The_Caped_Eluder on 23/4/2005 at 18:39
I narrowed it down to Hazelshade Cemetery vs The Clocktower, and I had a hard time picking my favourite from those... In the end though, I found The Clocktower had just that much more attention to detail.
Marvellous effort! :thumb:
smithpd on 23/4/2005 at 20:25
I really enjoyed all of these. Well done, authors! They all had their moments that made me smile. Clocktower made me smile more than most. :)
Rather than repeat comments in all the reviews, with which I generally agree, I will point out some things that I thought were a little strange. These are not meant to be disparaging. I really enjoyed all of them.
A nice stroll. Crashed when I reloaded a save.
Graveyard. Was that fog effect simply water with a different texture and sound? Whatever it was, it was a nice illusion.:) Shingle texture under the ceiling of the chapel was a little strange.
Requiem. The eulogies stopped playing about a second before they were finished.
Ride the butterfly. I had a lot of fun riding these. I think the wing flapping could have been simply rotating the image in one direction. Yes? Cool. One of the "butterflies" was actually a moth. An underwing.
Surrounded by the metal age. Nothing unusual other than the justaposition of industrial and garden feelings. Well done.
The Clocktower. I was expecting to find the owner's body at the highest ledge after hopping around on the ropes. Nope. :)
St. Lazarius. The stats say 2137 loot. I missed it. Is it there? I am looking forward to the Imperium.
TF on 23/4/2005 at 20:50
It couldn't have been water, sheesh; water is animated by cycling through about 20 frames, to achieve that fantastic smoothness he would have had to have around 1000 frames, that's just crazy, and I don't think the water supports that many anyway; the keyword here is 'conveyor'.
demagogue on 23/4/2005 at 21:21
But I think ZB made the terriffic remark that this technique *should* be used for water surfaces in future FM's ... hovering just over the old cartoonish surface, since it is so much more convincing.
It's nice to know that T2-FM making is still a living art that keeps evolving. The future is still bright... :cool:
Ottoj55 on 23/4/2005 at 21:24
i'm working on some better water textures, but its not easy to make real water, water is reflective for one thing, something we can't do in thief. the water in farcry was perfect imo
prjames on 24/4/2005 at 02:59
Clocktower was definitely the winner for textures and many different objects.
St. Lazarius is a close 2nd (and no, the two rather lurid pictures had nothing to do with it! :ebil: ) I liked the music and the general textures (and the fact that it's based on a real place is always a plus).
The cemetary was quite good also, but I would comment (probably a comment made by many others) that the custom-tombstones often have text that's just a little too small to read (with or without the water-fog). Bigger tombstones might have worked here (or less text).
Neat little "beauty contest" - I didn't notice it until today when I cruised thief-thecircle... many other taffers may have missed this as we all wait with baited breath for T2X. :cool:
- prjames
ZylonBane on 24/4/2005 at 09:50
Quote Posted by demagogue
But I think ZB made the terriffic remark that this technique *should* be used for water surfaces in future FM's ... hovering just over the old cartoonish surface, since it is so much more convincing.
Right, that's what I meant. Just use this technique (or even a simplified version with only two layers) right over the water surface, then set the actual water texture to invisible.
A nicely-animated water texture is almost impossible to achieve in the Dark Engine, because the rate it animates at is so slow. In SHTUP I tried to recreate a Quake-style animation of the water surface, with only partial success due to the low animation speed (and Dark's unfortunate insistence on posterizing water textures).
TF on 24/4/2005 at 10:28
That's quite true, I rushed to make enhanced water with conveyors about a day or two after the contest missions were released, it looks quite good, even though I used the standard water texture for the conveyors, I used 4 layers on top, and copied those 4 layers and moved them a micron lower but flipped vertically, because a conveyor only has one side, and you need to do that in order to see the water fx from underneath the water surface.
A conveyor can be as large as you want it to be, and have the same scale on the texture (a scale which you can change, I set a slightly different scale for each conveyor myself, for kicks)
Because of that you wouldn't waste too many objects, minimum of 4, I'd recommend 8.
Vigil on 24/4/2005 at 12:00
Well, this used to be a terribly clever post about combining several different conveyor layers on a single model, except that I hadn't actually bothered to find out how conveyors work. To wit, they are a bitmap effect (of all things) and have nothing to do with models. So that wouldn't work. But, further discussion on this should probably go into the TEG.
Nightwalker on 24/4/2005 at 15:29
Yes, Vigil is right. Please keep the tech stuff to a minimum in this thread and concentrate on comments about the missions relating to the contest. :)
