Tr3B@Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 6:05 pm :
Ok I think I should post this stuff here because I learned really much about the Doom3 tech by reading these forums.

:!: As a note I don't use any snippets of the Doom3 SDK or something else. This is complete new code written from scratch for the old Q3A engine architecture.

I finally implemented some basic client game code for skeletal animation. The new code is quite experimental but the following video shows a Quake4 Plugable Player Model (PPM) called IDGirl by Vahl running in a converted custom Doom3 multiplayer map Thunderstruck. The animation system uses a single .md5mesh for the body and mixes all legs and torso animations together. Well the death animations are missing yet.
Another special thing is that I put a projective light into the map that projects the sky clouds onto everything in the map: world, players, items et cetera.


OK here is a XviD 27.8 MB demonstrating this stuff with a simple bot match:
(encoded with: mencoder video0001.avi -o teaser-misc-stuff-20070116.avi -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=3000 -oac faac)
http://xreal.varcache.org/teaser-misc-stuff-20070116.avi



Another interesting feature is omni-directional variance shadow mapping that allows alpha tested shadows. Most guys of you know that the Doom3 tech, F.E.A.R and other engines using stencil shadow volumes have to fake that with a good light attenuation.
I hope that we will see that feature in id's next engine. :)
Image



Koroshiya Ichi@Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 6:22 pm :
nice!!

cant get on the site at the mo but im sure its cool! u need any modellers?

and would it be tough to integrate volumetric lighting? sorry if thas a dumbass question, i hav limited intellect on such things



6th Venom@Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 6:38 pm :
You made a really good work man, it's like it's the D3 engine brother! :D
What's about performances differences, did you tested the same scene on both?



BNA!@Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 6:48 pm :
Tr3B wrote:
Another interesting feature is omni-directional variance shadow mapping that allows alpha tested shadows. Most guys of you know that the Doom3 tech, F.E.A.R and other engines using stencil shadow volumes have to fake that with a good light attenuation.
I hope that we will see that feature in id's next engine. :)


Looks marvelous!

I also was a bit disappointed by the lack of alpha tested shadows, but eventually got over it quickly.

Thanks for the heads up and please keep your good work up!



Regulator@Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 6:56 pm :
Vid has some exotic sound codec so it wont play for me, use common one fcs.



Phobos@Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 8:32 pm :
wait so what that was a quake 3 mod for doom3..?

And yeah i couldn't hear anything either.



6th Venom@Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 8:41 pm :
No, it's a Q3 engine modification. (that's what i understood)



Tr3B@Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 8:46 pm :
Hmm I used the MPEG4 AAC audio codec. Maybe it's not so common yet.
Anway XreaL is not a Q3A mod for Doom3. It is a heavily modified Q3A Total Conversion based off the GPL release from 2005 and able to run Doom3, Quake4 or Prey media assets.
Well it's not a finished TC yet because we have not enough modellers and texture artists.
I rewrote the renderer to support Doom3 material files and Doom3 maps can be compiled to the Q3A BSP format using a customized XMap compiler. It supports Doom3 style lighting and shadowing but I wrote all this stuff from scratch. It doesn't reach the same speed as Doom3 for several reasons. Doom3 has more optimizations and XreaL uses GLSL shaders for a high quality mode. I think you could get similar results with the 3Mood interaction generator.

For a technical list of what this engine is different to vanilla Q3A look here:
http://xreal.sourceforge.net/xrealwiki/CodeChanges



zeh@Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 9:11 pm :
This looks impressive and sounds great. Good luck, Tr3B.

Also, I get no sound on the video - apparently it doesn't even have an audio layer.



Jack Rammsdell@Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 10:16 pm :
You didn't tell me you had the IDGirl model fully functional, last time I checked you were still implementing it :)



bkt@Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 11:17 pm :
Bravo, from that one screenshot I can see a lot of potential, I'll check out the video when I get home!



Kiltron@Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 12:10 am :
Anyone doing anything with this other than beefing up Quake 3? Like a game of it's own to put on Wii, PS3 or 360?



zeh@Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 12:17 am :
Kiltron wrote:
Anyone doing anything with this other than beefing up Quake 3? Like a game of it's own to put on Wii, PS3 or 360?


From reading the page, it seems the idea *is* for this to be a separate, standalone multiplayer game (like warsow or nexuiz), not a new q3 client.



Kiltron@Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 12:43 am :
zeh wrote:
Kiltron wrote:
Anyone doing anything with this other than beefing up Quake 3? Like a game of it's own to put on Wii, PS3 or 360?


From reading the page, it seems the idea *is* for this to be a separate, standalone multiplayer game (like warsow or nexuiz), not a new q3 client.


Yeah I read that, but I was asking Tr3B if there were any other plans for it.



mikebart@Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 7:56 am :
looks awesome nice work with the shadows



kat@Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 10:16 am :
Kiltron wrote:
zeh wrote:
Kiltron wrote:
Anyone doing anything with this other than beefing up Quake 3? Like a game of it's own to put on Wii, PS3 or 360?


From reading the page, it seems the idea *is* for this to be a separate, standalone multiplayer game (like warsow or nexuiz), not a new q3 client.


Yeah I read that, but I was asking Tr3B if there were any other plans for it.
Got your thinking cap on hmmm?! :idea:



Tr3B@Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 11:12 am :
Kiltron wrote:
zeh wrote:
Kiltron wrote:
Anyone doing anything with this other than beefing up Quake 3? Like a game of it's own to put on Wii, PS3 or 360?


From reading the page, it seems the idea *is* for this to be a separate, standalone multiplayer game (like warsow or nexuiz), not a new q3 client.


Yeah I read that, but I was asking Tr3B if there were any other plans for it.


The goal is to create a complete new multiplayer game with similar gameplay to classic Q3A but graphics on a level of Doom3 and other current tech games. It would be nice if we could get more artists to work on this to make it a game like Tremulous, Warsow or Nexuiz.

The main difference is that all media should be made of normal-mapped stuff to take advantage of the per-pixel power XreaL features.

It doesn't make much sense to put last generation stuff like OpenArena into XreaL/base/ and run it with per pixel lighting. It might look even worse without proper normal maps.

