To all programmers out there who have an appreciation for designing maps, there is an idea that has been across my mind for awhile and I think it would be fantastic if it became a reality.. This idea is to have a third party tool that is strictly designed for editing shadow & color lightmaps (.GND file support). There are lightmap tools currently available such as GNDEdit (not exactly user friendly) & BrowEdit but they are extremely limited in functionality.
The tool would be able to do the following:
1. Open a map (Require .RSW and .GND) -> You can see the map objects & terrain just like BrowEdit but cannot edit them
2. Use lightmap tools to colorize walls, ground level terrain, shadows across objects, and perform custom lightmap calculations.
The benefits with this is the quality and control of RO maps would be a lot better. What I've found as a mapper for several years is the beauty of map when working with design simplciity and lightmaps. You will find that many of Gravity's maps are extremely simple in design but look amazing. The ability to do this is found all in the lighting. Lighting controls the perspective of how well a map appears. If you have full complete control over that, players would have a greater appreciation of their play area.
Here are a few examples of simple maps that can be designed in less than an hr yet look fantastic because of the quality of lighting:
1. Turbo_room
2. Pay_dun00
3. 1@tower
4. Job_wiz
Lighting is one of the last features of a map we have very limited control over. There hasn't been third party tool release specific for lightmaps in quite a long time, and personally I think its needed. So I'm just throwing this request out there to you all and maybe this might strike your interest as a possible project you might start in the near future. Calculating and controlling how lightmaps form isn't exactly a walk in the park (Borf has spoken to me regarding this) however if you are able to accomplish something like this, I truly believe mappers such as myself out there would really appreciate this new additional tool.
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Syouji
To all programmers out there who have an appreciation for designing maps, there is an idea that has been across my mind for awhile and I think it would be fantastic if it became a reality.. This idea is to have a third party tool that is strictly designed for editing shadow & color lightmaps (.GND file support). There are lightmap tools currently available such as GNDEdit (not exactly user friendly) & BrowEdit but they are extremely limited in functionality.
The tool would be able to do the following:
1. Open a map (Require .RSW and .GND) -> You can see the map objects & terrain just like BrowEdit but cannot edit them
2. Use lightmap tools to colorize walls, ground level terrain, shadows across objects, and perform custom lightmap calculations.
The benefits with this is the quality and control of RO maps would be a lot better. What I've found as a mapper for several years is the beauty of map when working with design simplciity and lightmaps. You will find that many of Gravity's maps are extremely simple in design but look amazing. The ability to do this is found all in the lighting. Lighting controls the perspective of how well a map appears. If you have full complete control over that, players would have a greater appreciation of their play area.
Here are a few examples of simple maps that can be designed in less than an hr yet look fantastic because of the quality of lighting:
1. Turbo_room
2. Pay_dun00
3. 1@tower
4. Job_wiz
Lighting is one of the last features of a map we have very limited control over. There hasn't been third party tool release specific for lightmaps in quite a long time, and personally I think its needed. So I'm just throwing this request out there to you all and maybe this might strike your interest as a possible project you might start in the near future. Calculating and controlling how lightmaps form isn't exactly a walk in the park (Borf has spoken to me regarding this) however if you are able to accomplish something like this, I truly believe mappers such as myself out there would really appreciate this new additional tool.
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