╙🖇mods-making-discussion

[brave tartan]

right now that option is inside in Tools section

heres result >

[naive snow]

Well the filter is wrong

Otherwise looks good

[brave tartan]

so what do I need to set then, and do those settings are standard throughout all textures? ground/weapons/trees whatever?

[naive snow]

Is this for the UI texture or a gun?

[brave tartan]

nah thm is not neede for UI right? if ure not making some kind of fancy 3D style UI I think. Im mostly working on enviromental textures, ground,cars,trees,grass,metal,wood etc

might do weapons

and just in case if setting is differnt woudl be great to know correct settings for UI/hud too

will makes notes for myself

foudn your conversation with grok about mip filter etc but its too advanced for me to fully understand xD

I guess mip filter should be Kaiser same as in nvidia tool

[naive snow]

Mip filtering is unnecessary for textures that don't have MIP like UI

You also don't need Bump for those, so the only real usage of THM is having the textrue format and texture type. The engine will still read properly the texture regardless of if you have a THM for those

For environments you do need the mipmaps and actual filtering method, almost all textures use Kaiser for filtering because it makes things sharper further away

and for environment you'd of course specify the actual Material and bump height if you have a bump map

Don't forget to setup proper flags too

Foliage will have for exemple the Has Alpha, Binary Alpha (if you want really fucking sharp foliage), Generate Mip Maps, etc

[brave tartan]

Damn dont know at all what to choose for those flags. Material on the other hand need to check the list

[naive snow]

Most of the flags are self explanatory but are really really edge cases for super specific shit, you won't need those really

[brave tartan]

What about material weight how do I know what to add there. And bump height to its auto sets it to 0.5 but what is the height?

[median raptor]

does anybody know of a good mod that makes the armor models look nicer

prefferably just a whole graphics pack that improves the overall atmosphere

[naive snow]

Generate Mip Maps | Whenever you use mip maps
Has Alpha | Do you have transparency in your texture?
Binary Alpha | Do you want shades of alpha or do you want it to be either fully opaque or fully transparent
Alpha Border | Add a one pixel transparent border to the texture, mostly used with making objects fade to full transparency further.
Color Border | Kind of the same, makes the texture have a one pixel color border, like alpha for mip map fading.
Fade to Color/Alpha | Make the texture fade over distance to an alpha value and color
Dither | Put a dithering patern over the texture to reduce aliasing and make things blend better, see picture for dithering
The detail stuff is used for detail textures that are overlayed onto the other textures, mostly for terrains

[naive snow]

Material weight is for terrain layer blending, don't worry about it.
Bump height is to set the strenght of the bump map for the object.

[surreal gust]

axr toolset?

i use it sometimes but never for unpacking or packing .db files

it can be inconsistent

[brave tartan]

Oh its those where road connects with grass texture and goes in patches so that setting makes more or less of those patches or smth of that kind? And bump height how do I know how strong I want it? Like always the highest in what situation would I want it low?

[brave tartan]

And thanks alot for this will save it up

[naive snow]

Well too high of a bump will kind of break the lighting on the weapon or object. Like making the bump super high will make bolts and whatever in the normal map really pop out.

So you fuck around and find the right strength. Honestly, the default is enough for 99% of cases

[naive snow]

Material weight might be how much the specified material has an impact on the object with hindsight. I've never tested it in depth

Yeah that seems to be the case

[brave tartan]

so material weight depends on the selected material?

and what those materials even mean, except of metal not sure what are others

[surreal gust]

what's the difference between orennayar -blind and blin - phong

what kind of a bump difference will it make

[brave tartan]

will sum up few last question, sorry to bother u so much,

1. what materials names means? for example metail okay for metal sheets or pipes I guess but else?
2. material weight values as shown above will depend on material selected right?
3. texture format is DXT5 correct?
4. texture type? usually Image? but maybe terrain when I make ground texture or thats entirely different stuff?
5. and bump mode, with newest SSS it might make sense to set it to bump paralax ? or that doesnt work and just leave it on default?

[naive snow]

They are all different specular models

[surreal gust]

ik that they're specular

i wanted to know whats the difference between them

i usually use orennayar-blinn

in my terrain textures

[naive snow]

Well oren nayar is meant to be a substitute to lambert, it has less of dark edge fresnel vs the lambert model

[surreal gust]

I see

I have to figure out how to fix smooth groups for trees

When i export them (with fixed smg) they don't get applied

Nor in blender

[naive snow]

You need to edit not the suface normal, but the vertex normal itself

[surreal gust]

how

i just select the object and add weighted normals

thats all i did

[naive snow]

1. They're just different models so they'll modify how the lighting is applied to the object. How the specular from a light hits the material
2. Yes
3. DXT5 for objects, RBGA for the 8.8.8.8 stuff
4. You'd only change the texture type if you were importing cubemaps for the skybox, bump maps for bump maps, terrain for terrain masks
5. Parallax is to enable actual parallax on models. It's mostly good for stuff like brick walls or whatever.

[naive snow]

https://www.blend4web.com/doc/en/normal_editor.html

[brave tartan]

wow okay, saved all the pictures too xD, 4) so while doing main texture I use image, when I switch to doing bump use bump map, bump# ?, and cube map is for the sky specifically? thought skymaps are also simple textures so image?
5) so in case if Im doing smth (and that would be most thing I guess) that supposed to have "holes" like for example a hole in the ground from a shovel or deep car tire trail or smth and it supposed to look 3D like I use parallax, but in case of smth like metal pipe regular + bump is enough right.

[surreal gust]

it doesnt work

(the addon)

[naive snow]

4. Yep. Skyboxes are cubemaps unless Ascii changed the shader for those with Hippo
5. You could make the hole looks plenty deep like the car tire trail with simply OrenNayar - Blin, it's great for matte surfaces like frabric, terra cotta and such

[naive snow]

Find another one that does then, it's not a Xray thing, it's a blender question

[surreal gust]

Ok but what I meant to say is the addon crashed upon installing

[naive snow]

Just google the why then

[brave tartan]

okay think got all the info. excpet terrain masks u mentioned for terrain option is what exactly? sounds like smth with layers of textures?

[naive snow]

It's the mask that defines stuff like where grass will be, where the materials (dirt, asphalt, grass,etc) will be

Since it's purely masks info, you don't want any color modification or other color transformation applied to the textures

[brave tartan]

hmmm smth advanced, so basically theres a map terrain mask file which sets this road has asphalt nearby will be dirt and grass. smth like that?

thought it is set through simple configs or scripts, or I mean map file itself

[naive snow]

https://igigog.github.io/anomaly-modding-book/mapping/multimaterial-terrain.html

It's an RGBA texture that encodes in each of the channels the material weight

[brave tartan]

oh wait, so mby thats the thing which makes a random mud texture has some grass patches here and there?

[naive snow]

That'd be the details textures

[brave tartan]

yeah, so whats the exact difference bit confused sounds very similar with describtion

[naive snow]

The mask defines the core texture

Detail textures are textures that are blended on top to break paterns or repetition, they are things like grass splotches, cracks, that are layered on top of those core textures

Detail textures can be applied to any geometry like brick walls or concrete/cement blocks. It's not a terrain only thing

[surreal gust]

such as vehicles too

[brave tartan]

ooooh, so terrain mask is the one that blendes two or more textures together, and detail textures adds more details to make it look more seemingly like clutter, rocks on the ground etc etc can be whatever that fits?

[naive snow]

Like lets say I made a model that's a cement block, in the THM of the cement texture I'd specify another cement texture or a crack texture and apply it via the scale option

[surreal gust]

they're a bit hard to notice on other surfaces

also if you have a textures but that textures requires a detail texture that doesn't exist

the game will most likely crash

[brave tartan]

with your example, if I make brick wall, what would be my detail texture then ? lines between bricks or smth? cracks on bricks etc? why cant that be just done on the terrain mask lets say. to make pattern more randomized I guess?

[surreal gust]

modifying the terrain mask would require you to edit terrain main materials

since they won't match each other

[brave tartan]

so its more like a seperation into "layers" to make adjustments separately and more freely and that way when texture repeats again (terrain mask) it wont have same pattern of details texture(cracks?) so it looks more natural?

