[Placing ambient-lights]

Works like a charm!!

Just saved me 2 days of boring "move up and down dummy one-by-one"

Np. I made the script to do spare myself some hours, I might as well share it so that others can do the same

[Placing ambient-lights]

Does anyone know a fast way to align my ambient lights (which is a helper-dummy) to my terrain?

here you go:

macroScript Move_to_z category:"Grin tools"

(

fn g_filter o = superclassof o == Geometryclass


fn find_intersection z_node node_to_z =

( 

local testRay = ray node_to_z.pos [0,0,-1] 

local nodeMaxZ = z_node.max.z 

testRay.pos.z = nodeMaxZ + 0.0001 * abs nodeMaxZ 

intersectRay z_node testRay 

)


if selection.count > 0 then

(

target_mesh = pickObject message:"Pick Target Surface:" filter:g_filter

	if isValidNode target_mesh then

	(

	undo "MoveToSurface" on

		(

		not_moved = #()

		for i in selection do

			(

			int_point = find_intersection target_mesh i

			if int_point != undefined then i.pos = int_point.pos

			else

				(

				format "Did not find surface: %  \n" i

				append not_moved i

				) --end if

			)--end i loop

		select not_moved

		)--end undo

	)--end if

)--end if

)

This is a maxscript that will take all the selected nodes (your 700 dummies) and when you click on a surface they will move straight down (in Z axis) until they hit the surface, afterwards they move up 1 m which is a good placement for ambient points.

In max, goto mascript>new script paste the script and hit run. Now you will have a macro installed, you can then go to customize>customize user interface and bind the script to a hotkey or a quad menu so that you easily can use this function. You find the command in the grin_tools category.

Good luck with that map

[What are the size maps people are making?]

*bump*

I'm curious about this too. I have a rather large map, and I don't want to put more work into it if something similar is going to happen to it...

Well there is no actual limitaions in size. The playable area in most SP missions are within 700*700 m and then spawns in a 10000*10000 m big backdrop. What matters is how much objects and houses you use.

whenever you crash there is a crash message that might help you determine what caused it. Whitout it and a description what you did it's very hard to know what is wrong.

[New Patch Map Editor Bug?]

Dont quote me on that but thats what it seemed to me.

I'm quite sure it was this:

Some units do not have collision, and can not be removed from within the editor. The level designer will have to delete them from the world.xml file.

Ex: “marine_corpse_on_backâ€, “marine_corpse_against_wallâ€

[Map script help]

When reading error messages, the first line after crash message is important. it says what file and at what line the game crashed.

"data\levels\custom_levels\blackhawk_down\blackhawk_down.xml (59): Expected identifier"

This says that you have a error in blackhawk_down.xml on line 59, if that is your whole xml file, you have missed to end the script data tag.

begin by adding a </script_data> to the end of the file.

[Sky Environment]

The light cube decides the lighing, not the post effects.

You mean the realtime shadows are calculated from that source aswell?

Or is it just the appearance of a sun in the sky?

Sorry, a bit unspecific.

When calculating lightmaps, the light cube decides the lighting Sorry about that. Ingame there is a lightsource at the sun of course, and post effects to enhance the mood.

[Sky Environment]

I was wondering if someone could tell me how to make the sun in my sky be at high

noon. I noticed some settings in the xml for the sky. It had rotation, pitch, yaw.

Can I edit the xml to make the sun be at high noon? I played with the xml a little

but no luck so far.

If you go to the sky layer you can move the sphere by pressing your arrow keys left and right, and the easiest way to get high noon effect is to choose the light cube from mission 02 or 03, 08 or 09 which are day missions. The light cube decides the lighing, not the post effects. i think it will be aligned to the rotation of the sky layer.

[Mission07?]

It's no hidden or unlockable content or anything, just a mission that was suggested but later scrapped from all versions.

But since we had already named and started creating the later missions we kept the names of them to avoid bugs, otherwise mission08 would have been named mission 07.

[M4A1 Carbine]

to make a custom mag is the correct procedure both for alignement and uv reasons, so good job with your progresses (I know how you feel when you finally see your meshes into the inventory )

I know that feeling Good job

The bullet is for mags that have bullets left. If you look at empty mags the bullet is gone, on halfempty and full mags you see the next bullet. It's seen in mags on hte ground and when reloading.

