[DFBHD] Baldo's New M60 Sight

[Baldo_the_Don]

How about a Scrome J8-F1 with a reticle easily described as "almost unusably french" by anyone even vaguely familiar with the fleur-de-lis?

[Baldo_the_Don]

Honestly, the attachment is a secondary concern for me with this post, but...

cs_office_Punch_Reticles.jpg: The way reticle sprites work in Counter-Strike (version 1.6, CS for short) and Counter-Strike: Condition Zero (CS:CZ) is a bit different from how Counter-Strike: Condition Zero Deleted Scenes (CS:CZDS) uses them, so I couldn't just drag and drop my CS:CZDS stuff into CS and CS:CZ. For the sniper rifles, I had to deal with the irremovable thin lines and their wonkiness. On the SG-552 and the AUG, it's the irremovable crosshairs. They stay visible even when you zoom in CS and CS:CZ. You can still add reticle sprites, but they'll only cover that crosshair.

A short aside for clarity: The two little horizontal and two little vertical lines in the center of the screen that you use to aim unzoomed weapons in some Half-Life 1 (HL1) mods? I call those the crosshairs. Fairly certain that the Valve developers do too. The lines that appear when you zoom in a zoomable weapon that are provided by a targa or sprite graphic file? I call those reticles or sights.

Just so we're all on the same page, right?

I made some sprites for the SG-552 and the AUG.

The first thing you'll notice is the weird dot pattern. My adventures in modding HL1 sprites have presented me with transparency problems. There are four ways sprites handle transparency:

Additive: Is a white design on a black background in a palette of blendable grayscale starting with black and going to white. The game interprets darkness in pixels as transparency, brightness in pixels in the sprite is added to whatever is behind them on screen in-game, using the color of the HUD, so it looks glowy. Except the game doesn't allow this draw method for reticles or crosshairs, 'cause sighting elements that auto-adjust brightness for environmental lighting would be too cool and useful.

You'll have to choose one of the other three draw methods, although only two of them are practical for reticles and crosshairs.

Alphatest: I don't know what the name means, but what it does is allow you to choose a palette for the sprite of up to 255 colors, and the 256th color will be interpreted as transparent. This way, you can have a red chevron with black lines, but angles and curves will be aliased and pixelly, 'cause alpha (transparency) has one level and does not blend.

Indexalpha: This is a black design on a white background in blendable grayscale. The first 255 colors in the palette are levels of grey, from white to black this time, and will be interpreted as alpha. The 256th color will be the color of the reticle or crosshair.

Normal: This draw method is 256 colors in a sprite, no alpha. The game will not accept sprites if the dimensions of the sides are not in multiples of 8 pixels, so if you're not making an 8 px square to aim with, you can't really use this draw method for reticles and crosshairs.

What all that means is that, you can make multicolor reticles with pixelly angles and curves, or smooth alpha angles and curves in a reticle of one color.

I want my black lines with red bits, so I have to use alphatest, but then I can't really have a nice blur around the sight housing, can I?

Something I learned about the way the game basically smooths things in the reticle sprites by making the pixels really blurry in-game is that, sometimes, what you cannot do with blended alpha, you can fake with patterning. So if you want to imply a line less than a pixel thin, you draw a one pixel wide line with every other pixel alphaed. The dotted line then looks super thin in-game. If a solid one pixel line is too thin for what you want it to do, but a two pixel line is off-center, and a three pixel line is too thick, you stick with the solid one pixel line, but add rows of dots to the sides of it, implying a centered, two pixel line.

And if you want to fake a blurry scope body, you use a dot pattern that's dense toward the middle, and thins as it gets to the outer edges. Suboptimal, yes, but better than the alternatives.

All that may help you understand what you see in the attachment a bit better.

The left side has my interpretation of the Trijicon ACOG Crosshair. The inner edge of the 'scope body' is 124 milliradians in diameter, the crosshair reticle is 110 mrads tall, 48 mrads wide, and the thin line gap in the center of the horizon is 11 mrads wide. Zoom in and you'll see the red bit really is that classic ACOG crosshair shape, even though this level of magnification (1.91x) makes it a bit dottish.

The right side is my attempt at the classic AUG Swarovski 'Donut of Death,' with a bit of green illumination on the ring that, as far as I know, is my own invention. You can also see the hard-coded crosshair peeking into the center so annoyingly if it's sized to 'small' or 'medium' in the game settings, but if you like a 'large' crosshair, the bars and post completely hide it. The inside of the outer ring is 150 mrads wide, and the outside of the inner ring is supposed to be 12 mrads wide, ideally 14.7 px, but a 14 px unsmoothed circle is actually an octagon, so I made it a little wider (16 px) to make it look more round. The inside of the inner ring is 10 px wide so I could have a 1 px green illuminated ring bordered with a bit of black. That's 3 px wider than to scale, but I decided clarity is preferred to authenticity this time.

