Hi,

I was wonder if someone can help me please. I am trying to put 2 types of light into my map. One is a flickering light bulb, the other a flickering flame. I assume that they are the same effect.

I have read a couple of posts, but I don't understand them. could someone explain in very simple terms how it is done.

I was also wondering, has someone ever put a ghost in a map?

Regards

The flickering is going to be a problem. You have two basic choices. One, use an effect, but doing it this way really doesn't give the player the effect of an actual flicking light with true shadows. Or two, using the method of covering up the dynamic light using another brush or a shadow brush, moving the brush over the light, quickly, then removing it quickly. Unfortunately, I would say the simple method would be to just use an effect. Save you lots of time and headaches for such a simple game effect most players won't even care about.

As for the ghosts, I have used them before in two maps I've done. They weren't the greatest but it worked well enough to get the idea. I used a custom texture of a zombie image, and masked out the background obviously so only the figure was visible, and then dropped the transparency of the image to less than 50%, all in photoshop and then I used a script to hide and show the texture/brush of the image, making it look like it disappeared and reappeared. it wasn't the greatest, but it worked for the effect I was trying to achieve. Hope this helps. But, yes, both are possible.

Hi Deek,

I hope you are keeping well.

I suppose the flame effect doesn't really matter s there is a fire there anyway. I am just finishing a cod 4 version of asylum from WAW.

I have opened up a couple of rooms and being an asylum I thought it would be nice to have a ghost and some screaming. The flickering light bulb would add to it, but if it is too difficult I'll pass. I'll give your suggestions a try and see what happens.

I think that you are right about no one caring. I recently downloaded six new maps and they were so basic, they were probably made in a week. One was just the same building repeated over and over. Maybe it's just the gameplay and no one cares what the map looks like.

Regards Rob

Well, don't get me wrong. Making a map that actually looks and feels real, is a big deal. People notice, they do. So, when I say that nobody cares, I don't mean, don't take the time to make the map epic, DO take the time to make it epic, all I'm saying is that, I don't know how many people will actually respect the work that went into it. You know, notice your efforts. But, for the people who do notice, it's recognition and respect.

I always spend a lot of my time on the maps audio. I think the audio can make or break the map. If you do well on the ghosts audio, it might put you over the top and not even need the other effects. It should be gritty, so make sure you have decals, and lots of them, great audio and lots of map effects, like dust and grime.

Find a way to make the player doubt what he saw, but don't make that doubt constant, make it random doubt. Meaning, if you use ghosts somewhere, make sure it doesn't always happen in the same place, every time. Find a way to create random player doubt.

Hi Deek,

I didn't mean I wasn't trying, just that there are a lot of maps around which clearly have not taken much effort.

Sometimes I spend days over small details and wonder if I am wasting my time.

I find with the decals I am always getting an error message saying they are floating. It doesn't seem to stop the map from running, but it is annoying.

You are right about the sound it does make it come to life. I am running some water at the moment and haven't put the sound on yet and it seems flat.

I just wish I had a lot more knowledge of the workings of radiant, but I guess it takes a long time to learn it all.


regards Rob

The best way I have found to use decals is to CTRL+SHIFT, which only selects the face of the brush. Then go to the drop down, PATCH> Faces to Terrain. This will make that face selection a patch, and you can match your wall or brush to exactly your face and not have any offset, thus not throwing any errors. So basically, once you've made it a patch, you just give it a decal texture and you're done, maybe a few minor tweaks with sliding the texture around using the S [Surface Inspector]. Most of the time I'll select many faces, then make all those selections terrain using this same method. That way you can make the wall a bunch of different decals. Sometimes if there are many brushes making of that terrain patch, I'll make them a group, so later I can select them all easily, duplicate them and lay another patch over them again. I also make them detail [the group], just to cover may bases.

I don't know if you are familiar with this method, if so, just disregard, if not, you have something new to try.

Floating usually means that, the terrain patch you have made a decal hangs off, or is technically floating, and not laying on the brush face, or it could even be overlapping just a .05 gap somewhere. Sometimes I have even gotten it because it was placed across more than one brush at a time.

I tried making flickering lights on some of my maps, and there are only 2 ways of doing it!
Like Deek said, effect or shadow brush!
If you don't know how to make an effect, i will help you with that and make one for you!

Hi Deek,

I am really annoyed with myself now. I knew the method you suggested, but had forgotten it.

I have spent hours covering the walls with terrains patches and trying to jig them around windows etc

I have changed all the patches to your method now.

Regards Rob

Hi TrikX,

I have followed a couple of tutorials and they didn't work. I think mainly because they lost me in the middle somewhere, and I didn't quite get it.

I would like to learn how to make a flicking light, if you could tell me in very simple terms, I mean real idiot terms then that would be great.


Regards Rob

I can't explain it in idiot terms cause it's not that easy to explain every step of making an effect, there are a lot of things to do, so i just made one for you.

Download Flicker Light Effect Here

And i have set the range to 900 units, so it will not be visible outside that range, but you also don't need more for an light bulb.
Also it prevent's you from getting errors with infinite range!
If you wan't to change something with it, like color, range, delay and stuff, just open up CoD4EffectsEd and open the effect in it, then play with values in there! ;)

I hope that helps!