XreaL is more than just an improved Q3A engine. I modified the GtkRadiant, Q3Map1, and almost everything to have a certain degree of compatibility with Doom3 community assets.
It uses the Doom3 .map format and follows the convention that every level entity should have a name. These are some radical changes compared to the old Q3A tech which affect almost everything ... even the bot library.

Well most of these things are answered in the FAQ section:
http://xreal.sourceforge.net/xrealwiki/FAQ

And if you are interested in some more technical parts then have a look at the Development section:
http://xreal.sourceforge.net/xrealwiki/Development



6th Venom@Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 12:42 pm :
So, your engine is able to render/create old school Q3 shadows to the map geometry (when BSP), combined to the true stencil shadow?
(I looked quickly in the technical section, but didn't found the answer)

Where (or when) can we DL a test version?



Jack Rammsdell@Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 1:00 pm :
He has completely removed the quake3arena lightmapping, but still supports the quake3 .map format.



6th Venom@Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 1:12 pm :
ok.

Do you planned sort of soft shadows? (smoothed selfshadows, etc...)
Softedges alphas interactions with lights? (hairs, etc...)

or anything new that the D3 engine is lacking?



lsblsb@Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2008 8:46 pm :
I've the same error on the same card (GeForce GO 7800 GTX)

any ideas?
********************
ERROR: Fragment info
-------------
(69) : error C5051: profile does not support conditional returns

shaders failed to link
********************



6th Venom@Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2008 11:11 am :
last month i ran it on my 7950 and all was ok except that blurred shadows (even the lowest) really kill the FPS down from 60(limit) to 10-15 with only 2 bots... Oo!
...but it ran.

And as Tr3b said me, it's a 7xxx issue. (new 9800GTX stay at the 60 limit)



Soulburned@Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2008 4:20 pm :
maybe it's a driver thing? I can't even get the latest set from Nvidia, I downloaded it and trying to install fails, says it can't detect a card that's compatible with that set of drivers...



Empire Games@Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2008 9:33 pm :
Image
Image

Look for the server and download in about a week.



Empire Games@Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2008 6:00 am :
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image



Soulburned@Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2008 6:38 am :
screenshots look good!



Empire Games@Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2008 8:40 am :
Thanks..........
Texturing should be done tomorrow, then a day to clip/portalize and optimize the map, then a day to light and play test.
Next im going to do X_DUST from CS.



Soulburned@Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2008 7:54 pm :
Very nice! Keep up the great work, I'll try and see if I can figure out what the deal is with the error and 7800 GTX go cards...



Empire Games@Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2008 9:17 pm :
Is this the driver you tried?
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_175.19_whql.html



Soulburned@Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 1:50 am :
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_notebook_167.51.html
even though it's a beta... it should install.



Empire Games@Posted: Sun Aug 03, 2008 7:01 am :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ENrTEZ_V3k (Click high quality)



Empire Games@Posted: Sun Aug 03, 2008 7:49 am :
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image



Empire Games@Posted: Sun Aug 03, 2008 5:56 pm :
Image



Empire Games@Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2008 8:45 am :
XrankiN is now available for testing.
http://www.warcryonline.com/base/XrankiN.pk3

Their is also a test server online (ICL_TEST_SERVER)
If anybody can test out the map/server and report that would be great.



Tr3B@Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2008 9:20 am :
downloading :)



Empire Games@Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2008 6:02 pm :
cool.......im still working on some of the portals and fixing textures,the test download is lightmap only with portals removed because it was causing bad up close rendering (stuff would disappear).



Tr3B@Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 9:55 am :
XreaL does not require Doom 3 visportals at all. Just compile the map with XMap2 -vis (fullvis not -vis fast). The renderer uses a BSP + PVS algorithm to build VBO surfaces from all potentially visible surfaces from a BSP leaf.
It's like in Q3A but way more efficient because it only happens every 1000 - 5000 frames when you move from one BSP leaf/cluster to another.
XMap2 simply ignores all editor/visportal surfaces because XreaL's editor/visportal is like common/nodraw.
common/areaportal is still supported but only makes sense with doors.

I would compile it with Q3Map2Build and these options:
Code:
"D:\Games\XreaL\xmap2.exe" -fs_basepath "D:\Games\XreaL" -fs_game "base" -game "xreal" -meta -v "D:\Games\XreaL\base\maps\xrankin.map"
"D:\Games\XreaL\xmap2.exe" -fs_basepath "D:\Games\XreaL" -fs_game "base" -game "xreal" -vis "D:\Games\XreaL\base\maps\xrankin.map"
"D:\Games\XreaL\xmap2.exe" -fs_basepath "D:\Games\XreaL" -fs_game "base" -game "xreal" -light -extra -v -gamma 1.3 -samplesize 1 -lightmapsize 2048 -scale 2.0 "D:\Games\XreaL\base\maps\xrankin.map"


You can also see the BSP leaf volumes with this option:
Code:
"D:\Games\XreaL\xmap2.exe" -fs_basepath "D:\Games\XreaL" -fs_game "base" -game "xreal" -debugportals -meta -v "D:\Games\XreaL\base\maps\xrankin.map"


edit: concerning the lightmaps .. the next XreaL alpha will force to only use directional lightmapping or mixed lighting. That is mappers can decide which lights contribute to lightmaps and which should stay to be realtime lights.
The pure realtime lighting will be disabled and only offered for XreaL based projects. It's simply to slow even in Quake4.
Most Quakers want a 125 fps game and we cannot achieve that with pure realtime lighting and up to 20 visible characters.
Our goal is a renderer like in Unreal Tournament 3 where 97% of the lights are used for lightmap baking.



Empire Games@Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 6:01 pm :
Thanks for the info about portals with xreal......i did not know that.
also i don't use the pre alpha downloads,every morning i update from svn and recompile all projects.
I saw that you have fixed some stuff on the map in the svn log (thanks :D ) i will update check it out.



Empire Games@Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 2:58 am :
OK...............................I turned all vis_portal brushes to hint brushes and it completely fixed my vis problem.



Empire Games@Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 9:15 am :
Also i had to load it into a stock q4 editor and do a brush cleanup to fix the disappearing textures.



Tr3B@Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 6:05 pm :
Ok I think I should post this stuff here because I learned really much about the Doom3 tech by reading these forums.

:!: As a note I don't use any snippets of the Doom3 SDK or something else. This is complete new code written from scratch for the old Q3A engine architecture.