I like my crosshair set to 'small,' so I needed an alternative to the AUG original sight, and I went with a German #4 and a red dot, as displayed in the middle of the attachment. The center gap is about 10 mrads from center to bars and post, and the bars and post are about 5 mrads thick. The red dot is as small as I could make it and still get that super-bright red dot effect.

So that's the current state of my favorite CS mods. Now I can get to the main reason for this reply.

In this post:

https://novahq.net/forum/showpost.ph...49&postcount=3

I have a screenshot of my modification of the M16 sight targas I found in the DFBHD demo. I like them tons, and I was happy I found them, but if I had been a little bit more attentive to this post:

https://novahq.net/forum/showthread.php?t=46890

...that Luis made... nine years earlier (!!!)... I would not have had to wait so long to enjoy them.

Nine years. Nine whole-ass years.

Situations like this are a bit worrisome to the Gen-X metalhead with dementia in his family history.


Edit:

cs_office_alternate_AUG_reticle.jpg: Pure black, blended alpha, and designed to use the crosshair as illumination.

[Menrva]

Keep up the great work, Baldo!

I've just joined NovaHQ and months ago I released a preview of my work in progress mod for DFBHD on ModDB. You're credited for the work done on the new weapon sights included in the mod: https://www.moddb.com/mods/delta-for...bre-operations

I've been working on it a lot lately. If you feel like improving upon what you already did for the mod, let me know.

[DF:BHD]

Originally Posted by Menrva

I've been working on it a lot lately. If you feel like improving upon what you already did for the mod, let me know.

I was in looking at your work. It looks great. Nice work.

[Baldo_the_Don]

I am not smart. This sometimes wrecks my progression as a person, and the setbacks monopolize my headspace, and from the outside, it might look like I'm rude.

I'm not rude on purpose, I'm preoccupied with damage control.

Like...

The Half-Life 25th anniversary update surprised me in the most ridiculous way. I was modding up a new reticle, I looked at it in-game, quit the game to tweak it, started the game to look at the new tweaks, and CS wouldn't start. Neither would CS:CZ nor CS:CZDS. Then when I started HL1, it was completely different.

My anxiety skyrocketed.

I tried a bunch of stuff 'til I disasterously uninstalled and reinstalled HL1 and all the HL1 mods I like. See, most of the games and programs I'm used to dealing with will only delete files and folders that had been installed, not new folders or files that were not installed, but Steam does things differently, so when I went to look at my modifications in my Steam games, they were all gone. Sprites, targas, .wavs, AI nav points for dozens of Vampire Slayer VI maps. Hundreds of files.

Now, guess if I had backed those files up anywhere. At all.

My stomach is knotting up as I write this, just thinking about it.

So what I've been doing the last few weeks is rebuilding my HL1 mods, and my HL1 mod mods.

This video basically saved my sanity:



Remember kids: Keep Calm and Choose the Legacy Beta.

I've pretty much recreated all my best CS:CZDS stuff. Attached is a triptych of a whole new reticle. It's from Primary Arms, and I think it's called the ACSS HUD DMR .308/.223. Unscaled, but detailed. It's kind of complicated, but not where it needs to be simple. I don't love it, but I think it's neat.

[mg]

Damn that sucks, man!

This tripped me up so much too. I had never seen CS1.6 crash like this before, and had no idea the developers themselves had a little fun inverting the icon in the task bar for the dialog window displaying the error message--because it happened after installing a suspicious anti-cheat program for a community I barely trust, I thought I was up for re-installing everything (including the OS). As everybody else discovered, it was indeed OK, just Valve doing Valve things.

FYI: You mention a "legacy beta" version but just in case someone else somehow sees this info here for the first time, there are now two distinct beta variants, one called simply "beta" and one called "steam_legacy". My read is Valve first pushed the reverted patch in their beta channel, then introduced the exact same update under the name "steam_legacy" to "clarify" it wasn't a newer version but the pre-anniversary one, though leaving the "beta" channel up to avoid breaking the installation of many people a second time.