[naive snow]

Something porous or with with cracks

Basically so the object retains sharpness up close (if you texel ratio isn't all that good) you'd overlay a repeating texture at a smaller scale to represent pores or small details like rust

[surreal gust]

a texture doesn't need a detail parameter

it is entirely optional

[brave tartan]

eh, I wish I could find official work as a stalker developer its so interesting to learn all of this 😄

[naive snow]

Most modern games run at a texel ratio of 512/m
Meaning for an object that's 1x1x1 meter, you'd have 512 pixel x512 x512 displayed on it

[naive snow]

Become a game dev

[brave tartan]

I wish I could but where I live theres entirely zero gaming dev companies, especially who woudl hire rookie like me xD

[naive snow]

I actually had an interview with some of the CGC staff for a lighting artist position. Relocating to kiev wasn't feasable tho so I turned down the position

[brave tartan]

after readin bits of that github page u linked Im more confused agai nxD

[naive snow]

Just do remote work, the industry completly changed in the landscape in the last 3 years with covid, most studios now accept full remote. I've been remote with work for 3 years now myself

Plus you don't actually need any formal education paper, you'll get hired entirerly on your portfolio and work

[brave tartan]

I do not have diploma or any particular programing/designer skills, bit of everything here and there, so it woudl be woudl say impossible to get hired

right portfolio might help if I had smth to show other than, oh here I went into stalker files found how to dltx smth or here I foundout how an icon picked up inside texture drew a new icon, and repositioned it on the screen. 😄 would sound like a joke at the intervie

[surreal gust]

You should learn mapping for xray idk

its difficult but at the end

the feel of having forbidden knowledge

since my sdk is huge this is what I have to deal with every day

bypassable but i have click the mouse like 70 times to open the editor

and i wouldnt want to dig 150 gb to fix this

[brave tartan]

1. lets say Im making an asphalt road texture (thats Image option? right, as terrain mask would be a different file that connects this asphalt to lets say grass)
2. and detail texture is then Image inside thm? and Im confused xD

[final cairn]

Hi o/
anyone found a way to make wepl hit effects play at long distances ? it works fine on short ranges, would be great when sniping

[surreal gust]

Terrain mask colors have a meaning

[naive snow]

You'd be surprised at how many people we've actually bumped up in the interview schedules based on wheter they had done modding work. Because it's fairly valuable. It means you're not affraid of digging into files, making things work and learning by yourself. Someone knowing roughtly how the different jobs all work together and are tied together to make a finished product is a great skill

[surreal gust]

Red is grass, Green is asphalt, Blue is earth and Alpha is sand

[brave tartan]

okay so Im making apshalt that what we call detail texture right? and later on I make terrain mask connecting asphalt as Green with other textures in some kind of a pattern

[surreal gust]

You dont have to edit the terrain mask

Only edit it if you're changing the material texture positions

[brave tartan]

its just an option inside thm I wonder when to use it

never if I dont edit it ?

[surreal gust]

you dont need to

[brave tartan]

cool

so Image for textures, cuba map for sky

[surreal gust]

editing it would mean having to edit the levels terrain and recompile the level since

[brave tartan]

nump map for bumps

[surreal gust]

material assignments would be out of touch

yes

[brave tartan]

would be amazing to find myself a spot somewhere especially remote, atm jobless too sadly

[brave tartan]

bump#, some people say we need it some not, whats the truth ?

[surreal gust]

bump# is automatically generated after creating a bump map for a texture

Also

You can use normal maps too

[brave tartan]

wait what do u mean automatically generated? from where? I always made it myself

[naive snow]

2. The detail texture is a texture itself, like the screenshot I showed you. Let's say you made an object called obj_concreteBlock, that model has it's own unique texture, something you painted in photoshop with the UVs, kind of how guns have their own textures. In that unique texture thm, you'd specify to use the Detail map to be detail_beton-fine3.dds so the engine knows that you're unique texture needs to be overlayed with this detail texture

[surreal gust]

actor editor

[naive snow]

You don't need it if your normal maps are properly done. Bump# were a way to correct badly generated normal maps. They serve to correct artifacts introduced by a bad compression method. The texture also acts as a fallback incase the _bump map is missing for some reason

[brave tartan]

thats what I was also told before but then other peopel said no no no we def need it make it always

[brave tartan]

thats is what sdk or smth? never used anything like that made textures inside Substance Painter or photoshop then manually bumps etc

[surreal gust]

SDK

[brave tartan]

yeah never used one. might need to actually begin to use one when I work more on vehicles or terrain xD but so far was fine with those two tools

[surreal gust]

you dont need to use the SDK to make these textures

afaik other programs can do it too

[naive snow]

It's good practice to make the _bump#, since it's meant to correct normal maps for the engine to properly display them. The visual difference of with and without is negligeable

[brave tartan]

oh okay, its not hard like a minute or less of work so its better be there just in case

[naive snow]

There's no harm in having them is the gist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5P5vSD3u1k

[brave tartan]

I have bit of my own way making them through substance painter. made myselve save template inside it to make those basically almost ready few channel tweaks inside photoshop to finish

[naive snow]

Right, that's the creation of _bump maps, but for the creation of _bump# you need the actual SDK, the bump map and the normal map. (which is why certain weapon mods come with the normal map included for generation)

[celest forge]

I never do bump# maps

they deadass don't matter

all you get if you don't have em is a console error

[brave tartan]

But u dont need sdk to create bump#? I made them i. Photoshop at least thats how one person tought me

[naive snow]

How the weck would you encode the normal map difference in photoshop? This would be some insane mental gymnastic to do

[naive snow]

Juan confirmed serial console spammer

To be fair, I didn't do them for the optimized models bakes

[brave tartan]

Irk what u talkin about xD i had my normals exported from substance together with the base color and through some channel shenanigans bump# is made

[naive snow]

No, that's the bump

bump# is a corrective texture

[brave tartan]

They looked exact same as any other bump# from other textures

No no I know

Bump is green one

[celest forge]

I'm not, but there's a guy that comments all of my addons

[brave tartan]

Bump sharp is grey one

[celest forge]

"THERE'S A CONSOLE ERROR PLS FIX"

[brave tartan]

Same thing I made both inside photoshop xD

[celest forge]

I'm always like bro do you play with the console open or what

[brave tartan]

Im not at pc as its late night would have shown a quick example

[naive snow]

I think you got played man, I can't phantom a way of doing corrective artifact uncompression via photoshop

[brave tartan]

No idea it worked fine looked fine but who knows

[naive snow]

The reason why the bump# is grey vs the bump map being green is simply because the bump map encodes much more vector information.
Like here's the actual normal correction of the Bump#. This shifts the read information of the bump map

[brave tartan]

Looks exactly like what I was making

[naive snow]

vs the z normal channel of the bump map
X+ normal channel
Y- normal channel

[brave tartan]

I dont know what to say I dont know the difference especially as I never used sdk xD and was making them this way all the time and they worked I mean looked just fine

[naive snow]

I'd be interested in seeing the actual method you use

[brave tartan]

But who knows mby its all fake or half working stuff

Every other person making bumps different way too so mby what I was thought with bump sharp also incorrect can be can be

[naive snow]

TBH most of the bump# in game are a tiny gray square tiny 8x8

[brave tartan]

If thats how they should be then mines are def incorrect xD otherwise tomorrow can show u how I made them so u could have a good laugh xD

[naive snow]

The tiny square is incorrect, but it's a way to avoid a console message

[brave tartan]

Oh then theres a chance xD

[surreal gust]

Exotic butters.

[distant plinth]

ooo i see thanks for your help!

[civic finch]

Silly question for you guys, I wanted to increase the range of hideouts radios so I can actually hear the damn thing from 5 steps away, what file should I mess with?

[fair inlet]

edit music files with savandt #╙🖇mods-making-discussion message

[brave tartan]

@naive snow let me know when ure around wil ltry to show u how I was tought about ubmp#

[final cairn]

Hey o/
noob question, what is this datatype format : const vector& ?

class sound_object {
...
function play_at_pos(game_object*, const vector&)
...
}

[true anvil]

Hello, does anyone know is it possible to spawn and edit NPC logic in underground level (for example X18) with guard position logic (standing still with weapon holstered)?

[sacred token]

A 3-dimensional vector

Where do you want to play the sound?

[simple scaffold]

Yes. Same as anywhere else.

[final cairn]

the sound of the hit effects from wepl's mod calls this function : hitSound:play_at_pos( ply, npc:position() )
problem is I want to increase the distance the hit effect is played from (i could do that with editing the ogg's but i need to do it for all of them)

default is 75 meters, but when sniping i want to hear if i hit or not from a longer distance
and thought that by replacing the position of the npc in the call with something closer would solve the issue of editing the ogg's

[fair inlet]

something like this should work

[final cairn]

golden, thank you

[neon flower]

I would like to uses some HD models but, none of them really stay true to the art direction, any ones i dont know about?

[slow bolt]

Stalker 2 itself doesn't stay true to the art direction

[torpid furnace]

https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/addons/anomaly-original-models-rework-v011-dolg-hd-models

that's the closest thing ig, but it's a WIP

[naive snow]

Sure, how do you do it?

[neon flower]

preeche

[brave tartan]

right trying to make one example but I see my substance files got corrupted somehow xD one moment

[brave tartan]

heres aprox result, not da best my files got messed up, UV maps are basically became 5x5 pixels for some reason in my saved projects xD

[naive snow]

Right but this seems to be the same information in all 3 channels of RGB

[brave tartan]

basically yes, only alpha are different, thats what I was shown by several russian stalker modders

[naive snow]

But that's bad, you're basically over feeding the correction of the Bump#

[brave tartan]

zero idea what that means, thats all I knew, was doing it that way it worked fine, I mean in game looked fine.

[naive snow]

Alright so in simple terms:
When you create a bump map, because of the channel compression (R, G and B aren't compressed the same) you lose some normal map information, typically, the blue channel red channel lose the most information (which is fine because it's our specular) then the blue channel is next in terms of loss and finally the green channel. Alpha channel is mostly uncompressed because of how DXT5 works. What the Bump# file does is it has the information lost from that compression, so the lost information of the blue channel is packed in the green texture, the lost info of the green channel into the blue red channel and then the lost info of the alpha in the blue channel.

