[2016.02.23 17:13:12] Ryan Lam: what a small chatlog
[2016.02.23 17:16:32] Michael Tannock: Ryan, you seem upset today.
[2016.02.23 17:16:43] Ryan Lam: a bit
[2016.02.23 17:16:46] Ryan Lam: also very busy
[2016.02.23 17:19:11] Michael Tannock: I'm going to guess that it's because of the lack of work we've done.



I can't speak for anyone else, but I have to keep my ear open for my disabled sister whenever my Dad is out of the house, and he goes out often.
[2016.02.23 17:20:00] Michael Tannock: Like now, he's getting Fish for tea.
[2016.02.23 17:20:36] Ryan Lam: well the lack of work done isn't a great thing, but on the other hand I haven't been able to do much either so it's not like I can blame you guys
[2016.02.23 17:23:08] Michael Tannock: Are you worried that the community who sees the work we do, and these chat logs, will assume that the lack of work is out of laziness rather than real life, since they can't see our lives only our work?
[2016.02.23 17:23:25] Ryan Lam: only partly
[2016.02.23 17:27:31] Michael Tannock: I don't know if this will help, but when I was on the Black Mesa team, we had to get used to periods of down time, followed by bursts of fantastic progress.
[2016.02.23 17:27:49] Ryan Lam: well that's to be expected
[2016.02.23 17:27:56] Ryan Lam: it was the same way with the Hazard Course
[2016.02.23 17:28:14] Ryan Lam: no doubt it'll be the same way for this project
[2016.02.23 17:28:24] Ryan Lam: especially for a hobby project that can only be done in our spare time
[2016.02.23 18:31:39] Stephen Wimmer: And there's the kicker, everybody.
[2016.02.23 18:31:51] Stephen Wimmer: This isn't a full time project.
[2016.02.23 18:34:20] Chris Bryant: Remember how excited we'd get when there'd be months of hardly any progress followed by making seemingly all of it up in like a weekend?
[2016.02.23 18:34:54] Stephen Wimmer: This is how it goes for most mod development.
[2016.02.23 18:35:14] Ryan Lam: lol I think we set a few records going through almost all of Beta stage in about a month before release
[2016.02.23 18:35:32] Ryan Lam: for HC
[2016.02.23 18:51:45] Jeff Lyons: lol yeah
[2016.02.25 02:19:44] Jeff Lyons: So I found a thing on Polycount

http://polycount.com/discussion/164282/ue4-rooftop-offices-mini-environment-for-a-gumroad-tutorial



