Deus Ex : Source

[Jonas]

I have nothing good to say about that, so instead I will shut up.

[m3rc1l3ss]

hahaha thanks for the good laughs.. nice pictures

ok back to topic.. he added some more pictures, VersaLife logo and UNATCO logo.

:>

Eww jaggies

[Mr_Cyberpunk]

*cringe*

That Unatco One is so bad.. look at those anomalies on the borders *sigh* GET THIS KID AN ALPHA CHANNEL!

[justanotherfan]

Looks alright I think. Of course, I'm imagining it being scaled to the UNATCO Trooper's hat logo and other small size things in-game. In other words the thumbnails look good, and it's cool to work on a larger image and scale it down to hide imperfections (I think?). The Versalife one looks very close to the original, with a bit more of a tilt in the globe so it shows more than just North and South America. I like that.

What I don't understand is why I'm talking about textures and logos. I don't know where that UNATCO logo came from, and it's nice, but I don't remember it in Deus Ex, and I don't understand why there's a new UNATCO logo. It's a mod "to recreate Deus Ex with the Source engine", and yet it's doing graphic design for fictional organizations. I guess it's fun to make up the new logos and everyone is free to do so, but HDTP is done that stuff and releasing soon. Mr.Cyberpunk discussed this in the DX:Redux mod thread. Redux was just customizing (with some imaginitive other goals tacked on) and the first mod by Chrome, but if DX:Source is serious about porting DX to Source, I'm confused by the second update being logos, especially with the criticisms of the first screenshot taken into account.

DXR always felt like it was just changing the engine. A few textures were done (I remember remade barrels), but I think those were donated to HDTP. I didn't hear about any new DXR textures afterward, and Akerfeldt became a huge help to HDTP's efforts to get the new characters in. I thought that was pretty ideal.

And thanks Jonas, I didn't know about the additive/subtractive difference in mapping. Weird, how I always felt Unreal was one of the only engines good at creating an outdoors, when each map was sort of encased in something. I know it's just a metaphor used in creating a space, and I can't think of any repercussions for "outdoor" maps when doing it in either a subtractive or an additive way, but it's odd to think of. I've never made a map, so that was interesting.

[Mr_Cyberpunk]

A few textures were done (I remember remade barrels)

I'm pretty sure the barrels were apart of HDTP too and TNM.

But you're right, whats the point of all that extra work when again its already been done!

[EER]

Well, the models for HDTP are not freely available (yet) so he can't use those. I would still like to see a remake of Shadow Warrior in UT3 or Source. Maybe I'll try it myself some day, without the modeling obviously.

[Mr_Cyberpunk]

Shadow Warrior would be EPIC IMO. I love that game. And HDTP is nearly finished, I think its safe for users to be at least asking if its possible to use the content. Just to check if it will be possible when it does eventually become available to the public.

[DaveW]

They're not too bad, do the job and all.
But mine are better.

[Mr_Cyberpunk]

But mine are better.

I already said that

[Dead-eye]

blame that on their high ups being total idiots thinking that GOW is the best thing since sliced bread.

Tell me about it.

Part of me thinks IDTech5 would be EXCELLENT for Deus Ex (see the Thief Mod for version 4(aka Doom3)) and has a very high chance of becoming open sourced later...

Why not IDTech 4 that most likely will become open source vary vary soon. Do you really need better visuals then DirectX 9 Graphics? I played doom 3's demo and the visuals were OK. Again where getting back to players only noticing graphics for about 15 minutes before they judge the game on gameplay. I think players judge the game on plot about half way through.

AND THEY MADE Ued3 PRIMARILY ADDITIVE GODDAMNIT

Oh I see that's why my maps in UT3 weren't rendering. I was subtracting. How silly of me to assume that the way I have made maps for the last 6 years would be the same in Unreal 3.0.

No joke I actually have considered recreating Citadel Station in Source. Make the elevators instant teleporters between floors or something. The station's small and undetailed enough that it could be all one level. Might make a good Left 4 Dead map, hey.

I'm down but only if you include cyborgs. That would be a hell of fun L4D map. Also the goal should be to kill SHODAN. Maybe you could send an Email to value with your idea and they could help with objectives, one new enemy class, etc. Most likely not but you never know they do won't to make the game more profitable.

[Jetsetlemming]

Level editing in Unreal has traditionally been subtractive, such that when you start a new level, you get a big block of world that you can carve rooms out of. That means it only takes one cube to make a room because you subtract it from the world, whereas additive engines like Source (and GldSrc before it) take 6 brushes to make a room (one for each wall, the ceiling, and the floor).