Creating a bump# with the same value all around is basically feeding in super overcorrected values to the engine

Lets say for a concrete exemple that the made bump map has a loss of information and it slighty shifts the received lighting by 3 degrees in the blue channel (lighting will point slightly more down when hitting the weapon from up top). Not a whole lot mind you, but ever so slighly. By feeding in the crazy bump# you're making you might be over correcting all channels by several degrees. Your blue channel (z) might now be -7 degree, the green (x) might point -10 degrees and the alpha channel (y) also by -10 degrees. Effectively, it moves the whole of the received lighting in a direction

You'd be better off making an empty gray image and living with the ever so slighly -3 (z) lighting shift instead

[brave tartan]

right that makes sense. so without going too deep into hows the correct version, simply its through sdk right?

[naive snow]

Yeah the SDK checks the bump map vs the fed normal map and encodes the changes in a bump#

[brave tartan]

okay. thanks, thats for another day would be amazing to have whole courses learnign all that stuff for stalker idk its very interesting

atm myself working on new asphalt texture with paralax feature

[neon flower]

looks neat

[naive snow]

Most of it is lost game dev knowledge. bump# aren't used anymore in modern engine because normal maps now have a dedicated compression format. So there's no more need for corrective textures like bump#

[surreal gust]

sdalger nostalgia

[brave tartan]

one more question.

Im testing one black color texture for a weapon right.

and trying to save it in dtx5 adds pixelation all over it

same problem I had with the interface icons before, where I was advice to use 8.8.8.8 instead for them to not have this problem

will it also work for the weapon? using that 8.8.8.8 instead of dtx5

[naive snow]

Yeah but it will be fucking heavy in memory. For black weapons you can use the dither color thm flag to help

[surreal gust]

also if you're making custom textures for openxray you can use the BC7 format

dont use it on anomaly because it doesnt support bc7 yet

[brave tartan]

so the only obstacle is memory? I thought 8.8.8.8 does not support mipmaps and we need those for things like weapons

[naive snow]

Hmmmm well with mipmaps it doubles or more the size

Like 8.8.8.8 is almost an uncompressed format, so making everythign 8.8.8.8 would turn the prefetcher into a 32 gig requirement

[brave tartan]

Im confused I thought we dont need mipmaps only for "2d" textures static ones like icons UI overall etc. therefore using 8.8.8.8 is fine as it wont mess with colors

but for weapons etc mipmaps are needed and we supposed to use dxt5

[naive snow]

Yes

[brave tartan]

but dxt5 for me doing this -
no preview

preview

[naive snow]

We mostly use DXT5 because it's a decent trade off for memory/size

[naive snow]

Honestly, most weapons don't need to be that black, you can use a higher gray and simply lower the specularity channel to compensate

[surreal gust]

I thought the weapon textures used dxt1

[brave tartan]

its just a mod one person making for "new" looking weapons and scopes and i nrealitythose are often very dark flat colors

[naive snow]

some of the legacy anomaly weapons are dxt1, but that format is an atrocity

[surreal gust]

well terrain textures are stuck using it

You can't change it

I think you can with thm editor but it will cause bugs

[naive snow]

Well especially if you want dark mate, you'd make the weapon a higher shade of gray and use a low specularity. Using a dark dark will make the weapon essentially a black hole

[brave tartan]

it looks fien in game

[surreal gust]

Would terrain ground textures work well with dxt5

not with the terrain texture itself

[naive snow]

You'd have better compression and pixelisation wouldn't be as bad. To be honnest terrain textures as dxt1 isn't that horrible since they tile so much

[surreal gust]

It only affects the terrain texture itself

Not the detail ground textures

[naive snow]

Terrain textures would look better if you had proper anisotropic textures for grounds

[brave tartan]

its def not black hole looks fine liek a dark mate in game, wait will find a screen for it

[surreal gust]

Higher terrain texture resolution (other than 2k) is pointless since it will just increase the amount of time to calculate hemisphere

when compiling maps

[naive snow]

Look through the various weather and time of day, if it's fine, just ship it

[surreal gust]

Also the latest nightly build of the SDK got an increased build quality limit (hemisphere from 3 to 4 and sun shadow quality from 3 to 5)

Which is great I guess.

[naive snow]

It's just more rays for the light bake, I doubt it would be a noticeable difference in the actual radiosity gathering step

[surreal gust]

the compiler has a -gi stage

enables radiosity stage

only works with modified compilers

i didnt see a difference using this so I just left it on

the texture res for every map in anomaly is 2k i think

[brave tartan]

its fine color wise yes like its not a black hole as u mentioned. but that pixelization is still there, it might be barely barely visible if not zoomed in super close but I and modcreator know that problem is there andquality is not perfect 😄

[naive snow]

Which makes sense, you don't need a super high resolution for a specular/hemispheric occlusion map

[naive snow]

Are looking at the optic here or the gun?

[brave tartan]

optic in this case

gun is also smth he made but problem is with darker optics

[naive snow]

The more prevalent issue here that I'm seeing is the aliasing introduced with your super high rez textrue vs the texel density of the gun to be honnest

[surreal gust]

I wish it was better though

The modified compiler has an option for bc7 lightmaps

but anomaly doesnt support it yet

So I use it on my openxray test maps

[naive snow]

I honestly can't see where the issue is on your screenshot

[brave tartan]

no idea what do u mean looks fine. ofc its not me who made them and quality wise and design they look different so does not blend in, but thats his problem and vision 😄

[surreal gust]

The SDK quality upgrade should do the trick, but I haven't compiled a map with the max settings yet due to compile times.

[naive snow]

Honestly, lightmaps should be in an unsigned format or something close to an HDR format

Bicubic sampling of lightmaps would also be a major quality gain

[brave tartan]

yes on the screen its not visible, its only on the texture when u zoom it in closer, mby in the game too but theres barely any situation when u look at scopes that close. its more - I know theres a problem in the car so I need to fix it even if it still drives

[surreal gust]

nobody wants to touch at the lightmaps though

it's stuck at 1024x1024 resolution

if you're interested here are all the compiler settings

[naive snow]

Like the tiny edge wear, the sharp gray lines on edges. They really really stand out because of how small they look, it feels like a rendering problem

[surreal gust]

this is only for the geometry

[brave tartan]

thats the problem <<

[naive snow]

If you can't see it in-game leave it be. It won't look any different really if you change the format

[brave tartan]

comparison for texture and how it pixelates after saving in dxt5

[surreal gust]

im not sure what the border parameter is for

[naive snow]

Rather do try out the dithering THM flag

[brave tartan]

Ill inform him to try it out, but its more of I wont be able to sleep right knowing theres that problem

same as I had very same problem with UI but for me it was easy fix by using 8.8.8.8 as I didnt neewd mipmaps

for weapons I think its needed, so using 8.8.8.8 feels wrong

[naive snow]

But that's because you're looking at a compressed image vs an uncompressed engine read image

Of course you'll see artifacts if you super zoom in

You're looking at problems where there's none

[brave tartan]

game uncompresses it? but I still saw pixelation rpoblem with icons in the game, thats how I noticed it

[naive snow]

UI shader and in-game shaders for objects aren't nearly the same

UI is basically, simple, just use the texture as is. No lighting, no nothing extra

Object shaders are a whole 'nother thing because of the need for lighting

[brave tartan]

right so thats why I saw it, but for weapons it decompress it so the problem will be gone?

[surreal gust]

Even the SDK supports 8:8:8:8

[naive snow]

Really really really attenuated. Like unless you're able to really isolate on the model a spot where you can noticeably see the shadding issue, there's no need to correct it

Where I would consider fixing it is if it introduced color artifacting. Like if it changed the read color and created color splotches islands

[brave tartan]

it kinda does changing that "black" into purple/green

ofc in game as u said its probably not visible

makes it rainbow 😄

[surreal gust]

also always make a backup .png file of your textures

.dds can have problems if exported multiple times from what i've heard

[brave tartan]

im doing lots of bacup, this mod is not made by me so its up to creator how he does things, he asked for some assistance, and later on he told me about this issue which is same as I had but not on icons but weapon

[surreal gust]

I'm looking for good grass textures

That I can use to compile for my map

[naive snow]

Yeah that's why when doing textures you want to avoid the extrems of color like black/white. Since the extremities of the spectrum are the more compressed ones

[brave tartan]

Im doing asphalt now after I test it throully and make sure it works fine with new SSS I might try doing either grass (which usually neglected alot) or mud texture

[naive snow]

This goes also with the thing I explained to you about textures compression and how it compresses different channels

[brave tartan]

right, but that is the whole idea of hsi pack like a mdoern, fresh and new look for scope/weapons

[surreal gust]

also on what would you use 8:8:8:8

on normal maps?

[brave tartan]

UI stuff

[naive snow]

Are you doing work with Lunatic?

