Poll

Do you turn off Motion Debris in the launcher?

YES. It's ugly and unnecessary.
NO. I have a need for speed.
Dunno/don't care. Snuffleupagus.

Author Topic: Motion Debris Redux  (Read 5643 times)

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Offline Colonol Dekker

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Re: Motion Debris Redux
Bad idea, because some people play at very high resolutions like 3840x2160, and the debris would be very tiny for them.

...So what? The effect would still be the same: a relative speed indicator.
The debris pieces are basically small objects that exist in the game world (even if they're treated very differently from other objects). Thus, like ships and weapons, their apparent size shouldn't depend on screen resolution. Besides, you need to scale them anyway so that they enlarge as they move toward the player (which is what the game does now) rather than "pop" into view.


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Offline chief1983

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Re: Motion Debris Redux
The HUD still shrinks down at larger resolutions right?  Becoming smaller but more crisp looking?  That's what I thought we could have happen with the debris.  Relative size changes related to speed would remain in place, but the overall size would shrink with increasing resolution like the HUD, so that they always cover the same pixel area instead off unit area.  Maybe it wouldn't work well, but that's what I was getting at.
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Offline Swifty

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Re: Motion Debris Redux
HUD works that way because we're transforming 2D points manually in software; there's no perspective Z and we use an orthographic projection for the HUD.

Motion debris doesn't work that way because motion debris are drawn in 3D. Meaning they have a Z and therefore are transformed by a perspective projection matrix in hardware.

 

Offline chief1983

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Re: Motion Debris Redux
Ah, wow.  I had no idea they were that differently handled.
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Offline Mongoose

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Re: Motion Debris Redux
I like the concept of motion debris, but I've kept it turned off for years because the retail implementation frankly looks butt-ugly.  If you guys can figure out a way to gussy it up I'll put it back on in a heartbeat. :yes:

 

Offline Cyborg17

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Re: Motion Debris Redux
Every time I saw the flag, I just assumed it was an option to keep debris chunks from ships from rotating. So I had no idea that the option existed!

 

Offline niffiwan

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Re: Motion Debris Redux
Are the motion debris bitmaps moddable? I remember trying to figure out if I could replace the bitmaps and failed. If they aren't, you could at least open them up to modders so we can customize them (and perhaps make nicer looking ones).

From a quick dig through the code I believe the answer is yes. It can be set/changed in stars.tbl and in theory they can be .ani, .eff, or even a single image bitmap. The retail ones (normal debris only, there don't seem to be any retail assets for nebula debris?) are .ani at 18x15 res with 7 frames each.
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Offline swashmebuckle

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Re: Motion Debris Redux
I made custom motion debris for FotG, so it's definitely possible to replace them with something nicer looking. The thing that really bugs me about motion debris is how they don't rotate properly when you roll the ship. I can only notice it when the ship is at a standstill of course, but it makes them really jump out as sprites rather than something that seems like a natural part of the backdrop. If they could either be made to rotate correctly or just faded to transparency as you slow down that might make them more acceptable to a broader assortment of players.

It's also kind of weird how they always are rendered behind ships even when they clearly should be closer to the camera.

 

Offline Zacam

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I can tell you that there are 2 sets of debris for Motion Debris, one is standard, the other is for Nebula (but for the longest time, the Nebula entries in the code were not specified and looped (if I recall correctly) using the non-Nebula ones, so I'm not specifically sure that it's utilizing any "different" ones in a nebula vs. not.

So it is possible to make a separate toggle for each depending, I'll admit though that it's been awhile since I've looked at it, so I don't fully know what it would require.

Code: (Starfield.cpp 157-159) [Select]
debris_vclip Debris_vclips_normal[MAX_DEBRIS_VCLIPS] = { { -1, -1, "debris01" }, { -1, -1, "debris02" }, { -1, -1, "debris03" }, { -1, -1, "debris04" } };
debris_vclip Debris_vclips_nebula[MAX_DEBRIS_VCLIPS] = { { -1, -1, "nebdeb01" }, { -1, -1, "nebdeb02" }, { -1, -1, "nebdeb03" }, { -1, -1, "nebdeb04" } };
debris_vclip *Debris_vclips = Debris_vclips_normal;
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