A tip: while I always consider game installation directories to be "owned" by the developers (in terms of being able to do whatever they want to them as part of upgrade and migration processes, including removing custom files/reverting patches), I almost always set them under revision control nowadays (I use git); especially when I inevitably start modding. It allows me to see precisely what changes across updates (of the base game and the mods), revert arbitrary changes, "bisect" semi-automatically to figure out which mod (or, as in this case, which base update!) might be causing a problem, and obviously track my own work and experiment. In your case it may also help easily clone/synchronize your work outside of the game installation directory (on the same system and/or others), thus making sure you never lose it again.

It may take a bit of getting used to, but ever since I started doing that, I can't go back; I can't count how many times something changed which I didn't expect and would have never known about without it, or how many times I made a mistake myself (e.g. the classic: forgot to revert a temporary experiment) but which the system caught immediately. I recommend the practice for all modders!

[Baldo_the_Don]

I did a thing with the SFOD mod, which is the old working name of one of the mods I help Menrva with sporadically. See attachment.

I’m unsure of the AK/GP-25. Might be over-blobby. I love the .357, and I’m mighty proud of the shotgun. Keep in mind, these skins are all .tgas, and some resolution will probably be lost converting to .dds.

I could not draw anything on the notch of the Remington. I don’t know how this happens, but in my works on it, I realized that changing the color of any of the single pixels at the corners of the 512px² shotgun skin, the entire notch mount changes color. Four single pixels of the skin covers the notch, and they’re all layered over each other.

But I did my best.

The .45 has no notch modeled into the rear sight, so I centered the front sight fairly perfectly, and angled the weapon so it sits just above the notchless rear sight.

All the pos and tpos pitch values are edited so the secondaries are zeroed at 50m.

In one Operator Drewski video or the other, he was explaining russian military doctrine on zeroing AKs for 400m and aiming at beltline, and he might’ve been blathering, but I was convinced, so the AK/GP-25 is pitched to zero at 400m.

The front sight mount on the AK model is too short to align with the rear sight. And it might actually a Type 56.

I had also skinned and posed the RPK-74, but the idle animation makes the idea unusable.

And that’s how I spent my weekend.

[Oscarmike247]

Originally Posted by Baldo_the_Don

I did a thing with the SFOD mod, which is the old working name of one of the mods I help Menrva with sporadically. See attachment.

I’m unsure of the AK/GP-25. Might be over-blobby. I love the .357, and I’m mighty proud of the shotgun. Keep in mind, these skins are all .tgas, and some resolution will probably be lost converting to .dds.

I could not draw anything on the notch of the Remington. I don’t know how this happens, but in my works on it, I realized that changing the color of any of the single pixels at the corners of the 512px² shotgun skin, the entire notch mount changes color. Four single pixels of the skin covers the notch, and they’re all layered over each other.

But I did my best.

The .45 has no notch modeled into the rear sight, so I centered the front sight fairly perfectly, and angled the weapon so it sits just above the notchless rear sight.

All the pos and tpos pitch values are edited so the secondaries are zeroed at 50m.

In one Operator Drewski video or the other, he was explaining russian military doctrine on zeroing AKs for 400m and aiming at beltline, and he might’ve been blathering, but I was convinced, so the AK/GP-25 is pitched to zero at 400m.

The front sight mount on the AK model is too short to align with the rear sight. And it might actually a Type 56.

I had also skinned and posed the RPK-74, but the idle animation makes the idea unusable.

And that’s how I spent my weekend.

Yeah the uvw mapping on some of these models are not done very will. So changing one pixel might retexture more than you want. I believe i have the original models in 3ds max. I could fix the shotgun and he AK47 front sight and send them to you if you'd like.

[Baldo_the_Don]

Originally Posted by Oscarmike247

Yeah the uvw mapping on some of these models are not done very will. So changing one pixel might retexture more than you want. I believe i have the original models in 3ds max. I could fix the shotgun and he AK47 front sight and send them to you if you'd like.

I don't know what UVW means, but it looks more UWU than I'm comfortable with, tripping an unreasonable anger response. I'm fun at parties!

The germans have a phrase: Tu was Du nicht lassen kannst. Word for word: 'Do what you not leave can.' Contextually: 'Do what you can't not do.' It basically means 'do what you gotta,' and it almost always has dismissive and rude shading to it.

But, man, Tu was Du nicht lassen kannst is the foundational drive behind all my modding adventures.

I don't think I need new .3dis, I'm just fooling around with things here, but if my experiments have inspired you to do something you can't not do, I apologize for the inconvenience, and would be greatful for your effort.

I'm still glad you told me about RenderFOV, dude. Let me show you my latest bit of jank I've done with that.

I edited the AKGP's semi mode with 2x mag., RenderFOV 40, and an attempt at a high-ready pos. The tpos is pitched down to zero at 400m. See attachment.