For his LEWD pack

[brave tartan]

no, with WIP guy called Meowie

not really doing just helping him out here and there with info mostly

[surreal gust]

This is also an option

[brave tartan]

by the way might I ask, if uever did a ground texture, any of them, cocnrete, mud, whatever. did u made them in photosohp/alternatives, or mby might have used a ground model and some kind of other tool to apply texture on the model and see how it looks ? Im just looking for a good model for ground atm using just a simple flat panel I made inside blender for susbtance painter in where I do textures

[surreal gust]

I'm not a texture artist

[brave tartan]

oh okay, how I do it right now kinda works, but Im looking for any better ways, though I dont know any texture artist either, except GTR creator which I heard doing it on whole another level than any normal mortals 😄

[surreal gust]

GTR development is dead

Almost 2 years ago since his last news post

[brave tartan]

that I know, I was told creator had BUNCH of almost finished textures and cars too, but then happened what happened in the world and he was gone

[naive snow]

You need to make a ground plane with a 1/3 UV size so you can see repetition of patterns. There's a whole workflow involved. But honestly if you want to do texture work, you'd be off using Substance Designer to actual make the textures

and then use the made materials in Painter to paint onto your unique UVs and models

[brave tartan]

Im just using substance painter for it and using flat plane, not sure about 1/3 UV idk hwo to set that up yet, UV from stalker are killing me overall whole another problem I had when I tried exporting a car from blender into substance, with the whole UV overlapping issue. so atm Im doing smth simple, so simple flat plane for it

[naive snow]

Alternatively, you have the whole of the Quixel library for textures to work off

[brave tartan]

will begin to learn substance designer some day for sure so I can make a good combo of subtance designer and painter together

[brave tartan]

never heard of it, if its paid might be not available for me xD

[cosmic knot]

Any of you know if there’s a mod to display a contracts payout on the task board? I’m assuming it’s impossible since payment is selected from within a range and not predetermined correct?

[naive snow]

It's a huge photoscan material library free, since Unreal bought the company

[brave tartan]

oh free, might take a look at it, will be a nice thing if I can find what to work with, I do have a gifted few hundred metal smart materials inside substance painter, someone gifted it to me xD but those are mainly metal with very few of others

[naive snow]

https://quixel.com/megascans/home

[brave tartan]

jsut logged in <<

[naive snow]

Mind you, you'll need to extract those and recombine them into a stalker format, but it's free stuff and quality too

[brave tartan]

if I can import them into substance painter somehow and then apply to lets say same mentioned flat plane model, then I can save it into stalker format

though need to look for that 1/3 UV thing u mentioned before

[surreal gust]

I've seen that the SDK limits normal maps to 8:8:8:8

[brave tartan]

graphic designer things is what excites me the most, wish I had a possibility to do some proper courses and make a portfolio with it to find a job in that industry. mby one day,

[naive snow]

Basically you divide your flat plane in a 3x3 grid via edge loops. Then you scale the UV so only the middle square takes the space of 0-1 in you UV (scale the whole island) so because textures by default wrap and tile in substance, you'll see the texture tile on your plane and you'll be able to paint from one edge to the other

[brave tartan]

very sorry but its too advanced for me xD I kinda understand it but only partly

[surreal gust]

also how would you add new custom textures?

import them from idk from ambientcg

and configure them in the actor editor and that's all?

[naive snow]

I can make the plane model for you

[brave tartan]

omg, if u could woudl really appreciate it, as atm Im using smth that only shows me 1 pattern and had to do adjsutments with testing it in game first every damn time.

[naive snow]

Sure, I'll finish a meeting and I'll knock something real quick for it

[brave tartan]

appreciate, no hurry if ure in a meeting(work I guess?) its late night out here so Im out for the night (after I test the quixel texture I downloaded quickly to see how it works xD)

not too sure how to use it all properly yet, how I did it, quality falls to the bottom, but yeah at least got a source of smth to play around with mby will learn smth idk yet, not sure where to begin even xD

[naive snow]

How wide/height do you typically work?

2048?

[brave tartan]

4k usually to be fair

[naive snow]

Holy balooney

[brave tartan]

Im not doing a super massive whole game overhaul atm

3-4 textures 4k is fine 😄

[surreal gust]

At least use 4096x2048

[brave tartan]

but I guess 2k also works

[surreal gust]

I'm going to try some textures from ambient cg idk

[naive snow]

I'll make the plane a texel ratio of 512 like most modern games, you can tweak it later

[brave tartan]

my main monitor is 1440p ultrawide and second monitor is 4k so I cant use lower resolution anyway looks too pixelated 😄

[surreal gust]

To tile the detail texture 512 times?

[naive snow]

Wut no

[brave tartan]

I guess he meant 512pixels so it repeats 4 times for 2k

[naive snow]

a texel ratio of 512 means that you have 512 pixels per meter in-game

[surreal gust]

oh i see

didnt get it

[naive snow]

So on a 2 meter x 2 meter wall, you'd display a 2k texture

Afaik orignal texture models of Stalker SoC use something like 128 or 256 at max on characters

[brave tartan]

right, will see tomorrow, still not sure how to properly use those textures from Quixel inside substance as on website they look so nice on that orb but for me it s*cks xD

[naive snow]

It's probably the channel unapcking that's messed up

[brave tartan]

found some kind of video how to use them inside susbtance painter, might help me set it all up.

[naive snow]

Here you go

[brave tartan]

might begin making smth like ground textures a few of them for myself, will be nice learning course, might be smth for a portfolio later on too

yeah I see what u meant it repeats (made 2k)

[surreal gust]

Did I configure it correctly

I put BC7 because im going to use it on openxray

just gotta put the bump texture

[naive snow]

Way easier to see problematic repeating paterns

[brave tartan]

yep, thanks ALOT!!! will see that video how to use them tomorrow and see if I can make it work properly. might be some new paralax working 2k Unreal engine like texture for the stalker be made 😄

[naive snow]

Set filter to kaiser, dont use bump mode to paralax, use none for now, change the Use as Bump(r2) and remove implicit lighted. Fade Color, set the color to an average of the color of the texture

[surreal gust]

doesnt implicit light give those fake shadows?

[naive snow]

Honestly. No clue. Most textures dont use it

[surreal gust]

Do I put kaiser on the normal map as well

[naive snow]

You'd have to check with and without

[surreal gust]

I'm gonna leave it on I guess

It did make a difference

[naive snow]

Yes

[surreal gust]

and disable the "use as bump (r2)" on the detail texture

[brave tartan]

yeah def need some guides first, paralax kinda works, but it looks like plastic or smth not rocks etc xD no sharpness

[naive snow]

Well if that texture is meant to be a detail texture you'd use the Detail Color on the color texture, the Detail Bump on the bump map you'll create

[surreal gust]

this texture is a brick wall

im using a detail texture to add more detail

so i'll leave it on I guess

I should be good to go

set the fade color

[naive snow]

Right, so if it's a ''core'' texture, the base texture of the wall, you're not flagging it as a detail texture

Only the detail textures you're putting on top need to be flagged as such

[surreal gust]

its set to "2D texture" as it's type

well im too late

if that causes any problems i will turn it off

[brave tartan]

from a bit further it looks better xD. okay im out thanks alot again!!!

[surreal gust]

Since I used a pre-configured texture

I don't need to create bump#?

[naive snow]

You don't need a #bump, but you do need a Bump map

[surreal gust]

with a normal map?

[naive snow]

Otherwise you're missing the whole specular map

[surreal gust]

oh well disabling detail bump like you said and using "Use" at the bump map

makes the texture completely flat

It also ignores light sources

i mean it does still light but its kinda like those broken smooth groups you see on objects

sheet

it looks like i need a bump map too

[naive snow]

Yeah you're basically telling the engine that this texture SHOULD have a bump map, so the engine is expecting a normal/specular combination. It probably substitutes a basic gray texture if you didn't specify one (no specular map so no lighting from sources) and flat (no normal map, so flat)

If you don't have a bump map ready, just set the Bump mode to none

[surreal gust]

I used crazy bump to convert my normal map to a bump map

[naive snow]

Wut, but that's not correct. Crazy bump maps aren't stalker bump maps

Like that's a height map

[surreal gust]

yes but looking at the actor edtior

its different

the colors are neutral

[naive snow]

It's not the bump map format that the engine expects

This is how you're meant to do bump maps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD5stu22Wls

[surreal gust]

There's no bump map included in the file I downloaded

It just has color, displacement, AO, normal and roughness

[naive snow]

Yeah you're meant to create it

[surreal gust]

damn

I don't have gimp

i guess i have to install it

[naive snow]

The displacement can be converted to a height map to function with the SSS parallax

[surreal gust]

im creating a brick texture as a test

not a new detail ground texture

[naive snow]

Well gimp, paint.net, photoshop, etc, any software will work

[surreal gust]

okay but i dont know how to do it

[naive snow]

I just gave you a video on how to

[surreal gust]

its for gimp (the method)

[naive snow]

Channel switching stuff is the same as in photoshop

The only important thing in the video is the channel order for the creation of the bump map

[celest forge]

Which is brain dead simple too

[brave tartan]

I had to come read before fallin asleep. This one will have to look into too will need that

[cerulean mantle]

What mod in GAMMA's modlist is to look at for all the weapon files?

weapon config files.

[celest forge]

I doubt they're all in single folder

GAMMA uses guns from too many mods

If you want a specific gun's ltx then search for that mod in mo2

[cerulean mantle]

You know, I want to make a DLTX mod. But I'll actually do that. I already know BAS and PPP are there.

