[Skin] The Calm Before the Storm

DWells55 · Post by **DWells55** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 6:25 am

r0tten wrote:
This Halo Ring's artificial weather system created by the Forerunners is
evident on this island; home to the most intense and mysterious of
storms.
it's too long i tried adding it to the main menu with that description and it cuts it off in the middle of "mysterious". come up with a ne one, i like the way you think!!!!!!!!! i need a good description for the map pack too.

Try just "the most intense of storms" and see if that fits.

r0tten · Post by **r0tten** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 2:04 pm

it's still 2 letters too long, with the full thing it cuts off at the "y" on mysterious. so how ever many characters that is, i'm too lazy to count.

ScottyGEE · Post by **ScottyGEE** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 2:28 pm

I think the max is 255 letters...

DWells55 · Post by **DWells55** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 2:31 pm

The just this ring's instead of this halo ring's.

ScottyGEE · Post by **ScottyGEE** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 2:33 pm

yeah man IMPROVISE

DWells55 · Post by **DWells55** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 6:30 pm

Darn it, chad, you've been plagued wiht the black DDS problem again. I've found a few textures on map that are giving me trouble. I'm going to try extracting them, saving them as bitmaps, then opening the bitmap file abd letting it generate mipmaps when I save it as a DDS again with CS2 and reinject.

Oh, and this

This ring's artificial weather system created by the Forerunners is evident on this island; home to the most intense of storms.

fits fine in the menu.

ScottyGEE · Post by **ScottyGEE** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 6:33 pm

Mr. Dwells55, I am currently in the process of modding this map so I'll remove the lods...anychance u can tell me the bitm names?

theycallmechad · Post by **theycallmechad** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 6:35 pm

DWells55 wrote:Darn it, chad, you've been plagued wiht the black DDS problem again. I've found a few textures on map that are giving me trouble. I'm going to try extracting them, saving them as bitmaps, then opening the bitmap file abd letting it generate mipmaps when I save it as a DDS again with CS2 and reinject.

Well, I wouldn't quite call it a plague... the plage is my noobishness. I thik I have a way of fixing these (thanks to a ScottyGEE suggestion), and hope to have an update on this skin sometime next week. The main texture I noticed is the driftwood texture... if you know of any others, please be so kind as to letting me know here. That would be greatly appreciated.

Monkey Terd · Post by **Monkey Terd** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 6:44 pm

very nice

DWells55 · Post by **DWells55** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 7:15 pm

theycallmechad wrote:
DWells55 wrote:Darn it, chad, you've been plagued wiht the black DDS problem again. I've found a few textures on map that are giving me trouble. I'm going to try extracting them, saving them as bitmaps, then opening the bitmap file abd letting it generate mipmaps when I save it as a DDS again with CS2 and reinject.
Well, I wouldn't quite call it a plague... the plage is my noobishness. I thik I have a way of fixing these (thanks to a ScottyGEE suggestion), and hope to have an update on this skin sometime next week. The main texture I noticed is the driftwood texture... if you know of any others, please be so kind as to letting me know here. That would be greatly appreciated.

Driftwood being that log thing right by the hill by the Sniper spawn by the Warthog, right? It's been bugging me.

Absolutely BEAUTIFUL sky by the way. Those clouds are just amazing when they are moving overhead like that. I love it. This map is one pretty addition to my mainmenu - the only time I play regular Relic now is when someone else chooses the map over System Link.

Agent ME · Post by **Agent ME** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 8:30 pm

It's a skin... it doesn't effect online/system link play at all, why not put it over your normal relic so you can use this while you play system link too?

DWells55 · Post by **DWells55** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 4:22 am

Because I like to have a 100% even playing field online.

.09 · Post by **.09** » Sat Mar 18, 2006 9:11 pm

I like simple, yet professional stuff like this. Looks great man, nice work.

drewboi · Post by **drewboi** » Sat Mar 18, 2006 11:17 pm

Nice work chad...

Tural · Post by **Tural** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 10:39 pm

The only skin I've ever felt was worth downloading.

HK-47 · Post by **HK-47** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 11:03 pm

wow...this could be used to make some good movies.

~SkiLLs4KiLLs~ · Post by **~SkiLLs4KiLLs~** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 11:53 pm

wow the map is great *downloads*

DWells55 · Post by **DWells55** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 10:20 am

Just a wee suggestion - in some parts of the sky, you can see blocking from JPEG artifacting or whatever. THink you could blur it out?

theycallmechad · Post by **theycallmechad** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 10:29 am

DWells55 wrote:Just a wee suggestion - in some parts of the sky, you can see blocking from JPEG artifacting or whatever. THink you could blur it out?

No, that's actually a HUGE suggestion. It's the one reason I held onto this skin for so long, and it was the primary reason I almost didn't release it. The dang sky is a dXT 1, and in order to render a gradient, the bitmap has to be a DXT 5. I tried to force it to be a DXT 5, but it only worked for half of the sky, leaving the other half all messed up.

When I started skinning this map, I knew that I'd be limited with what I could do as it wouldn't open up with insolance. I also knew that relic is a fairly plain map, but it has TONS of sky on it, so I decided to focus on the sky. When I skinned it to be how I wanted it, I got the blocks. I tried over and over to get rid of it, and nothing worked. I even tried to blur or smudge it, but it still looks the same. What you see is the very best I could get it short of making the whole sky black (that would defeat the purpose of the theme of the mod, however). So, I gave in finally and just released it. I am going to do an update on this soon, I hope. I'd like to fix a few things I forgot about before I released it. I don't like the color of the weeds, and I need to try to fix the logs. There's a few other small details, but they're small enough they need no mention.

Tural, I'm glad you like the skin. I'm confident you'll find it just as good ingame as it looks by the pictures.

DWells55 · Post by **DWells55** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 10:35 am

Ah, I gotcha. It's really not that bad anyways.

A DXT5 is a lot bigger than a DXT1, so it might have moved some of the data around in the mpa, resulting in a half corrupted sky.