I finally implemented some basic client game code for skeletal animation. The new code is quite experimental but the following video shows a Quake4 Plugable Player Model (PPM) called IDGirl by Vahl running in a converted custom Doom3 multiplayer map Thunderstruck. The animation system uses a single .md5mesh for the body and mixes all legs and torso animations together. Well the death animations are missing yet.
Another special thing is that I put a projective light into the map that projects the sky clouds onto everything in the map: world, players, items et cetera.


OK here is a XviD 27.8 MB demonstrating this stuff with a simple bot match:
(encoded with: mencoder video0001.avi -o teaser-misc-stuff-20070116.avi -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=3000 -oac faac)
http://xreal.varcache.org/teaser-misc-stuff-20070116.avi



Another interesting feature is omni-directional variance shadow mapping that allows alpha tested shadows. Most guys of you know that the Doom3 tech, F.E.A.R and other engines using stencil shadow volumes have to fake that with a good light attenuation.
I hope that we will see that feature in id's next engine. :)
Image



Koroshiya Ichi@Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 6:22 pm :
nice!!

cant get on the site at the mo but im sure its cool! u need any modellers?

and would it be tough to integrate volumetric lighting? sorry if thas a dumbass question, i hav limited intellect on such things



6th Venom@Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 6:38 pm :
You made a really good work man, it's like it's the D3 engine brother! :D
What's about performances differences, did you tested the same scene on both?



BNA!@Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 6:48 pm :
Tr3B wrote:
Another interesting feature is omni-directional variance shadow mapping that allows alpha tested shadows. Most guys of you know that the Doom3 tech, F.E.A.R and other engines using stencil shadow volumes have to fake that with a good light attenuation.
I hope that we will see that feature in id's next engine. :)


Looks marvelous!

I also was a bit disappointed by the lack of alpha tested shadows, but eventually got over it quickly.

Thanks for the heads up and please keep your good work up!



Regulator@Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 6:56 pm :
Vid has some exotic sound codec so it wont play for me, use common one fcs.



Phobos@Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 8:32 pm :
wait so what that was a quake 3 mod for doom3..?

And yeah i couldn't hear anything either.



6th Venom@Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 8:41 pm :
No, it's a Q3 engine modification. (that's what i understood)



Tr3B@Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 8:46 pm :
Hmm I used the MPEG4 AAC audio codec. Maybe it's not so common yet.
Anway XreaL is not a Q3A mod for Doom3. It is a heavily modified Q3A Total Conversion based off the GPL release from 2005 and able to run Doom3, Quake4 or Prey media assets.
Well it's not a finished TC yet because we have not enough modellers and texture artists.
I rewrote the renderer to support Doom3 material files and Doom3 maps can be compiled to the Q3A BSP format using a customized XMap compiler. It supports Doom3 style lighting and shadowing but I wrote all this stuff from scratch. It doesn't reach the same speed as Doom3 for several reasons. Doom3 has more optimizations and XreaL uses GLSL shaders for a high quality mode. I think you could get similar results with the 3Mood interaction generator.

For a technical list of what this engine is different to vanilla Q3A look here:
http://xreal.sourceforge.net/xrealwiki/CodeChanges



zeh@Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 9:11 pm :
This looks impressive and sounds great. Good luck, Tr3B.

Also, I get no sound on the video - apparently it doesn't even have an audio layer.



Jack Rammsdell@Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 10:16 pm :
You didn't tell me you had the IDGirl model fully functional, last time I checked you were still implementing it :)



bkt@Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 11:17 pm :
Bravo, from that one screenshot I can see a lot of potential, I'll check out the video when I get home!



Kiltron@Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 12:10 am :
Anyone doing anything with this other than beefing up Quake 3? Like a game of it's own to put on Wii, PS3 or 360?



zeh@Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 12:17 am :
Kiltron wrote:
Anyone doing anything with this other than beefing up Quake 3? Like a game of it's own to put on Wii, PS3 or 360?


From reading the page, it seems the idea *is* for this to be a separate, standalone multiplayer game (like warsow or nexuiz), not a new q3 client.



Kiltron@Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 12:43 am :
zeh wrote:
Kiltron wrote:
Anyone doing anything with this other than beefing up Quake 3? Like a game of it's own to put on Wii, PS3 or 360?


From reading the page, it seems the idea *is* for this to be a separate, standalone multiplayer game (like warsow or nexuiz), not a new q3 client.


Yeah I read that, but I was asking Tr3B if there were any other plans for it.



mikebart@Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 7:56 am :
looks awesome nice work with the shadows



kat@Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 10:16 am :
Kiltron wrote:
zeh wrote:
Kiltron wrote:
Anyone doing anything with this other than beefing up Quake 3? Like a game of it's own to put on Wii, PS3 or 360?


From reading the page, it seems the idea *is* for this to be a separate, standalone multiplayer game (like warsow or nexuiz), not a new q3 client.


Yeah I read that, but I was asking Tr3B if there were any other plans for it.
Got your thinking cap on hmmm?! :idea:



Tr3B@Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 11:12 am :
Kiltron wrote:
zeh wrote:
Kiltron wrote:
Anyone doing anything with this other than beefing up Quake 3? Like a game of it's own to put on Wii, PS3 or 360?


From reading the page, it seems the idea *is* for this to be a separate, standalone multiplayer game (like warsow or nexuiz), not a new q3 client.


Yeah I read that, but I was asking Tr3B if there were any other plans for it.


The goal is to create a complete new multiplayer game with similar gameplay to classic Q3A but graphics on a level of Doom3 and other current tech games. It would be nice if we could get more artists to work on this to make it a game like Tremulous, Warsow or Nexuiz.

The main difference is that all media should be made of normal-mapped stuff to take advantage of the per-pixel power XreaL features.

It doesn't make much sense to put last generation stuff like OpenArena into XreaL/base/ and run it with per pixel lighting. It might look even worse without proper normal maps.

XreaL is more than just an improved Q3A engine. I modified the GtkRadiant, Q3Map1, and almost everything to have a certain degree of compatibility with Doom3 community assets.
It uses the Doom3 .map format and follows the convention that every level entity should have a name. These are some radical changes compared to the old Q3A tech which affect almost everything ... even the bot library.

