Important: Imminent Update to Break Certain Mods. Fix Included!
Hugh
CameramanSan Francisco, CA Join Date: 2010-04-18 Member: 71444NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Onos, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Developer, Pistachionauts
CameramanSan Francisco, CA Join Date: 2010-04-18 Member: 71444NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Onos, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Developer, Pistachionauts
in Modding
Hi everyone!
Natural Selection 2 will, if all things go to plan, receive a sweet new update on May 1st. On that day, certain mods will experience a mini-apocalypse. @SamusDroid, an extremely talented and motivated member of the NS2 community, has been the technical lead on this upcoming update. He has been responsible for all aspects of technical development, and the following message regarding mods is from him. I am extremely proud of the effort @SamusDroid has made for this update, and even more proud of him for making this effort to warn all mod creators of the impending effects on their mods.
I only posting the message to give it 'gold background' prominence!
From @SamusDroid:
*****
Soon a build will be released for 265 that will use a new method to change textures on models called texture atlasing. Due to there being a large amount of models that would need to be created in order to have weapon variants, we were forced to use texture atlasing. There is no way around this change, and with Natural Selection 2 becoming increasingly closer to the 32-bit memory limit we can not afford to increase the likelihood users will crash due to an increase of memory usage. Texture atlasing allows us to instantly change textures on models without the need to create new models, unfortunately this means that Exo and Rifle retexture mods will need to be updated in order to work properly. Below you will see an example of what an improperly working Exo skin will look like if it is not updated to the new format. An out of date mod will appear as if two textures have been mixed together over a model, to fix this you will need to update the material files of certain models.
Your mods are valuable, and this is an opportunity to prepare for this upcoming patch by providing the resources needed to update your mods. Below you will find information on what you will need to do in order to update your mods, including files for replacement.
Exo retexture mods
If you modify the third person Exosuit model download the following and place it in “models/marine/exosuit/” in your mod folder.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8f3dco149gbpeka/exosuit.material
If you modify the third person Claw model download the following and place it in “models/marine/exosuit/” in your mod folder.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tux6rds6dm68lwf/claw.material
If you modify the first person Exosuit view model download the following and place them in “models/marine/exosuit/” in your mod folder.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jrae8gezyiippa6/claw_view.material
https://www.dropbox.com/s/f0yahdfn4ad1xpp/minigun_view.material
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ip81sj3i6hghtiu/forearm.material
Rifle retexture mods
If you modify the first person Rifle view model download the following and place them in “models/marine/rifle/” in your mod folder.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xp6j9o2g7298jus/rifle_view.material
The files you are downloading are changing the shader and “numRows 2” to “numRows = 1”
What this is doing is setting how many atlases are in the texture and where the shader will look for the texture. The following is an example of a texture wth two atlases http://i.imgur.com/5XhmOlj.jpg. In code, we are specifying the textureIndex of the model, 0 being the top, and 1 being the bottom. Before 265, the textures for the Exo and Rifle did not use texture atlasing therefore are only a single texture. These changes will provide support for existing retexture mods that require minimal work to fix.
*****
End.
Natural Selection 2 will, if all things go to plan, receive a sweet new update on May 1st. On that day, certain mods will experience a mini-apocalypse. @SamusDroid, an extremely talented and motivated member of the NS2 community, has been the technical lead on this upcoming update. He has been responsible for all aspects of technical development, and the following message regarding mods is from him. I am extremely proud of the effort @SamusDroid has made for this update, and even more proud of him for making this effort to warn all mod creators of the impending effects on their mods.
I only posting the message to give it 'gold background' prominence!
From @SamusDroid:
*****
Soon a build will be released for 265 that will use a new method to change textures on models called texture atlasing. Due to there being a large amount of models that would need to be created in order to have weapon variants, we were forced to use texture atlasing. There is no way around this change, and with Natural Selection 2 becoming increasingly closer to the 32-bit memory limit we can not afford to increase the likelihood users will crash due to an increase of memory usage. Texture atlasing allows us to instantly change textures on models without the need to create new models, unfortunately this means that Exo and Rifle retexture mods will need to be updated in order to work properly. Below you will see an example of what an improperly working Exo skin will look like if it is not updated to the new format. An out of date mod will appear as if two textures have been mixed together over a model, to fix this you will need to update the material files of certain models.
