PlaneShift
Development => PlaneShift Mods => Topic started by: Venalan on July 21, 2014, 02:34:23 am
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Hey everyone.
So for a long time I have tried to 'fix' long standing art bugs, and had good success for a while. Recently this progress has slowed so I decided to release all the fixes I've been able to do using the released art independent of an art update. I hope at some point I can get the master copies to fix the same art in the released client.
So please download the changes and use them. They are generally quite small 'fixes' but some have a big impact on the art, this is one of the bigger examples.
(http://i59.tinypic.com/2v2gm87.jpg)
Most of the changes I've made are involved with the 'mipmaps' which are the versions of textures which show when you are further away from an image. With these fences when you are very close they look fine, but as you move away they look worse, this is what I've tried fixing.
Unfortunately I don't have the skill to make this an automated install process so you will have to modify the materials.zip file manually.
how to do it:
1a - Download this zip unofficial texture updates 1K V1.1 (https://www.dropbox.com/s/g27qn923j68k81l/unofficial%20texture%20updates%201K%20V1.1.zip)
1b - Download this zip unofficial texture updates 2K V1.1 (https://www.dropbox.com/s/z70fzm8m61xp3yb/unofficial%20texture%20updates%202K%20V1.1.zip)
2 - extract it somewhere.
3 - locate C:\Program Files (x86)\PlaneShift\art\materials.zip
4 - Copy the materials.zip file to somewhere like the desktop (you could then rename the original file to maintain a default copy).
5 - Copy the files from the extracted download file into materials.zip.
6 - Copy and replace the original materials.zip file (unless you renamed it when it will just copy it).
****You should now have changed the official art for my unofficial edits.
7 - load PlaneShift and play as normal.
I hope this was clear, I've had some testers and they were able to do this and enjoy the adjustments I've made.
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I would have done that years ago. But Talad seems to have insisted in using the bugged output of a possibly misconfigured DDS converter until CrystalSpace would release an own converter. Which probably still didn't happen.
I was never granted access to the original material, to avoid accumulation of artefacts by recompressing already DDS-compressed art (which has blocks and reduced color depths).
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For those of you who are using PSExtended (http://greatshift.111mb.de/psextended), the mod package by Neeno: The modloader (http://greatshift.111mb.de/modloader) feature allows you to easily replace textures, for example with this unofficial update, while keeping your materials.zip unmodified. This is very convenient, not only if you want to run the updater!
So, to use Venalan's art update with the modloader, - get the zip file Venalan linked above,
- drag and drop a mod.xml file into the zip,
- put the zip in /planeshift/art/mods/ and
- Enjoy.
The mod.xml is just a text file with the mount path. You could either just copy the example file that comes with PSExtended (from /planeshift/art/mods/redrobe_ylianm.zip), or you can copy/paste the following text to a new mod.xml:
<xml>
<mod_information>
<name>Unofficial art update</name>
<author>Venalan</author>
<description>mostly fixes to minimaps </description>
</mod_information>
<mount_path>/planeshift/materials/</mount_path>
</xml>
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I've done a little more editing.
Comments?
(http://i60.tinypic.com/28mffc6.jpg)
(yes an armoured riverling!!)
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Sweet!
But can it swim?!
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Like a stone!
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The riverling is stylin' and landscape looks great! :thumbup:
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haven't uploaded the latest yet? linked file is 3 days old.
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Ahh you did it! :D
Looks fantastic!
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Well, now, that is an Armored Riverling! :)
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Very nice armor Venalan. However, I am not sure what the original riverlings looked like up close as I always gave them plenty of space when traveling. Nice job on the landscape as well. :)
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I had always assumed "armored riverling" meant like a turtle shell. Does this mean riverlings are intelligent and advanced enough to smith their own weapons/armor? Or are they like hermit crabs and find armor laying around to occupy? Or I suppose it's possible that the riverling body could convert minerals in the water and food supply into a protective casing over time, like our bodies do with calcium to make bones.
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No riverlinga.dds in the mod package? So I guess that is a preview. I am really curious about the changes to the terrain, and wonder if this is mostly a result of smart settings in plslaunch and fixed scaling problems. Either way, the ground texture looks great in the screenie.
Back to armored riverlings: The art for these has been around from the very beginning when riverlings were introduced to the game. However, something is messed up really badly with the UV mapping for lateral symmetry, so the poor thing looks like a floating bunch of texture patches. I think someone tried to fix it long ago, maybe that was Moja, I don't really remember.
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For the armoured riverling, both versions of this creature have a different texture files which both have different mapping (layout of the art). This results in the normal riverling looking fine, and the armoured riverling looking like it does with lots of random bits of texture all over its body and lots of 'invisible' bits which correspond to 'empty' parts of the texture file. What I tried to do was rearrange the texture using the basic riverling as a template. This has resulted in a much better looking final model, BUT, it's far from perfect. Ideally someone who is actually an artist needs to remake the texture, but in the mean time I love it :D
The above picture was a preview as I've been (I hope) improving the ground+rock textures further as I get a little better with making this stuff. Today I remade the sky map, and I'm just testing it.
