Hi, Xedoh, good to have you here!
I made the map Parpax for Tremulous and ported it over to Unvanquished, but currently I got wound up in gameplay programming, so we are one mapper short (EmperorJack did Thunder and plat23, Pevel did yocto) and could use support.
Textures are really the scarcest resource we have so you will need to experiment with light color and brushwork to make a visual difference to the other maps. We currently have access to 2-3 very good sets, being eX by evillair and pk01/pk02 by philipk. There's also trak5 by TraK but most of the textures lack specular maps. Someday, when ancient parts of my TODO list carved into stone are unearthed, I will look into doing these specmaps. Ingar started retexturing Vega for us lately and the result should be a few more shiny textures for us all to use.
Here's the relevant part of Parpax's readme file with links and licenses to the textures I used (the sets named "evillair" and "philipk" are remainers of the older textures of the respective artists – a few of these ancient textures are still present on Parpax):
Code: Select all
scripts/parpax_evillair.shader
scripts/parpax_ex.shader
textures/parpax_evillair/*
textures/parpax_ex/*
Author : Yves 'evillair' Allaire (http://evillair.net/)
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/)
The author also grants the following modifications:
- You may edit any shader/material file (.shader/.mtr file) as you
see fit.
- You may change the color of any "texturename.blend.tga/.jpg" or
hue to fit the style of your map.
Notes : scripts/parpax_ex.shader is a modified .mtr file.
Changes: The .shader files have been merged together and modified by Viech
eq2_baselt03_blue.jpg is a copy of eq2_baselt03.jpg with modified hue
eq2_baselt03_blue.blend.jpg is a copy of eq2_baselt03.blend.jpg with modified hue
eq2_baselt03b_blue.jpg is a copy of eq2_baselt03b.jpg with modified hue
eq2_baselt03b_blue.blend.jpg is a copy of eq2_baselt03b.blend.jpg with modified hue
Source : http://www.evillair.net/v2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=43
textures/parpax_exm/*
Author : Yves 'evillair' Allaire (http://evillair.net/)
Modifications by Unvanquished Development (http://unvanquished.net/)
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/)
The author granted Unvanquished Development to make derivate works
of his textures.
Unvanquished Development claims no copyright for these textures.
If you use them in your own project, atrribute the original author
but also leave a notice that says that they have been altered with
his explicit permission.
Changes: The textures in this set are merely mashups of evillairs ex
textures that should resemble textures in his eq2 set.
Source : http://www.evillair.net/v2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=43
textures/parpax_ydnar/*
Author : Randy 'ydnar' Reddig (http://shaderlab.com/)
License: Usage and redistribution policy: Textures may be freely downloaded,
modified, and used in free maps, mods or total conversions provided
this copyright notice is left intact and a link to Shaderlab is
provided in the credits or read-me file. Other non-commercial
applications are considered on a case-by-case basis via e-mail. All
other usage requires written permission. Bulk redistribution or
archival of the textures in any medium, digital or otherwise
(except mapping packages for mods) is prohibited.
Source : http://shaderlab.com/slrl/textures/
scripts/parpax_pk01.shader
scripts/parpax_pk02.shader
textures/parpax_philipk/*
textures/parpax_pk01/*
textures/parpax_pk02/*
Author : Philip 'Blazeeer' Klevestav (http://www.philipk.net/)
License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Changes: The textures in parpax_philipk have been converted from bmp to jpg
by Viech.
The .shader files have been modified by Viech.
Source : http://www.philipk.net/
textures/parpax_trak4/*
textures/parpax_trak5/*
Author : Georges 'TRaK' Grondin (http://trak.mercenariesguild.net/)
License: MIT("X11") license
Changes: The normal maps (*_local.tga) have been converted by using the
inverted alpha channel as the blue channel and removing the alpha
channel. The imagemagick command was:
convert <old> -channel b -fx "1.0 - u.a*1.0" -alpha off <new>
Source : http://trak.mercenariesguild.net/node/3
If you want an example of how we organize the texture sets feel free to unzip map-parpax-d02.pk3 and look at its directory structure. Don't reference textures from other maps though, since they might disappear or change anytime – include a copy of the textures inside your own pk3 instead. Note that the textures inside Parpax's pk3 are in webp format, I convert them with a script when I package the map. Webp is well suited for textures and makes the resulting pk3's smaller.
Unvanquished has a nice "pk3dir" feature. just put a directory ending in ».pk3dir« where you would normally store pk3 files and it will be treated as if it was one. Inside the pk3dir you have the same subdirectories as in the package (in fact you only need to zip the pk3dir and you will have a working release of your map, albeit it often makes sense to remove unused textures and remainers of the map compilation process ).
We have a well organized wiki with a page about mapping, you might want to have a look at it, too, as some questions might be answered there.
New features include, apart from support for normal, sepcular and parallax occlusion maps for textures (the last is performance hungry but can be used on selected textures), colorgrading (an arbitrary linear transformation of all colors in the scene, can be used to give a map or a region of a map an atomspheric complexion), better quality light flares and a refactored and improved entity system (some of its features are not yet supported by the level editors, such as multiple targets for entities). Some of this might be documented on the wiki but if you don't find anything there feel free to ask me, one of the other mappers, Timoteo (hwo rewrote the entity system) or gimhael (hwo works on renderer features).
I'm reachable 24/7 via IRC, which is probably the best place to ask quick questions.
Hope that answers some of your questions!