Well most of these things are answered in the FAQ section:
http://xreal.sourceforge.net/xrealwiki/FAQ

And if you are interested in some more technical parts then have a look at the Development section:
http://xreal.sourceforge.net/xrealwiki/Development



6th Venom@Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 12:42 pm :
So, your engine is able to render/create old school Q3 shadows to the map geometry (when BSP), combined to the true stencil shadow?
(I looked quickly in the technical section, but didn't found the answer)

Where (or when) can we DL a test version?



Jack Rammsdell@Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 1:00 pm :
He has completely removed the quake3arena lightmapping, but still supports the quake3 .map format.



6th Venom@Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 1:12 pm :
ok.

Do you planned sort of soft shadows? (smoothed selfshadows, etc...)
Softedges alphas interactions with lights? (hairs, etc...)

or anything new that the D3 engine is lacking?



New Horizon@Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 1:43 pm :
voldemort wrote:
and as far as getting dirty --well most of us arnt but we do appreciate at least a starting point to work with going through all the code and limited docs --is basically asking everyone to backtrack from point a for a project they might want to help with --but not devote their lives to --currently until you inspire more folks this is still YOUR project not theirs --by makeing it simpler and giving a starting point more people will be encouraged to embrace it


Exactly! What some might consider simply 'getting your hands dirty' is mission impossible for others. It's not the job of mappers to create all the 'starting point' documents. As voldemort says, that's backtracking and a complete waste of resources.

We started bringing beta mappers into our project very early on, and soon learned how important documentation is to a project.

We have an A to Z tutorial that can have mappers producing a working map within a day without ever having to build the code themselves. That has been the biggest turn off for me in trying this project.

All that said, this project is incredible and I LOVE the work I see being done here. :) I hope you are able to setup a solid foundation for others to start using it.



voldemort@Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 2:11 pm :
Been a while time since I visitied your wiki --been cleaned up a lot looking better ---beter navigation is needed --yeah you ""can"" find the documentation your looking for --but it takes effort--clean up the sites naviagaion and that will help alot --noticed the shader manual --once I get a working editor Ill see what madness I an cook up



voldemort@Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 5:06 pm :
Okay tested on xp and vista 32 --editor now works --the game crashed complaining about OpenAl.dll this was easy just downloaded the latest copy from creative and stuck it in the foler --worked like a charm

observations

Lots of missing textures in editor in the Tr3B folder
the entities still reflect quake 3 entities --your gona kill me for this --but I would focus on updateing the entities to reflect more modern engines and editors--this will radically speed up development for mappers

example --cyrtec and Id --tech superior to epic --yet epic is hogging all the developers theese days why --better editor --if you have to sacrifics a small bit of vision for 1/2 the development time --well economically it makes sense with the one with better development time and tools same thing applies here --if I can mod for game A or B A will take 6mo B 1.5 years --most folks will go with A

now Im going to ask you for the moon
I would foccus on a key frame mover ---reason it can replace almost any other mover --set 2 keyframes and you have a funck bobbing , rotating, shakeing pendulom etc... and WAY more this could radically speed up mappers

again --why not just ask for the moon --but Im being honest this would help


next out of curriosity whent ahead and straight plugged in my stuff into your game --apparently it cant handle a 15mb mtr file the smaller ones work and some other stuff needs tweaked ---but way impressive --im used to 8 months compile times with Q3 that real time lighting makes a huge difference in compiling maps

next started playing with some of the realtime lighting stuff I had figured out in D3 and amazngly works great

the same issue exists in this as in D3 that the light texture only is rendered properly on one axis
sollution rotate the light on 2 45% angles and it renders on all 6 sides --works the same here

next I would also foccus on seing if you can add more geometry primitives --the more primitives folks have the less carving they have to do --again a development accelerator

I was shocked at how similar some of the stuff works

Right now have a really sick fam and promised some folks some stuff but Ill start churning out stuff probably in a week



Tr3B@Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 5:25 pm :
I haven't put everything into the pre-alpha to keep the filesize down.
There are more textures available at: http://xreal.varcache.org/base/

Next time I will add all texture packages right from the beginning.



voldemort@Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 5:51 pm :
sorry did not realize that about the textures Ill check for furthor resources before I post next time



TRSGM@Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 7:17 pm :
Tr3B wrote:
Alright thank you for your comments. That is what I intended to get with the current pre-alpha release.
GtkRadiant doesn't work due to a last minute bug it seems. I haven't figured it yet.

Concerning the documentation: I know there is some lack of documentation and that sort of Q3A/Doom3 hybrid mapping
approach might be strange as well. However I had not enough time to write all required information in the wiki, because
other things of the project had a higher priority so far.

I will release new Win32 binaries soon, which should contain a working version of the XreaL radiant.
Until then you can try the binaries of an older version: http://xreal.varcache.org/XreaL_2008013 ... naries.zip
But only use the GtkRadiant binaries in that zip file.
Another thing is that you need to install the needed Gtk runtime if you haven't so far: http://xreal.varcache.org/gtk-2.10.11-win32-1.exe
Otherwise it's likely to not work at all.

I will do more frequently pre-alpha releases in the next time. One new pre-alpha for every month should be possible.

Concerning Parallel-Split Variance Shadow Maps: I know how it works but I handle light interactions entirely different using static VBOs that are created at load time.
I don't use any Light Space Perspective approaches like that. 95% of all Doom3 lights are omni-directional lights where PSVSM doesn't work so well.

Yeah, for everyone's bitching about it DX10 would do a remarkable job in fixing that last issue. Being able to render to all faces of a cubemap with a single pass makes things pretty speedeh. Regardless, you can't beat the quality using only those 512x512 shadow maps. Carmack is using a similar overall system for RAGE.

Incidentally, what would the problem be with using static VBOs? I'm not an OpenGL guru, but AFAIK they're pretty similar to DirectX's vertex buffers, and that's basically the only way you can do any real geometry rendering. Perhaps I'm misinterpreting your particular usage.



Tr3B@Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 7:48 pm :
TRSGM wrote:
Yeah, for everyone's bitching about it DX10 would do a remarkable job in fixing that last issue. Being able to render to all faces of a cubemap with a single pass makes things pretty speedeh. Regardless, you can't beat the quality using only those 512x512 shadow maps. Carmack is using a similar overall system for RAGE.

