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.





--------------------------------

.prts is .prts and pieces .prts.

Ack!

I forgot to mention the following:



1.  VisLight contains the disastry mods for light.  Thanks to disastry for

the mod!  This allows you to use additional lighting parameters mangle and

wait to specify lighting picth and yaw as well as lighting distance for

individual lights.  For more info or if you dont need vislights lighting

abilities get lightdis brought to you by disastry.



2.  VisLight makes some really dark maps.  You may need to put in a lot of

lights to make it look right.  This is not a direct replacement for the

regular light you are used to it is a totally different approach in many ways.

So use more lights to make sure the surface is brighted from the proper

areas and be aware that it will probably take longer.  The results are in

many areas much more realistic though.  Enjoy!



ArchVile