As there are max objects named body01 and body02 its a bit confusing. The tag makes bodies, the names of the objects is not important - to clarify:

The body01 and body02 are just objects names in max called body01 and body02 that form the mags collision. Since they are both specified whithin the main_body tag they act as only one body.

[REASON for blue minimap]

I suppose it is like this. As tga is a four channel format, when the map is rendered into the file it writes in all channels.

Now if you did want a mask - say that you did a map like the severs map in the bda-pack, the alpha would already contain that mask so that you could paint everything else black. If you don't want the mask it's quite easy to remove.

On the other hand, it seems like that's not what's causing this since a tga with no alpha still doesn't render. I'll ask the programmers what is actually causing this and see if there is a solution.

Another thing to try. Try to raise the levels of the file so that you have no pixels that are 100% black. if the RGB value is 0,0,0 it might read that as transpancy as well. Easiest way to fix this in PS is to replace all the 0,0,0 with 1,1,1. Or add a layer with "screen" as blending and that is filled with rgb 1,1,1.

[BIG BASH!]

Will be at the beach. Labor Day weekend and all, y'know...

I can't then (hope you didn't change it because of us ) But still, I think some other grin people will be there

But why not have a monthly bash? Easier to plan according to then

[Blue background in minimap]

-Athenian' date='Aug 24 2006, 11:18 AM' post='412101']

Well I tried that using the circular brush as white and "painted" in the alpha channel layer all white. Though it didn't seem to make any difference in game. Would using "fill" instead of painting make a difference? I'll try it and see though. Is there anything else that needs to be done other than just saving it? Thx for the replies.

Tried making the alpha channel all white using the "fill" with no change. Gonna try a fresh install tomorrow. Maybe I messed some settings up or something along the way. Thx for the replies though.

Hmm. No, it should not matter how you get the alpha channel white...might be some other thing.

Try this if you use photoshop - when you save the .tga , uncheck the alpha channels checkbox. That should save the file as RGB, not RGBA and thus directx should consider the alpha as 100% solid.

[REASON for blue minimap]

Maybe this helps...it's talking about images in general,but I assume it also corresponds to the channels in a TGA file.

"Direct acquisition of luminance requires use of a very specific spectral

weighting. However, luminance can also be computed as a weighted sum

of red, green and blue components.

If three sources appear red, green and blue, and have the same radiance

in the visible spectrum, then the green will appear the brightest of the

three because the luminous efficiency function peaks in the green region

of the spectrum. The red will appear less bright, and the blue will be the

darkest of the three. As a consequence of the luminous efficiency function,

all saturated blue colors are quite dark and all saturated yellows are

quite light. If luminance is computed from red, green and blue, the coefficients

will be a function of the particular red, green and blue spectral

weighting functions employed, but the green coefficient will be quite

large, the red will have an intermediate value, and the blue coefficient

will be the smallest of the three."

So it seems Blue has fewer bits..

I may be way off here....

I think I may be in over my head, and I realise I really shouldn't have started a new thread that is leading no where. Sorry guys...just a little ###### off with this problem, mainly because I completely do not understand it.

You are right, but a bit off

Tga also supports a alpha channel RGBA, which is used by directX as transparancy. Black is transparent, White is solid. Therfore you'll see the colour of the graw UI though black areas of the alpha channel from the .tga.

What you need to do is open it in a image editor that you can edit the alpha channel in (as Photoshop or gimp) and colour the whole alpha channel 100% white. This does not affect the RGB colours in any way, it's a separate 8 bit channel

[Blue background in minimap]

-Athenian' date='Aug 23 2006, 11:26 AM' post='411843']

Well thx for the response, very much appreciated. Unfortunately my photoshop skills only go as far as resizing and changing the pictures format. I did manage to find the alpha layer and where it is blue in the minimap is black in the alpha layer. Where the minimap rendered correctly is white, so you might be on to something there though. But don't have a clue how to make the alpha layer all white.

Not sure if I did it right but I painted the whole map in white in the alpha channel but it didn't effect the minimap. Still looks the same. Maybe I didn't make the alpha channel completely white correctly. Thx for the info though Bumbi. I opened up some of my other maps and looked at the alpha channel and the ones that worked correctly in the minimap were mostly white with a few black areas.

Then it is the alpha that makes it. The alpha is a mask, and Directx reads it directly as transparancy...

