The Dark Mod: Need Alpha testers with ATI cards. - by New Horizon
piano-sam on 29/2/2008 at 19:45
I have an ATI card with omega drivers, and will fully use this as an excuse to play around in Dark Mod.
Shadak on 29/2/2008 at 19:54
That latest file works well. The best way to see how the normals are still working fine is to nab the candle in the apartment, toss it out the window, go back out and down, and get the candle and extend it's reach as far out as you can and scan it around near the walls and areas to see the normals just fine.
It's just that the new ambient no longer causes a directional light (which is good), so without any other light sources of course things are going to look more flat, but this is actually for the best
chumbucket91 on 1/3/2008 at 04:15
I downloaded the latest file as well. The lights are back to a playable not-burning-my-eyes-out level (although still different from the original.) Some of the surfaces aren't bumpy like the original version anymore though, for example: the green stone streets outside the house are perfectly flat.
New Horizon on 1/3/2008 at 04:21
Quote Posted by chumbucket91
Some of the surfaces aren't bumpy like the original version anymore though, for example: the green stone streets outside the house are perfectly flat.
As explained above, this will be remedied with properly adjusted lighting. The new ambient appears a bit brighter due to the faulty lighting being fixed. There are no longer any more incorrect shadows to add false definition.
hit 'ctrl-alt-~' to bring down the console and type r_skipbump 1 to turn off bump mapping and r_skipbump 0 to turn it back on. You will see that the textures are not flat...they are simply lacking the incorrect shadows that made them look deeper than they really should have been. Slightly less ambient and properly adjusting the lighting will help with the look of flatness though.
rebb2 on 1/3/2008 at 10:10
You guys are right, something is still weird.
I could almost bet that the Doom3 Rendering Code is passing slightly different stuff to the Shaders if it finds an ATI card - dammit.
*keeps bashing head on this*
242 on 1/3/2008 at 10:25
Quote Posted by Shadak
It's just that the new ambient no longer causes a directional light (which is good), so without any other light sources of course things are going to look more flat, but this is actually for the best
Why for the best? I don't quite understand why to change what worked just fine and looked good.
All people needed to make it more brighter was to adjust brightness via menu and/or gamma setting in cfg or ini file, and no problems.
rebb2 on 1/3/2008 at 10:35
Damn, can't send Private Messages on this Board :(.
chumbucket and Neuling, do you guys happen to be on any IRC Networks ?
New Horizon on 1/3/2008 at 14:32
Quote Posted by 242
Why for the best? I don't quite understand why to change what worked just fine and looked good.
All people needed to make it more brighter was to adjust brightness via menu and/or gamma setting in cfg or ini file, and no problems.
No man...no, no, no. You missed the point of the fix by a million miles. :) The fix has nothing to do with making it 'brighter'...go back and read the thread. That only makes it worse.
The default doom 3 ambient had a bug. I don't know how familiar you are with ambient lighting and what it's supposed to do, so bare with me.
Default doom 3 ambient has a problem. Look at the arrows in the picture below. An ambient light is supposed to light things evenly from all directions. What this light is doing is casting light from right to left on an angle. There are harsh shadows everywhere. This is wrong for several reasons.
1. It's supposed to be an ambient
2. No matter where or how you placed the default doom 3 ambient light, the shading was incorrect in 95% of cases.
Inline Image:
http://photos-a.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sf2p/v199/56/56/644095787/n644095787_2389352_2896.jpgThis is how an ambient light SHOULD light a scene.
Inline Image:
http://photos-c.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sf2p/v199/56/56/644095787/n644095787_2335578_6059.jpgHere is a pretty decent example from Computer Desktop Encyclopedia. Doom 3 ambients were behaving like a 'fixed' directional, instead of an ambient.
Inline Image:
http://img.zdnet.com/techDirectory/_AMBLITE.GIFAnyway, you don't want a bright ambient light anyway...it washes out all your shadows. Ambient is only used for the very slightest brightening of shadows.
242 on 1/3/2008 at 15:03
Well, I see. But don't you think that id specifically made it work so to make picture look natural in places without directional lights?
There isn't 100% ambient lighting in RL, lighting always has some direction. AFAIK, in D3 directional lights reach not that far usually and there going to be LOTS of places with only ambient lighting in TDM probably. Totally flat textures there will not only make the picture look unnatural, but plainly worse. That's what I'm concerned with...
New Horizon on 1/3/2008 at 15:18
Quote Posted by 242
Well, I see. But don't you think that id specifically made it work so to make picture look natural in places without directional lights?
Hopefully I won't come off sounding exasperated, because I've been over this a million and one times with other people. LOL The simple answer is no.
Id's ambient lights don't render flat. I think that was stated earlier in the thread. They were supposed to render as non-directional bump mapped, but the bug caused them to render at a cocked angle. There is subtle shading to give form, but they won't look like they're being lit from a fixed angle anymore...which was wrong.
Quote from the id developers site.
ambientLight An ambient light has non-directional bump mapping and no specularThe above is what they intended, but since they didn't use ambient in Doom 3...they didn't bother to fix the bug.
Test this with r_skipbump 1 in the console. Bump mapping is still there in 'ambient only' lighting situations.
Quote:
There isn't 100% ambient lighting in RL, lighting always has some direction. AFAIK, in D3 directional lights reach not that far usually and there going to be LOTS of places with only ambient lighting in TDM probably. Totally flat textures there will not only make the picture look unnatural, but plainly worse. That's what I'm concerned with...
As I said, they aren't completely flat...they're simply
evenly lit.
Ambient light should never really be used as the sole form of lighting...except in a few rare situations. It's a base level light...and should really only be used to prevent the shadows from being pitch black.
We've been working with this engine for years, and the bug was confirmed years ago too. We know what we're talking about.