I hate to say this, 'cause we both seem to be people that suffer from deeper levels of having to do things we can't not do, but that .45 really should have a notch in the rear sight.

[Oscarmike247]

Originally Posted by Baldo_the_Don

I don't know what UVW means, but it looks more UWU than I'm comfortable with, tripping an unreasonable anger response. I'm fun at parties!

The germans have a phrase: Tu was Du nicht lassen kannst. Word for word: 'Do what you not leave can.' Contextually: 'Do what you can't not do.' It basically means 'do what you gotta,' and it almost always has dismissive and rude shading to it.

But, man, Tu was Du nicht lassen kannst is the foundational drive behind all my modding adventures.

I don't think I need new .3dis, I'm just fooling around with things here, but if my experiments have inspired you to do something you can't not do, I apologize for the inconvenience, and would be greatful for your effort.

I'm still glad you told me about RenderFOV, dude. Let me show you my latest bit of jank I've done with that.

I edited the AKGP's semi mode with 2x mag., RenderFOV 40, and an attempt at a high-ready pos. The tpos is pitched down to zero at 400m. See attachment.

I hate to say this, 'cause we both seem to be people that suffer from deeper levels of having to do things we can't not do, but that .45 really should have a notch in the rear sight.

UVW assigns each polygon of the model to their coordinates on its texture graphic. (see attachment) This is how it looks laid out on the texture. You can stretch and morph the UVW however you like, but generally you want it to be uniform to the texture.

In the case of the rear sight piece on the shotty, I have it selected in the screenshot (highlighted in red). As you can see, the original modeler left the UVW coordinates for the entire piece smooshed into a single pixel in the lower left corner of the texture. Probably by accident, or like most other decisions in the game, they just didn't give a flip.

So now if you change the color of that one pixel in the texture, it changes the entire color of the sight piece.

Pretty simple fix. I only have to unwrap the UVW for those specific poly's and position them on an unused part of the texture.

Btw, love the use of the RenderFOV.

[Oscarmike247]

Originally Posted by Baldo_the_Don

I don't think I need new .3dis, I'm just fooling around with things here, but if my experiments have inspired you to do something you can't not do, I apologize for the inconvenience, and would be greatful for your effort.

No worries. Attached is the fixed 3di. I also noticed that the UVW mapping for the screw head closest to the trigger was messed up. it was rendering nearly the entire texture onto that one screw head

In the zip, I included a render of the actual UVW map as a .tga. You can put this as a layer in whatever image editor you're using to show you where the UVs are while you're texturing.

In the attached screenshot I have highlighted in red where the new UV coordinates are for the rear sight piece.

Have fun.

[Baldo_the_Don]

Here we go. Green highlights on the shotgun sights. Oh yeah.

Are they perfect? Nah. Could they be better? * shrugs *

Note that I deactivated the idle animation to display how exactly I tried to center the sights and align them with the bottom of the center pixel. 'Cause I forgot I'd like the weapon pitched lower to zero at 50m. * sigh *

Is there any way to manipulate .3di or .tga/.dds files to make those dots actually glow?

[Oscarmike247]

Originally Posted by Baldo_the_Don

Here we go. Green highlights on the shotgun sights. Oh yeah.

Are they perfect? Nah. Could they be better? * shrugs *

Note that I deactivated the idle animation to display how exactly I tried to center the sights and align them with the bottom of the center pixel. 'Cause I forgot I'd like the weapon pitched lower to zero at 50m. * sigh *

Is there any way to manipulate .3di or .tga/.dds files to make those dots actually glow?

Looks great! And yes. I've done this with one of my pistol irons. I just added a few flat circles to the geometry and assigned them a separate texture. Then in the oed you set the texture to selflum to any color you want. Looks amazing in night maps.

[Oscarmike247]

Just for gits and shiggles. I went ahead and added the actual glowing dots. I tried to get it as close to yours as possible.

Drop this 3DI into your mod and load a night map. I don't have the Tpos for the sights so you'll have to show me how it looks aiming down sights. you may need to remove your green dot textures because the ones I've added to the model probably wont line up to your texture.

Also attached is an example on my test map walking into a dark building.

Edit: I feel like maybe I got the rear dots too big. I'll wait to see them aiming down sights.

[Baldo_the_Don]

Try this tpos on the shotgun:

-5.500 52.020 -155.340 0.430 359.790 358.400

The pos is the same heading, pitch, and roll, just 15 right and 20 down.

My new shotgun skin is not compatible with the selflum dot .3di. It is also not necessary for the SL .3di. I did have to hex edit both of the .3di files you've attached in this thread to get the skins to work, but it went well enough.

