Tried the experimental dirtmapping (ambient occlusion) feature of Tyrann’s compilers. I wasn’t so sure this would work well with Quake’s dark textures, but I think I’m convinced now. Perhaps it’s also the hi-res textures that make it “pop” like this. Plus the fact that this map is a thankful test object because of the relatively high amount of brush detail. Having the floor here be a func_detail also solved some lighting issues compared to the release version.
Looks like AO should to me. Nice. It deepens the creepy atmosphere of the Quake world.
I don’t know exactly what makes this nice lava glow look so good, but I’ll take it! (OK, I suspect the hi-res textures do a large part to avoid the colour clamping that Quake does, and MH’s engine has some light shenanigans that I don’t quite remember the details of.)
The AO adds subtle lighting detail to the floor grates, the wall details and the grapple point in the ceiling.
The screenshots are not brightened or otherwise photoshopped, they’re dumped straight from the engine and converted to JPG. This is how it looks in game.
It’s quite likeable. Someone recompile vanilla Quake with this.
Nice!
Looking good! Yeah, I like how AO make brushwork detail pop out, while also adding (hopefully) realistic shadows to make the world a little moodier.
I was testing AO on e1m1.bsp while debugging it, with no other lighting (the -dirtdebug option), and I’d think “Hmm, this just looks like r_fullbright is on, I don’t really see any AO”, but the I’d turn the actual r_fullbright 1 on, and the world suddenly looks completely flat and fake 😉
“r_lightmap 1” plus compiling with -dirtdebug is super handy to see what exactly the AO is doing, and for tweaking the dirtrange / dirtscale / dirtgain values.
It is very subtle, yeah, but I like it. I’m not sure if the RMQ engine has r_lightmap, but I can always do that in quakespasm. Really good job with the compiler!
re: your e1m1 testing: Some parts of that map are also pretty brightly lit, not so much chance for AO to become visible I guess. Many of the vanilla maps are chock full of light entities in crazy places.
Yeah – just adding a pass of AO on top of e1m1 doesn’t do much, it’s already got a pretty intricate lighting setup with a ton of shadows. The “-dirtdebug” option I was testing ignores all lights in the map, sets everything to 100% brightness and then adds the AO to that, so you can see what the AO is doing in isolation.
Beautiful screenshots of your nice work compiled with the AO.