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Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 23. December 2024, 17:59:14 »

That won't work because some rapiers can be the default blue ones and I need to know if they are blue because they rolled blue or because they haven't been updated yet.
Just use Property.PossessedSimple() to check for non-inherited properties.
Posted by: Xkilljoy98
« on: 17. December 2024, 01:07:47 »

Are there any updates on this game btw? Not sure what would be keeping it or why they hadn't really said much. I guess if nothing else then "when it's done" is better than constantly moving the release window like they did with the SS1 Remake.
Posted by: sarge945
« on: 13. December 2024, 16:38:46 »

Isn't the color already "stored" in the object model and icon properties? Why store it again?

That won't work because some rapiers can be the default blue ones and I need to know if they are blue because they rolled blue or because they haven't been updated yet.

I could probably get away with not storing it, using some other method like sticking a metaprop on it, but it seemed like the least hacky option at the time.
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 13. December 2024, 16:00:14 »

Currently, in the Coloured Laser Rapiers mod, I have to store the colour variable in the DoorCloseSound property
Isn't the color already "stored" in the object model and icon properties? Why store it again?
Posted by: eldrone
« on: 13. December 2024, 08:06:29 »

I have to check these things, because I know that during the reverse engineering a bunch of things got fixed by default.


As a default archetype additions can never be saved during gameplay, but as a default the archetype edits in squirrel gets applied at the start of every mission load.

Applying property edits to live objects should always be permanent and saved.
Posted by: sarge945
« on: 13. December 2024, 06:12:12 »

Do mention any dbmod issues, if there's any I want to make sure we fix them, including better ways to add or change scripts and args.

I've linked it before, but you should try to implement as much as you can from my DML Wishlist to really make modders lives as easy as possible. It outlines a lot of issues that currently exist with DML.

Probably the most important ones to me are a squirrel API for creating brand new properties on objects, which will be properly kept on saving, transitioning maps, etc, and proper support for physics objects.

Currently, in the Coloured Laser Rapiers mod, I have to store the colour variable in the DoorCloseSound property because squirrel's GetData/SetData don't work through map transitions. This is hacky and awful and I wish I could use a custom property, something like RapierColour.
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 12. December 2024, 14:46:02 »

It would be nice if a script API existed for accessing gamesys variables, like OS upgrade multipliers, main elevator destinations, etc.
Posted by: eldrone
« on: 12. December 2024, 07:25:06 »

oh and, going along with squirrel tools, here's a work in progress debug mode property inspector:

(and yes, every faint dot there in the background is an object)


I'm also going to see if I can add some ability to modify/add/remove properties in realtime for testing purposes.
[prop_inspector.jpg expired]
Posted by: eldrone
« on: 12. December 2024, 05:44:40 »

Does it have the ability to block vanilla event handlers?

So for instance, if casting a PSI power sends a message to the player to, say, increase their armour, would we be able to intercept this and say "ACKCHAULLY, don't do that at all"

Defining new archetypes in Squirrel could be interesting, but DML should still be good enough for most purposes (except for creating objects with physics - so I hope that's fixed)

That's an interesting scenario, I'll look at this, but I believe it should be.

Do mention any dbmod issues, if there's any I want to make sure we fix them, including better ways to add or change scripts and args.

Dml's are still preferable for directly altering vanilla game stuff or mission content.


I have brought up the possibility of having dml's only apply to the gamesys below it in priority order, just to stop that thing where vanilla dml patches has to be told to not apply to scp, so want to check what people's opinion is on that one.
Posted by: sarge945
« on: 12. December 2024, 02:20:01 »

Does it have the ability to block vanilla event handlers?

So for instance, if casting a PSI power sends a message to the player to, say, increase their armour, would we be able to intercept this and say "ACKCHAULLY, don't do that at all"

Defining new archetypes in Squirrel could be interesting, but DML should still be good enough for most purposes (except for creating objects with physics - so I hope that's fixed)
Posted by: eldrone
« on: 11. December 2024, 08:34:57 »

So, I've been working a bit on various squirrel side tools and systems:

There will be a new general player script where you can register handlers, essentially eliminating the need for future player scripts:

You essentially create a handler class, register it with the player, and it can grab any information it needs as well as subscribe to all kinds of messages related to the player, including frame updated, and a more solid way to know when the game is actually ready.

As an experiment I've made a simple debug handler that parses the entire pool of objects every frame and just draws information about them on screen at their location and any link connections and it just works.