Subtractive editing is a lot less hassle when you get used to it, which you generally do pretty quickly - as soon as you understand how it works, it's really simple. Subtractive geometry has also generally been more efficient, at least in subtractive-based engines (meaning in the UE1, an added brush takes more resources than a subtracted one, so you if you can make a map mainly out of subtracts, that'll theoretically run better, but I don't know how it compares in engines that are addition-based). And finally, subtraction is less prone to create BSP errors (though they certainly happen) because you can't forget to seal off your level against the void.

Yes. Creating a level by subtraction instead of addition is roughly a million times faster when you're used to it.
If Valve switched to subtractive for Source we'd be on Half-life 3: Episode 1 by now.

That ends this week's segment of Understanding Game Engines™. Tune in next week when we'll be looking at how occlusion culling works!*

* Hell no.

The way Unreal handles this is too complex for me to get. I can understand Source and its visleaves (Game world is automatically divided into small zones based on geometry, these are visleaves, with the polygons and anything placed inside that visleaf assigned to it. Each corner of a visleaf has a straight line drawn from it to every other corner of every other visleaf during map compilation, and whether the line can complete or if it hits a solid piece of geometry is stored. While playing a Source game, the game loads that data based on the current visleaf you're standing in. Any other visleaves that a complete line could be drawn to from the corners of your current visleaf will be drawn. Also polygons with their backs to the player or behind the player are automatically invisible) but I'm still not sure all that goes into Unreal's system. I've actually had a friend claim that the game just draws everything in your current zone, but I'm pretty sure he didn't put very much thought into that.

Why not IDTech 4 that most likely will become open source vary vary soon. Do you really need better visuals then DirectX 9 Graphics? I played doom 3's demo and the visuals were OK. Again where getting back to players only noticing graphics for about 15 minutes before they judge the game on gameplay. I think players judge the game on plot about half way through.

IDTech 4 runs kinda horribly on ATI hardware compared to equivalent Nvidia. The lighting engine is also totally awful. Ugh, stencil shadows.

[Jonas]

I've actually had a friend claim that the game just draws everything in your current zone, but I'm pretty sure he didn't put very much thought into that.

Well I've never really looked into how Unreal actually does occlusion culling, but I'm fairly certain it's done, because I've had my share of occlusion-related BSP errors and crashes during TNM's development. Zones, as far as I know, are simply a way to help the engine handle occlusion by pre-dividing the game into seperate areas so it can quickly eliminate large parts of the map from view before moving on to more detailed occlusion culling. That's half speculation and half plain old guesswork. I assume Shane, Nick, or John could tell us how it actually works.

[Dead-eye]

I've actually had a friend claim that the game just draws everything in your current zone, but I'm pretty sure he didn't put very much thought into that.

Well I've never really looked into how Unreal actually does occlusion culling, but I'm fairly certain it's done, because I've had my share of occlusion-related BSP errors and crashes during TNM's development. Zones, as far as I know, are simply a way to help the engine handle occlusion by pre-dividing the game into seperate areas so it can quickly eliminate large parts of the map from view before moving on to more detailed occlusion culling. That's half speculation and half plain old guesswork. I assume Shane, Nick, or John could tell us how it actually works.

Or see it work. Set up two rooms with the other room that goes to a hallway that gose around a corner. Put a zone brush between the door from one room to the other. Start the map and type in console rmode 2 I think... or rmode # (Where # is replaced it with any number). You'll notice that the geometry inside the Zone that you are in only renders and the geometry in the other zone only renders when you can "See" it.

I fairly sure you can only see this work in Unreal 2K3 or later.

[DDL]

Well, that's basically what Jonas already said, isn't it? Zones are fairly easy to understand (if line can be traced from the player's viewpoint to any part of the zone portal, consider zone for rendering. If not, don't), and can be more visible demonstrated by taking your two zone example and placing a window between the two zones (solid brush for the glass): despite being translucent, this still "zones off" the areas (while not counting as a zone portal itself), so you'll find you can only actually see through the window when the doorway is visible, otherwise: hall of mirrors effect.

The question is: does the engine do occlusion culling OTHER than zone based culling, and the answer is obviously yes (no matter how laggy a complicated map is, looking directly at the floor always speeds things up enormously).
However, as to how it does it..no idea. The obvious method would be roughly the same as JSL's source example: only draw polys the player can trace a line of sight to (so start with zoneportal polys, since that potentially saves a hell of a lot of work, the work outward from there). Possibly some of this is done at build time when it works out lighting (if this light cannot raytrace to this area AT ALL, then most probably this area cannot be seen from where the light is, etc), but I'd have to look it up on unrealwiki, and they seem to have changed to a 'demand you create an account before you can look at 90% of the pages' format now, the fools.

[jakearoo1jak]

you guys are very funny, i'm going to link this on the mods homepage