Incidentally, what would the problem be with using static VBOs? I'm not an OpenGL guru, but AFAIK they're pretty similar to DirectX's vertex buffers, and that's basically the only way you can do any real geometry rendering. Perhaps I'm misinterpreting your particular usage.


Well I merge the geometry of all light interactions for each light together to big VBOs. This saves a lot of tiny individual light surface drawings but suffers that you can't group light interactions in a view-dependend way like PSVSM requires it for every frame.
That is necessary or I would have to render up to 10 000 light interactions, because of all those tiny BSP surfaces.
I don't even render all six view pyramids for every point light. I have another little trick: I mark surface interactions in what pyramids of the point light they rely and then I only render relevant surfaces for each of those 6 views. The the other cubesides will be just cleared to the default value so sometimes it is also possible to update only 2-3 pyramids of a point light.
I think you can't handle that much better with DX9 target hardware. Ah well I investigated really a lot of time to think about optimizations like that. My last optimization was to remove duplicated vertices from all kinds of used VBOs. Especially shadow geometry can be simplified because you only need to consider the vertex position and can ignore vertex uv coords when your surface doesn't require an alpha test.

However in the next phase I'm going to try to generate HDR lightmaps with the engine's renderer at map load. Realtime lighting is really nice but I have to admit that I really like the high quality lightmapping of Unreal Tournament 3.
I would like to do the same with Doom 3's light attenuation model or better the one I have developed with XreaL, which is similar. :)
XreaL is even able to use .roq videos for lighting.



voldemort@Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 8:33 pm :
XreaL is even able to use .roq videos for lighting.

:D:D:D
I would put more smiles but I thought that might be overkill



Tr3B@Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 8:32 pm :
I was finally able to port Q3Map2 over to the XreaL project as XMap2.

Now it is possible to use all the lightmapping goodies of Q3Map2 with Doom 3 style materials to produce high quality directional lightmaps.

I compiled gwdm2 with deluxe light mapping:
http://xreal.varcache.org/screenshots/shot0071.jpg
http://xreal.varcache.org/screenshots/shot0072.jpg
http://xreal.varcache.org/screenshots/shot0073.jpg
http://xreal.varcache.org/screenshots/shot0074.jpg
http://xreal.varcache.org/screenshots/shot0075.jpg
http://xreal.varcache.org/screenshots/shot0076.jpg
http://xreal.varcache.org/screenshots/shot0077.jpg



6th Venom@Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 8:51 pm :
only "waw"! :D



MKULTRA@Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2008 5:06 am :
I'll be happy if XreaL really can compile D3 maps. I build maps for Q3 and D3 and use a small program to convert the map between the two. I tried the same thing on XreaL but it would just crash xreal radiant once the map got complicated, and I figured if I couldn't map for XreaL there wasn't much point.

Plus, does it really now use lightmaps? Excellent, it was a drag when Q3Evolution decided to remove all the lightmap code, that hybrid system was what made it interesting.

The old binaries at http://xreal.varcache.org/XreaL_2008031 ... naries.zip seem to be gone, and I don't have VC2008 yet.

Any chance of some binaries for the latest, D3 compiling, lightmapping version?



Tr3B@Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2008 1:31 pm :
Ah well the HDD of the xreal.varcache.org server crashed and the server will be offline for an unknown time.

I'm going to upload a new pre-alpha at http://hosted.filefront.com/treborator soon.
The new XMap2 compiler is already uploaded.



parsonsbear@Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 3:10 pm :
any chance of implementing something like, uhh, this?
http://www-evasion.imag.fr/Membres/Sylvain.Lefebvre/texprod/



Tr3B@Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 3:11 pm :
I won't implement megatexture support. I don't have time for it and it is beyond the project goals.

The newest version of XreaL contains many bugfixes and performance optimizations.
It also includes optional directional light mapping and a slightly adapted DarkRadiant level editor.

Check it out:
http://files.filefront.com/XreaL+PreAlp ... einfo.html



6th Venom@Posted: Sat Jul 05, 2008 9:48 pm :
DLing this now!
Could it be possible to have some shadows mix, like, Deluxe Lightmap for static lights and world, and stencil (or blurred) for entities and dynamic lights, all and together?
This could be a great performance gain... no?



mavrik65@Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2008 2:21 pm :
So did you buy the non-GLP version of the quake 3 engine from id or did you get the GLP version for free?



Tr3B@Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2008 2:46 pm :
6th Venom wrote:
DLing this now!
Could it be possible to have some shadows mix, like, Deluxe Lightmap for static lights and world, and stencil (or blurred) for entities and dynamic lights, all and together?
This could be a great performance gain... no?

It is possible and there is a XreaL based project that goes that route. They use regular lightmapping in the ambient pass and the static realtime lights do not cast shadows from the world geometry there. It looks good and it is very fast: 200-400 fps in some demo maps.
However I haven't added that mode to vanilla XreaL yet.


mavrik65 wrote:
So did you buy the non-GLP version of the quake 3 engine from id or did you get the GLP version for free?

The code is based on the GPL release. XreaL is an open source project.



Soulburned@Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 6:59 pm :
When I try to run it, I always get this same error.
I've tried looking up this error but the only hits i get are to programmer sites for OpenGL which aren't helping me at all. Anyone else have this problem?
********************
ERROR: Fragment info
-------------
(69) : error C5051: profile does not support conditional returns

shaders failed to link
********************



Tr3B@Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2008 9:46 am :
What GFX card and drivers do you have?



Soulburned@Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2008 3:27 pm :
GeForce GO 7800 GTX, Forceware 84.26 (I'm running an Alienware laptop, these are the latest drivers that I can install).



lsblsb@Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2008 8:46 pm :
I've the same error on the same card (GeForce GO 7800 GTX)

any ideas?
********************
ERROR: Fragment info
-------------
(69) : error C5051: profile does not support conditional returns

shaders failed to link
********************



6th Venom@Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2008 11:11 am :
last month i ran it on my 7950 and all was ok except that blurred shadows (even the lowest) really kill the FPS down from 60(limit) to 10-15 with only 2 bots... Oo!
...but it ran.