On top of that there will be archetype creation available straight in squirrel so one could unify an entire new object in one single .nut

With those archetype tools templates can also easily be created so you can have very simple archetype creation.


But also: reaching the script instances of various objects should be fairly easy now.
Posted by: icemann
« on: 02. December 2024, 07:19:26 »

Ba dum dush.
Posted by: voodoo47
« on: 01. December 2024, 16:00:10 »

not gonna run on a Voodoo3 though.
Posted by: eldrone
« on: 01. December 2024, 15:38:21 »

Does Night Dive have an official stance yet on fans taking upgraded SS2EE assets and making them available for use in vanilla SS2?

Quite a bit not my area so can't really say anything about that, it's legal-zone. But I'd guess it's the distributing the files that'll be the problem.

But disregarding that, half of the stuff will be problematic to get to work in newdark, but absolutely possible, but once someone has this new version of the game there's really no big reason to move back to newdark, it's a much more optimized thing that supports anything newdark.
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 30. November 2024, 18:40:27 »

Does Night Dive have an official stance yet on fans taking upgraded SS2EE assets and making them available for use in vanilla SS2?
Posted by: eldrone
« on: 27. November 2024, 20:17:46 »

...
Posted by: eldrone
« on: 27. November 2024, 20:14:31 »

eldrone
Are you going to make a Blender plugin for making animations? Like exporting .nut file with animation coordinates? Also would it be possible to edit interpolations between frames?
Can absolutely be done, but not sure if I'll have enough time for that.
Posted by: eldrone
« on: 27. November 2024, 20:14:01 »

I am somewhat concerned about the performance impact of invoking a scripting language to perform real-time animation effects, especially things like reloading that are likely to happen in the middle of combat. Yes SCP uses scripting for animation too, but since it's an optional mod we can get away with just warning people that it has higher system requirements than the base game.

Essentially a non issue,

And it's way more things behind the scenes, there's an entire rig system there, calculating the rotations of interconnected points every frame and some raytests as well. So it's not just when an animation happens, but it's all the time, it's every frame for every single idle movement and camera based lerping going on with the viewmodel.
But out of every performance related thing that's come up, squirrel has never been brought up, squirrel is fast enough.

We're even implementing some per-frame entry points instead of having to rely on high-speed timers.

It's such a small part of the picture these days, there's a ton of overhead.


If anything I want to encourage the community to go more crazy with squirrel, there's a ton of space to do more system like scripts instead of just small things on stuff, and you can do much of the very same things that are done in the actual sourcecode of dark engine.
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 27. November 2024, 16:59:34 »

I am somewhat concerned about the performance impact of invoking a scripting language to perform real-time animation effects, especially things like reloading that are likely to happen in the middle of combat. Yes SCP uses scripting for animation too, but since it's an optional mod we can get away with just warning people that it has higher system requirements than the base game.
Posted by: dp_flint_4
« on: 27. November 2024, 15:46:33 »

eldrone
Are you going to make a Blender plugin for making animations? Like exporting .nut file with animation coordinates? Also would it be possible to edit interpolations between frames?
Posted by: eldrone
« on: 27. November 2024, 10:26:17 »

And essentially the setup for making animations as it is now would be adding a .nut with this in it:

Code: [Select]
// Add the 'Shotgun' category
g_weaponAnimations["Shotgun"] <- {};

//============================================================================================================
// shoot
//============================================================================================================
g_weaponAnimations["Shotgun"]["shoot"] <- NDPointRigAnimation("shoot", 30, 100, {
   // Weapon
   "weaponModel" : [
      { "frame":0, "pos":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0], "rot":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0] },
      { "frame":2, "pos":[-1.5, 0.0, 0.0], "rot":[0.0, -4.0, 0.0] },
      { "frame":16, "pos":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0], "rot":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0] },
      { "frame":22, "pos":[-0.3, 0.3, 0.0], "rot":[20.0, -15.0, -30.0] },
      { "frame":28, "pos":[-0.3, 0.3, 0.0], "rot":[18.0, -15.0, -30.0] },
      { "frame":48, "pos":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0], "rot":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0] },
   ],

   // shotgun pump
   "joint1" : [
      { "frame":0, "pos":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0], "rot":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0] },
      { "frame":20, "pos":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0], "rot":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0] },
      { "frame":23, "pos":[-0.6, 0.0, 0.0], "rot":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0] },
      { "frame":26, "pos":[-0.6, 0.0, 0.0], "rot":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0] },
      { "frame":29, "pos":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0], "rot":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0] },
      { "frame":99, "pos":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0], "rot":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0] },
   ],   
});
Posted by: eldrone
« on: 27. November 2024, 10:17:18 »

