Marathon 1 Redux

Discuss and unveil current Marathon projects.

player light setting - If there are no light sources, at what distance should things appear black?

light="0" -- In the dark you shan't be able to see your fist in front of your face.
0
No votes
light="0.1" - you can see your weapons and walls/monsters you're right up against
6
50%
light="0.2" - current setting on 0.0.13-alpha, you can only see about 1 WU
1
8%
light="0.3" - current setting on git, you can see for about 2 WU.
1
8%
light="0.4" - you can see about 3 WU, most things are visible
1
8%
light="0.5" - original setting, you can see for about 4 WU, only very large areas are black
3
25%
 
Total votes: 12
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Cyborg
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Thanks for the visual resources and feedback, I'll see if I can work with this style. I've also been looking for ways to make the rendering more efficient, so I should be able to improve the rendering quality if that pans out.

Also, feel free to use this stuff however you want.

As for what samples are:
For the most part, raytracing is a method of rendering that produces an image by simulating individual randomized paths of light en masse. Each "sample" is one photon for every pixel in the image, with multiple samples being averaged together to create the appearance of a consistent surface. Fewer samples results in erratic shading, producing the grainy effect in this image (its like trying to create a population demographic map by only studying a few people per area)
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The Man
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Cool, thanks. When you get the render finalised, how much work would it be to make nighttime/midday variants? I assume the current render is sunset/sunrise, which looks amazing, but I do have a tendency to have three different variants of planet landscapes (at least, that’s what I’ve done for M2, M∞, Tempus, and Tim Vogel’s adaptation of Craig Mullins’ tower). It’s obviously not worth bothering making three different renders now if you’re going to be making more changes to the landscape, though. In any case, of the levels I have planned for the Tau Ceti arc, one currently is daytime, one currently is dusk, and one currently is nighttime. This can obviously change if it’s too much work to make different renders, but it would seem kinda weird to have the sun in the same position for all the different levels.
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” —V, V for Vendetta (Alan Moore)

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

“If others had not been foolish, we should be so.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.” —Frank Wilhoit

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ravenshining
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Heck, it's weird enough for the Marathon to constantly be in the same position above the colony, but unless I figure out a way for Celestia to output an equirectangular panorama, space will stay as it is.
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The Man
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Agreed, but the Marathon’s position in space seems somehow less conspicuous than the position of the sun. If that doesn’t change across several levels, that seems likelier to be the sort of thing large numbers of players will notice.
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” —V, V for Vendetta (Alan Moore)

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

“If others had not been foolish, we should be so.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.” —Frank Wilhoit

Last.fm · Marathon Chronicles · Marathon Eternal 1.2 · Where Monsters Are in Dreams · YouTube Vidmaster’s Challenge
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Cyborg
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Changing the time of day should be really easy, just a matter of changing the light direction/sky input vector.

I was thinking of making a post-bombardment version for missions that would take place after the spaceport is nuked, those would look best at night, I think.
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ravenshining
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Yeah, that would certainly be a bit different! The spaceport itself will probably be modelled on-map- intact for the prolouge, and then destroyed if you get to go down - but fighting/slaving on the colony's fringes would probably result in fires, smoke, and whatnot.
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Cyborg
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I could have the two skies be rendered from different locations, if the surface levels call for it.
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ravenshining
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At the moment, the colony missions are little more than nebulous ideas for objectives. I don't want to say more than I have, have you make something, and then wind up wanting to go in a different direction or cutting things later. For now, render what you enjoy rendering or what suits your ideas :-) I certainly appreciate your efforts, and it's nice to have you pushing to get me thinking.... but right now I need to write week-overdue lab reports.
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ravenshining
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So I was out of commission for a couple weeks there due to carpal tunnel syndrome, and right now am focusing more in Eternal as we're pushing for the release of 1.2 by the new year, but I'm still working on M1R!

Apparently I did some things before my hands went down on Smells Like Napalm, Neither High nor Low, and Habe Quiddam, but aside from fixing a few wrong scenery items on Habe Quiddam I'm not sure what I was up to.

