Important: Imminent Update to Break Certain Mods. Fix Included!

HughHugh CameramanSan Francisco, CA Join Date: 2010-04-18 Member: 71444NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Onos, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Developer, Pistachionauts
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 An out of date mod will appear as if two textures have been mixed together over a model, to fix this you will need to update the material files of certain models.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.
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Comments

  • McGlaspieMcGlaspie www.team156.com Join Date: 2010-07-26 Member: 73044Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Reinforced - Onos, WC 2013 - Gold, Subnautica Playtester
    Awesome. Well, I'm not looking forward to picking up the pieces of my mods....BUT, Thank You for posting this info! Damned useful.
  • RisingSunRisingSun Rising California Join Date: 2004-04-19 Member: 28015Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
    edited April 2014
  • xen32xen32 Join Date: 2012-10-18 Member: 162676Members, Reinforced - Supporter
    edited April 2014
    This only applies to exo and rifles, right? I've made many texture mods, tho not for those two.
  • McGlaspieMcGlaspie www.team156.com Join Date: 2010-07-26 Member: 73044Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Reinforced - Onos, WC 2013 - Gold, Subnautica Playtester
    xen32 wrote: »
    This only applies to exo and rifles, right? I've made many texture mods, tho not for those two.
    As I understand it, all Marine variants as well.

  • BeigeAlertBeigeAlert Texas Join Date: 2013-08-08 Member: 186657Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, Pistachionauts
    What about custom models? Do they also need to have numRows = 1 and numColumns = 1?
  • GhoulofGSG9GhoulofGSG9 Join Date: 2013-03-31 Member: 184566Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Reinforced - Supporter, WC 2013 - Supporter, Pistachionauts
    edited April 2014
    McGlaspie wrote: »
    xen32 wrote: »
    This only applies to exo and rifles, right? I've made many texture mods, tho not for those two.
    As I understand it, all Marine variants as well.

    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 :D
  • McGlaspieMcGlaspie www.team156.com Join Date: 2010-07-26 Member: 73044Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Reinforced - Onos, WC 2013 - Gold, Subnautica Playtester
    BeigeAlert wrote: »
    What about custom models? Do they also need to have numRows = 1 and numColumns = 1?
    Anything using specific Surface Shaders will be affected by this. I assume they updated ones specific to marines:
    ns2/model/marine/Marine.surface_shader
    ns2/model/marine/marine_noemissive.surface_shader
    
    You'd have to double-check the *.material files for said custom models to know if they're be broken or not. If this update is done the way I suspect it is, most likely you'll get one of two outcomes using a custom model
    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.
  • HughHugh Cameraman San Francisco, CA Join Date: 2010-04-18 Member: 71444NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Onos, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Developer, Pistachionauts
    Hi everyone - @SamusDroid has the best handle on the answers to all these questions. I think he might have called it in for the night (he has been working exceedingly hard on 265 for the past few weeks), but I am sure he will be about to answer your questions over the next day or two. If you see him, give him a pat on the back!
  • McGlaspieMcGlaspie www.team156.com Join Date: 2010-07-26 Member: 73044Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Reinforced - Onos, WC 2013 - Gold, Subnautica Playtester
    edited April 2014
    I don't know why this didn't occur to me until now, especially since I'm doing it in MvM and ColoredSkins ... *facepalm* ... *doublefacepalm* ... *facedesk* ...

    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 values
  • Soul_RiderSoul_Rider Mod Bean Join Date: 2004-06-19 Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
    @Hugh‌ - Now this is the kind of information we want to have leaked!!!

    Thanks a lot for this, and for your hard work @SamusDroid‌
  • SamusDroidSamusDroid Colorado Join Date: 2013-05-13 Member: 185219Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, Subnautica Playtester, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
    edited April 2014
    This ONLY applies to Exos and Rifles. If you are not modifying those you do not need to worry about this. If you are overwriting any of the default textures used on the listed models, you will need to download the materials and place them in your mod and update when the patch goes live. Defaults will not fix the problem as if you set the default to 1 1 the material will still be specifying 2 rows still. Also, it is impossible for models to become invisible, they will just become a mixture of textures.
  • GhoulofGSG9GhoulofGSG9 Join Date: 2013-03-31 Member: 184566Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Reinforced - Supporter, WC 2013 - Supporter, Pistachionauts
    edited April 2014
    @Hugh‌ @SamusDroid‌ : If we are allowed to ask questions, i would like to hear if there are any plans to fix the "unknown" field network issue ?