Another little extra made possible now via the new viewmodel scripts:
Posted by: icemann
« on: 22. November 2024, 03:14:17 »

And something other games cover more a broad range of range of. Like in OG Silent Hill 2, upping the difficulty not only increases enemy counts + damage you receive but only also increases puzzle difficulty and how many of them you encounter. Some like Thief have additional objectives at higher difficulties.
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 22. November 2024, 02:22:00 »

And there is no reason why, if this hasn't been done before, that it can't be done in this new version.
Such a feature would technically be very easy. The reason games don't do this is because games are supposed to present a balanced out-of-the-box experience. That's why the sort of OCD tweakery you seem to be unironically requesting is usually hidden in debug menus or left to mods.

Even the original System Shock's level of customization is unusual.
Posted by: sarge945
« on: 21. November 2024, 23:14:23 »

Who cares about console gamers?

With the state of modern consoles being what they are, anyone who uses one deserves an inferior experience.

Still fighting that save scumming addiction I see.

It's an addictive and destructive drug which has destroyed countless communities.
Posted by: JDoran
« on: 21. November 2024, 23:04:12 »

Are there ANY games with such absurdly granular difficulty customization?

I don't know of any to that extent, no. But some games do have several definable skill related options, yes. And there is no reason why, if this hasn't been done before, that it can't be done in this new version. And I do think some people would like this feature.





System Shock 2 already has an extensive system for modifying all of the difficulty settings you mention. It just requires a text editor and knowledge of dml.

That's not going to be option for console gamers, though, is it? And not all PC gamers are going to want to have to familiarize themselves with DML, instead of using a few easy to use sliding bars in the New Game difficulty screen, I'd say.



It's probably better for them to focus their efforts on things that aren't currently fixable by the community (like the multiplayer, etc) than to implement things the community can already do.

I'm certainly not saying that the definable skill setting should be a priority for the developers, or that it should take their attention from any other features (though since you mention multiplayer, I doubt many people would miss that), just that it's something I hope that they consider adding to the game. I would find it interesting to try.
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 21. November 2024, 17:34:31 »

Still fighting that save scumming addiction I see.
Posted by: sarge945
« on: 21. November 2024, 16:31:01 »

System Shock 2 already has an extensive system for modifying all of the difficulty settings you mention. It just requires a text editor and knowledge of dml.

It's probably better for them to focus their efforts on things that aren't currently fixable by the community (like the multiplayer, etc) than to implement things the community can already do.

On that note

I would be eternally grateful if the squirrel services were updated to add functions to enable and disable manually saving the game with both the menu and quick save keys, disable or enable autosaves, and a function was added to create a quick save or autosave via script. Finally my "QBRs are actually gave points" mod idea can come to fruition
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 21. November 2024, 15:12:11 »

Are there ANY games with such absurdly granular difficulty customization?
Posted by: JDoran
« on: 21. November 2024, 14:58:55 »

[I copied this post from another thread, in case Eldrone is more likely to see it here]


Eldrone, are there any plans to have a definable difficulty mode in System Shock EE? I mean, aside from Easy, Normal, Hard, and Impossible, then a difficulty mode where the player can choose the values for, say:

- Enemy spawning rate

- Damage done by the player to the enemy

- Damage done by the enemies to the player

- The cost of items in vending machines

- How many Cyber Modules do skills cost

- The chance of finding random desired objects

- Hacking difficulty

etc.

All of these values would individually be settable from 0 % to 1,000 %, with 100 % as a setting being equivalent to what it would be in a usual game at the Impossible difficulty level. My two all time favourite games, Goldeneye and Perfect dark, do this and it's great because it allows really skilled players to make more difficult challenges for themselves.

Although perhaps settings such as 'Damage done to by the player to the enemy' and 'Damage done by the enemies to the player' should have 1% as a minimum instead of 0%, otherwise it would be quite literally impossible.  O_o

But if some suicidal lunatic fearless, mighty warrior wants to put 'Damage done by the enemies to the player' to 1,000 %, 'Enemy spawning rate' to 1,000 %, and 'Damage done by the player to the enemy' to 5 %, so as to REALLY have a challenge, then he or she can try it.
Posted by: icemann
« on: 21. November 2024, 14:23:06 »

Dual wielding be very cool.
Posted by: eldrone
« on: 21. November 2024, 10:42:23 »

Anyway, here's another theory I tested on how far one could take custom weapon stuff, entirely funny-dumb example. (disregard some broken stuff)

Still just one static model, works with the vanilla assets too, but two of the new viewmodels existing at the same time is no problem, I just mirrored the predefined weapon offset in squirrel for the second viewmodel.