[naive snow]

To be honest I just made a photoshop action script to simplify my life

I just name a layer Spec, another Normal and let the thing do it's work, it outputs a nice bump map all ready to go

[simple scaffold]

The base game guns won't even be in a mod they are compressed in anomaly game files

[cerulean mantle]

Oh...

[celest forge]

Same

[celest forge]

But gamma also doesn't use almost any vanilla guns

[simple scaffold]

I think you would be surprised

[celest forge]

It uses a bunch of replacers for vanilla guns I think

but pure unaltered vanilla guns

I don't think it uses that many

[random fulcrum]

the striker family are the only purely vanilla weapons that still drop in gamma outside of scripted spawns

[celest forge]

The shotguns?

[random fulcrum]

everything else is using a replacer or is a new gun

yeah

[surreal gust]

I should do that.

There are lots of textures in ambientcg

They have displacement maps which I assume are height maps right?

i made the bump texture

[surreal gust]

it works

[celest forge]

That's inverted tho

You need to invert the green channel

[graceful sluice]

Something went wrong

[random fulcrum]

wow it's the beta san andreas ak

[graceful sluice]

In the end it should look like that:

[naive snow]

Did you remove the geometry under the grenade launcher? Otherwise it's because you don't actually have a UBGL attached and configured properly so the bone is hidden by the engine

Take a look at how weapons with integrated UBGLs are setup in their ltx

[graceful sluice]

No, grenade launcher was ok, I still can't figure out how add attachments from different weapons

All that vertex group stuff

I tried add handguard by merging it to weapon body, and painted it all in weight paint. But in the end it was transparent or didn't existed in game

[naive snow]

I can take a look if you send the packaged blend file

[pulsar mason]

So, if i want to change the draw sound for the m4 butcher do i have to overwrite the entire gamedata\configs\items\weapons\w_m4_butcher.ltx file, or is there a way I can just change the value of snd_draw?

[naive snow]

Read the anomaly modding book on DLTX, it's in the pins

[pulsar mason]

somehow managed to get it to do what I wanted first try

[brave tartan]

anyone might know how do I even check groudn texture assigned to a part of map? I easily could check like a car texture or tree or smth but groudn textures seem to just say terrain_escape which is like whole map "texture", there should be those individual grass texture, asphalt ect, but cannot find how do I check in in blender

do I have to somehow check terrain mask to find out whats where?

[naive snow]

Yeah can't preview terrain in blender, you have to check via the sdk

[brave tartan]

dammit

really didnt want to get one more program 😄

[naive snow]

Well you do get the material reference in blender so you could make your own shader node combo to emulate the terrain blending from the masks

[brave tartan]

thats way to ofancy way of - lets change this grass texture 😄

https://igigog.github.io/anomaly-modding-book/resources/sdk-resources.html - last anomaly sdk ?

[naive snow]

Grab Hybrid Xray

[brave tartan]

hmm wheres that

[naive snow]

https://github.com/Roman-n/HybridXRay

It's a more updated sdk with a lot of quality of life features. Some bug fixing, etc

[brave tartan]

right, and whats the difference? its like one for all?

eeeem

which one I would need

[naive snow]

Release

[brave tartan]

gotcha

right, now into looking for how to use new tool just to find a correct texture file 😄

but to be fair using sdk feels kinda nice like an actual game dev xD

right but it wont show nay level files.

[naive snow]

I'm honestly not an SDK user so you'd have to ask Justsilverguy

FYI you can still find the assigned materials ID in blende on imported terrains

[brave tartan]

right before I begin to mess it up, better wait for that person and ask for advice

[brave tartan]

what, how I could not see it hmmm

I opened escape

for me it just said terrain_escape all over the place

@surreal gust if I may ask for a bit of help how to properly setup the SDK and how to actually import a map into it. ping me please when ure around. thanks!

[naive snow]

xray blender addon has something for terrain, I can't remember off the top of my head

[brave tartan]

hmm I do have that xray plugin or whatever that helps importing stalker stuff, mby Im missing smth for it

just says terrain escape, mby im checkign wrong stuff

I think u got some other plugin or smth

[naive snow]

Nah you got the right one, check the side bar for the Xray tools

[brave tartan]

yeee found it was hidden, so I click verify UV? clicked all objects waiting now as selected object did not change anything

[brave tartan]

oooh

[naive snow]

Don't actually know what it does tho

[brave tartan]

clicking verify uv all objects stopped responding blender xD

[naive snow]

Of course, you,re running through thousands of objects

[brave tartan]

no such option even

[surreal gust]

Nightly builds can also do the job and that is what I currently use. They return more of the original functionality that the original SDK had

[surreal gust]

Objects in the SDK are stored in .object files

You need the full rawdata and gamedata from CoP so that the SDK works properly

You can get them both in daagudas v2 sdk repack

[brave tartan]

so to just check for a texture on the map I need all that... damn

[surreal gust]

It's in anomaly modding book

Also detail ground textures are stored as detail_grnd_materialname

They only show the base texture

No bump maps or other stuff

That's intentional

[brave tartan]

sounds insane. I could do what I need in blender before, its just ground textures doesnt show up for some reason

[surreal gust]

Its also where you can configure textures, bump maps, etc via the image editor included with the sdk

[brave tartan]

could we jump in voice chat to set it all up ?

[surreal gust]

I can't

I'm not at the computer atm

[brave tartan]

okay, right, so. I need to open map and check a ground texture in a specific spot - what do I need. I got hybrid sdk atm

I download rawdata, COP gameata link not available

or do I just download that daagudas v2 sdk repack and delete hybrid sdk ?

[surreal gust]

Download the full version of daagudas v2 repack

Its located in moddding tools

And unextract it

Then put it to the sdk

Dont replace any files

[brave tartan]

so put it insie hybrid sdk folder without overwriting

[surreal gust]

Yes

Daagudas sdk is outdated

[brave tartan]

modding tools is ? I found it on some forum russian

[surreal gust]

You only need the rawdata and gamedata

If you cant find it i will link it later

[brave tartan]

found this https://ap-pro.ru/forums/topic/540-x-ray-sdk-07-repack-by-daaguda-v2/

[surreal gust]

Its a mega link

Im sure that forum has the mega link

[brave tartan]

yes what I meant, is that the correct one

need those I guess

[surreal gust]

Yes

[surreal gust]

Yes

[brave tartan]

ok downloading

[surreal gust]

You need to download both of them

[brave tartan]

brb when downloaded and extracted into hybrid sdk folder

[brave tartan]

ok dropped them and skipped overwrite files

[surreal gust]

Ok

[brave tartan]

whats next?

[surreal gust]

I'd suggest you to watch for SDK tutorials

They may be in ruski but thats your only option

You can search "Stalker SDK 0.7" in youtube

[brave tartan]

aaaa, why is it so complciated to jsut find a correct etxture xD

[surreal gust]

Because nobody uses the sdk

Except original games mappers

[brave tartan]

I know, checking textures worked fine in blender by opening level file, only ground textures are not showing any info for some reason

[surreal gust]

I know like 85% or 90% how to use the level editor

And about only 15 people or 30 people know this stuff

[surreal gust]

I told you that the detail textures are stored inside the detail folder

And their name is detail_grnd_materialname

[brave tartan]

I know where those are

[surreal gust]

It's different there than anomaly because of the game gamemtl.xr file

[brave tartan]

I needed to check what specific texture is use in this spot or that spot

[surreal gust]

You can check the mask files

To see where

So is your texture going to replace the detail_grnd_yantar or?

Also you dont need to use the sdk if you're instantly going to test your texture

[brave tartan]

idk mby one of them. atm working on asphalt texture, needed to check whcih specific ground/grass/mud whatever textures are connected to it nearby newbie village. do those, then check in game and go further and further. but I needed to know what texture is palced where

I did that with level files in blender worked fine to check car textures or bushes, tree or building

but ground jsut says terrain_grass or smth

like an example. theres like dozen of beton textures. so I would need to open level file and see specifically which one used on the spot Im workin on right now.

[brave tartan]

how cna I check those to find out where what ? need a fast way to find which texture assigned where

for now doing it manual/visual way - go into the game and try to visually see whic htexture it is xD

[surreal gust]

beton is used for brick walls

as an extra detail

[surreal gust]

there is only one detail_grnd_materialname used in sdk

in anomaly detail_grnd_materialname isnt used

[brave tartan]

that was just an example

[surreal gust]

ground_materilname_number is used

[surreal gust]

ground_grass_02 is used in army warehouses

[brave tartan]

thats good you know it. but how do I find out wheres what, I need to be able to check on the go

[surreal gust]

well i can also assure that ground_grass_03 is used by yantar

i don't know about other materials

i suggest you to try to replace ground_asphalt_01 with your texture

also every map uses ground_asphalt_01

[brave tartan]

I kidna know that as asphalt is asphalt. so how do I check whats aroudn it? in every map, I change one texture then, wow see theres some kind of not changed patches, need way to find them. and so on

[surreal gust]

thats for other textures

asphalt_01 is used in every single map

earth_01 is probably used in the cordon and garbage

i dont know where are other textures

All I know is that detail textures are determined which level shader is used on the terrain

[brave tartan]

whatever, seem that you also dont knwo how to check them. but thanks

will need to look for more info somewhere

[surreal gust]

This little thing at the item properties

levels/escape_grass

[brave tartan]

thats a texture? I cant even find it

[surreal gust]

No it's not a texture

It's a level shader

[brave tartan]

its that terrain mask?

