Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Need a dispenser here!

Mentlegen,
Sorry for the lack of updates, I am on a vacation to focus on my health. Turns out that having your monitor as the primary source of light and stacks of empty pizza boxes by the chair is not much good for the human body. Leaving mortal issues aside, here is the update to the skin pack. This contains skins for the engineer's buildables and a few fixes. Here is the download:
TF2 Tron v0.3
I would like to thank MugenOverlord for helping me on this one. Now, about the future of this skin pack, there are a few points I would like to talk about. First: Visibility. TF2 has a distinct art style and the lighting model that it uses makes the characters stand out in every type of environment. The Tron skin pack changes a lot of the details over the characters, and I have personally felt that it sometimes makes the characters harder to spot in a few scenarios. If the environment too is skinned as as the characters (black and dark shades of black with contrasting bright colors), depth perception takes a hit. See the video in the previous blog post for reference. Sure it looks pretty, but you can't play with that setup for long; it affects gameplay. Now this point is open for feedback, I feel that a lighter environment shade (see the snow in koth_viaduct, cp_coldfront) is ideal for characters skinned like this. Not exactly snow white, but partially desaturated and toned brighter so that the contrast between the characters and the environment is maintained. We can absolutely have the Tron style particle effects. Here, these images show what I mean:
Against dark environment

Against brighter environment
These images don't have glow on Solly's lines, but you should get the idea.

Second point: The weapons and hats. Just looking at the sheer number of hats and weapons we have in the game right now (and more are getting added day by day), skinning all of them is going to be a huge task. This, therefore, is not a priority right now. I plan to finish the maps and the HUD first, and then the weapons and hats.

Third point: I need help with all this stuff. It's a lot of work, and I can't sneak out enough time out of my job and gaming sessions. I need people who can texture stuff and are familiar with the Source SDK. I am new to the source SDK myself, and have to figure out a lot of stuff myself. It also needs to be tested for gameplay. For people willing to help, please add me on Steam, and thank you a lot.
Update: We have created a Google Group for collaborating. Turns out Steam chat isn't the most convenient way of discussing stuff. Please go to this page and request an invite : TF2 Tron Google Group

I really appreciate all the feedback received so far, and hope to get more. Stay tuned and keep pushing the carts.

Cheers!

20 comments:

  1. thank you for fixing the demoman skin, it was annoying. Do you know a way for the buildables skins to bypass sv_pure 1?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Can you provide a changelog-style list, of what was fixed in this update? I use these textures as custom models for players to equip if they want, on my server, and I want to know which files I need to update and which ones I don't. I assume the demoman skin was updated, but was there anything else?
    Thanks. What are the buildables you added?

    ReplyDelete
  3. When I tried to download this on Chrome I get and error "Error 310 (net::ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS): There were too many redirects." I got it downloaded when I switched to a different browser, but thought you might wanna know..

    ReplyDelete
  4. @ 4cbd56fe-5a73-11e0-84af-000bcdcb471e: no, i have no idea how to bypass the sv_pure 1 flag.

    @ Bionik: the demoman skin was updated, and engineer's buildings were added (sentries, dispensers, teleporters and mini sentries - all levels).

    @Matt: Strange, I use chrome as my primary browser, and i never encountered any such stuff.

    ReplyDelete
  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I do what you said in your .txt and don't work in my game...
    No skin, nothing any solution ?

    ReplyDelete
  7. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Not sure if you knew this or not, but there is a slight exploit with the current skin and a Spy with DR. Slight, because it doesn't happen all the time. When you 'kill' a DR spy, his decoy body doesn't fall.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Can't get the skins to work for the engie buildables.

    ReplyDelete
  10. There is a slight mesh issue with the dispenser. At certain angles, the E/F meter screen will disappear, showing the surfaces behind it.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I like the black one with the white lines

    I've played TF2 for thousands of hours the way its suppose to look

    I downloaded your pack to make TF2 look like tron

    Its just not Tron without black and white lines

    ReplyDelete
  12. Perhaps you could skin 1 hat for each class.
    Particularly the engineer's festiviser and the dr. dapper's topper.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Made a video with your skin pack. Also linked back to this blog.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBgb1wi7VO8

    ReplyDelete
  14. I no its a little late but u20090218, thats a pretty sweet video

    ReplyDelete
  15. Hey! Those Tron skins for the Soldier are amazing! Have you submitted them to the contribute site? Anyways, I started a TF2 blog called TheDevilsWaffle's Blog-0-Rama!, check it out sometime and return the love!

    ReplyDelete
  16. Can this be added to a hosted server?

    The files/folders on my server don't look the same as yours. Is it still drag and drop? Or do I just need to place them on the server as I would on my PC?

    Maybe this is a noon question, but thanks for your help.

    ReplyDelete
  17. I'm having a hard time making this skin pack work. I put the player folder in the models, and it still isn't reading them :/

    ReplyDelete
  18. Hi,
    You have really shared the wonderful post, you blog is also very informative. You have done the great research in this topic. Hand Soap Refill Bags

    ReplyDelete
  19. Wow, What a Excellent post. I really found this to much informatics. It is what i was searching for.I would like to suggest you that please keep sharing such type of info.Thanks Best oil dispenser

    ReplyDelete
  20. On my website you'll see similar texts, write what you think. tf2 items

    ReplyDelete