So if someone were to mod in a second equipment slot, it could absolutely be fully possible to do proper dualwielding, or possibly Psi amp + firearm combo in some way.

Posted by: eldrone
« on: 21. November 2024, 10:38:27 »

Yeah, I feel like being able to add new sound schemas, strings, and motions dynamically in mods would be sweet.

They're all being looked into, that's all I can say for now, but no promises.
Posted by: sarge945
« on: 19. November 2024, 01:58:15 »

Yeah, I feel like being able to add new sound schemas, strings, and motions dynamically in mods would be sweet.
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 18. November 2024, 20:05:20 »

Oh boy, the pressure is on now!
Posted by: dp_flint
« on: 18. November 2024, 15:53:10 »

I hope eldrone will provide feedback regarding the sound schema limitations.
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 18. November 2024, 14:48:18 »

He means mods can't add new sound schemas at all.
Posted by: voodoo47
« on: 18. November 2024, 12:32:35 »

yes, this is the dml phys props limitation. also you should be able to edit that post now.

not aware of any issue with adding sounds though? I mean sure, they have to be in that annoying ADPCM format, but that's not a big deal. maybe you mean the sound schema count limit?
Posted by: sarge945
« on: 18. November 2024, 12:24:37 »

Honestly, the big feature us modders need is proper string file support and the ability to add custom sounds.

Adding scripts to the last script slot dynamically is cool and all, but already somewhat doable with some script hacking. It's pointless unless we also have DML concatenation for properties like DesignNoteSS so that script parameters can by preserved between mods without being overwritten.

Please see my DML Wishlist for more information about this and other limitations.

Also, I can't edit that post for some reason, but another thing to look into is making objects created via DML have actual collision and work properly. Currently, objects like crates created via DML can be walked through as if they don't exist, and if you ever cross the 0,0,0 location in the map, will instantly teleport to 0,0,0 and become solid. This desperately needs fixing. The current workaround is to spawn a marker where you want your object to be via DML, and then either using NVScript or some custom squirrel to actually spawn the object at it's location, which is tedious and annoying.
Posted by: eldrone
« on: 17. November 2024, 07:47:11 »

Impressive. And yeah, Looking Glass/Irrational did like to use Gouraud shading on large flat surfaces to crudely simulate per-pixel lighting.

gouraud was pretty much standard at that time, but what they didn't want to do was split up edges because they likely were very strict on the vertex budet.

Splitting up an edge would require unique vertices for both sides of that hard edge.
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 15. November 2024, 14:22:20 »

Impressive. And yeah, Looking Glass/Irrational did like to use Gouraud shading on large flat surfaces to crudely simulate per-pixel lighting.
Posted by: eldrone
« on: 15. November 2024, 07:14:49 »

ZylonBane
But as an example: Here's one test .bin I used to see that these things were working properly (and yeah, I know, cubemap orientation is borked atm):
Posted by: eldrone
« on: 15. November 2024, 06:55:33 »

Hypothetically, does this also mean you can decouple arm models from weapon models, so a mod can now reflect a player career choices/level actions? So you could have a Navy arm-sleeve for players choosing Navy, a different Psi arm-sleeve for Psi players etc? If so, that'd be fantastic news. I know there's newer SDKs for Half Life 1 that allow this e.g. mappers can now more easily have the player use scientist arms, then change them to HEV arms, when the player gets a HEV suit later on.

Absolutely, please release those tools if you can: there'll be a whole new audience checking out Enhanced Edition & thus potentially a new generation of modders, so easier to use tools, would be a godsend. Even if we have to pester Nightdive on your behalf, hopefully it won't come to that!

Most of it is batch-scripts to work with already existing exporters for blender for example, it could work with any kind of exporter.

It sort of parses a blender scene for collections, and uses their name and other information, then passes that on to the actual exporter and does a behind-the-scenes exporter without the dialogue window.

So I just keep a collection with the name of the .bin file, and the config just sets up the path to whichever mod folder I'm using.


But on arms: Yeah, technically it's already decoupled and could be material-changed to have different arm textures, but that requires a bit more work, but the arms just use one texture now for both melee weapons and ranged weapons.