    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?
  • SamusDroidSamusDroid Colorado Join Date: 2013-05-13 Member: 185219Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, Subnautica Playtester, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
    edited April 2014
    @Hugh‌ @SamusDroid‌ : If we are allowed to ask questions, i would like to hear if there are any plans to fix the "unknown" field network issue ?

    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
  • GhoulofGSG9GhoulofGSG9 Join Date: 2013-03-31 Member: 184566Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Reinforced - Supporter, WC 2013 - Supporter, Pistachionauts
    edited April 2014
    SamusDroid wrote: »
    @Hugh‌ @SamusDroid‌ : If we are allowed to ask questions, i would like to hear if there are any plans to fix the "unknown" field network issue ?

    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

    I allready have known that just asking if there are any ( 266 or 267 ) plans to fix it ....
  • SamusDroidSamusDroid Colorado Join Date: 2013-05-13 Member: 185219Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, Subnautica Playtester, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
    edited April 2014
    Yes, read carefully "is not likely to be fixed". In simple terms, no. There is no one who can fix it, they are all busy.
  • GhoulofGSG9GhoulofGSG9 Join Date: 2013-03-31 Member: 184566Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Reinforced - Supporter, WC 2013 - Supporter, Pistachionauts
    SamusDroid wrote: »
    Yes, read carefully "is not likely to be fixed". In simple terms, no. There is no one who can fix it, they are all busy.

    Asking Hugh another time was worth a try ;)
  • DC_DarklingDC_Darkling Join Date: 2003-07-10 Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
    Ok so only riffle hmm. Nice, I was already thinking over how to do Axe and Shotty, glad I dont need to.

    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.
  • Dictator93Dictator93 Join Date: 2008-12-21 Member: 65833Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    Well this is interesting and thank you.

    I have made no texture mods but Samus' post is quite helpful
  • DC_DarklingDC_Darkling Join Date: 2003-07-10 Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
    Agreed on it being useful and I see why Hugh posted it. Some folk just want the yellow.

    *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
  • cooliticcoolitic Right behind you Join Date: 2013-04-02 Member: 184609Members
    He mentioned new weapons...

    HE MENTIONED NEW WEAPONS
  • SamusDroidSamusDroid Colorado Join Date: 2013-05-13 Member: 185219Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, Subnautica Playtester, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
    edited April 2014
    Agreed on it being useful and I see why Hugh posted it. Some folk just want the yellow.

    *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
    _view.material files are already excluded by default
  • DC_DarklingDC_Darkling Join Date: 2003-07-10 Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
    I will agree with you on the yays. @‌SamusDroid

    yaaaays
  • DarkflameQDarkflameQ Join Date: 2013-02-28 Member: 183451Members
    edited April 2014
    SamusDroid wrote: »
    NO UNKNOWN IN SEVER BROWSER IS NOT FIXED IN 265 AND IS NOT LIKELY TO BE FIXED.
    That's very professional of UWE, introduce new bugs and never fix them as they are too busy on new projects, nice.
  • holty007holty007 Join Date: 2013-08-17 Member: 186917Members
    DarkflameQ wrote: »
    SamusDroid wrote: »
    NO UNKNOWN IN SEVER BROWSER IS NOT FIXED IN 265 AND IS NOT LIKELY TO BE FIXED.
    That's very professional of UWE, introduce new bugs and never fix them as they are too busy on new projects, nice.


    Very true.
  • SamusDroidSamusDroid Colorado Join Date: 2013-05-13 Member: 185219Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, Subnautica Playtester, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
    Well it's not like Andi purposely broke it and then moved on to other projects...
  • Soul_RiderSoul_Rider Mod Bean Join Date: 2004-06-19 Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
    I believe the player information is an engine bug is it not? And that is why it won't be fixed? It is not somethign Andi could fix as he doesn't have engine access.
  • SamusDroidSamusDroid Colorado Join Date: 2013-05-13 Member: 185219Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Gold, Subnautica Playtester, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
    No... andi DOES have engine access, how do you suppose he broke it if he doesn't have engine access...
  • CCTEECCTEE Join Date: 2013-06-20 Member: 185634Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    That bug bothered me exactly 0 times the last few months.
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