Took a crack at that lava wall today. If you'll recall from the previous page, I'm trying to replicate this hue-shift effect from M1:

Image

First off, I brought back the upper and lower bands that were missing from the HD textures. Here's a side-by-side comparison- HD on the left, original in centre, my edit on the right, JPEG'd for the Pfhorums. warning, 3072x1024 if you click:
lava09-compare.jpeg
Here's my first attempt at glowmapping. I was hoping that the glow was applied additively, so I created the glow image by removing the blue and green channels and subtracted the result from the regular image. Unfortunately, it appears the glow is merely paced on top, not added, so while it looks okay in the dark (nevermind that it's being superimposed on the wrong texture in this screenshot), it looks all wrong in the light:
DefendTHIS_0000.jpeg
So, I resorted to a less elegant solution that works for now, unless someone has a better idea of how to go about this:
DefendTHIS_0001.jpeg
DefendTHIS_0002.jpeg
I don't like those sharp lines in the centre, I'll have to blend that. And make the upper & lower bands more transparent. Next weekend.
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The Man
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One possibility is to use two different textures. That might actually be the easiest solution. I don’t fully understand how glow maps work, though. If you can explain it, it might help me significantly with Chronicles, too!

Anyway, glad to see more updates here.
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” —V, V for Vendetta (Alan Moore)

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

“If others had not been foolish, we should be so.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.” —Frank Wilhoit

Last.fm · Marathon Chronicles · Marathon Eternal 1.2 · Where Monsters Are in Dreams · YouTube Vidmaster’s Challenge
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ravenshining
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I was just thinking that, having realised that the above is not going to work at all where the texture is used to meet lava.

Reading up on the MML documentation, I found an option for glow_premultiply. Theoretically, this should give me the ability to use additive blending. IIUC, a pixel with 0 alpha and nonzero RGB should blend additively with the underlying image. Unfortunately, when I set glow_premultiply="true" and use the attached DDS's, A1 still just overlays the image, treating transparent red pixels as transparent.
DefendTHIS_0003.jpeg
You can verify that the glow map is indeed red if you open lava09gm.dds in GIMP and transfer the alpha channel to a layer mask. Fill the layer mask with white, set the layer mode to addition, and paste lava09.dds underneath it, and you get the texture as it was, yellow striped.
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ravenshining
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Seeing as premultiplied alpha seems to be broken, I went and made several permutations of the glowing stripe texture - that is, separate in the Shapes file, but for the 1024x1024 version it's the same base texture with one of four different glowmaps applied. Voilà!
DefendTHIS_0005.jpeg
While I was adding new bitmaps to the shapes file, I thought I'd go and tackle another idea I've been considering - having a separate lava texture for Ouch polygons. With that done, I went and did a texturing / adjustment pass over all the lava or lava-containing levels.

Here's the incandescent liquid texture. Tim Vogel's M1 version, shifted towards the yellow to be more like the orginal M1 texture, and now with glow and alpha maps:
HabeQuiddam_0000.jpeg
And here's the new opaque lava texture. Tim Vogel's M1 lava texture multiplied by his M∞ lava texture, shifted towards red, plus a glowmap. Note that my weapons are down as I've just burned to death, and the little bit of liquid lava visible in the corner. The heavy grey fog is supposed to represent smoke and explain why there's no oxygen.
FireFireFireFireFire_0008.jpeg
And these nasty little pools have lava underneath incandescent liqud! You'll take damage extra fast if you stand about in here:
FireFireFireFireFire_0011.jpeg
Of course, I got sidetracked with things, and did a lot of work especially on Fire! making the liquid in the bridge room rise as the platforms do, and setting up various lights and platforms so the switch raises the bridge when on, lowers it when off, won't prematurely interrupt a raising or lowering in progress, etc.

Later, after much mucking about on Try Again, I threw up my hands and decided to do the level over, this time basing it on the VMC version rather than M1A1. Then I realised I had spent all day on this and it's getting late, so I saved my partially-completed Try Again into the Try Again II slot for now.

All this, including a merged map, is up on git! Mind you Try Again is horribly ugly at the moment and there may be glitches elsewhere.