[surreal gust]

No

It's different

Terrain mask is a texture

[brave tartan]

okay so what do I get from that?

I cant even open any levels to check for whatever u showed. nto sure what that escpae_grass gives me as it does not tell me which texture is used in there."

[surreal gust]

Bro you dont need to edit it

Level shaders are stored in gamemtl.xr files

They only tell the game what detail shader to use for the terrain

And terrain mask tells the position

[brave tartan]

detail shader is the ground texture or mud texture or asphalt?

[surreal gust]

Yeah... I realized that the anomaly sdk is bullshit

It doesn't exist

some schizophrenics thought it does exist

[simple scaffold]

It can be assembled from parts. Everything short of level editing is easy enough, as I understand. And editing levels is possible if not as easy as the particle editor.

I personally have never used it. But I know ppl that have. Mostly in the anomaly discord. Maker of extra levels for instance

[surreal gust]

I specialize in level editing and ik how to change current geometry so that isn't hard

When I got replies that anomaly SDK exists

I was like wtf it doesn't

I released volumetric smoke for agroprom underground a while ago

It just changes the levels fog volume file and configs for the smoke

[simple scaffold]

The anomaly level source is missing. It makes the SDK not want to work on anomaly levels. This is true.

A lot can still be done with the correct CoC SDK properly configured. Again I avoid it like the plague because it is really only used for art and art scares me. So I cant really tell you what to do, just who to ask.

[surreal gust]

I heard that xcvb has them

I'd only use them if

I'm remaking every single map ever...

Test map I made

Here's the physics showcase

(the brick texture is a placeholder from ambientcg)

[simple scaffold]

Yeah, or the closest that I am aware of on any of the major anomaly discord server's

[surreal gust]

So far ik like 85 or 90% of level editing at this point

The only problem I have is that

I suck at using modeling software such as blender

[simple scaffold]

Me too. I end up making a mash potato sculpture or something excessively geometric

[celest forge]

I mean why don't just take assets from another place

you took trees from FC5 right

just rip structures from other games

ez

[surreal gust]

Yes the problem is

They cause overdraw issues

My sdk is about 120gb-ish size

So I have lots of custom objects added

[naive snow]

Cleaned up your hiearchy, properly parented everything, created the bone shapes and also fixed some broken armature modifiers.
The grenade launcher being parented under wpn_launcher will still appear transparent until the model knows that it has a built in UBGL. So either add the m203 attachement in the ltx and actually spawn a m203 UBGL and attach it to the gun to appear or look at how guns with built-in UBGL have their LTX made

[tawny stream]

I kinda really want to try that thing

[graceful sluice]

Lol, I found easter egg on PEQ-15

[tawny stream]

Typo on the other sticker as well. Says "confirms" and should be "conforms."

[regal bolt]

does anyone here know what mod to disable to remove the scope recoil?

[proper basin]

Is there a mod that allows you to bind a third two-handed weapon? (sniper from inventory, or sniper in pistol slot)

[elfin mason]

https://discord.com/channels/912320241713958912/1202505462688260147 if you want to add more stuff you can ping me in the mod thread

[soft burrow]

@undone lily instead of #📎to-do message how about making sin enter a downed state at 30% health where they flail on the floor like zombifieds and only headshot damage can finish them

[undone lily]

Hum maybe

I’m not all too convinced about this idea just yet anyway

Just headshot them like anyone else, and Sin turns out to be glorified bandits again

[slender whale]

I think they meant that they get back up, like the zombie faction does if you don't make it over and headshot them while they're on the ground

Which would make prolonged engagements with them really tough

As for moving the shield effect to isg, do they really need it? They're already armored to hell and back, would be funnier to give it to ecologists

[naive snow]

ISG already have a crazy damage reduction of 65% or something, even more than Sin. Adding the visual effect to denote that won't change much really

[waxen widget]

hello, does anyone know of a way to respawn the monolith in the sarcophagus? a mod maybe?

[runic wraith]

So, how dltx handle same values from different files?

[brave tartan]

https://igigog.github.io/anomaly-modding-book/addons/dltx.html

[runic wraith]

Where is nothing that i search, if 2 diff mod change same res of same armor, that is taking priority if both dltx?
If only @ taking over ! but i doubt

[hardy hound]

i think it loads by file name

like if mod_system_zzzchanges.ltx changes value A
and there's mod_system_zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzchanges.ltx that also changes value A, the zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz one will be the one that does the changes

i think that's how it works

[random fulcrum]

yeah it loads alphabetically

[runic wraith]

Almost as i think, thanks, time to testing

[cerulean mantle]

Hi. What causes this glass effect?

[whole inlet]

Just had a thought about how to move Skinflint to the main building. Which file contains coordinates/direction of this character? Want to move him to the main building just for fun and save some time in preparations before missions.

[hardy hound]

in ui_mm_main_16.xml

inside that file theres a section named

'' <shniaga_wnd x="400" y="419" width="392" height="280">
<buttons_region x="8" y="0" width="220" height="380" always_show_scroll="false" vert_interval="4"/>
<shniaga x="7" y="-20" width="219" height="61" stretch="1">
<texture>ui_inGame2_slider</texture>
<magnifire x="27" y="18" width="162" height="24" stretch="1">
<texture>ui_magnifier2</texture>
<y_offset>1</y_offset>
</magnifire>
</shniaga>
</shniaga_wnd> ''

it's the ui_magnifier2 entry i think

[regal bolt]

Is there a way to turn off impulse anomaly?

[cerulean mantle]

Made a completely alpha as ui_magnifier2.dds and it's gone. Thank you.

[lethal garden]

So, if i wanted to change a certain weapon to use shotgun shells, does that automatically change the projectiles also? I am converting a rifle into a shotgun, and I want to ensure that it has multiple projectiles when using buckshot, one when using slugs, etc. Does this automatically change upon changing the ammo type?

[celest forge]

Yes

[quasi blaze]

The texture for the D.PRO Aimpoint is missing on the PKM Zenit LMG, how do I fix this?

[ember niche]

If anyone asks about unlocking the mouse cursor from the game window. Simple script todo that. Use case is for content creators. Now if they search the entire server for help as I did, they'll find it.

#Requires AutoHotkey v2.0
SetKeyDelay('-1')
F1::WinActivate("Program Manager") ; Set Focus to Desktop

Thx for helping to create this awesome experience

[celest forge]

@naive snow you seem to know almost anything, do you know how do I avoid these like green coloring on black stuff when exporting with the nvidia plugin?

[naive snow]

Not really. It's a limitation of the format. You can go fucking wild and export in 8.8.8.8 like its done for the UI, but that'll make a huge file size. I've been looking into updating a crunch exporter to address this issue. Do you have the weapon's texture original saved in png, bmp or tga?

[celest forge]

I do yeah

[naive snow]

Can you send it as an attachment and not an embedded picture?

Ah actually, this will work just fine I think

[celest forge]

I don't think you can send at attachment on desktop now

[random fulcrum]

send it as a zip maybe

[celest forge]

the 8.8.8.8 fixed it

the texture is almost 100mbs

but it fixed it

[naive snow]

Hmmm well the version of the crunch editor I'm using right kinda does a better result but there's still some green splotches here and there. Way better than nivdia tho

Try this one out

[celest forge]

This is with the 8.8.8.8

[naive snow]

Yeah 8.8.8.8 basically is a lossy compression, so no color loss

Scratch that last one I think I might have hit the nail on the head with these settings

@celest forge If you grab the crunch compression from this github (download zip and extract) you can use these settings
crunch_x64.exe -file T_Gun_BaseColor.png -fileformat dds -dxt5 -Quality 100 -mipmode Generate -mipfilter kaiser -blurriness 0.5 -uniformMetrics

The crunch_x64.exe is in the bin folder, just navigate to it via cmd and drop your .png in the same folder

I'm fucking impressed considering this is something from Unity

[celest forge]

Thanks dude

[naive snow]

@brave tartan this might also interest you, a viable solution for fixing the black textures going splotchy green

[naive snow]

Do let me know if it works properly in-game, I'd be interested to see

[quasi blaze]

The texture for the D.PRO Aimpoint is missing on the PKM Zenit LMG, how do I fix this?

[lilac compass]

Hi guys I wanted to try to add a prone to stalker area a mod I have been playing I have a mod that adds this to shadow of chernobyl but I wasn't sure what I needed to add to stalker areas actor.ltx

[naive snow]

Is that something out of vanilla Gamma or is this from a custom gun pack?

[quasi blaze]

@naive snow It's from the vanilla gamma install, the BaS weapon pack

[random fulcrum]

classic gamma

[naive snow]

You'd have to find the name of the texture you're missing, then compare if other users on the latest update have the said file or the same issue

[quasi blaze]

pretty sure it's this texture that belongs to the scope

[naive snow]

Grab the OGF tool from the pins of this thread. Run that and open the ogf of the pkm

[quasi blaze]

@naive snow Ok I'll grab the tool and try. I guess it's the "wpn_pkm_zenit_siber_deltapoint_hud.ogf" ?

