Improving some low-quality original objects?

[ZylonBane]

While the new winebottles are a big improvement, why not darken the regular wine bottle to match the same tone as the original, so that it will be less easy to confuse it with the finewine?

Ditto this. While long-time Thief players know that the green bottle isn't loot, the new texture -- with its gold seal and gold-edged label -- makes it look as if it is. "Junk" object textures should always look dull and matte.

[Nameless Voice]

ZylonBane, Vigil You must have missed the part in my list where I pointed out that the textures for the side of those coins is rubbish and needs to be replaced with a proper texture at some later date. For example, a texture made by photographing a stack of coins (fancy that!) rather than just throwing together a blob of coin-coloured stuff and drawing some lines accross it.

And Nameless Voice, your objects look good - I only hope that their poly-count is good as well.

Well, the poly counts are higher on most of the objects; I think I may have been getting a little carried away on some, especially the apple and the sword model I just made a few moments back.

I think the new pouch skin is too smooth - it could really do with more folds like the original... how about making the model sag rather than having the neck come straight out? That was something that always bugged me about the original.

Ah, well, I built around the shape of the orignal, which is why it looks so similar.
That texture was actually made from a photo of a velvet pouch, though perhaps not a sufficiently crumpled one.

While the new winebottles are a big improvement, why not darken the regular wine bottle to match the same tone as the original, so that it will be less easy to confuse it with the finewine?

I'll try that and see how that looks. Remember that those screens are brightened, though.

I managed to throw together a candle texture from some images I found on the Google Image Search. It's not the best, though.
Vigil, do you think you could let me have the one you made?

I'd go one step further than that, and say that anything that uses textures from txt16 is highly unlikely to look good either

There are a few good ones. b]bell2.gif[/b], for example. Some of the plates, banners, and painting aren't too bad, either.

[Eshaktaar]

Made a new Up/Down Switch:



It's 112 triangles and uses one 128x128 bitmap (standard Thief palette) instead of three seperate ones. The red handle is part of the texture now.
Since I painted the texture at 512x512 I could have saved it at 256x256, though that'd be a bit overkill, I think.

Edit: Here's the link: updnlever.zip
Note that I named the object updnlevr.bin - if you want it to replace the regular switches, rename it to swchupb.bin

[ZylonBane]

Wow. That's amazing-looking.

However...

The old switch looks like a simple sheet-metal box held together by rivets. The new switch, with its beveled edges, looks more like a single die-cast piece, in which case what are the rivets for?

This sort of thing will be a continual challenge for a project like this. Yes, the old models are simple and low-poly due to when the game came out-- but in many cases the models are simple additionally because they're supposed to be representative of extremely primitive technology.

[SubJeff]

The rivets hold it to the wall don't they? Looks good

[Vigil]

Looks fucking fantastic, actually. Great job, Eshaktaar.
Also, I doubt the thing about the rivets will occur to many people - it didn't occur to me until you mentioned it.

[R Soul]

And he teases us by not giving us a download link

[Eshaktaar]

Oops - I edited the post to include a download link.

Zylonbane's right, that occured to me when I painted the rivets. I could change them to screwheads and pretend the casting's got thick walls and screw threads inside.

[Nameless Voice]

*Sneaks in, grabs the lever and wanders out, so impressed he forgets to complain that the lever was on his todo list*

Now I think of it, those rivets do look a little odd. Maybe they hold on the back of the lever box?

[The_Dude]

Has anyone used Vigil’s excellent replacement skins for the footlocker. I have used them in my mission and they look good. However, doing so also replaces the texture for the lockbox but it only appears to replace the front texture of the lockbox not the sides which looks decidedly odd.

Is this me or is it a problem with the skins?

[R Soul]

The textures used on the footlocker overwrite the ones in obj.crf, but not all of the textures used by the lockbox were used on the new footlocker.
Download the containers again. They've been updated to fix this.

[The_Dude]

Dang!

[Harpalus]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but seeing as the .crf files are just zip files, wouldn't overwriting the files inside avoid any of the aforementioned problems? Or is there something I'm forgetting?

[Eshaktaar]

We'd need an installer which takes care of manipulating the .crfs and restoring them to their former state if the user wants to. Anybody care to whip up a foolproof program?

[ZylonBane]

Something I'd love to see fixed is the picture frames. As Esh explained to me a few months back, the texture warping you see on some objects is caused by textures being mapped into non-rectangular shapes. If someone can come up with a frame graphic that's pre-distorted into the proper trapezoidal shape, it should be possible to avoid this behavior. Or something.

[R Soul]

I must have missed that one, or I wasn't into object texturing back then, so I'm glad you've mentioned it now.

The frame texture is stretched and tiled.
It can be planar mapped quite nicely, and the wobbling texture seems to be eradicated.

I also noticed that the back of the frame is really fussy, yet the player will barely see it, i.e. wasted polys.

I redid the frame of one painting and have made it look a bit more solid. I've also put a texture onto the back so you can use it as a secret door.

Just one painting for now:
http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/...te/paint31.zip

What do you think?

I'll work on more tomorrow when I'm less tired and in a better frame of mind.

You had your chance All of them are now in this thread

[Nameless Voice]

Okay, I've added the poly counts of the objects to the list above. Let me know which ones you think I've gone overboard on.
I'll have to see about putting the package up somewhere, too...

[Eshaktaar]

I'll have some more switches and buttons in the same style as the up/down lever later on.

[redface]

Just wanted to ask: can the stuff posted in this thread be used by FM makers right away or should we wait for it to come in an official release pack ?

[R Soul]

They way I see it is: If you don't want someone to use something unitil a certain time, don't put a download link in a public place unitil that time has arrived

I can't speak for others but my stuff can be used right now. I'd rather see some of my improvements used in peoples FMs than have everyone wait wait wait until I've done everything.

[Nameless Voice]

I've just uploaded a 'demo' with some of my improved textures/models for people to look at.
People are free to use them in their FMs, bearing in mind that they are not completely 'finished' yet - I might tweak a few of them some more later, particularly based on any feedback I get.
Oh, and I'll probably be mapping a few of those Txt16 textures to use the standard Txt palette if I can manage that without loosing too much quality.

<s>Enhancement Pack Demo</s>
EDIT: URL removed. Download the demo instead (link found further down this post).

Eshaktaar: I look forward to seeing them. I was just thinking that some of the other levers (flat up/down, BigFloorLever, etc.) are very similar to the one you made, and could be built fairly quickly using the same texture.

R Soul: Those sound good. I'll have to take a look.

[Eshaktaar]

Thanks. So far I've got the labeled up/down switch, all the arcing levers, the normal button and the alarm button. What remains is the jump switch (started remaking it) and some of the button variations.

I decided to give the red lever handles a material with some self-illumination (at 25). This should make them about as visible as the old ones without looking odd.

[Lady Rowena]

NV, I had an error message from Winzip.
Was it a demo mission or just a group of objects?

[Speesh]

That zip archive seems to be corrupt, I tried downloading it multiple times and couldn't open it. Can anyone else get it?

By the way, these upgrades have been great so far . Maybe I'll have time to get to some myself.

[R Soul]

The problem seems to be with wdplnks4.gif