On another note, I know I'm the dumb, incredibly naive ideas guy, there's a ridiculous amount of complexity involved and so on. You've said here previously, that the Half Life 1 method of "put a skeletal animation joint on the mouth, with the audio file volume controlling its movement" won't work on the vanilla models, as there's not enough space on the vanilla models for such a method, which is 100% fair and valid. No point in having a solution that doesn't work both with vanilla and enhanced models!

However...for very obsessive/determined modders who don't mind deliberately breaking vanilla model compatibility, would it possible to add in a mouth joint, that's not working in the game only due to an deliberate "typo" in the code? So for FM authors or campaign modders, they can easily fix the "typo" to enable it, albeit it'll obviously only work with Enhanced Models? HL1's method allowed for both plain maps & vastly more expansive mods, to implement custom dialogue very easily. Just make the custom sound file in the required format and voila: no need to muck around with face posing, syncing up mouth movements etc like in later games. Plus it's from 1998, so it'd be era appropriate for the level of graphic fidelity Enhanced Edition is going for.

Like anything, any improvements in these areas would require ripping out the entire skeletal mesh system in dark engine, which is not the easiest feat, and I've already bumped into so many areas where I wish I had this ability.
Posted by: eldrone
« on: 15. November 2024, 06:49:27 »

They always used object face normals. I'm guessing you mean they now use the Gouraud normals.

They didn't use any information from the model, it created a new polygon per polygon, flat shaded.

Now it's always using the normals of the vertices and drawing it in one pass, so you can have any combination of smooth and flat shaded surfaces, so safe to say a flat surface is still going to be a flat surface.

Seems like it would be preferable to extend the MTL syntax to allow selecting whether face or Gouraud normals are used for a material.
Well that isn't true. Its utility may be limited, but it's perfectly functional in NewDark. For example you can use it to make screens fade out when viewed off-center, simulating the display characteristics of LCD panels. I've used it to simulate snow sparkle, by making bright pixels appear and disappear on the surface as the player moves around.

It's up to the model data. If it's an entirely smooth shaded model, it'll be treated as such, and if it's a hardshaded cube or similar by design, it will be so.

Since EE is essentially using an all-new renderer, would it be safe to assume that the glitches when Gouraud-shaded and non-rectilinear textured polygons are partially offscreen no longer exist?

Yeah, I think that's the case.

There's been a bunch of optimizations in this area, but I can't go into specifics.
Kex is a framework, a sort of layer, so most of the work has been in actual dark engine code.

One thing for example is that I've made all doors actual properly shaded objects with hard edges where you would expect them to be, and you're very likely aware of what happens when you change doors from a smooth shaded object to one with hard edges where the side of the door is a flat surface instead of a gouraud rounded blob.
Posted by: Livo
« on: 15. November 2024, 06:08:23 »


Looking into .dml's and having them be applied in mod order to avoid having to worry about patch-dml's of vanilla patching mod gamesys...

Personally I've been looking as much into the viewmodel (arm and guns) as I can, and concluded it should be possible to bypass weapon stuff and make custom weapons that don't have to follow the limitations of the hard coded system.

The new weapon stuff currently parses all the information from weapon properties, as well as a few additional NVscript args to build up the new viewmodel, and it's entirely in squirrel, this allows for post fire ejection of shotgun shells and can be extended to anything imaginable.

I'm doing some research into making melee weapons more easy and flexible, including an idea to have the melee weapon viewmodel pick the world model and attach it to an empty handed viewmodel, so that new melee weapons could be implemented without having to touch rigged meshes.

Hypothetically, does this also mean you can decouple arm models from weapon models, so a mod can now reflect a player career choices/level actions? So you could have a Navy arm-sleeve for players choosing Navy, a different Psi arm-sleeve for Psi players etc? If so, that'd be fantastic news. I know there's newer SDKs for Half Life 1 that allow this e.g. mappers can now more easily have the player use scientist arms, then change them to HEV arms, when the player gets a HEV suit later on.

There'll be a toolset  (collection of scripts and batch files) I hope I can release in the future to make asset-exportation way more seamless than it is now, I have it down to one .bat file to export models from blends, textures from .psd's, animations, scripts, dml's, compile a motiondb and copy them all into a modfolder, in just two clicks, and the setup is just a single config file.

Absolutely, please release those tools if you can: there'll be a whole new audience checking out Enhanced Edition & thus potentially a new generation of modders, so easier to use tools, would be a godsend. Even if we have to pester Nightdive on your behalf, hopefully it won't come to that!

