Installation and Usage

First I want to thank you for downloading CorVus Mod.
This document will show you how to use CorVus Mod the right way and how you can set up CorVus mod for use.

First we will start off by doing the most important part of creating a
Map/Level for “CorVus Mod”.

Creating a Level
Creating a map for “CorVus Mod” is a bit different than creating a level for vanilla FPSC or any other Mod which is released. You can keep creating your Rooms with Segments, but there is one thing to remember.
When you use “CorVus Mod”, all parts of the static geometry will be hidden, if not in Screen.
(Static Geometry=Segments & Static Entities)
So you should think about what could be hidden in-game and what not. But normally you can create everything with Segments that you created before when using vanilla FPSC.
If you place dynamic entities into your scene you have to remember, that the user can switch off the dynamic shadows, so they might not cast any shadow at all.
Also remember, that the 2 geometries can have different shaders applied to them, but that's something different.
If you place lights, make sure EVERY light is a dynamic light. If you use static lights, they will:

1. Not show up in your level
2. Maybe produce errors when running with the mod
   Also remember, that CorVus Mod can only render up to 9 lights with shadows on them at once. So if you have more than 9 lights on screen, the other ones will cast no shadow at all.
   Do not use any entity that uses more than one texture as it might have no texture in-game and might be pure black!

Building the Level
Because the Test Game function does not work with “CorVus Mod” you have to build the entire level as a standalone, with the normal FPSC-Game.exe or another Mod. But you have to check that some options are disabled. If you start the “Build Game” dialog, click on the “Textures” tab.
There you have to disable the lightmapping by clicking on “No Lightmaps”, after that switch to the tab called “Build Settings”. There you have to disable all shader effects by clicking on “No shader effects” and activate the “Dynamic Lights”.
Then you can go on and export your level like you did without the mod.

Preparing first run
After you built your map, you have to do some more things. First copy all CorVus files into your game. Just use the files from the CorVus rar or zip.
This includes all needed Media and the .exe file.
Then you have to run First-Time-Setup.exe in your game’s folder. After First-Time-Setup has done its job (your screen may or may not flash black for a second or two) you will notice this in setup.ini:

[CorVus Addons]
dynobjectshadows=0
water=0
depthoffield=0
lightrays=0
shadowsize=256
directsize=512
bloom=0
width=1024
height=768
todtime=7
lightmaps=1

I will later define what each line is doing.
For now just leave them like the example above.
Now you should be able to run your map for the first time. Be prepared that the loading might need some time to finish (that's normal!).

Adjusting Values
This part defines what every setup.ini command is doing, and what the ranges of each value are.

dynobjectshadows:

• Enables/Disables shadows on dynamic entities (0-1)
  water:
• Enables/Disables water in the level (0-1)
  depthoffield:
• Enables/Disables the Depth of Field effect (0-1)
  lightrays:
• Enables/Disables the LightRay effect (0-1)
  shadowsize:
• Sets the shadow size of Lights and Flashlight (32-1024)
  directsize:
• Sets the shadow size of the sun-light (32-1024)
  bloom:
• Enables/Disables the Bloom effect (0-1)
  width
• Sets screen width (for example 1024)
  height:
• Sets screen height (for example 768)
  todtime:
• Sets the start time of the Time of Day Lighting (0-24)
  Be warned that the effects “Bloom/LightRays/DoF” should only be used on high-end PC's.
  Also don't use too high values for the shadow size. The sun-light should normally be a doubled value of the normal shadowsize.
  lightmaps:
• Enables/Disables lightmapping (0-1)

Setting up Surface Shaders
This is one of the most important and hardest parts of the creation of a level for “CorVus Mod”.
You may have noticed that everything in your level is rendered without any shader applied on it. This rendering is called Diffuse.
To get any real shader onto your surfaces, you have to apply the shader and give it the needed textures.
In “CorVus Mod” you can have the following effects:

• Normal mapping
• Parallax mapping
• Relief mapping
• Environment bumpmapping
• Normalmap environment

In this tutorial, I will only describe how to use the first 3 of them, as the last 2 are not fully working.
First to set-up any shader for your surfaces, you have to find the texture for the surface, it is normally located in the texturebank.
There you will find all the textures of your segment/static entity. For this Tutorial, my example texture is called “corvtest_D2.dds”.
So if you found your texture, you have to create a new file, which will control the shader used for this texture.
Right click and create a new text file which needs to given the same name as your texture, but with the .cmat extension. For example:
corvtest_D2.cmat
The file extension is important. Make sure you have changed it from .txt to .cmat, otherwise it will not work.
Now open your .cmat file and add this line to it:
objshader=
This will control which shader will be used.
Now, you need the right commands for every shader, so you can add it to the .cmat file.
The available commands are:

• normal
• parallax
• relief
• envbump
• envnormal
  Every shader needs its own textures. I will show you which ones you need. Let's start.
  Normal
  Normal mapping only needs a simple normal map to produce the effect. “CorVus Mod” automatically loads every required texture for the shader that you added. But you have to make sure that they are written properly, otherwise the engine would give you an error.
  To get the normal mapping working, you have to create a normal map for the specified texture.
  After you have done this, you have to save the new file as a .dds into the same folder as the base texture.
  Like I told you, you have to name it properly to get the effect working.
  If we take our example texture called “corvtest_D2.dds”
  our normal map has to be called like this:
  corvtest_D2_N.dds
  Make sure that you do not delete the old _D2 of the texture name.
  If you load up your game now, you will see the normal mapping effect on the surface with this texture.

Parallax
To create a parallax effect, you need one more texture for it. You need a normal map and a height map.
After you have created both, name the normal map image as described in the normal mapping tutorial and for the height image change the ending to a _H.
After that, just write parallax into the .cmat file. Run your game and you will see the effect.

Relief
To create a relief effect, just do what you did to achieve the parallax effect; just change the shader to relief. You may need a stronger normal and height image, to see the relief effect.

Creating effects for dynamic entities
First you need to know, that dynamic entities can only have a normal map shader applied to them.
To get it working, you have nothing more to do, than creating a normal map image, name it like in the Normal Map tutorial and save it into the same folder as the base texture. After that, the shader will be applied automatically.

Using alpha channel
The alpha channel of a texture can only be used if there is no shader applied, so it has to be rendered via the diffuse shader, or with normal mapping.
Because of the renderer, sometimes the alpha only uses one colour and not the whole alpha layer. This may be fixed in later versions.

Known Bugs

• If adding a gun into game, the gun does not show up and the sunlight is corrupted.
• If adding enemies into game, they jump in the air, while shooting at you.
• By using the left mouse button, sometimes the game crashes.
• By tabbing out of the window, the game sometimes crashes.
• Some dynamic entities are black in-game.
• Using a lot of Fullscreen Shaders drops the framerate.
• If FPS is higher than 30-40, the movement becomes strange.
• Because of the culling system, sometimes the sun-light shines into a room from behind you.
• The sun-light causes some weird effect on the edges of segments.
• The HUD is sometimes not scaled right at some resolutions.
• If Depth of Field is enabled, the focus sometimes is wrong and the whole screen is blurred.
• Only one level can be played, otherwise the game crashes.

In-Game Controls
For activating the Flashlight press f, to deactivate it press g.
To raise the water height press Num+.
To lower the water height press Num-.