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Plan for Trent "mittens" Polack

Name:	Trent "mittens" Polack
Date Posted:	Jul 16, 2005
Rating:	4.0 out of 5
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Blog post

Bug hunting in the transfer of starter.fps from Torque Game Engine to the Torque Shader Engine.

I didn't work as much as I had hoped to on porting the "starter.fps" demo from the original Torque Engine to the shader engine. Primarily because of sleep, calc 3 homework, the Auto Assault beta, and the premier of season 2 of Battlestar Galactica... Though I did get a few hours of work in, and here's what I've accomplished (then what I've figured out).

First I was able to get the orc textures to display; the problem was simply that one of the game's scripting files relied on a folder that wasn't there. Here's what the orc looked like after I changed this:

[image]http://polycat.net/gallery/albums/earlytorquetests/orcunshaded.sized.jpg[...

I had to re-enable shader materials to get the orc's material shaders to work correctly, which I disabled for reasons that I'll cover in a moment, but it was certainly worth it when I saw them in action:

[image]http://polycat.net/gallery/albums/earlytorquetests/orcshaded.sized.jpg[/i...

Something about the model still strikes me as being a bit "off," but I'll tweak that a lot more when I get the rest of the demo working correctly. After I had accomplished this "feat" (remember: any victory, despite size, is a big victory when programming), I went back to focusing on fixing the "see-through" interior buildings. The only objects with this problem, which is basically that the buildings have taken a liking to using the skybox textures, are DIF interior files; which are, basically, a Torque equivalent to Quake MAP files... These are the files that Torque uses for its interior maps/components which are managed through a BSP scene management tree (just like the Quake games). I posted a picture of this yesterday, but here's a link to it for a quick recap. Anyway, I disabled the following lines in materials.cs (the demoMaterial function can be found below the commented-out lines):

demoMaterial("MtlPilrFront","interiors");
demoMaterial("MtlPilrBottom","interiors");
demoMaterial("Mtl","interiors");
demoMaterial("F","interiors");
demoMaterial("Wall_filler1_01","interiors");
demoMaterial("Floor_tile01","interiors");
demoMaterial("FlrFiller3_01","interiors");
demoMaterial("WalMtlbase1_01","interiors");
demoMaterial("FlrFiller3_01","interiors");
demoMaterial("Filler_tile1_01","interiors");
demoMaterial("oak1","interiors");
demoMaterial("oak2","interiors");
demoMaterial("oak2_end","interiors");
demoMaterial("thatch","interiors");
demoMaterial("Floor_slate01","interiors");
demoMaterial("WalNoGroove","interiors");
demoMaterial("Wall_block01","interiors");
demoMaterial("stonewall","interiors");
demoMaterial("Wall_panel01","interiors");
demoMaterial("MtlPilrTop","interiors");
demoMaterial("cottage_detail","interiors/hovels");

function demoMaterial(%name,%dir)
{
   %com = "datablock Material(Demo_"@%name@") {"@
      "baseTex[0] = \"~/data/"@%dir@"/"@%name@"\";"@
      "pixelSpecular[0] = false;"@
      "specular[0] = \"1.0 1.0 1.0 0.1\";"@
      "specularPower[0] = 32.0;"@
   "};";
   echo(%com);
   eval(%com);
   addMaterialMapping(%name, "material: Demo_"@%name);
}

Once I disabled these lines, I got the interior/DIF objects to look like this:

[image]http://polycat.net/gallery/albums/earlytorquetests/tseinteriorbug.sized.j...

This image shows that the actual DIF skin is now in-game, but it is fighting with the previous "see-through" skin as before. Also, when I disable the lines above, the shaders on the orc cease to show up, which leads me to believe that the problem with the DIFs is related to materials. In short, the focus on my bug-hunt for this damn thing is getting narrowed down, and I'd expect that I'll figure out what's going on tomorrow. Then I can port over my GUI changes to this, and play around with the shaders.

Also, I'm looking for some help with some art assets for my game (very dark, very moody, kind of a mix of fallout/diablo/quake kind of thing) if anyone is feeling bored. Specifically, I need a bunch of buildings/textures for the prototype level I'm planning for the prototype work I'll be doing on the game. So if you're interested, just comment below. Off to bed.

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David Stewart (Jul 16, 2005 at 06:04 GMT)

Hi Trent,

I wondered what it would be like to use the starter.fps in tse.

I do not have tse.

I've read that there are differences in the dif format between tge and tse. Perhaps that is causing a problem.
I don't know if there is a dif converter yet or if there will be.

Timothy Aste (Jul 16, 2005 at 08:31 GMT)

That is true, all interiors need to be recompiled with the TSE version of Map2DIF.

Thijs Sloesen (Jul 16, 2005 at 10:25 GMT)

Trent!

You here?! You never told me! :P

-- Epidemi

Josiah Wang (Jul 16, 2005 at 14:44 GMT)

Lol i missed Galactica last night - gotta torrent it somewhere...

In any case, it looks like good progress...I can testify to the fact that any accomplishment, small or large, is a victory ^^

Trent "mittens" Polack (Jul 16, 2005 at 16:26 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

I'm using the TSE version of map2dif. Though I'm not sure if I'm building the maps wrong with it as I just drag the MAP files onto map2dif. The progress that the build goes through makes me think nothing is going wrong on that end, but I'm not sure.
Edited on Jul 16, 2005 17:06 GMT

Sam M (Jul 16, 2005 at 18:06 GMT)

whooo, bsg! That's all i have to say, except to comment on the shiney pictures.

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