowing water, I just realized OA already had at least one... it's used in oa_dm5 (the cistern) map.

[Hitchhiker]

Hi,
I looked at Akom's waterfall map. Looks nice!
Without engine-side support for capturing refraction image the water cannot be improved with GLSL. I've tried adding stream glsl program to it but it does work well (in the sense that deeper parts of the riverbed are refracted as much as the shallow ones so it does not look too good). The only improvement glsl could provide for the shader is vertex animation (which is kind of slow on the cpu but can run fast on the gpu).
hitch

[Gig]

Excuse me Hitch, I have not understood exactly which kind of improvement were you trying to apply to the water. When I asked you to do some kind of better water, I had in mind something like "fractal-style" waves on its surface.... something that could remind the nice water surface effects one can find in the first Unreal Tournament game (e.g. at 1:10 or 1:50 of this video).
I liked both Q3 and UT... Although I played Q3 much more, I always recognized water effects in UT were way better than those in Q3. Do you think there is a way to do something vaguely similar?

I also tought about that GLSL tech test you showed us, where you did some kind of water. It was more than a year ago, I don't remember if that was a screenshot or a video.

From your post above, were you trying to make some refraction effect inside the water? (E.g. distorted light rays?) I was asking something for its surface...

However, other ideas to improve Q3 water (not necessarily with GLSL!) could be:
- Blue-ish effect while inside it (maybe this could simply be obtained by the mapper by placing some "colored" light sources in the water?)
- Having a water not perfectly crystal clear, but making it "hide" the view in distance. In other words, mixing the existing underwater and the "fog" effects. Separately, they exist in standard Q3 shaders... I wonder if there is a way to have both of them at the same time.
- Maybe it's too difficult to have a reflection on the surface "distorted" like this... but a "mirror" effect exists in Q3 (at the very beginning of Q3DM0)... who knows if there is a way to place a "mirror" surface on/just under the water surface, and possibly give a little of transparency to it? In other words, somehow mixing the "water surface" and "mirror" existing effects. If not refraction, at least reflection?

If there is need for help with "standard" Q3 shaders, could we try to PM Udi maybe?

[CGB01]

Gig, have you looked at the islewater shader that comes with the standard OA paks?  It's has a fog parameter so distant objects fade, it's not crystal clear and has a blueish tint to it.  I'm modifying the pool3d_4b2.tga texture file to have a greenish tint to it so that I can use it as my shader for swamp water.

[Gig]

Gig, have you looked at the islewater shader that comes with the standard OA paks?  It's has a fog parameter so distant objects fade, it's not crystal clear and has a blueish tint to it.  I'm modifying the pool3d_4b2.tga texture file to have a greenish tint to it so that I can use it as my shader for swamp water.

Very interesting! Thank you!  

Unfortuntaley, it's not easy for me to test OA textures/shaders, because my NetRadiant shows "shader image missing" on a lot of shaders. I have no idea about the reason. If someone could help me, that would be very appreciated. I'm just using the NetRadiant package download from here.
It's hard to work that way... unless I will will be to fix that problem, I think I will be forced to continue using Q3Radiant...
Take a look to the first screenshot: I've done a small room with three different kinds of OA waters (liquids/justwater, liquids/hydrowater, liquids/islewater): in the editor they look like a single "shader image missing". :-/

However, testing those three shaders:
- Justwater (left, in the second screenshot) is a classic "transparent" water, similar to those usually found in Q3. Azure in surface only.
- Islewater (right) is "foggy" water (see third screenshot).. nice but it's surface is very little transparent (a little more transparent would be better, IMHO).
- Hydrowater (center) is "foggy" (it seems a little less "dense" than "islewater"... good) and has got a nice "wave" effect... but unfortunately there is a glitch (caused by the mix of "wave"+"fog" maybe?): when the wave goes down, you can see the wall of sky blue color, like if there is water also there (see fourth screenshot, where only one kind of water is used). Maybe one may make the "blue fog" effect start from below the level where waves moves?