[naive snow]

It should have the name of the collimator in the ogf file

[naive snow]

Probably yeah

[quasi blaze]

ok I'll give it a go

[naive snow]

Just check if it references the delta point texture path properly, if not correct the path

[quasi blaze]

Ok thanks for the help, I'll have a go at it

[naive snow]

Not a whole lot of people use LMGs so it might be an oversight of the zulu rework patch that happened in december

[quasi blaze]

@naive snow Aha. So if i fix it, is there a place where I should upload the .ogf if other people need it?

[naive snow]

Well you could ask anyone who plays with debug and is on latest update to check first if it's a ''you'' problem or a global problem. If it's global, then you can post about it on #1092834455300866068 once your discord rank is 6 (just talk more in newbies-chat) then you'll be able to make a bug report and give the corrected ogf there so it's in the next update

[quasi blaze]

Alright 👍

[quasi blaze]

@naive snow The path for the deltapoint texture is not present in the textures folder for BaS 2022 guns. Not sure where to go from here

It seems to be pointed to the correct textures though, but they are missing

[naive snow]

Well its looking for the wpn\wpn_scope_base_leupold_deltapoint_diff
Do you have that one when searching in your MO2?

It should be under the Gamedata\textures\wpn\ folder as wpn_scope_base_leupold_deltapoint_diff.dds

[celest forge]

Why are you looking for zenit in the folder

look for deltapoint

[quasi blaze]

these are the ones that pop up

[celest forge]

That's in the wrong folder tho

[quasi blaze]

oh?

[celest forge]

unzip this in the BaS main textures folder

that should fix it

[quasi blaze]

aha ok I'll try it out and test it

@celest forge I take it the main BaS refers to the 76- Bas - Mich? under Gunplay

[celest forge]

I guess so yeah

[quasi blaze]

ok

@celest forge Yeah that's the one, the delta textures aren't present in it for some reason. thanks for the textures Juan!

[celest forge]

Sure thing bud

[lilac compass]

What line in the actor.ltx allows us to prone instead of low crouch?

[surreal gust]

I use it for lightmaps

i'm not sure if there's a difference but i'm using it.

[brave tartan]

right so use that crunch compress wit that long command, but do I do it after which step. like finish edits to a texture and instead of saving it in dds, save it in png and then compress it with crunch and it will have very similar/same quality as dxt5 but almost no/none that color blending as if 8.8.8.8 used? and will be saved in dds

[half hound]

first time I'll be here. might be the last idk. say I wanted to add something to the craftable item list. for example.... exo batteries. how would one... go about such a thing?

[iron drum]

Hi @steady apex, could you help me out with something? With DXML is there a way to force an XML read on a specific file from a non modxml_* script? I tried calling the "openXMLFile()" function from dxml_core but the "s" variable is nil and I can't figure out what it should be since this function is not called anywhere.

[steady apex]

Hi, there is no way

[vague sphinx]

@thin kelp Hi there, I have a question, if I wanted to recolor the chest piece (front and back, the one with all 4 black spots) of this model to orange smoothly without having to select the texture pixel by pixel hoping not to overlap with other textures, how would you proceed ? (basically just this part without having to recolor the whole model)

[celest forge]

Go into uv editing in blender

Select the vertices of the thing you want to color

Then export that as an image

Load it into whatever software you're using and use it as a selection mask

[vague sphinx]

Alright, thanks for the explanation, I'm going to try that

[thin kelp]

for changing colours like that i would usually go into photoshop make a new texture. However, you can find a similar texture ((identical layout)) (which has the colour you want to use) and mark that chest with that other texture in blender

you would need to add it as a second material but thats fine

[vague sphinx]

I did find the similar one but it has some extra "harness" features that I will not be using, so I'm resorting to the blue one recolored

[naive snow]

The crunch is still a dxt5, it's simply the quality that's different really. It might still have some slight color blending here and there, but it fixes the black issues so far. Your steps are good

[brave tartan]

cool. I suggested this solution will see after eh tries it out

[naive snow]

In blender, selecting the whole chest piece geometry you want to recolor/edit, go to your UV layout, there you can save a UV layout texture that you can overlay as a layer on top of your texture in paint.net as a multiply. The orange selection in blender will show you where your model triangles are mapped.

[vague sphinx]

I know, Juan explained it for me in #╙🖇mods-making-discussion but thank you

I was able to redo the model somewhat proper, now it's about making the tier 2, 3 and 4 variants

[iron drum]

Ah, that's too bad, thank you anyway!

[icy estuary]

Anyone knows what to modify to stop NPC's from spamming their lines while idling?

It gets so annoying to hear the same shit over and over again every 5 seconds

[random fulcrum]

add a bunch of empty sound files

[naive snow]

Just dilude the number of actor lines files, so the game picks and play empty ones like spacers

[icy estuary]

Can I just extend the down time by like 10x?

[naive snow]

You can use the npc more chatter mods as a basis to check what script they edit and go from there

[icy estuary]

script_sound_axr.ltx

Do I need to edit this?

Oh, okay, thanks!

Also, I'm not talking about Chatty Companions

I don't care about text messages, I just hate other NPC's blabbing about

[slow bolt]

never saw that problem at all

NPCs barely talk

[random fulcrum]

must be complaining about mercs really

since russian speaking mobs don't talk that much

[slow bolt]

Oh if i was near mercs talking their lines in gamma i would genocide them all very soon

I can only handle so many laughs and "come on guys thats not funny"

[icy estuary]

I wouldn't mind them talking I just don't like how often they repeat the same 3 lines they have per faction

[slow bolt]

what faction are you talking about?

because stalkers are very silent

They barely talk

[icy estuary]

All of them: Loners, CSky

[slow bolt]

i guess you are playing a different game then

[icy estuary]

The same "no habar"

[slow bolt]

well that is idle chat with others

and it really isnt every 5 seconds

[icy estuary]

Or "my shoes are worn off, I got cheated"

It's often enough to get annoying, especially when sound mixing is garbage and you can hear them while being very far away

[random fulcrum]

add san andreas npc banter

[icy estuary]

I'll have two number 9's

[state]
type = npc
npc_prefix = true
avail_communities = bandit, csky, dolg, ecolog, freedom, killer, army, monolith, stalker, greh, greh_npc, army_npc, isg, renegade
path = states\idle\idle_
shuffle = rnd
idle = 7,13,100
group_snd = true

It's this it?

[celest forge]

Nah add oblivion npc banter

[random fulcrum]

wait let me do that one again

[lyric sentinel]

Someone knows how to replace vodka textures? I want replace putinka and nemiroff

[olive steppe]

I there a way to interact with reshade from in game script? I wan't to make a script that will toggle off some reshade effects when nvg is on. I saw that reshade turns off automatically when aiming with PIP scopes, so maybe it's possible?

[random fulcrum]

it turns off because modded exes got an addition some time back that made reshade not interact with ui layers

so that you didn't get your fancy bodycam shader making the inventory look distorted

or the hud

[naive snow]

Just find the item ltx file that describes the object, it should point you to their ogf model. From there you can use Blender or the OGF editor to change the file path to your new texture. You can also simply replace the existing texture given that you respect the UVs

[lyric sentinel]

Thanks for guide bro🤝

[shadow hull]

Would anyone be willing to send me the grok_items_tier.ltx? I made adjustments to mine and didn't make a back up and I don't remember what I changed or why I did it.

[stable vault]

https://github.com/Grokitach/Stalker_GAMMA/blob/main/G.A.M.M.A/modpack_addons/G.A.M.M.A. Expert toolkits tier 5/gamedata/configs/items/settings/grok_items_tier.ltx

[shadow hull]

Thanks.

[gaunt seal]

@cursive charm what planned for next sss update?

[slow bolt]

bruh

Why would you ping mod creators like that

[celest forge]

@slow bolt shut up nerd

[gaunt seal]

its you?

i asked for he

not you

shut up

[slow bolt]

https://tenor.com/view/yakuza-voices-of-the-void-votv-kerfus-shut-up-gif-5133990977358614387

[celest forge]

https://tenor.com/view/slap-mag-agent-mag-agent-torture-hank-hank-madness-combat-gif-25012179

[slow bolt]

https://tenor.com/view/cat-gif-452436100611219231

[hardy hound]

Its in the moddb page

[grave sable]

I wanna try making an animation mod for AK 12 monolith

How Can i do it like any tips and guide on which softwares i need?

[naive snow]

It's on his Discord you can access by subscribing to his Kofi page

[naive snow]

@faint sable Here are all the THM for the XME4

[faint sable]

gonna go in and test

[celest forge]

It doesn't have bumps?

[faint sable]

we testing to fix this

[celest forge]

The purple/green pixelation?

[faint sable]

yee

[celest forge]

Ah yeah

Compression bullshit

Burn knows more about it than I do

[naive snow]

Nah this isnt for the green/purple, this is to fix the bump missin the channel and gloss breaking to shit

I'd have to ask Keaton for the original texture files of the XM4 to fix the green/purple

[steady apex]

https://tenor.com/view/vainzi-white-guy-gif-24847210

[naive snow]

All the bumps were missing their THM and some of the base color THM had funky swanky shit in there

[celest forge]

So the guy made the bumps but not the thms to assign em

?