It's a project he's doing in Unreal 4 for a tutorial set, but I'm really digging the aesthetic
[2016.02.25 02:19:56] Jeff Lyons: Might yoink a few of these screenies as prop reference
[2016.02.25 02:23:49] Ryan Lam: I like the aesthetics with the skylights, but I doubt we'd be able to take advantage of that because nighttime
[2016.02.25 02:24:00] Ryan Lam: although it could make the rooftop battles interesting
[2016.02.25 02:24:55] Jeff Lyons: Yeah
[2016.02.25 02:25:20] Jeff Lyons: Maybe we could have some moonlight or light pollution shining through, for a bit more of a subtle addition to the interior lighting
[2016.02.25 02:25:27] Ryan Lam: that could work
[2016.02.25 02:25:47] Ryan Lam: I'm toying with the idea of projected texture lights
[2016.02.25 02:26:10] Ryan Lam: I forget, did Portal 2 fix the grainy shadows when they used them?
[2016.02.25 02:26:15] Jeff Lyons: I think they did
[2016.02.25 02:26:17] Ryan Lam: hmm
[2016.02.25 02:26:23] Ryan Lam: don't think that would be an option for us then
[2016.02.25 02:26:40] Jeff Lyons: IIRC the VDC has the snippet of code to enable multiple projected textures. It may or may not have something to fix the grain, I can't recall
[2016.02.25 02:26:42] Ryan Lam: for us, it seems to be either a choice between grainy shadows or shadows that are obviously aliased
[2016.02.25 02:26:47] Jeff Lyons: :(
[2016.02.25 02:26:53] Jeff Lyons: Lightmap scale .5
[2016.02.25 02:26:57] Ryan Lam: we can choose the level of grain, I think
[2016.02.25 02:27:06] Ryan Lam: and yeah I'm aware of the code that removes the projected texture limit
[2016.02.25 02:27:09] Ryan Lam: should be easy
[2016.02.25 02:27:21] Jeff Lyons: If I recall the grain was because it was low resolution for perf reasons
[2016.02.25 02:27:21] Ryan Lam: I'm thinking of at least using them for the IR camera beams, would be sweet
[2016.02.25 02:27:25] Jeff Lyons: Ooohhh
[2016.02.25 02:27:29] Jeff Lyons: That would be nice
[2016.02.25 02:27:33] Ryan Lam: the grain is because they didn't bother to code a proper AA mechanism for the shadows, I think
[2016.02.25 02:27:44] Ryan Lam: I could be wrong
[2016.02.25 02:27:48] Jeff Lyons: Well I guess we'll find out which way it is
[2016.02.25 02:27:53] Ryan Lam: but I know the reason for the grain is because aliasing is a problem
[2016.02.25 02:28:45] Jeff Lyons: I think I want to make some recessed light fixture models sometime soonish
[2016.02.25 02:29:48] Jeff Lyons: Also, in regards to aesthetics and building materials, what do you guys think?
[2016.02.25 02:30:12] Jeff Lyons: Are we going modern plaster and polished wood, space age, or something in between?
[2016.02.25 02:30:41] Ryan Lam: not space age
[2016.02.25 02:30:56] Ryan Lam: I'd say, take a nicely furnished modern office and use that aesthetic
[2016.02.25 02:31:03] Ryan Lam: the current references we have seem like a good starting point
[2016.02.25 02:32:45] Jeff Lyons: And I'm assuming we're going to have mainly clean textures
[2016.02.25 02:32:53] Jeff Lyons: Since it's an office building in decent repair
[2016.02.25 02:34:34] Ryan Lam: yep
[2016.02.25 02:44:52] Ryan Lam: also since we have little to no water in basically all the floors, we could possibly hijack the _rt_WaterReflection thingy to get pretty shiny floors?
[2016.02.25 03:14:24] Jeff Lyons: If it can be done with material parameters and not just shaders, probably
[2016.02.25 03:14:35] Jeff Lyons: Especially since 99% of floors are going to be level
[2016.02.25 03:14:55] Ryan Lam: worst case, just create a fake water texture that isn't actually water, with no refraction and no animation, and create glass above it
[2016.02.25 03:15:07] Ryan Lam: might just be crazy enough to actually work lol
[2016.02.25 20:55:31] Ryan Lam: looks like I might be able to access the stencil buffer without having to actually write a shader
[2016.02.25 20:56:09] Michael Tannock: How would you go about it?
[2016.02.25 20:56:37] Ryan Lam: apparently there are helper functions available that let me access the stencil buffer through C++ code
[2016.02.25 20:56:49] Ryan Lam: whether or not they'll help me do what I want is a different story
[2016.02.25 20:57:17] Ryan Lam: also, I feel that this was a decent enough conversation to be included in this chat for the record:
[2016.02.25 20:57:19] Ryan Lam: [11:46:00] Michael Tannock: I wonder if opening up floorplans to forum goers would be helpful?

[11:46:27] Ryan Lam: Well they're already public

[11:47:03] Ryan Lam: it's not like we're preventing anyone from doing anything with them

[11:47:41] Ryan Lam: although IIRC they're not posted on the wiki yet, which needs to change

[11:47:46] Michael Tannock: I mean having others submit floorplans, not show them the floorplans we have.

[11:48:03] Ryan Lam: nothing stops them from doing that

[11:48:26] Ryan Lam: Ryan Lam - Today 11:47

> it's not like we're preventing anyone from doing anything with them

[11:48:39] Michael Tannock: Nothing stops them, but nothing prompts them either.

[11:50:32] Ryan Lam: I'd prefer not to prompt them

[11:51:03] Ryan Lam: If this were the hazard course, I'd have a different attitude toward community contributions, but this isn't the hazard course

[11:51:36] Ryan Lam: Well, specifically a different attitude toward expressly welcoming and encouraging contributions, that is

[11:52:01] Ryan Lam: I don't mind accepting things that we agree are really good

[11:53:34] Michael Tannock: Well, you don't have to accept everything, so are you afraid of the thread being filled up with community floorplans?

[11:55:46] Michael Tannock: Possibly for the same floors?

