The thread that started it all

[Craig Kostelecky]

You can post bug errors here as well. But posting in the bugs thread would make things easier as that first post is usually updated with new bugs and it would be easier to referrence it.

 

But either thread works for me.

[Craig Kostelecky]

I am very happy to finally see some progress happening in this area. Big thanks to everybody involved who are making the effort needed to finally get rid of the clipping issues we've had.

 

There is a reason behind this post besides the praise I'm giving these people. I'd like to get another public beta package released in the near future. But before I do, I'd like to have a consensus on how we're going to handle the cols. Should they be removed from the image and defined in the gta-vc.dat file?

 

 

re: Pine Creek, you know there's...

Are you trying to imply that Ryan_ is the same gut as PineCreek Skidz? Because I do not think they are the same person (even though Skidz's name is Ryan)

[charlesbesso]

Craig the game seems to work fine with the col's defined in gta_vc.dat. I propose we do an internal beta update for the team member's so we can test this new method on the wide range of their various set-ups to make sure no new issues crop up. if there's no new issues reported then we can take that bold step and release it to public for further testing, I also proppose all the people work on .col's collaberate and get portland's col's finished so we can use it as the sandbox for this testing. sound good to you guys?

 

to ryan_ it's actually rather simple ok a) import the .dff for the object b) create the new item as I described over the object you've imported c) when satisfied delete the .dff's object leaving your new object d) export as x and generate a .col file. here's the part I don't know how to do, how to go into the orginal .col and replace the old object data with the new updated object data (can anyone in the forum explain in pm's or this thread or perhaps make a tutorial about how one would do this it would speed up this mod alot)

 

hope that answered most of your question ryan.

Edited March 24, 2005 by charlesbesso

[Black-hawk]

Edited March 24, 2005 by Black-hawk

[Ryan_]

LOL No, i am not Pine. That was kinda funny. i think he was just referencing my post.

 

Charles, I know how to do that lol, so you do not know how to 3d model?

 

Edited March 25, 2005 by Ryan_

[Smellton]

So is this just an update or do you have to download the whole thing again?

[charlesbesso]

uh no I can't model I've been trying for the past five hours and 3d studio max is just crap, it'd be easy to forge a shape in it if when you picked a vertice with select it didn't DO EVERY DAMN VERTICE IN THE ENTIRE MODEL ON IN THE SELECTION BOX.... this is crap, does anyone know a 3d editing package that doesn't do that?

 

edit - it took alot of time but I got around that annoying issue, got block_maindrag down to about 877 faces so far with full detail, Vizup says it can bump it down to around 450, I'll be adding the backs of the buildings and the ground in the center which will be another 26 faces and I'll have completed my first complex modeling edit ever. whoo... I'm going do some simple ones after this.

 

and no ryan I was replying to your question in the previous post and I ment MANUALLY editing COL files

 

Death Squad working within Zmodeler is even worse since you can't even view the imported files vertices.... oh well maybe in Z2

Edited March 25, 2005 by charlesbesso

[DeathSquad]

3d Studio Max is the better of the programs, but I will say its a semi-harder program to learn. Look up Zmodeler, that seems to be the popular one under 3d Max.

[MegaVovaN]

[Ryan_]

For me VIZup says the best it can do with block_maindrag is 1080, and it has holes all over the place.

Polygon Cruncher got me to 1000 with a perfect model.

But, I have been thinking about the whole col/poly thing. I took a good look at the models and came to the comclusion that I can get very high detail colfiles with very low polycount if I just learn to make the mesh myself.

So.....

I'll be back when I have an update.

 

ps. does anyone know if the 3ds max 7 col I/O script works well? I really like the Dff I/O script so I hope its good.

 

[Alexcube]

When will be BetaV2 Release?

 

È êòî òàêîé Hammer83?

[ali_r]

I can't download the latest update? is there some other mirror for it?

[Luke]

So is this just an update or do you have to download the whole thing again?

If you're upgrading from Beta v1, then download the whole thing again.

 

Alexcube: Just don't ask, seriously, don't ask...

[ali_r]

Can i have an awnser on my question?

 

Is there an other mirror?, couse this one doesn't work for me anymore

[Luke]

Can i have an awnser on my question?

 

Is there an other mirror?, couse this one doesn't work for me anymore

The beta download gets a lot of traffic, and it looks like y-less has hit his limit and his host is being irritating now and they're not going to carry on serving his pages until next month. So perhaps someone else will setup a mirror, or failing that, you'll have to download it early next month I suppose.

 

That said, you don't need to be so pushy when asking, someone might have a mirror, just wait and see. You waited an hour and expected an answer, guys like Craig are still asleep, wait a while and we shall see.

[Lurk Morrison]

While playing, I get insane stunt bonuses (Not the ones you do for 100% completion) for flipping over a car (just onto it's roof) or for wrecking off a bike.