Of great help to all the Weland work was discovering that I could enter .save level into the A1 console for an original M1 map! Texturing and items and some other things get all out of whack, but it's nice to see how the original is put together without having to fire up Pfhorte!
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The Man
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Looks cool. I definitely like the idea of multiple lava textures.
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” —V, V for Vendetta (Alan Moore)

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

“If others had not been foolish, we should be so.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.” —Frank Wilhoit

Last.fm · Marathon Chronicles · Marathon Eternal 1.2 · Where Monsters Are in Dreams · YouTube Vidmaster’s Challenge
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ravenshining
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Randomly had some ideas for Try Again. Just experimenting...
Tryagain_0000.jpeg
Tryagain_0002.jpeg
Tryagain_0001.jpeg
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treellama
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ravenshining wrote:Of great help to all the Weland work was discovering that I could enter .save level into the A1 console for an original M1 map! Texturing and items and some other things get all out of whack, but it's nice to see how the original is put together without having to fire up Pfhorte!
Yep, it will save it as an M2 map. I think I've mentioned that before as a way to open M1 maps in Weland. Maybe in this thread!
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The Man
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The lavafalls with dividing stones are a cool (figuratively, definitely not literally) idea.
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” —V, V for Vendetta (Alan Moore)

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

“If others had not been foolish, we should be so.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.” —Frank Wilhoit

Last.fm · Marathon Chronicles · Marathon Eternal 1.2 · Where Monsters Are in Dreams · YouTube Vidmaster’s Challenge
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ravenshining
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treellama wrote:Yep, it will save it as an M2 map. I think I've mentioned that before as a way to open M1 maps in Weland. Maybe in this thread!
Yeah, you mentioned opening a saved game in Weland, which I assumed meant a game saved at a pattern buffer. That method usually didn't work, so either typing .save uses some different code? or something got fixed between 1.3 alpha and 1.3 beta.
The Man wrote:The lavafalls with dividing stones are a cool (figuratively, definitely not literally) idea.
Thanks! Although that's definitely not a rock texture. It turns out having my red lava texture applied to a vertical surface next to a non-lava vertical surface doesn't look very good, and since Double Aught made that river 9 WU deep, I needed something mechanical-looking to put under the lava in order to restore the incandescent waterfall and have it look right. Then I went all-out and added the greebles.
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ravenshining
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Playing around with HUD ideas. These are just concepts I whipped up in the GIMP, not actual screenshots. Source XCF here.

First take, 1080p:
HUD1080.jpeg
Closer to classic layout, radar shifted up to make room for console, 1200p:
HUD1200.jpeg
Combined Weapon/Ammo panel, weapons manifest moved up next to net stats. The idea is the net stats panel would only appear in a net game, but maybe some other stats could display there for single player? Of course both the net stats and weapons manifest panels could be omitted and you'd just scroll through the inventory panel like normal.
HUD1200a.jpeg
At 480p the M1A1 HUD is probably better, but I wanted to try this for scale:
HUD480.jpeg
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Hm...I think the second one looks the best, mostly because the weapons manifest/ammo count's arranged where my eyes are used to going to. Also like the idea of inventory being displayed more visually.
welcome to the scene of the crash
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Lion O Cyborg
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For the flamethrower, my votes in the poll of realistic fire plus something else I shall explain:

Basically I want the flamethrower to function like this, but with Marathon 1 classic's benefits of not being burned by your own flames and more opportunities for using it as a jetpack, as M1 Classic was a bit lacking there:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CdCKx7Dd7I

The left flames part might require some jiggery-pokery so as it doesn't cause problems on maps with Bobs (mainly the escort missions, as they are winnable now) and/or friendly monsters, like the S'pht in Rebellion.
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ravenshining
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If I implement some sort of lingering flame effect, I'm not going to make you immune to it. In fact, I may use lua to drain your oxygen, too, for standing around in a confined space with a fire going :-) It will also deplete your oxygen supply while firing.

I could potentially make a jetpack feature, but not both. I'd just use regular Marathon flames and I think I can use lua to make them fly out the rear. I'll consider your vote for "other" to be a vote for jetpack.