In photoshop, goto channels, select the alpha channel only, the fill it with 100% white. Save it and it should work fine.

[3DS Model problem]

Constructive!

A wee bit better description than falling through a black hole would be nice.

It crashes when you spawn the object?

It crashes when you spawn inside the editor?

You can't stand on the object?

I don't understand.

[Blue background in minimap]

-Athenian' date='Aug 23 2006, 01:16 AM' post='411733']

Well maybe someone from GRIN can comment on this. If it's just a bug and needs to be fixed or something that everybody is doing wrong. Most likely it's just a bug that needs to be addressed in the next patch.

Just a idea - not sure if it works. Take a look at the alphachannel of the tga and make all white.

[graphic_group]

<graphic_group name="scar" culling_object="gfx_body_loda">

<lod_object name="scar_body">

<object name="gfx_body_loda" shadow_caster="true" max_distance="500"/>

<object name="gfx_body_lodb" shadow_caster="true" max_distance="1500" instance_struct="world_tm_ambient_cube"/>

<object name="gfx_body_lodc" shadow_caster="true" instance_struct="world_tm_ambient_cube"/>

</lod_object>

</graphic_group>

So, this is all referring to lod's and such. I assume these are part of the diesel file? I don't know much about Max, so I'm just going to guess here. You have 3 objects in the diesel file(or max file) with the names gfx_body_loda, b, and c? Or, is there some way to define lod's in max and they share the object name scar_body in this case? Can anyone elaborate on this?

object_name="gfx_body_loda" is always the name of a object in the max scene - what follows in the same tag is the properties you want to give the object in the Deisel engine.

graphic groups are for LODing (Level of detail) objects - so that the engine knows what objects are in the LOD.

[BIG BASH!]

Wish I could be there - I'm gonna go see Pablo Francisco on Saturday night, though. Sorry, you don't get to pwn me.

I knew there was something!

I'll be around afterwards though - if Ulf still remebers I wanted one of the tickets.

Sorry guys :(

[BIG BASH!]

Make a biweekly or monthly thing out of it if the first one shows enough interest?

Ubisoft can afford the servers!

I've been waiting patiently for a chance to get PWNt by the GRiN guys! They owe me for all the smack I talk about them being from Finland and stuff....

soudns like agreat diea would be fun to take them dwon hehehe

@ willie (yes im tired and stupid thing seem funny )

how about 21.00 UTC? That would be early morning next day for australia and midday US.... right? Russia/china/japan will have to be up late, but then again - that's the period of the day where your gaming skills are at maximum

or maybe even later so that I can get som performance altering liquids into my blood before the match

[BIG BASH!]

Great initiative Angel.

I'll negotiate with the headquarters, but I'll do my best to be there for you guys.

I hope we put up multiple servers so that everyone can join in... not that there is more than 7 people playing this game according to some sources

[BDA SERVER AND MAPS]

Have had them for a while but played them yeasterday.

Great maps, I like what you have done with the sever parts!

[Jobs at GRIN]

LOL

I played Rome Total War and as a RTS it's dam good, teaches good strategy.

viii

p.s. nice to hear it's not all work at Grin HQ

Rome Total War is good, Barabarian Invasion is also nice, but Alexander is not

And Evil Genius was a fun game, I liked to torture people with the lab stuff

And all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy

[Change map for Day to Night]

num thats too bad there must be some way to do it... so far the forcing the lights to work is working fine... so i will stick with that and keep trying new things. Thx for the idea and the testing there of

Load up the map you want to use, select post effects from a night mission (5 or 11) and hit export. Haven't tried this, but it should work

[Finally bought GRAW]

I stopped by Gamestop, which is half a mile from my house. Dude was coming out of the store w/GRAW in his hand, they wouldn't take it as a trade. They had several already. I offered him a fiver. He took it.

So now I can give our server copy back to Abomb, and if my squad decides to play GRAW (after some more patches) then I'm good to go. If not I think I can get my five back by selling it on EBay.

Anyhow, I got a great deal dontcha think?

Come on, drop the pride admit that you did buy it at full price

Anyways, I'll be on the servers if you want to reply to this joke with a lethal shot, see you there

[My perspective!]

Man. What to say?

It's always nice to see someone that has good perspective on life and it's inspiring to hear that you have such a positive thinking even through the difficulties you have. I sincerely hope you do get better...

...and you can shoot me anytime if it helps