August Lab Report #1 of 12 news - Zircon Engine - a "DarkPlaces Mark V" project mod for Quake

Update: Moving Spotlight Prototype

Moving spotlights prototyped. Possible to make a spotlight that moves, like a security system that sweeps an area or actively looks for a player. This one will need writeup on setup, some of the setup has some "rules" and uses some fields differently than they are often used. Not sure if anyone ever would have made moving spotlights, requires combining a few features together in an unusual way ... did not expect it to actually work.

(And that is real-time editing of an entity done in the console. This is #1 of 12 for a reason.)

Atmospheric Lighting Experiment

So far I have not been able to get Q3 map compiler produce super-crisp shadows to make an "immersive atmospheric feel". Whether or not the map compiler can do this with the right settings, what is definitely possible is using a cubemap on a light to project the shadow and lighting desired.

(In game it is sharper than can be pictured in an image format that uses lossy compression like the above. Lossy compression likes to remove transitional colors.)

Notes:

• DarkPlaces supports lit sprites. Sprites and particles are not affected by lighting and any attempt to have fog or steam mixed with a lighting effect -- lit sprites is going to be a possible tool for this. DarkPlaces with treat any sprites with an "!" (exclaim) in the name like "!sprite.spr" or "sprite!.spr32" as a lit sprite and give it lighting.
• Cubemaps illuminate the map nicely including doors and platforms. Models/sprites do not receive their light from a cubemap, only from the light radius.

Easy Hall Lighting Examination

The Easy Hall in the start map in Quake 1.5, which is possibly (or not?) the same as the SMC (Small Mod Compilation) has a great lighting effect.

Open up the real-time light editor ("r_editlights 1") and looking around, this effect is mostly due to coronas.

Upon examination and deep inspection, it is not mostly coronas -- it is all coronas!

In DarkPlaces, it is actually possible to use the real-time light editor to create normal lights with a corona and then set the diffuse to 0 and shadow to 0 (turning off the light emission) that creates a corona only effect!

Notes:

• "Normal Mode Lights" in a real-time lighting file (quake/maps/start.rtlights) cannot be turned off in DarkPlaces with any of the settings. Tried with settings (like r_dynamic 0 then tried r_shadow_realtime_dlight 0) and then looked through the engine code, it cannot be done. There is a way to cause them to go off, r_shadow_debuglight 999999 which will only render light index #999999 which is not going to exist, so none of the rtlights will render. Settings should be able to affect these lights.

Someone told me about some limitations about DarkPlaces coronas. I have managed to experience them and looked at the code. Some other time, I will go into detail on that topic rather than throw in a wall of text into this article.

Shader Examination

Worked through the shader code in DarkPlaces, testing many of them. The above is "deformVertexes normal 2 0.5" which I had never seen or encountered in a .shader file.

The shader for the above is essentially this:

textures/dfx_effects/test1
{
    qer_editorImage textures/zz_effects/solarium
    
    deformVertexes normal 2 0.5
    tessSize 128 // larger is safer, smaller will result in many triangles

    {
        map textures/zz_effects/solarium
        blendfunc add
        tcgen environment       
    }    
    {
        map $lightmap
        rgbGen identity
        blendFunc filter
    }       
}

I noticed a desired feature that would be nice to have in a shader, and neither Q3 nor DarkPlaces seem to have the feature I wanted ... more on that next time.

Possibly next time .. discuss warpzones. "I don't know what that is!" Think Doctor Who's police box that is larger on the inside, yes that is one possibility .. or making a room that once you leave it is now part of some "other place".

August Lab Report 1 of 12

This was going to be a long article with visuals of every examination, experiment going on with full notes that in some sense would function as a working todo list or showcase. After 3 days of working on the long form version, it became clear that was too much to edit and there will be 12 instead of 1.

DarkPlaces is capable of many things, the documentation is sparse and similarly so is finding implementations of many capabilities. Through documentation and other means, these can be made accessible.