The dots on the rear sight feel large-ish and low, but I feel the dots on every photo of real sights I've seen felt like they could sit a little higher, so that's realistic to me. I feel they could be a tiny bit brighter, too, but I'm not sure (don't want them to glare in the NVGs). The color is perfect.

The dot on the front sight is entirely too small. I think, ideally, except for a nice dark square at the very tip, perhaps also the base, the rear-facing polygons of the front post could do with illumination.

The NVGs don't like the rear sight dots much. They can't even with the front sight dot. At all.

I am loving these experiments, though.

[Oscarmike247]

Originally Posted by Baldo_the_Don

Try this tpos on the shotgun:

-5.500 52.020 -155.340 0.430 359.790 358.400

The pos is the same heading, pitch, and roll, just 15 right and 20 down.

My new shotgun skin is not compatible with the selflum dot .3di. It is also not necessary for the SL .3di. I did have to hex edit both of the .3di files you've attached in this thread to get the skins to work, but it went well enough.

The dots on the rear sight feel large-ish and low, but I feel the dots on every photo of real sights I've seen felt like they could sit a little higher, so that's realistic to me. I feel they could be a tiny bit brighter, too, but I'm not sure (don't want them to glare in the NVGs). The color is perfect.

The dot on the front sight is entirely too small. I think, ideally, except for a nice dark square at the very tip, perhaps also the base, the rear-facing polygons of the front post could do with illumination.

The NVGs don't like the rear sight dots much. They can't even with the front sight dot. At all.

I am loving these experiments, though.

You think maybe on the front post we could have it more like your skin? in the SL 3di, I just have a small cylinder that fits into the sight. but I could very easily make the middle section selflum with a bit of the tip and base left normal.

[Baldo_the_Don]

Originally Posted by Oscarmike247

You think maybe on the front post we could have it more like your skin? in the SL 3di, I just have a small cylinder that fits into the sight. but I could very easily make the middle section selflum with a bit of the tip and base left normal.

'Cause a dark tip on the front post gives a contrast point against brighter backgrounds, and I think, ideally, the upper edge of the illumimation on the front post should align with the upper edges of the rear sight dots when the upper edges of the sights are aligned, although the angles might be tight.

And I doubt we want to make a career of this shotgun model/skin, but if the front post was maybe 50% wider, it would allow for dark edges on each side of the illumination.

I think a dark tip on the front would be good, though.

[Oscarmike247]

Originally Posted by Baldo_the_Don

And I doubt we want to make a career of this shotgun model/skin,

We will be the best in our field. haha. I don't mind. I've been animating my M60 model for my mod. Animating that ammo belt has been a tedious pain in the rear. so doing something simple like this is a nice break. It only takes a few minutes to make adjustments to the shotty. It's just fun to play around with.

I ended making the front post a bit more than 50% wider. The original was extremely thin. I slightly increased the front SL dot size and slightly reduced the rear circles. Using a camera in 3ds max I lined it up as if aiming down sights, made sure the front post was flush with the top of the rear posts, then adjusted the circles so that the tops of them lined up with one another.

Curious, how did you get the ADS view with night vision? when I use 3D sights (NoCardSwitch), switching to nods raises my camera so the gun is too low to get a sight picture.

[Baldo_the_Don]

Originally Posted by Oscarmike247

Curious, how did you get the ADS view with night vision? when I use 3D sights (NoCardSwitch), switching to nods raises my camera so the gun is too low to get a sight picture.

I remember that! I couldn't remember how I fixed it for a second. One of the things I hate most is when I fix something and either don't know or forget how. I got it though: deactivate pixel shader support in the video settings. It uglifies everything a bit, and the NVGs get very blurry, but you can ADS.

Edit: My guess is the view in the 3Ds Max preview is isometric, and without a third dimension to change the angles over depth, aligning the dot tops would be guesswork. The attachment shows where we are now, though. I darkened the skin on the post and notch, so it pops a bit more.

This is all so good.

[Oscarmike247]

Originally Posted by Baldo_the_Don

I remember that! I couldn't remember how I fixed it for a second. One of the things I hate most is when I fix something and either don't know or forget how. I got it though: deactivate pixel shader support in the video settings. It uglifies everything a bit, and the NVGs get very blurry, but you can ADS.

Oh, ok. Yeah I'd rather not. I use the textured mirror shader for the glass on my optics. turning off pixel shader support totally ruins it.

Oh well. IRL you can't use nods with most sight systems anyway. so I guess it's kind of realistic. haha