Saturday, 20 April 2013

Getting a new keyboard, mousepad, small computer upgrades...

I got a job a couple of weeks ago, and so far I've gotten some more RAM for my computer, and my mousepad (Puretrak Talent) is on its way. I need to wait for my check to get verified before I can get my Ducky mechanical keyboard (Cherry MX Red switches), and that's going to be damn fun to use.

After my keyboard, I think I'm going to wait for the Ninox Aurora mouse, and then get that.

As for actual work on things such as Skyrim or Minecraft maps, I'm waiting for cpu to finish his minecraft > map converter. I got some more RAM, which will help a lot with compiling light, though I'm still a bit lacking in CPU horsepower. I might delve back into Skyrim maps, because the real problem I had was light: the maps were all really disappointing and disheartening, because I had to compile in fullbright every time - my computer couldn't handle all the intense light settings I was using. I may still need to dial back the settings somewhat because my processor sucks, but RAM limitations should be more or less gone for now. I might have updates soon.

And as for Minecraft maps, if I get a new GPU before CPU (lol) finishes his mc2map, I will be able to clean them up somewhat in Radiant. The biggest problem, aside from it taking forever (200,000+ brushes in a relatively small map, 90% of which need to be removed), is that I can't render all the tris in Radiant, so I get about .3 fps, which I can't operate with.

Just because nobody but me ever looks over these, I decided to write down a note to save on brush count but increase the amount of textures: if there's a section of flat ground that can be combined into one brush, but there are multiple textures (for example, dirt and grassy dirt), I can make a new texture for that one section, tiling the textures myself. I don't think, considering how well tga compresses, it will be a huge problem. All of the Minecraft textures combined are only about 1mb when zipped up.

As always, here's a picture of what I have been working on: a minecraft-themed jump map. I still haven't been able to beat it. It's really fucking hard. Also, there are a lot of stylistic things I need to fix or change. I want to make the textures tile properly, but I don't think that's possible, at least not with my skills. It's a little annoying how badly the textures tile across edges on cubes...
It's really easy to light, but it looks like ass with my current settings. I recreated the map inside Minecraft to see what it looks like, so I might go from there to make it look alright.