VisLight for win32


standard disclaimer
-------------------
If this program causes your computer to have problems in any way, whether it
explodes or loses its cmos or whatever, its not my fault.  By reading this
and using my vis you understand and acknowledge this disclaimer.  All issues
with the software not working properly and all responsibility for damages lie
solely with the user. 


Care and feeding
----------------
VisLight is a redo of the vis program for generating the potentially visible
set of quake maps and of the light program for generating quake lightmaps.
Several modifications have been made to allow for better performance and ease
of use.  This particular version has been compiled for a win32 environment
such as Windows NT or Windows 95.


Vislight incorporates both vis and light into the same program but it goes
farther than that.  Light actually uses the vis data to do assist in its
calculations.  However this has proven to be slower not faster.  The next
version should work a little better I hope.  

VisLight has the ability to estimate the time of your vis job.  This is a very
rough estimate and becomes wildly inaccurate for conditions involving a
large number of leafs visable to other leafs.  However it is the most
accurate time estimation out because its the only one. 

Had to rip a feature off of the hipnotic guy.  VisLight shows percent done now
for both vis and light.  Much more useful than looking at a blank screen for
hours at a time.

The next featureset of VisLight is that it now has the ability to use a response
file just like doom did.  Instead of typing tons of different command line
parameters one can just put them in the response file and it will be processed
as if it was on the command line.  An example response file is included with
the program.  This was done because the next version may be a WorldCraft plugin.

Ambient sounds for textures are calculated by the vis program.  The textures
associated with sounds can be changed via the response file. The following
commands do this and are show with their default values:

-watertex *water
-skytex   sky
-slimetex *slime
-lavatex  *lava
-extrawatertex *04water


Custom texture names for water brush sounds,lava sounds, and sky sounds,
should make for some interesting levels in the future :)

For those of you who may be still experiencing strange problems with grey
areas try the -threshold parameter.  It is a floating point number that
controls how close of a fit the vis does.  The default is 0.1 but you can
try 0.01 or 0.001 if you want to get it more precise.

VisLight takes only one command line parameter and that is the name of the
bsp file to operate upon.  The actual commands are contained in the
default.rsp file in the same directory as the VisLight program.  In addition
to the texture commands the following are available for use in the response
file:

-extra   turns on extra sampling for light
-dist    value for light distance
-scale   value for lightscale
-threads  not really used.  kept for possible future client/server package.
-level    vis level.  level 2 is default
-v        verbose mode

Right now I am looking at ways to algorithmically improve vis.  So far things
are going slowly but in time it will happen.  Also I would like to see the
next version of VisLight have the capability to show sunlight through the sky
as qrad does now.  And of course I am retrofitting this bad boy for radiosity
now.

Thanks and greetz
-----------------
  Thanks to GOD or else we wouldnt be here.  Also thanks go out to iD
software because they love us almost as much as He does ;-)  Also I would
like to thank Billy Zelsnack for his putting up with me and being such a
great help in my other projects.  Special greets to Dave Taylor at crack.com,
Ryan Geithman at bossgames, and all my wonderful friends on irc.


Starving Coder Standard Beg for dollars section
-----------------------------------------------
VisLight is FREEWARE.  Use it and  give it to your friends.  If you like the
program please give to a worthy charity such as Feed the Children, the Red
Cross, or your local Church.



Complaints, Concerns, Comments, etc...
--------------------------------------
They all go to vile@dazed.nol.net or /dev/null depending on how angry you are
at me ;)  Seriously though, PLEASE send me any comments or suggestions.  I
would like to bring you the absolute best vising tool ever.  Thank you.


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.prts is .prts and pieces .prts.