[12:04:39] Ryan Lam: I'm more basing that on the idea that despite the openness, this is still primarily our project, whereas HC I considered to be more of a BM community project
[2016.02.25 20:57:33] Ryan Lam: (end of convo)
[2016.02.25 21:13:28] Chris Bryant: This is why we should finalize our application process, so we don't to deal w/ PMs without anything of substance like this.
[2016.02.25 21:16:13] Ryan Lam: mhm
[2016.02.25 21:20:29] Ryan Lam: honestly as far as the process goes, I think what we have is fine
[2016.02.25 21:20:46] Ryan Lam: except the interview questions, which are incredibly vague and I'd totally reject most of them as actual questions we should ask
[2016.02.25 21:22:57] Ryan Lam: and also we need to revise it to basically remove all mention of the collab design proposal document (since it's currently unfinished and completely untested)
[2016.02.25 21:23:22] Ryan Lam: and revise it to move the application assignments to Skype rather than forums, since we don't have proper forums (unless you still want to use the old ones)
[2016.02.25 21:24:35] Chris Bryant: Yeah, I wrote this like a year or two ago when the collab was initially written up.

As for questions, which ones did you think were vague? Most of them seemed fine to me (Though I haven't read them in a while).
[2016.02.25 21:25:12] Chris Bryant: And assignment, we were originally using forums for them since that would be good for archiving.
[2016.02.25 21:25:39] Ryan Lam: true
[2016.02.25 21:25:49] Ryan Lam: I'd say Skype works as a stopgap measure until we get actual forums, for now
[2016.02.26 01:21:17] Chris Bryant: Can the receptionist's nametag be "L. N. Page?"
[2016.02.26 01:21:45] Ryan Lam: don't see why not
[2016.02.26 01:22:18] Chris Bryant: Good, because I would have made it happen regardless of what you answered.
[2016.02.26 01:22:24] Ryan Lam: then no
[2016.02.26 01:22:47] Chris Bryant: I'm making it happen regardless.
[2016.02.26 01:25:07] Stephen Wimmer: Ryan shuts down the mod.
[2016.02.26 01:25:56] *Chris Bryant shuts down Ryan.*
[2016.02.26 17:36:08] Jeff Lyons: Straming
[2016.02.26 17:37:18] Ryan Lam: w00t!
[2016.02.26 17:59:11] Ryan Lam: stream is messed up
[2016.02.26 17:59:14] Ryan Lam: lol
[2016.02.26 17:59:25] Jeff Lyons: Ah shiet
[2016.02.26 18:00:12] Michael Tannock: You'll have to stop streaking then.
[2016.02.26 18:01:19] Ryan Lam: yay fixed
[2016.02.26 18:04:02] Jeff Lyons: How's the door look?
[2016.02.26 18:04:21] Ryan Lam: seems reasonable
[2016.02.26 18:17:56] Jeff Lyons: Either I'm doing this "Draw other Objects" thing wrong or there's a bug in Blender
[2016.02.26 18:18:05] Jeff Lyons: This is gonna make UVing a bit harder
[2016.02.26 18:20:18] Ryan Lam: suggestion: increase font size of your text
[2016.02.26 18:20:24] Ryan Lam: hard to read at the stream resolution
[2016.02.26 18:20:57] Jeff Lyons: Where are the preferences for that again
[2016.02.26 18:21:02] Ryan Lam: uhh
[2016.02.26 18:21:07] Jeff Lyons: I've never had to change it in NPP
[2016.02.26 18:21:23] Ryan Lam: well
[2016.02.26 18:21:29] Ryan Lam: you could do ctrl+plus to zoom
[2016.02.26 18:21:42] Ryan Lam: I think...
[2016.02.26 18:22:05] Ryan Lam: oh control+scroll up/scroll down
[2016.02.26 18:22:14] Ryan Lam: zoom out/in
[2016.02.27 15:56:55] Ryan Lam: jeff did you up your last taser vid
[2016.02.27 20:36:03] Jeff Lyons: Not to the wiki no
[2016.02.27 20:36:06] Jeff Lyons: Thanks for reminding me
[2016.02.27 20:36:25] Jeff Lyons: It was still processing the last time I thought about it
[2016.02.27 20:36:54] Ryan Lam: you can post the link anyway, that way it'll be available automatically and you won't have to check on it later
[2016.02.27 20:37:58] Jeff Lyons: It's up now
[2016.02.27 20:38:02] Jeff Lyons: Really?
[2016.02.27 20:38:05] Ryan Lam: yeah
[2016.02.27 20:38:07] Jeff Lyons: Oh, I suppose that'd make sense yeah
[2016.02.27 20:38:18] Jeff Lyons: I'll have to be more vigilant on doing that in the future