 

T'is pretty weird when it reads "And what a great landing." when I'm running from the flaming wreck.

[charlesbesso]

I came to that same conclusion ryan but with 3ds max and the bug I was talking about it makes it an insanely over detailed task, otherwise I would have just deleted all the vertices cept the top of the roof's and then rebuild it the problem with that was I wanted to keep those little steps you can actually stand on infront of the store fronts and also ideally I'd like to be able to stand on the various overhangs, if only there was a face to redefine the faces of the polygon's with a line tool, ryan I can send you my block_maindrag so you can see how I went about reducing the polygon count (one thing I did was use photoshops optimize then exported and let Vizup take a crack at it and it reduced it 50%) I also used the view to go inside the model and manually delete alot of faces that you can't see and would never run into unless you were in blue hell.

 

if you ever figure out how to edit the meshes manually please tell me as I could have reduced it alot more if I could have simply built a flat plane on the store fronts instead of having all the detail of the frames of the doors + windows

 

or if there was a way to delete all the vertices except the border's and have some software intelligently fill the faces with the left over vertices

[Mercie]

depending on the filesize (under 30 mb) I could host it. Granted, I also have access to 2 other sites/servers to put it on aswell. Expect links if I get the file to start with.

 

[email protected]

[MegaVovaN]

Just discussed it over with my hosting provider

Yall have 40 GB on this till the end of March!

Beta 2 TEST files with new SCM

Fake GTA 3 Audio Files

 

Filesize of beta 2 test files is 81 mb

 

But you could pack it with WinRAR and split into parts.

[ali_r]

Thanks MegaVovaN, now i can enjoy the pride of liberty too

[Mercie]

Well, I used to play GTA3 and I would get a little window that said "Please insert your GTAIII disk."

 

Now, even with all this new Vice City modding, I have not seen the window. I installed GTA:LC in a fresh copy of VC and now I am getting that same window. Bug? Glitch? Stupid CD? Cd Drive?

[Hammer83]

È êòî òàêîé Hammer83?

That would be me.

[Lurk Morrison]

Check the other threads for adding the GTAIII audio.

[Craig Kostelecky]

Thanks a bunch for the temp hosting MegaVovaN. That should hold us over until the end of the month at least. By the way, are you using the newest audioLC download (the one I made about a week ago)?

[Ryan_]

Well, It has been said enought times and I'm sorry it took me so long to attempt it but, I was thinking it would be better if we just edit the original col files. Basically all we need is the original cols with proper roofs and some backings to some buildings. There are also parts of the ground that need colfiles (in the middle of a model where you could not get in gta3.

 

I think I was misleading with my thoughts on high detail col files, when i speak fo detail, I mean about the roof/balconies/overhangs ect, which when I learn, will be a very easy thing to do. When we decimate the dff models, the decimation software is trying to keep a good appearance of the model to the game world, but that is not what we need. No matter what decimation software we use, the polycount of the colfile is too high.

Some of gta3's colfiles have 0 faces. How was that done? I think I really need to get a good understanding of the faces/polys/triangles/vert's ect.

Anyways, that is where I'm at.

Any advice or helpful info?

Thanks

[MegaVovaN]

No, that AUDIO LC is real old!

Tell me where I can download new fake audio, and I will replace it.

[Craig Kostelecky]

From here.

 

It has all of the GTAIII audio files included. However, all of the cutscene files are replaced with empty wave and mp3 files. So the total download is around 3 MB.

[Y_Less]

Yeah, sorry all. I did say at the time I only had 25Gb so couldn't be the only host. I'm amazed it lasted this long. It would be much appreciated if other people could also provide a more permanent other host as downloads have been going up and up (according to my c-panel logs) so if I'm running out now, I dread to think what it would be like next month. I may also need to contact my hosts.

 

Edit: I have also updated the first post with the new links.

Edited March 25, 2005 by Y_Less

[jcab42]

Did you guys try my suggestion? If so then where did you run into trouble?

 

re: "Zmodeler is even worse since you can't even view the imported files vertices"

I have no idea what you're talking about. You can't see vertices?

 

And no, Craig, I wasn't saying that they are the same person.

[charlesbesso]

Jcab vertices are the dots that make a polygon a polygon, z mod cannot show you these points, whereas 3d studio max can. however I am wrong about doing it like that much like Ryan I believe the only way to do this properly is to create new models. it's not that your concept wasn't sound J it's just we don't know how to model it at this point

 

Ryan yeah I noticed the zero face col's the orginal block_maindrag is a zero face file (at least the main part) here comes the problem loading it in colleditor shows me the size of the plane but neigher z mod nor 3ds max has any indication of measurment to scale a plane for use as the buttom for it.

 

at this point I'm just going to try modeling it with as litte features as possible, but that means losing details from the orgainal file , now all I need is some graph paper to visualize it.