I suppose adding the "foggy" effect to Akom's water could be nice...

[Hitchhiker]

Excuse me Hitch, I have not understood exactly which kind of improvement were you trying to apply to the water. When I asked you to do some kind of better water, I had in mind something like "fractal-style" waves on its surface.... something that could remind the nice water surface effects one can find in the first Unreal Tournament game (e.g. at 1:10 or 1:50 of this video).
I liked both Q3 and UT... Although I played Q3 much more, I always recognized water effects in UT were way better than those in Q3. Do you think there is a way to do something vaguely similar?

I also thought about that GLSL tech test you showed us, where you did some kind of water. It was more than a year ago, I don't remember if that was a screenshot or a video.

From your post above, were you trying to make some refraction effect inside the water? (E.g. distorted light rays?) I was asking something for its surface...

no problem Gig, I misunderstood. I have tried to make a photorealistic water flow.. and that needs more than the engine can supply at the moment. I'll try again with a simpler approach - just adding little waves.

the water glsl shader I made is still in the ZEQ2 thread I believe. I've now made a glsl program that can do something very similar to the water effect in Unreal video - one just needs to provide the texture of the floor that is under the water surface. And there is a glsl program for more of a lake kind of water. But either of the three can be tweaked - best way is to play with the glsl code/parameters. I'll try to prepare everything in the next days.

The refraction only works on the surface but I imagine lake water could be modified to 'wave' walls of (i.e.) a pool that are underwater.

So far I've made few different glsl programs and I need to pack them together and post. I'm actually working on your map and it is under definite destruction
I think this way I could send you back your pak file with glsl stuff inside it. This pak could then become sort of a glsl tech demo and a place to learn glsl from.

I'm having hard time finding shaders used in the map within different pak files. Any suggestion where to look for shader definitions (which shader files) would be a great help.

Regarding the tutorial... it will probably be a bit longer to finish than I originally said. sorry about that..

I'll try to get this done asap.

[CGB01]

Unfortuntaley, it's not easy for me to test OA textures/shaders, because my NetRadiant shows "shader image missing" on a lot of shaders. I have no idea about the reason. If someone could help me, that would be very appreciated.

I'm also using NetRadiant but it has to do with the shader itself, not NetRadiant.  Took me a while (being a noob) to figure it out...  If you open the scripts/liquid_water.shader file, you'll see that for many of the textures they are missing the qer_editorimage tag.  What this line does is specify which image to be displayed in NetRadiant's composite window (3D model window).  If this line is missing from the texture, you'll get the "shader image missing" thing.

Add this line to the islewater shader as the first line;

...
qer_editorimage textures/liquids/pool3d_4b2.tga
surfaceparm nomarks
surfaceparm trans
surfaceparm water
cull disable
...

Save file the shader file and reload NetRadiant.  You'll now see the texture of the water (I used the same image as the one used for the water itself).  You can put whatever you want to see in the editor in that line, it's not rendered into the final map so you can put smiley faces if you'd like

For the three_water and foggy_water images, this is because you have more than one brush to create your water pool.  Any two brushes that touch, you have to set the surface of that brush as "nodraw", otherwise you get a darker and denser image rendered by the engine as each of those faces will have it's own face drawn then sandwiched together.

The hydrowater works fine when you extend the edges past it's enclosure (pool edge).  This is because it creates the wave effect by shifting the edges of the water brush.  So if they line up exactly to the pool's egde, you'll see a gap appear as the water moves.

Now my turn to ask...  How the heck do you capture a screen image or video in OpenArena? I'd like to be able to post images/videos of what I'm working on to get comment as well! 

Thanks,
-Claude.

[Gig]

Now my turn to ask...  How the heck do you capture a screen image or video in OpenArena? I'd like to be able to post images/videos of what I'm working on to get comment as well!  