If I do grenades, all bouncy grenade ammo will be in secrets, or possibly lootable off flamethrower-equipped security detachment corpses.

Hm... now, I like a lot of these ideas, so yet another possibility would be that the flamethrower starts out like the normal flamethrower, and you get a different upgrade depending on which plank you go down. I'm not sure how I'd like that distributed, but if I do that, definitely the grenade flamethrower is what you'd get for killing all the BoBs.
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Lion O Cyborg
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Regarding the fans including the ones in Never Burn Money, will they actually spin in Redux, like they do in Rubicon? I always thought it was strange in Marathon 1 that Bungie never actually animated the fan textures. I don't know if there were issues that prevented them though, except I do think the time they had might have been one. (as according to a retrospective on the trilogy i saw, Bungie wasted their time "play testing" netgames and had to fix the single player maps before the deadline, which was why it was pushed back to December 21)

Other than that, it still looked odd. The alpha I am playing of Redux doesn't have working fans in E1M3 (Arrival chapter map 3) so far, but it does add fan and pump sounds to their polygons.
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Lion O Cyborg
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ravenshining wrote:If I implement some sort of lingering flame effect, I'm not going to make you immune to it. In fact, I may use lua to drain your oxygen, too, for standing around in a confined space with a fire going :-) It will also deplete your oxygen supply while firing.

I could potentially make a jetpack feature, but not both. I'd just use regular Marathon flames and I think I can use lua to make them fly out the rear. I'll consider your vote for "other" to be a vote for jetpack.

If I do grenades, all bouncy grenade ammo will be in secrets, or possibly lootable off flamethrower-equipped security detachment corpses.

Hm... now, I like a lot of these ideas, so yet another possibility would be that the flamethrower starts out like the normal flamethrower, and you get a different upgrade depending on which plank you go down. I'm not sure how I'd like that distributed, but if I do that, definitely the grenade flamethrower is what you'd get for killing all the BoBs.
The last part sounds interesting. It's like with the alien weapons but what you get is determined by the plank. (I've only been on the full success plank in Alpha. I'm replaying to Habe Quddim right now before I continue)

The standing flame damage is fine with me; it's in Brutal Doom and Strife as well. I hope the two oxygen penalties were just a joke however, as they would take it too far.

The grenade flamethrower would function like the phosphorus grenades in Strife:

https://youtu.be/oPrU7LSqiX0?t=489

I've always wanted to see that flame spreading effect in Aleph One since seeing it in Strife, maybe even for an Aleph One port of the Veteran Edition.
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ravenshining
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Lion O Cyborg wrote:Regarding the fans including the ones in Never Burn Money, will they actually spin in Redux, like they do in Rubicon? ...

Other than that, it still looked odd. The alpha I am playing of Redux doesn't have working fans in E1M3 (Arrival chapter map 3) so far, but it does add fan and pump sounds to their polygons.
I made an animated fan texture quite a while ago, but apparently I never got around to actually applying it.

http://pfhorums.com/download/file.php?id=7487&mode=view

Also, please do not use DOOM-style level designations. I don't want none of that trash in here. Use the level name if you want anyone to know what you're talking about.
Lion O Cyborg wrote:I've only been on the full success plank in Alpha.
That's because the whole plank system hasn't been implemented yet.
Lion O Cyborg wrote:; it's in Brutal Doom and Strife as well.
Please stop talking about DOOM. I absolutely detest DOOM, as do many Marathon fans, and have no intention of making anything DOOM-like. If you want something, put it in Marathon terms, don't point at DOOM.
Lion O Cyborg wrote:I hope the two oxygen penalties were just a joke however, as they would take it too far.
No, I'm not joking about oxygen. If you want to be able to do something extra, you'll have to pay for it somehow, and mixing oxygen with flamethrower fuel sounds like a good idea to me. Depriving the player of oxygen is a very Marathon thing to do, after all.
Lion O Cyborg wrote:The grenade flamethrower would function like the phosphorus grenades in Strife:
No it most certainly will not. Please stop referencing other games.
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ravenshining wrote:DOOM
DOOM

...Doom.
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