And as Tr3b said me, it's a 7xxx issue. (new 9800GTX stay at the 60 limit)



Soulburned@Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2008 4:20 pm :
maybe it's a driver thing? I can't even get the latest set from Nvidia, I downloaded it and trying to install fails, says it can't detect a card that's compatible with that set of drivers...



Empire Games@Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2008 9:33 pm :
Image
Image

Look for the server and download in about a week.



Empire Games@Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2008 6:00 am :
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image



Soulburned@Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2008 6:38 am :
screenshots look good!



Empire Games@Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2008 8:40 am :
Thanks..........
Texturing should be done tomorrow, then a day to clip/portalize and optimize the map, then a day to light and play test.
Next im going to do X_DUST from CS.



Soulburned@Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2008 7:54 pm :
Very nice! Keep up the great work, I'll try and see if I can figure out what the deal is with the error and 7800 GTX go cards...



Empire Games@Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2008 9:17 pm :
Is this the driver you tried?
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_175.19_whql.html



Soulburned@Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 1:50 am :
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_notebook_167.51.html
even though it's a beta... it should install.



Empire Games@Posted: Sun Aug 03, 2008 7:01 am :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ENrTEZ_V3k (Click high quality)



Empire Games@Posted: Sun Aug 03, 2008 7:49 am :
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image



Empire Games@Posted: Sun Aug 03, 2008 5:56 pm :
Image



Empire Games@Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2008 8:45 am :
XrankiN is now available for testing.
http://www.warcryonline.com/base/XrankiN.pk3

Their is also a test server online (ICL_TEST_SERVER)
If anybody can test out the map/server and report that would be great.



Tr3B@Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2008 9:20 am :
downloading :)



Empire Games@Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2008 6:02 pm :
cool.......im still working on some of the portals and fixing textures,the test download is lightmap only with portals removed because it was causing bad up close rendering (stuff would disappear).



Tr3B@Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 9:55 am :
XreaL does not require Doom 3 visportals at all. Just compile the map with XMap2 -vis (fullvis not -vis fast). The renderer uses a BSP + PVS algorithm to build VBO surfaces from all potentially visible surfaces from a BSP leaf.
It's like in Q3A but way more efficient because it only happens every 1000 - 5000 frames when you move from one BSP leaf/cluster to another.
XMap2 simply ignores all editor/visportal surfaces because XreaL's editor/visportal is like common/nodraw.
common/areaportal is still supported but only makes sense with doors.

I would compile it with Q3Map2Build and these options:
Code:
"D:\Games\XreaL\xmap2.exe" -fs_basepath "D:\Games\XreaL" -fs_game "base" -game "xreal" -meta -v "D:\Games\XreaL\base\maps\xrankin.map"
"D:\Games\XreaL\xmap2.exe" -fs_basepath "D:\Games\XreaL" -fs_game "base" -game "xreal" -vis "D:\Games\XreaL\base\maps\xrankin.map"
"D:\Games\XreaL\xmap2.exe" -fs_basepath "D:\Games\XreaL" -fs_game "base" -game "xreal" -light -extra -v -gamma 1.3 -samplesize 1 -lightmapsize 2048 -scale 2.0 "D:\Games\XreaL\base\maps\xrankin.map"


You can also see the BSP leaf volumes with this option:
Code:
"D:\Games\XreaL\xmap2.exe" -fs_basepath "D:\Games\XreaL" -fs_game "base" -game "xreal" -debugportals -meta -v "D:\Games\XreaL\base\maps\xrankin.map"


edit: concerning the lightmaps .. the next XreaL alpha will force to only use directional lightmapping or mixed lighting. That is mappers can decide which lights contribute to lightmaps and which should stay to be realtime lights.
The pure realtime lighting will be disabled and only offered for XreaL based projects. It's simply to slow even in Quake4.
Most Quakers want a 125 fps game and we cannot achieve that with pure realtime lighting and up to 20 visible characters.
Our goal is a renderer like in Unreal Tournament 3 where 97% of the lights are used for lightmap baking.



Empire Games@Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 6:01 pm :
Thanks for the info about portals with xreal......i did not know that.
also i don't use the pre alpha downloads,every morning i update from svn and recompile all projects.
I saw that you have fixed some stuff on the map in the svn log (thanks :D ) i will update check it out.



Empire Games@Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 2:58 am :
OK...............................I turned all vis_portal brushes to hint brushes and it completely fixed my vis problem.



Empire Games@Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 9:15 am :
Also i had to load it into a stock q4 editor and do a brush cleanup to fix the disappearing textures.



Tr3B@Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 3:29 pm :
I wrote a FAQ for the most common questions.

Saving files to the user's home dir is a feature and not a bug. :)
It's also covered by the FAQ.

http://xreal.sourceforge.net/xrealwiki/FAQ



The Happy Friar@Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 4:20 pm :
strange, it didn't find anything in that folder when I did a search. Must of not checked to search hidden folders.

Here's example screens. FYI, it seems that whatever the game starts with (bloom on/off), that one messes up & the opposite setting fixes it.

bloom off: Image max: Image soft: Image

rail firing when "correct" view: Image "incorrect view": Image

At first I thought it was a feature because I changed settings while in mid-map. Thought I hit a special jump pad or something. :D



Tr3B@Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 4:37 pm :
Nice, you are the first one who encountered a heavy bug like that.

What GFX card and driver version do you have?



The Happy Friar@Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 5:43 pm :
stupid me, I should of posted that info:

ATI 3850 512mb
Catylist 8.2
duel monitor setup but game on 1st monitor.
A.I is disabled
Triple buffering Enabled
Everything in display control panel set to defaults (let program decide)
not overclocked



Enforcer@Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 3:29 am :
Xcellent, get like 45 - 60 fps maxed out. on the test map , havent test on the test dm map



New Horizon@Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 4:27 pm :
Has anyone been able to get the xreal version of GTK Radiant to work? I've tried to get the thing to work for the last year and thought it would have come packaged to run in this alpha or pre-alpha...but it hasn't.

I had to copy all the dll's over from our own Radiant strain (Dark Radiant) and it still fails to work. I've tried it under Windows Server 2003 (my regular workstation os) and windows XP.

I don't mean to sound rude, but I've been highly frustrated with the lack of assistance on the main Xreal forums. Basically, I was told to go download some other projects strain of Radiant as it was close to the Xreal version. That's pretty bad.

Anyway, here are the errors from the radiant log.