[celest forge]

Unreal graphics

[naive snow]

Some bumps were assigned, some were not, part of the textures are in DXT1 so it scraps the alpha channel

[naive snow]

Whoaaaa this is odd

[celest forge]

Tf

[faint sable]

yea I saw it and was confused too usually it just does the droplets

[celest forge]

That's a cod port tho right

[random fulcrum]

i can hear this gif

[naive snow]

Odd, mine seems to work good

Is that on SSS20?

[faint sable]

on the latest 20.2

[naive snow]

I'm still on 20 alpha 6 so that could be why. Tho hard to explain the super weird shading

[faint sable]

testing the rain on other guns, only the xm4 is doing this

[naive snow]

Here try these, I've modified a thing or two that might be the culprit

I'm using those in the screenshots

[faint sable]

trying rn

it's still doing it

[naive snow]

No clue then, might be something to do with the new SSS

[faint sable]

yea I suppose so, it doesn't do it with any other guns though so must be something with this one

[celest forge]

What are these bumps bro

it looks like the gun is oiled up

[naive snow]

Yeah I think whoever ported the gun over redit the smoothing group and didn't redo a proper bake the normal map

Or it's straight up a roughness map shoved in the bump instead of a glossiness map

Heck the silly thing is that the textures are BC7 which isnt supported

So it's a miracle the gun isn't turning blue

Yeah normal map is all fucked

[celest forge]

Something's fucky

About this gun

It's like

kit bashed from parts from other stuff

not just the cod stuff

[celest forge]

That's better

even by just a tiny bit

can't believe grok would add something of this quality with his standards

this is like BAD

All of the textures are horribly compressed for some reason

@faint sable has it always been like this?

[faint sable]

yep

[celest forge]

Major yikes

this is like

BAD bad

Not even with correct bumps it looks ok

[naive snow]

The compression artifact are partially because the texture is saved as BC7 but read as DXT1 from the THM. Whomever did this really put in basic ass effort

Like the actual textures themselves are kinda okay, but the bump is done horribly and the compression is all over the place

[woven terrace]

and then peopel laugh at me because I take like 75-80hrs per gun...

[surreal gust]

Or probably used the microsoft bc7 converter

anomaly doesnt support bc7 most likely

[low spindle]

Hello,
Does anyone know where the tables for objects spawned from containers is? As in what spawns from medboxs and wooden crates? I have an idea.

[simple scaffold]

items\settings\ph_box_generic.ltx

As read by xr_box.script

[low spindle]

Brilliant. Ty as always

[stiff cradle]

hey, just was curious if possible to spawn a pulse in debug, cant find it in the lists anywhere

[simple scaffold]

It is interesting it looks like the script has support for drop lists by level and or faction, but I can't say I ever noticed any variations.

[simple scaffold]

Everything is possible, the debug menu as a Lua code execution console. You can run any Lua you want. Including the code to spawn a pulse.

Example of code that spawns pulse can be found in the psi storm manager script

[stiff cradle]

thanks 🙂

[low spindle]

thats strange i too have never noticed any appreciable difference ingame. I plan on modifying the object list and spawn % as part of a modpack

*tweakpack

[low spindle]

Here i made this for you real quick. its not perfect but its a SUBSTANTIAL improvement. Its not finished but when it is I will post to moddb

[clear nacelle]

Почему в UGR3 не работают прицелы?

Why in UGR3 dont work scopes?

[knotty latch]

time to ask the professional modders:
Do you guys know if anyone is developing a monolith storyline at the moment?
Also, what's the easiest way to make a mod to add my own music to the game's radios?

[tawny stream]

Well, one of these was in the FAQ.

#╭📖faq message

Read that

[knotty latch]

thanks @tawny stream
does anyone know if theres' a monolith questline coming? and/or when?

[surreal gust]

For radio you need to unpack the music .db files

[cerulean mantle]

What could be causing this Time Continual?

It's counting time. 84000 I'm pretty sure means 84 seconds from entering the main menu on launch.

Okay, it's from one of the newest addons.

Grok's Gotta Go Fast Extended.

[sacred token]

oops

Yeah, I'll fix that in the next update

*now

Thanks for reporting it

Also the Time Continual is not directly called from script. It is being sent by the engine when the function "printf" is called

[tight imp]

Guys is there a way to increase the size of ammo boxes ?

[cerulean mantle]

!Shader

[queen pine]

@cerulean mantle To clean your "Shader Cache", don't use the option in the Anomaly launcher.
Go in this folder: Anomaly\appdata, you'll find a folder called shaders_cache, delete this folder and launch the game normally from MO2, using your preferred DX.

[cerulean mantle]

Thank you for the mod!

[sacred token]

You're welcome :)

[slow bolt]

So gamma users will never get the update

[sacred token]

ᵖˢˢᵗ ᵖˡˢ ᵉˡᵃᵇᵒʳᵃᵗᵉ ᴵ ᵏᶦⁿᵈᵃ ᵈᵒⁿ'ᵗ ᵘⁿᵗᵉʳˢᵗᵃⁿᵈ

[stable vault]

I dont think that mod is even included in gamma, at least it's not in the modlist on github

[slow bolt]

Grok's gotta go fast is

[stable vault]

But I am now using it thanks to seeing this bug so thats a win I guess

This is Groks gotta go fast extended

a mod of a mod. modception

[slow bolt]

There is a difference?

oof

[stable vault]

https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/addons/gotta-go-fast-extended

Yeah lets you control more movement speed types

[cerulean mantle]

Ads speed is my favorite

You can also make walks slow to enjoy a stroll before a Lurker jumps at you out of nowhere

Fanboying over SSS

[vale knot]

Lol

Was waiting for that to get deleted

[sacred token]

So you change the values mid gameplay sometimes? Maybe I'll add a keybind so you can change the speed like in EFT with alt and mouse scroll

[cerulean mantle]

Yeah, I change my whole MCM values from time to time because I'm kind of playing with Experience Framework and since I can't dynamically adjust thing, I do them every 5 levels (every 5 levels, I set the Skills to level up by one etc.)

[narrow stirrup]

snd_draw = weapons\bino_draw, 0.5 <-----------Hey guys can somebody tell me the function of this 0.5 pls

[sacred token]

Probably volume

[narrow stirrup]

Thank u

[latent path]

I wanna make a mod for the stalker edition non-stop drink

Guess i'm gonna have to buy the can and scan it. Before I do, has anyone tried it?

@sudden rune you wanna help or smthn?

[sudden rune]

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/934064112760139836/1198633494423814265/no.gif

[latent path]

Knew it

Anyway, anyone got a can that they've already cut up? otherwise i'll do it

[sudden rune]

https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/addons/non-stop-for-anomaly

[latent path]

Not that one. This one

[latent path]

I've already got that mod's textures open as a guideline

My main problem is i can't find good pictures of the entire can. It only normally shows just the front, missing the back portion with the gas tank, not to mention the warping from it not being flat. Also there isn't a good source for the back text, usually having heavy flash that makes it difficult to read

I've got a dremel so i can make a clean cut, I just need to take several photos and I should be able to scrub any flash. I don't have PS installed on this machine yet but I'll get it up and running.

Made a post on reddit just in case anyone's done the work for me

[runic wraith]

Is dltx mod_SYSTEM means it patch loaded ingame stuff? And i can add in 1 file like armor and helmet fixes together?

[boreal wraith]

can't wait for cerveza cristal mod (beer texture replacer)

[analog blade]

So im going to sound like a colossal f**k, but if you see a "Stack Traceback" message in the logs thats not something to worry about thats just the script running right? Rather than an issue with the script running, example being here, specifically looking at the "__spawn_dynamic_mutants.script" line.

[knotty latch]

is there a guide somewhere on how to mod?
im looking specifically for story-crafting related mods

also what coding language is used by x-ray engine?

[slow bolt]

Check pins

[slow bolt]

Engine is C/C++

Scripts are lua

[knotty latch]

on a scale from 1 to 10, how easy would you think it is to take a quest that already exists, and add it as a yellow quest for some other faction?
for an experienced dev in c#

[slow bolt]

You dont edit the engine

You script in Lua

[knotty latch]

so, scale from 1/10 , 10 being most difficult?

[slow bolt]

@gusty narwhal above

[random fulcrum]

take a wild guess as to how and why in a context of a, while niche, extremely popular game with a raving fanbase in the western and eastern halves of the world, tons of modders that seemingly do the impossible, you haven't seen this mod be fully developed yet

there was a guy that was working on an actually smooth implementation of the idea, including dialogue and shit

it never came out despite development going strong for like over a year

it's just outlandishly tedious

not even complicated just extremely tedious

[knotty latch]

im a developer, im gonna ask you this
-how tedious can it be, to take a quest that literally only asks for you to hand in equipment, and just add it to monolith as a yellow quest?

it should be no more than a copy paste in simple logic

at first im gonna make a questline of 2-3 recycled side quests

[random fulcrum]

i guess not that much if you just want it barebones?

also i don't see how being a developer changes anything really lmfao

[knotty latch]

Well, yeah, even if i want to change the parameters of what i want to be required to hand in for the completion of the quest, it cant be that tedious right?

[random fulcrum]

there's also the issue of forester's door which is i guess baked to the map but i haven't really looked at it either