New Vision In Multiplayer.

Discussion related to the New Vision mod.

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shinobi87
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New Vision In Multiplayer.

Post by shinobi87 »

Hi all. I'm new to the forum but not new to DXMP.

I've used the texture override feature of the D3D10 renderer from www.kentie.net to replace normal DX textures with the NV ones so they can be used while playing online.

All a player must do is download the textures and unrar them to the main textures folder, enabling them to play online using nv texs.

To do this I converted all files to .dds using photoshop, and arranged them in the necessary folder structure to be called by the rendering engine.

This is a cool workaround for the mismatch error and also enables mappers to use 2 versions of textures, one for normal and one for those with D3D10 renderer.

I've not uploaded or linked any files yet as I haven't had permission from you guys (well guy) at NV to use the textures in this manner.

For more info email me or find me on dxalpha.com forum.

I will check here since I've bothered to post here but it's quicker to email me.

Laters
PS: Looking forward to a further NV release, me likey the work in aftereffects on those anims!!
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DaveW
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Re: New Vision In Multiplayer.

Post by DaveW »

That's sneaky. And brilliant -I never even thought of doing that. I guess because the engine is looking at the packages thinking they're the same but the renderer (unknown to the game engine and multiplayer code) is switching the textures.

You have my support to release your version, although I'm hopefully releasing the 'final' New Vision this month (was hoping for this week, but I'm thinking it might be next week now). It's a shame I couldn't just release that because some people want to play with ENBSeries or just OpenGL etc. and this is purely a workaround using that renderer.

When I release New Vision I'll convert all the textures to DDS format too and upload that as a separate version of the mod.
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Re: New Vision In Multiplayer.

Post by shinobi87 »

Fantastic!

I've never used photoshop or fiddled with textures until today, so I'm probably doing it wrong, but using photoshop batch conversion and Nvidia dds plug in takes ages to sort the textures out. I'm using DXT5 compression if that means anything to you.

The most important (and annoying) caveat is that every texture must be in its proper place. For example say we had 2 textures in catacombs.utx called stone1 and wood1, stone1 being in the "stone" group in unrealEd and wood1 in the "wood" group, the directory structure must be:

X:\DeusEx\Textures\Catacombs\Stone\stone1.dds
X:\DeusEx\Textures\Catacombs\Wood\wood1.dds

Also, again unfortunately, the filenames are case-sensitive. The bit that's taking me the time is arranging them into folders as I have to have UEd open constantly to sort each individual texture into its proper group.

I won't bother doing it now if you're going to do it. Well, actually I might, just for fun lol. I've also alerted the guys doing the DXMP:HR mod of this workaround so they can consider using hi-res textures.

Also, I'm not certain but I think it is only the D3D10 renderer which supports this, I'm not sure if Chris Donhal's renderers support it. I don't think so.

Perhaps NV and the dds versions could both come bundled with a copy of the latest D3d10 renderer??

:)

EDIT: I was gonna use WinUHA to create an installer/self-extracting archive (better compression than winRAR), if you like I'll holf off until you release your final version of NV and if you like I'll do the dds version? I've got the file structures set up all I'd need to do is extract the new utx files, convert and overwrite. It's up to you but the offer's there.
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DaveW
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Re: New Vision In Multiplayer.

Post by DaveW »

The program I use is "Image Converter Plus", I have an old version but it works surprisingly well and will batch convert most formats quite quickly. It's probably easier for me to run that on the final textures directory and It will do a mass BMP to DDS conversion keeping the file structure intact.

And yes it's only the D3D10 renderer. It's not a specific feature of DirectX 10 or anything, but it's just because I suggested to Kentie about tricking the game to render pre-made Normal Maps . In a few days he found this amazing workaround to automatically load DDS textures.
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Re: New Vision In Multiplayer.

Post by shinobi87 »

Ah.

Well I have been interested in creating my own normal maps / heightmaps for the bump-mapping and POM features but I haven't a clue how!

You'll know all about appending detail/bump/height to the filenames then for external height data eh? I like that feature.

BTW Wasn't trying to imply you don't know the file structures it's just WOTGreal which I used to export your textures didn't make folders for texture groups. I couldn't get the textures to extract using my usual tool, Deus Ex Extractor.
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DaveW
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Re: New Vision In Multiplayer.

Post by DaveW »

I tried it ages ago but haven't really done it since, I've been meaning to get around to making normal maps for a few choice textures but haven't yet.

But Kentie explains the process fairly well on his site, as long as you match up the names it should work ok.
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Re: New Vision In Multiplayer.

Post by shinobi87 »

It's not the names that are a problem for me, it's actually creating the maps, I've followed a few tutorials but don't really know how to get a good result. The only one that made any sense to me and sorta explained why it wasn't working was this one: http://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/textu ... images.php

It's aimed at doom3 editing but the general principle remains the same AFAIK.
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Re: New Vision In Multiplayer.

Post by DaveW »

Just run it though CrazyBump. You can use techniques like custom heightmap painting etc. to get decent results with it.
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Re: New Vision In Multiplayer.

Post by shinobi87 »

OK thanks.
I've got it working in mp with your old release, BUT... there appears to be no detail textures. Any ideas??
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Re: New Vision In Multiplayer.

Post by DaveW »

I suppose there wouldn't be, detail textures are referenced in the .UTX's - without that information the texture won't know what detail texture to load.
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Re: New Vision In Multiplayer.

Post by shinobi87 »

Hmm. Experimenting with normal maps now.

It's easier to make normalmaps from ur texs, since the lines and such are clean, and pronounced.
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Re: New Vision In Multiplayer.

Post by DaveW »

Yes, you won't be able to make very good normal maps from the older textures - you'll just end up with something like ENBSeries where it looks awful.
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Re: New Vision In Multiplayer.

Post by shinobi87 »

Perhaps you could do normal maps for your textures?? Or would that be too much work?

I'm not aware of ENBSeries, have never tried it. I've heard of it though, adds bloom and stuff doesn't it?
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Re: New Vision In Multiplayer.

Post by DaveW »

I might do some for a few major ones - if I have the time - and release it as a separate download. I think the only ones that would really benefit are some of the sides of buildings like this:

Image

Even then the effect might be a little muted because the renderer can't detect where the light-source is coming from, so the light comes from a fixed position. It has a similar effect to just painting it into the texture. Parralax is an exception of course, but I don't really like the effect of that (because you can very clearly see it when the texture reaches a 90° edge).

ENBSeries adds a bunch of graphical effects including a normal map effect, where it generates on-the-fly normals to add a bit of bump to the surface. But the method it uses isn't great so everything ends up looking like jelly. I wouldn't mind just the bloom but I never found a way to tweak it very well.
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Re: New Vision In Multiplayer.

Post by bjorn98009_91 »

There are detail textures in the package, it's just that the textures don't use these textures. The Revision team might fix this sometime.
Producer and Quality Assurance Manager for Deus Ex: Revision.
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