Quote:
Started logging to C:/Documents and Settings/New Horizon/Application Data/XreaLRadiant/1.5.0/radiant.log
Today is: Sun Mar 09 12:16:50 2008
This is Radiant '1.5.0' compiled Mar 1 2008
XreaL build based on Zerowing revision 174
ModulesRef::initialise: type="image" version="1" name="jpg" - not found
Module Dependencies Failed: 'textures' '*'
Module Dependencies Failed: 'shaders' 'doom3'
Module Dependencies Failed: 'renderstate' '*'
Module Dependencies Failed: 'entity' 'xreal'
.\mainframe.cpp:610
assertion failure: module system failed to initialise - see radiant.log for error messages
----------------





----------------
loading custom shortcuts list from "C:/Documents and Settings/New Horizon/Application Data/XreaLRadiant/1.5.0/xreal-v2.game/shortcuts.ini"
commands import: data version 1.0 is compatible with code version 1.0
parsed 0 custom shortcuts
.\commands.cpp:88
assertion failure: failed to lookup command "PatchInspector"
----------------
----------------


I see these things are failing to initialize, but how to I fix it?



voldemort@Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 5:13 pm :
Ran gtk radiant from your directory and blew up with a crap load of messages --so I decided to import the needed stuff to my existant gtk radiant install
GL
modules
game
xreal etc
all the needed folders --no replaceing though
got way closer but this is how it still blows up on
my vista-64 box
.\preferencess.cpp147
assertion failure : game directory not found c:\Program Files (x86)gtkradiant 1.5.0/xreal-v1.game/"
stacktrace is disabled in release builds


(the stuff needed did get copied)
and I get this for v1 v2 and v3 gtk radiant works for all other games but upon selecting xreal for doom3


.\mainframe.cpp:610
assertion failure: module system failed to initialise -see radiant log -------

next

.\commands.cpp:88
assertion failure failed to look up command patchinspector

finally

\radiant\source\libs\modulesytem/singletonmodule.h:95
asserfion failure module still refferenced at shutdown


I was going to check how many of my assets from my assets pack could be transfered quickly for use for you guys ---but thats as far as I got



voldemort@Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 6:14 pm :
just m two cents--
great work obviously still in devel0pment but coming along nicely

In my opinion to encourage development you need to REALLY document EVERYTHING in a manner that is easy for folks to find and follow.
I mean All changes in the mtr format def format etc......
The easier you make it for developers the more development ght you will get for your project..

You might even ask bna to start a new section here for your project so folks can find stuff easier


You can see the corelation between developer resources and development with big engines like epic, ID and crytec

crytec is ahead of everyone tech wise but because of REALLY limeted resources there is very limited developent occuruing with its engine

epic on the other side of the scale is hogging the most development because it has the most developer resources...

I know you guys are seriously bussy just getting this stuff made but
untill you encourage development by building theese resources there will continue to be limited developer contributions from the community

I wish it was otherwise but many of the folks that might contribute might be more artistically inclined rather then code monkeys and from the looks of it you need asset development like models textures and sound since you guys are obvioulsy excellent code monkeys not saying you guys arnt excellent mapers to just pointing out the obvious stuff your missing right now



New Horizon@Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 7:06 pm :
I agree voldemort. The work being done here is exceptional, but without better end user support it's pretty much a wasted effort. Posting regular monthly builds would be a great start. People looking to try the latest build of the mod, either out of curiosity or wanting to map, shouldn't have to install development tools. Nor should they be shooed away like I was and told to download someone else's build.

All that said, I'm really impressed by the work, but the team needs to recruit some folks to make this thing more user friendly.



TRSGM@Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 8:31 pm :
Out of curiosity how are you handling VSMs and shadow mapping in general? In the event you haven't seen it, Parallel-Split Variance Shadow Maps (PSVSMs) do a fine job of capturing a lot of detail with O(N)-ish speed in relationship to number of lights. (depending on implementation/handling, i.e. you have a set for every light-- even then you could do some culling)

Info here:
http://74.200.65.90/showthread.php?t=40805

Random thought.



kit89@Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 10:07 pm :
Quote:
I agree voldemort. The work being done here is exceptional, but without better end user support it's pretty much a wasted effort. Posting regular monthly builds would be a great start. People looking to try the latest build of the mod, either out of curiosity or wanting to map, shouldn't have to install development tools. Nor should they be shooed away like I was and told to download someone else's build.


That's being worked on.

It's difficult for one man to develop an engine & produce lots of documentation for others to use to develop for Xreal.
What Xreal needs are developers that aren't afraid to get their hands dirty. To help Tr3B create documentation on how to use the engine effectively. To create current svn builds of the latest code modifications. To produce Bug reports & patches. To keep the wiki up to date.

Sadly many developers aren't willing to get their hands dirty to make it easier in the long run. :roll:



voldemort@Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 10:37 pm :
I agree that for one man that is near impossible --the problem is --as it stands it takes eliet --to help --the problem being most of the elite in the community have their own projects allready

for example if I could find out what changes there are from the stock doom 3 material files --I would be more then happy to contribute documentation on the mtr file process --but withought knowing those changes ????

If and when I can get gtk-radiant working with this --I will try to help im in the midst of alot of stuff allreayd



New Horizon@Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 2:14 am :
kit89 wrote:
Sadly many developers aren't willing to get their hands dirty to make it easier in the long run. :roll:


The first step towards that though is making the whole process more inviting to outsiders. I have no desire to setup all the development tools just to poke around GTK Radiant. On Dark Mod, we've spent time setting up our development environment so we can invite beta mappers who have access to regular builds from SVN. They get to play with all the latest tools, and we get immediate feedback.

It would take some initial setting up to create an environment where regular builds could be easily downloaded, but once it's done...it would be a far more inviting ..and inspiring environment for newcomers.



asmodeus@Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 3:19 am :
kit89 wrote:
It's difficult for one man to develop an engine & produce lots of documentation for others to use to develop for Xreal.


Good documentation is difficult no matter what.



kit89@Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 6:50 am :
Quote:
The first step towards that though is making the whole process more inviting to outsiders. I have no desire to setup all the development tools just to poke around GTK Radiant. On Dark Mod, we've spent time setting up our development environment so we can invite beta mappers who have access to regular builds from SVN. They get to play with all the latest tools, and we get immediate feedback.