To capture a screenshot in OA...just use DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Command_console]command console to bind "screenshotjpeg" command to a key, then press that key during the game. E.g. to bind it to the F12 key, type /bind f12 screenshotjpeg. While pressing F12 during the game, a screenshot will be saved to your DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/FAQ#Configuration_files_and_automatic_downloaded_files_path]homepath folder.
If using Windows, your image will appear in %appdata%\OpenArena\baseoa\screenshots (if you are using a mod, under its folder instead of "baseoa").

To export a video, you have to capture a "DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Manual/Demos]demo" first (record, stoprecord), then export it to avi file (demo <demoname>, video <videoname>).
(DO NOT LINK) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Manual/Demos#Export_to_a_video_file

--------
About the "black water sides" in three_waters and foggy_water screenhots, I did not mention them at all, because I guessed that was an artefact caused by having two water shaders touching without a nodraw...

About hydrowater, I'll try to align it with the border of the pool. Of course this means that you can use that shader only where the water can be completely aligned with all the (four) walls of the pool.
WAIT... Are you telling me I have to make the water (for correctly display that specific shader) HIGHER than the pool? Really? How many units?
---------

About the shaders in NetRadiant... manually fixing all those shaders would require a lot of time... can someone publish an updated package with this problem fixed? Making the work once only for all people around here?
Uhm... that "scripts" folder is in OA pk3,s right? Editing stock pk3 files is usually "bad"... I suppose we would need a specific extra .pk3 that includes exactly the same shaders one finds in OA 0.8. but with the qer_editorimage parameter. Right?
Does someone already had done a such thing? Otherwise, how can you guys actually map with NetRadiant?

[Gig]

the water glsl shader I made is still in the ZEQ2 thread I believe.

Your old video with that GLSL powered water: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkYgXeGeqwA
That water already looks quite good, IMHO. If you could just give some more transparency to its surface, I think that could be very nice.
Then, having also a "flowing" version of it, would be great for my map.

I've now made a glsl program that can do something very similar to the water effect in Unreal video - one just needs to provide the texture of the floor that is under the water surface.

Interesting, but this would mean that the water shader itself will include both surface and floor textures? What would then happen if the mapper would use a different texture for the floor or the walls of the pool?

So far I've made few different glsl programs and I need to pack them together and post. I'm actually working on your map and it is under definite destruction
I think this way I could send you back your pak file with glsl stuff inside it. This pak could then become sort of a glsl tech demo and a place to learn glsl from.

I fear using a "real" map for a tutorial demo could be a little confusing. I would suggest you to do a smaller map from scratch (copy-pasting things from my map or from other maps if you need), and to better organize it in sections (e.g. various small pools one next to the other, etc.). Providing a simpler map would speed up compiling if people would like to try modifying the test map itself.

I'm having hard time finding shaders used in the map within different pak files. Any suggestion where to look for shader definitions (which shader files) would be a great help.

Well, I guess that 0.8.5 shaders override 0.8.1 shaders, and 0.8.8 shaders override 0.8.5 shaders. In general, pk3 files that come "later" alphabetically are loaded after the others, and if they contained files (.bsp, .jpg, etc) with the same name, those in the "later" pk3 are used.
I don't know exactly how this applies to shaders, considering that a single .shader file can define "x" shaders, and those shaders could appear in "y" different folders in the editor (because the shader file specifies the path of the shader, that I imagine may differ from the one of the .jpg it uses). What happens if A.pk3 and B.pk3 files contain test.shader and alpha.shader files respectively (different file names), and both of them define liquids/liquidtest (same shader name)?

Anyway, to search for "source" of existing shaders, I suppose you could start uncompressing the "scripts" folder from your pak6-patch088.pk3 to somewhere in your hard disk... then use a tool that allows to search for text inside files (windows xp search, file locator lite, FreeCommander...). This way, you should be able to find the .shader file that contains the shader you see in the editor (I don't know if there is a way to find this out directly from the editor). If the shader name you are searching is not in any of 0.8.8 .shader files, then uncompress patch 0.8.5 .shader files to another location, and repeat the search in this location.

Regarding the tutorial... it will probably be a bit longer to finish than I originally said. sorry about that..
I'll try to get this done asap.

