[Nuke]

i hope it will allow script based animations. if it does you could in theory use them for cockpit gauges. you would just need a good imagination and the ability to access variables that the hud gauges use.

[WMCoolmon]

It'd be better to just make a flexible variable system that could be used for both gauges and the texture system, it'd be less convoluted to do things and probably more efficient as well. It would probably have to be hooked into the materials system (so you could choose whether the gauge would use a glowmap/shinemap)

Actually it'd be nice if we could work it into the animation system so we could do truly 3d knobs and dials and such.

It's not like we don't have render-to-texture for D3D...

[Nuke]

we have render to texture now?

[Bobboau]

well... we do...
you, as of now, don't. there is no access to it to any modder yet, exept environment mapping wich was modified to use the new system.

[DaBrain]

Originally posted by Bobboau
the end result will be something like that, this is how those effects will be implemented, not accessed.

So lazy people can just use pre-defined materials?


Looks like this is going to become one of best features ever.

[Bobboau]

exactly, in fact I am guessing that most people will simply use the predefined materials, on top of everything else this makes all rendering effects much more organised and even a little faster than they currently are.

tangent:
I am realiseing that I will need to add suport for texture transformations, be they static (scaleing texture coordanants, for easy multi-textureing) or dynamic (panning textures, and environment mapping needs a changeing texture transformation)

[DaBrain]

You know this is some awesome work, don't you?

[Bobboau]

yes, I am aware of this.

[Nuke]

so will we be able to include math functions and have access to game variables in our material scripts?

my idea is that you would have one control panel matieal with the scripted subsections for each gauge. then you can configure your panel simply through creative uv mapping, using the same material for all ships. you could aslo hav vasudan panels and shivan panels or a different panel material for each ship. and you can do stuff beyond panels, like making the glowie spots on the ship change collor as the engine output changes, or have your weapons light up when their armed. i would have fun with that, at least once i learn your scripting system.

[Bobboau]

you'll have access to game variables (at least untill we move to DX9 you'll only be permitted one variable per pass), but I'm not sure how much mathematical action I'm going to code. surely when we get the shader suport you'll have all sorts of math you can through at stuff (if hardware suports shaders) but with the states I don't know if I can get that effecent enough to make it worth while.

[WMCoolmon]

I would love to get some sort of simple-to-use variable system in - my draft is somewhere in the SCP internal - but I've gone through three revisions, at least, and still haven't got a 100% working version. (The last major revision didn't take arrays into account very well)

[Nuke]

Originally posted by Bobboau
you'll have access to game variables (at least untill we move to DX9 you'll only be permitted one variable per pass), but I'm not sure how much mathematical action I'm going to code. surely when we get the shader suport you'll have all sorts of math you can through at stuff (if hardware suports shaders) but with the states I don't know if I can get that effecent enough to make it worth while.

we dont need much maths, just basic operations and maybe a couple trig functions, maybey some logic functions. i dont see the one var per pass to be a big limit unless theres a big slowdown as you use more passes. just give us the tools and im sure you will see some awesome effects by us modders.

[Bobboau]

theres a big slowdown as you use more passes.

[Nuke]

so how many passes do you think it could hande?

[WMCoolmon]

As few as possible please.

Right now we're talking <5 with shinemaps/glowmaps/envmapping, in general, I think - unless there's more than 16 lights affecting the object.

AFAIK you can have as many passes as you like, though.

[Bobboau]

8> lights = 3
8> lights <16 = 5

on hardware that can handel 8 lights

most materials should have one or maybe two passes.

[WMCoolmon]

When taking animated textures into account, would it be possible to set the FPS and rotation type (Once, repeat, bounce) and whether to fade between frames?

What I'm thinking of are things like runway lights, where you really just need to fade between light set A being on to light set B being on. With the current system you'd have to make a massive animated glowmap. This would allow the same thing with just two frames and gradual alpha adjustment.

It might also work for Lightspeed's animated Shivan ship textures, and fading between frames would work well for when time compression is used to slow things down.

[Flaser]

Not to mention some cool cloacking effects - I'm talking about Ordos esque masquarade of pirate/black ops ships.

[Bobboau]

you can do liniar interpolation between two textures easily.

[Taristin]

Well....... less posting, more coding!