For the texture improvement, I did not change anything in pslaunch. It's simply better textures.
And for Illysia
(http://i62.tinypic.com/2ed5mjd.jpg)
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Oh, I remember, someone already offered a patched texture long ago. Was it Minks?
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So, I've gotten to a point that I wanted to let people play test.
Now, before you get this and use it be warned that there are places the new art looks better than before but still not great. Places like the Oja central roads look a little off but there is nothing I can do about that unless someone edits the maps as they look just as bad in the default game.
Instructions.
There are two versions, a '1K' and '2K' version. This is the resolution of the new textures I made. If you have an older computer then you might find the 2K version adversely affects your FPS. When I have been using it I've seen a ~5fps drop, and I've had some play testers and they have reported a very limited drop in FPS. But there will likely be cases when people find these much larger textures drop FPS more.
1a - Download this zip unofficial texture updates 1K V1.1 (https://www.dropbox.com/s/g27qn923j68k81l/unofficial%20texture%20updates%201K%20V1.1.zip)
1b - Download this zip unofficial texture updates 2K V1.1 (https://www.dropbox.com/s/z70fzm8m61xp3yb/unofficial%20texture%20updates%202K%20V1.1.zip)
2 - extract it somewhere.
3 - locate C:\Program Files (x86)\PlaneShift\art\materials.zip
4 - Copy the materials.zip file to somewhere like the desktop (you could then rename the original file to maintain a default copy).
5 - Copy the files from the extracted download file into materials.zip.
6 - Copy and replace the original materials.zip file (unless you renamed it when it will just copy it).
****You should now have changed the official art for my unofficial edits.
7 - load PlaneShift and play as normal.
I look forward to hearing comments.
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(http://i62.tinypic.com/2ed5mjd.jpg)
My, what giant floating teeth you have. ;D
You know... I just don't think Riverlings are big huggers. That looks... inconvenient. :whistling:
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Hi Venalan, it's indeed well done! \\o// \\o//
So far I noticed a weird behaviour of palm leaves in Ojaveda: if you rotate your view around the palm tree, you notice some background leaves oddly appear as if they are on the foreground. Anyway, I'm not sure if that's a problem of your mod or if it has always been there.
P.S.: unfortunately Planshift seems not "Fraps friendly" because it hang up each time I run Fraps, so I can't make a video showing what I mean.
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Hi Jawir I'm glad you like it. I looked with my install and it seems to be the same the same. You actually get the same behaviour with the plants around the back of brado's tavern. So it seems to be some problem with the game engine not knowing how to layer the models/textures correctly in terms of how far away from you they are. Nothing I can do with that.
I really hope that the people who use this spread by word of mouth about getting it.
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Jawir, imagine, PS even supports video recording via CS plugins. I just don't know where to get a custom built client; and it may work better as linux build, I believe to remember...
Do you mean bamboo leaves? They can certainly cause some strange effects due to texture transparency not being considered correctly (there are different possible side effects, one may be "hyper-transparency" which makes you look through all geometry down to the sky spheroid).
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@Venalan: i tried reverting to the original materials.zip and even on my notebook: the problem is still there so it isn't caused by your mod.
@Ligh: I didn't know that, unfortunately I have never been able to compile the client from sources. The subject here is the palm tree's leaves not the bamboo, it seems the engine is doing quite a mess with z buffer... or at least I think it could be that the reason.
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Not sure which palms, maybe in Kore ... but yes, certainly. Objects with partially transparent textures need a special handling, a specific sorting and additional rendering (some with, some without Z buffer altering) to be rendered correctly. This does not happen everywhere in Yliakum how it is supposed to be. One reason may be that the world map generation is not up-to-date, or has wrong flags set in configuration nodes.
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Hey Venalan, I really like the new environment textures. Last time I roamed the BDR area (in search for some giant...) I was struck by the new looks of the terrain - it really adds a lot to the atmosphere and feel.
One tiny suggestion: Maybe it avoids confusion if you link your latest work in the first post.
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I'd totally forgotten to do that Bonifarzia. I also updated the topic name with the update date.
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More players should try these awesome terrain textures. Maybe another screenshot or two will help?
(http://psps.psde.de/images/unoffArtUpdateSnap1.thumbnail.jpg) (http://psps.psde.de/images/unoffArtUpdateSnap1.jpg)
(http://psps.psde.de/images/unoffArtUpdateSnap2.thumbnail.jpg) (http://psps.psde.de/images/unoffArtUpdateSnap2.jpg)
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Much better. And maybe there will also be normal maps in a coming version...