Ok, don't worry. There is no hurry... just don't forget to do it when you will have some time!  

Also your floor in this video looks nice... is it possible to have such GLSL shader available for use?

-----------------------


@ALL - ONE MORE GENERAL THING ABOUT GLSL SHADERS. Let's decide this now that we actually start creating and using GLSL shaders. Fromhell's opinion would be welcome.

Guys, do you think we should "identify" shaders including GLSL in their name (e.g. adding _glsl -or simply _g- suffix to all of those shaders) -or placing all of them in a specific folder-, as a way to help mappers?
1) To help them finding shaders that include GLSL effects, if they wanna make their maps more cool
2) To help them reminding that they should test their maps with both GLSL support enabled and disabled, to be sure of the result in both cases?
OR should we assume that in future having shaders with GLSL support will became quite normal, or that GLSL code will be added also to "old" (already existing) shaders -that should not be renamed for compatibility reasons-, hence specifying _glsl in new shaders names only would become useless?

[CGB01]

Hey Gig, thanks for the info.  There's alot of stuff in the Wiki but no easy way to navigate it.  A table of content would sure help here!

As for the shaders missing the editor image, I agree, the person creating them should have included an image with them.  All of the stock shaders for OA should have an editor image, this would help noobs get started with map editing.  I posted the same comment/question a while ago and got a "don't worry about it" response but stil wanted to know why I was getting the "shader image missing" message.

The hydrowater needs to extend beyond the pool walls to work properly, not align perfectly.  Probably 2 or 4 units should be enough.  Like many things around here, experiment until you get a resonable result you like (odd thing, that exact line was included in the programming manual of my first computer in 1980    Funny how things always do a full circle in life!).

Cheers!

[CGB01]

About GLSL shaders, perhaps Hitchhiker can post the source for the water and floor shaders.  This would give us (or me) an idea of the work involved in creating them.  Right now I have to agree, they look really good (based on the 2 video links posted by Gig) but as I'm still just learning now normal shaders work, I don't want to jump the gun and comment on the GLSL direction for now.

Cheers!

[Gig]

I've done some tests with that hydrowater shader. Anyway, that' not required for my udestruction map (there is no need for the water in my cistern to have such waves! The water in my cistern should be not too much animated, but possibly more or less of the same color of the flowing water that I need for the aqueduct.)... I was just testing.

As you can see in the screenshots I attach here, I divided the platform outside the pool into various section of different heights (with steps of 4 units: they are -8, -4, 0, +4 than the level of the water). The border effect is not good in any of them.
In the second screenshot, I applied "nodraw" on the four lateral faces of the water brush (the water texture is still on the upper and lower face of it)... the only thing it changes is that the border is transparent instead of black (where the water is higher than the wall).

Who knows? Maybe that shader is simply faulty? I don't know.

About GLSL shaders examples/sources, maybe those may be posted in the apposite GLSL thread? Anyway, if in few days Hitch will release a package with various shaders and a test map, I suppose we could directly download it when it's done.

[Akom74]

Ehm, guys, maybe all this GLSL stuff may find better place in another topic, this is: [WIP] OpenArena Community Mappack - Volume 1 - BETA 2

The GLSL topic it's here: http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=4767.0

[Gig]

I'm trying to improve my OACMP map (that is not "eye candy" due to various reasons... of course one of them is that I'm a mapping noob) by adding some GLSL effects , or at least by using some "classic" shaders...

By the way, it seems you didn't read the last part of my previous post:

About GLSL shaders examples/sources, maybe those may be posted in the apposite GLSL thread? Anyway, if in few days Hitch will release a package with various shaders and a test map, I suppose we could directly download it when it's done.

[Akom74]

I'm trying to improve my OACMP map (that is not "eye candy" due to various reasons) by adding some GLSL effects , or at least by using some "standard" shaders...

By the way, it seems you didn't read the last part of my previous post:

About GLSL shaders examples/sources, maybe those may be posted in the apposite GLSL thread? Anyway, if in few days Hitch will release a package with various shaders and a test map, I suppose we could directly download it when it's done.