That kind of explains what I mean, you want to check out xreal's latest svn. But at the same time you don't want to compile it your self(getting your hands dirty). Even though by doing so & releasing the builds you can make it so much easier for the other developers. And release some of the strain on Tr3B to try and get all this done.

Quote:
for example if I could find out what changes there are from the stock doom 3 material files --I would be more then happy to contribute documentation on the mtr file process --but withought knowing those changes ????


Again this comes back to getting your hands dirty. Are you willing to find out the limitations of xreals mtr yourself & document it for everyone else to use? Or do you just want to wait till someone else creates the documentation?

Xreal would move much faster, if people just got their hands dirty & started helping out.



Tr3B@Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 9:17 am :
Alright thank you for your comments. That is what I intended to get with the current pre-alpha release.
GtkRadiant doesn't work due to a last minute bug it seems. I haven't figured it yet.

Concerning the documentation: I know there is some lack of documentation and that sort of Q3A/Doom3 hybrid mapping
approach might be strange as well. However I had not enough time to write all required information in the wiki, because
other things of the project had a higher priority so far.

I will release new Win32 binaries soon, which should contain a working version of the XreaL radiant.
Until then you can try the binaries of an older version: http://xreal.varcache.org/XreaL_2008013 ... naries.zip
But only use the GtkRadiant binaries in that zip file.
Another thing is that you need to install the needed Gtk runtime if you haven't so far: http://xreal.varcache.org/gtk-2.10.11-win32-1.exe
Otherwise it's likely to not work at all.

I will do more frequently pre-alpha releases in the next time. One new pre-alpha for every month should be possible.

Concerning Parallel-Split Variance Shadow Maps: I know how it works but I handle light interactions entirely different using static VBOs that are created at load time.
I don't use any Light Space Perspective approaches like that. 95% of all Doom3 lights are omni-directional lights where PSVSM doesn't work so well.



Tr3B@Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 9:49 am :
OK I uploaded new recompiled binaries and one of our mappers reported that those binaries work:

http://xreal.varcache.org/XreaL_2008031 ... naries.zip



Tr3B@Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 10:09 am :
New Horizon wrote:
Has anyone been able to get the xreal version of GTK Radiant to work? I've tried to get the thing to work for the last year and thought it would have come packaged to run in this alpha or pre-alpha...but it hasn't.

I had to copy all the dll's over from our own Radiant strain (Dark Radiant) and it still fails to work. I've tried it under Windows Server 2003 (my regular workstation os) and windows XP.

I don't mean to sound rude, but I've been highly frustrated with the lack of assistance on the main Xreal forums. Basically, I was told to go download some other projects strain of Radiant as it was close to the Xreal version. That's pretty bad.

Anyway, here are the errors from the radiant log.


Well I recommend to not use any other Radiants. XreaL's version has some necessary changes and fixes for the this kind of hybrid mapping and is based on the GtkRadiant 1.5 branch.
Other people are likely to point out to other Version but that won't work. I also thought about using the Dark Radiant for XreaL with some necessary changes but it has too many changes that focus on the Darkmod's development. You removed almost everything Q3A related. And I decided to work on my own branch because the idea was that mappers can use it immediately without the hassle of installing anything except the needed GTK runtime.



Tr3B@Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 10:33 am :
voldemort wrote:
I agree that for one man that is near impossible --the problem is --as it stands it takes eliet --to help --the problem being most of the elite in the community have their own projects allready

for example if I could find out what changes there are from the stock doom 3 material files --I would be more then happy to contribute documentation on the mtr file process --but withought knowing those changes ????

If and when I can get gtk-radiant working with this --I will try to help im in the midst of alot of stuff allreayd


voldemort: It would be very nice if you could help us with some mapobjects and textures. I saw that you have done a lot of cool stuff.

There is some documentation for developers available at: http://xreal.sourceforge.net/xrealwiki/Development

I even rewrote the entire Q3A Shader Manual to make a new one: http://xreal.sourceforge.net/xrealwiki/ShaderManual
XreaL supports almost all Doom3 .mtr keywords in addition to some older Q3A .shader keywords and some new ones.
XreaL doesn't support custom ARB asm or GLSL shaders within .mtr files so that is one of the limitations.

Instead it uses the stage keyword which implies the renderer to choose an appropiate GLSL shader that will work.

e.g. a heatHaze effect for the railgun projectile generated rail discs:
Code:
railDisc
{
        twoSided
        translucent
        sort postProcess
        {
                stage   heathazemap   // new keyword
                map             gfx/misc/raildisc_mono2_n.tga
                clamp
                deformMagnitude 1 // heatHaze.glsl specific parameter
                centerScale 0.6 + time * 2.3 * (1 - parm0) , 0.6 + time * 2.3 * (1 - parm0)
                blend GL_ONE, GL_ZERO
                alphaTest 0.5
      }
}



voldemort@Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 11:33 am :
Cool about the new binaries
1. as soon as I get a chance Ill fire it and let you know how it goes on various platforms
2. Well on top of other stuff allready promissed Rufus to help him on some stuff ---problem being sick kids since thursday night

INITIALLY his is a quicky so should be able to get in there and see how I can help preaty soon but without it working was kind of hard

I wasnt trying to dog you on documentation just point out a sad fact of reality
to be candid finding stuff on the current wiki is near impossible thats why I suggetsted talking to bna about hosting a subsection here

and as far as getting dirty --well most of us arnt but we do appreciate at least a starting point to work with going through all the code and limited docs --is basically asking everyone to backtrack from point a for a project they might want to help with --but not devote their lives to --currently until you inspire more folks this is still YOUR project not theirs --by makeing it simpler and giving a starting point more people will be encouraged to embrace it

again its not that your project isnt worth it Im amazed by your work but the reality is you could have found the holy grail but until you convince folks they wont care..

In life it dosnt matter how good your plan our how fancy your code--it matters on how well you can sell it and if you can inspire folks to follow --a leader --man on top of codeing and mapping etc why not ask you to just creat life to but unfortunatly that is the way the world works

again best of luck and soon as I get a chance Ill try to help im spread preaty thin right now --just got over two weeks of REALLY nasty flu and now my kids just got it