Your mods are valuable, and this is an opportunity to prepare for this upcoming patch by providing the resources needed to update your mods. Below you will find information on what you will need to do in order to update your mods, including files for replacement.
Exo retexture mods
If you modify the third person Exosuit model download the following and place it in “models/marine/exosuit/” in your mod folder.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8f3dco149gbpeka/exosuit.material
If you modify the third person Claw model download the following and place it in “models/marine/exosuit/” in your mod folder.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tux6rds6dm68lwf/claw.material
If you modify the first person Exosuit view model download the following and place them in “models/marine/exosuit/” in your mod folder.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jrae8gezyiippa6/claw_view.material
https://www.dropbox.com/s/f0yahdfn4ad1xpp/minigun_view.material
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ip81sj3i6hghtiu/forearm.material
Rifle retexture mods
If you modify the first person Rifle view model download the following and place them in “models/marine/rifle/” in your mod folder.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xp6j9o2g7298jus/rifle_view.material
The files you are downloading are changing the shader and “numRows 2” to “numRows = 1”
What this is doing is setting how many atlases are in the texture and where the shader will look for the texture. The following is an example of a texture wth two atlases http://i.imgur.com/5XhmOlj.jpg. In code, we are specifying the textureIndex of the model, 0 being the top, and 1 being the bottom. Before 265, the textures for the Exo and Rifle did not use texture atlasing therefore are only a single texture. These changes will provide support for existing retexture mods that require minimal work to fix.
*****
End.
Comments
but i post to thank you for the community who does understand
I don't think so. As the old skins all use their own models there is currently no need or way so far to use that mixin to lower the number of models (what is no real issue as the skin models are allready linked themself to the vanilla model ), but if there would be new skins i'm sure this system would be used
Futhermore the next patch won't break much if you are allready using hooks
Still i think your ColorSkinMixin will be still ways more powerfull
1) client just crashes
2) You'll get errors related to shader missing data and the model will be invisible
Now, if it's a texture mod, the the model will end up looking like you took the texture and just twisted it around and misaligned it. Basically, like the UV mapping is jacked up.
This can all be solved if the new/modified shaders just set the numRows & numColums default value to 1 in the shader's <input> tag...then all the materials don't need to be updated.
//Excerpt from ns2/models/marine.surface_shader <shader> <inputs> <input name="albedoMap" type="texture" address="wrap" /> <input name="normalMap" type="texture" address="wrap" /> <input name="specularMap" type="texture" address="wrap" /> <input name="emissiveMap" type="texture" address="wrap" srgb="true"/> <input name="blendMap" type="texture" address="wrap">materials/effects/mesh_effects/skulk_view_blood.dds</input> <input name="overlayMap" type="texture" address="wrap">materials/effects/mesh_effects/nanoshield_circuit.dds</input> <input name="hiddenAmount" type="float">0.0</input> <!-- Set Defaults --> <input name="numRows" type="float">1.0</input> <input name="numColumns" type="float">1.0</input> </inputs> ...Anything specified in the *.material file or supplied by code will override the default valuesThanks a lot for this, and for your hard work @SamusDroid
As we ( modders ) don't have access to the engine code, this annoying issue can't be fixed by us.
Also as you started to talk again to the modding community:
Will it be easier in the future to report issue and open pull requests for the vanillla build?
I don't even know how many times I have to say this.
NO UNKNOWN IN SEVER BROWSER IS NOT FIXED IN 265 AND IS NOT LIKELY TO BE FIXED.
There is also no reason you should need to make "pull requests". If you have a problem or a question about a bug, there is a thread just for that. We don't even use Git
I allready have known that just asking if there are any ( 266 or 267 ) plans to fix it ....
Asking Hugh another time was worth a try
Glad I saw this topic due to the hotlink to general. Already copy pasted the file in my riffle texture mod.
File looked simple enough.
Thanks for the update folks.
I have made no texture mods but Samus' post is quite helpful
*wakes up*
Does this not mean these mods will work on less servers as many do not block viewmodels but do block material files?
Awwww. I started to enjoy using a purple viewmodel riffle :P
HE MENTIONED NEW WEAPONS
yaaaays
Very true.