.... ....i've readed it after my post.... 

By the way, all about GLSL is to talk in the other topic, i think, and here you can post the improvement of your map linking at the GLSL topic to show how it work.

[Gig]

Note: what follows here was intended with an EDIT of my previous post... but considering you had already replied to that, you may have not seen it. Taking it alone, it can seem off-topic, but it's what I tried today, searching for ways to map more efficiently. Mapping with Q3Radiant configured for Q3 has got various limitations (e.g. not knowing which textures will be available in OA and how they will look), but I have not been able to make it work perfectly with OA. And using NetRadiant has got some problems, too (there is that "missing shader image" problem we mentioned in the posts above -very annoying!-... its compiler takes much longer to compile... I have some practical difficulties using it due to some differences from Q3Radiant...).



Being able to edit the map directly with OA stuff instead of with Q3 stuff in Q3Radiant would have help... today I tried to fool Q3radiant by transforming a copy of my q3+q3radiant folder in a oa folder, changing q3radiant config files to point to the new path (with baseoa)... I also copied the oa entities (.ent and .def for TA and OA stuff) from NetRadiant to Q3Radiant...
This way, opening the map in this "fooled" q3radiant correctly shows OA textures... but some items are not shown correctly (ammo boxes are not skinned and TA-OA specific items appear as simple boxes). I tried to add all pak6-patch088 .shader files to the q3radiant's shaderlist.txt... but then at startup it says that the maximum number of texture directories was reached, and it "dropped" 43 dirs... D'oh!!!  

[Akom74]

Being able to edit the map directly with OA stuff instead of with Q3 stuff in Q3Radiant would have help... today I tried to fool Q3radiant by transforming a copy of my q3+q3radiant folder in a oa folder, changing q3radiant config files to point to the new path (with baseoa)... I also copied the oa entities (.ent and .def for TA and OA stuff) from NetRadiant to Q3Radiant...
This way, opening the map in this "fooled" q3radiant correctly shows OA textures... but some items are not shown correctly (ammo boxes are not skinned and TA-OA specific items appear as simple boxes). I tried to add all pak6-patch088 .shader files to the q3radiant's shaderlist.txt... but then at startup it says that the maximum number of texture directories was reached, and it "dropped" 43 dirs... D'oh!!!  

This is the same way i've taked, but you have to delete originale Q3A/TA PK3.
Initially it drop 16 directory, but i have deleted some shader in shaderlist.txt and now i can work with only 3 dirs dropped, i cant dlete more shaders or textures....XD...

[Hitchhiker]

hi y'all
just last glsl post here. I think better to discuss glsl in another thread.
for glsl water like the one in Unreal, the 'floor' texture is specified in the q3 shader so the same glsl program can be used on any map.
as for tech demo, I edited the bsp file with hex editor and changed all texture/something/... to glshader/something/.. so basically it can be an independent map.. I'm not sure about creating a map by myself..
sorry for the thread invasion.. now off to glsl thread
cheers

[fromhell]

The GLSL derails are funny because it poked my...... non-GL software rendering thread too. All because I managed to get a water effect going in a completely different engine

[Gig]

This is the same way i've taked, but you have to delete originale Q3A/TA PK3.

Of course, I already did this.

Initially it drop 16 directory, but i have deleted some shader in shaderlist.txt and now i can work with only 3 dirs dropped, i cant dlete more shaders or textures....XD...

Could you please post your shaderlist.txt? If you already did some thought about which shaders are less useful and can be left out...

@Hitch
I already guessed that more shaders could use the same glsl program (a thing that should be mentioned in the tutorial, I suppose... telling to pay caution that a glsl program could be shared by various shaders)... but anyway also requiring to have a separate shader for each different pool wall isn't very comfortable.
However, as I told before, also a water like the one of your old video (but some more transparent in surface) would be already great for me... I don't really require to see the distortion of the pool floor... a cool (small) waves layer on top is enough for me.