On another note, I know I'm the dumb, incredibly naive ideas guy, there's a ridiculous amount of complexity involved and so on. You've said here previously, that the Half Life 1 method of "put a skeletal animation joint on the mouth, with the audio file volume controlling its movement" won't work on the vanilla models, as there's not enough space on the vanilla models for such a method, which is 100% fair and valid. No point in having a solution that doesn't work both with vanilla and enhanced models!

However...for very obsessive/determined modders who don't mind deliberately breaking vanilla model compatibility, would it possible to add in a mouth joint, that's not working in the game only due to an deliberate "typo" in the code? So for FM authors or campaign modders, they can easily fix the "typo" to enable it, albeit it'll obviously only work with Enhanced Models? HL1's method allowed for both plain maps & vastly more expansive mods, to implement custom dialogue very easily. Just make the custom sound file in the required format and voila: no need to muck around with face posing, syncing up mouth movements etc like in later games. Plus it's from 1998, so it'd be era appropriate for the level of graphic fidelity Enhanced Edition is going for.
Posted by: ZylonBane
« on: 14. November 2024, 17:12:55 »

envmaps/cubemaps/incidence now uses normals of objects ... no more faceted objects
They always used object face normals. I'm guessing you mean they now use the Gouraud normals.

you can still split up edges to get proper normals here
Seems like it would be preferable to extend the MTL syntax to allow selecting whether face or Gouraud normals are used for a material.

incidence is absolutely amazing and was completely unusable in newdark previously
Well that isn't true. Its utility may be limited, but it's perfectly functional in NewDark. For example you can use it to make screens fade out when viewed off-center, simulating the display characteristics of LCD panels. I've used it to simulate snow sparkle, by making bright pixels appear and disappear on the surface as the player moves around.

Since EE is essentially using an all-new renderer, would it be safe to assume that the glitches when Gouraud-shaded and non-rectilinear textured polygons are partially offscreen no longer exist?
Posted by: eldrone
« on: 14. November 2024, 08:21:19 »

Just a tiny update on things, and this will be more on the technical side this time.


There's work going into figuring out various weird quirky limitations, I've been deep diving into the workings of the engine for months now.
And these words will be as is and can't be taken as definite (things can change):



How mods are being combined and prioritized are being worked over a bit more, such as possibility of combining string files in a better way.

Looking into .dml's and having them be applied in mod order to avoid having to worry about patch-dml's of vanilla patching mod gamesys.

Materials now fully work on ai meshes just as they do on static meshes.

envmaps/cubemaps/incidence now uses normals of objects and are drawn in one pass, no more faceted objects (but you can still split up edges to get proper normals here) (incidence is absolutely amazing and was completely unusable in newdark previously)

more dynamic script application is being discussed (first empty script slot etc), and a way to concatenate arguments in the script argument properties via .dml's, so you can add or replace a previous script arg.

Personally I've been looking as much into the viewmodel (arm and guns) as I can, and concluded it should be possible to bypass weapon stuff and make custom weapons that don't have to follow the limitations of the hard coded system.

The new weapon stuff currently parses all the information from weapon properties, as well as a few additional NVscript args to build up the new viewmodel, and it's entirely in squirrel, this allows for post fire ejection of shotgun shells and can be extended to anything imaginable.

I'm doing some research into making melee weapons more easy and flexible, including an idea to have the melee weapon viewmodel pick the world model and attach it to an empty handed viewmodel, so that new melee weapons could be implemented without having to touch rigged meshes.

There'll be a toolset  (collection of scripts and batch files) I hope I can release in the future to make asset-exportation way more seamless than it is now, I have it down to one .bat file to export models from blends, textures from .psd's, animations, scripts, dml's, compile a motiondb and copy them all into a modfolder, in just two clicks, and the setup is just a single config file.

Right now the enhanced asset stuff is very likely to depend on SCP to work, and it's waay more extensive than was planned in the beginning, but as always: SCP (and the other mods) are fine without it.



There's a lot of things going on behind the scenes as always, everyone is very busy, so I appreciate everyones patience, and the contributions that makes this possible.
Posted by: Nameless Voice
« on: 02. September 2024, 21:34:32 »

Sure thing, Tony.
Posted by: icemann
« on: 02. September 2024, 03:54:35 »

Never know what hit em.
Posted by: voodoo47
« on: 01. September 2024, 15:19:19 »

that's my actual ringtone.
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