Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Edwin on March 08, 2003, 11:32:10 am

Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: Edwin on March 08, 2003, 11:32:10 am
When will we get to see beams that punch holes in ships and carve out chunks(and the holes and chunks actually stay)?  Is this planned to be done?
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: Fry_Day on March 08, 2003, 11:58:36 am
Most likely never.

The most that will be is damage decals, and that isn't too far off.
Title: Re: major beam effects: when?
Post by: IceFire on March 08, 2003, 12:00:07 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Edwin
When will we get to see beams that punch holes in ships and carve out chunks(and the holes and chunks actually stay)?  Is this planned to be done?

Thats not even really properly possible with most engines TODAY...nevermind a hacked upgrade of FreeSpace 2's engine which is about 5 years old now.
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: Galemp on March 08, 2003, 12:23:06 pm
Unless everybody wants to go all Boadicea with armor plating on their capships, but I doubt that's going to happen.
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: diamondgeezer on March 08, 2003, 12:26:54 pm
GEOMOD!



:nervous:



What?
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: IceFire on March 08, 2003, 01:26:39 pm
Quote
Originally posted by diamondgeezer
GEOMOD!



:nervous:



What?

I'm pretty sure even RF2's geo-mod abilities are stretching the limits of that engine and the hardware at the moment and Red Faction's engine was build ground up for that ability in mind.  FreeSpace 2 is not such a beast.  

There are other effects more worthwhile.
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: diamondgeezer on March 08, 2003, 01:40:52 pm
Ah come on. You know you want geo-mods... admit it.. you want them
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: aldo_14 on March 08, 2003, 02:33:17 pm
Actually I though RF's geo-mod (albeit it no seen the sequel) was both ugly and monumentally pointless.
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: Terorist on March 08, 2003, 06:04:56 pm
Quote
Originally posted by diamondgeezer
Ah come on. You know you want geo-mods... admit it.. you want them

It seems you have lots of good ideas on how to implement it then, let's hear them...

:rolleyes:

Geo-mods have been brought up many times, and every time the answer that has been repeated is that it's beyond the current engine. It would require some fundamental changes and total rewriting.

Sure, it would be mildly fun, but it's not something that would really add much to the experience.
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: Liberator on March 08, 2003, 07:03:42 pm
Here's a really twisted thought on how to implement carved up capships with out a major remodeling effort.  Feel free to smack me down, I know this would require months of coding.

Have where when the beam peirces the ship, like it already does, simply( :ha: ) connect the two closest vertex points.  The problem is how to texture something like this.
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: Black Wolf on March 08, 2003, 09:24:47 pm
 Taint that simple. That might give the visual effect in a very messy way, but you'd still probably need mou ntains of code telling the game what to do with turrets, subsystems etc. that are affected by the geo mod, plus you'd need new sorts of debris, and you'd need a way to allow the game to change the model spontaneously so that the geomod actually affected the gameplay (ie. ships and weapons would be able to pass through it

Twould be difficult.
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: Fry_Day on March 09, 2003, 01:47:49 am
Geo-Mod WON'T happen. Get over it.

Seriously, FS2 uses the BSP data for collisions. if you change the model, the BSP is no longer valid, and needs to be rebuilt. That is not a real-time operation. (Technically, I know you can do BSP-tree merges, but I wanna see anyone who volunteers to program that)
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: Bobboau on March 09, 2003, 02:01:27 am
ya, the way FS holds it's poly data isn't like you may think, it's basicly a list of sortnorms and polygons, there is no way to alter this in real time, hell in fake time it's prety hard
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: diamondgeezer on March 09, 2003, 08:44:42 am
You lot are just jealous of geo-mods :p

:nervous:

*runs*
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: OldMan on March 09, 2003, 01:47:43 pm
When of the T&L implementation will already need a larger rebuild of engine. If we can leave space to vertex shaders, then with it we can generate some damage effects (not hard after VS is up)... not very complex..but enough to make the ships look like  damaged.
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: CptWhite on March 09, 2003, 04:02:44 pm
if you could figure out stable live debris then ships could possibly be built with this in mind, but its a very limted solution, alas its the best you could hope for :thepimp:
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: Bobboau on March 09, 2003, 04:15:58 pm
live debris is stable, it always has been, you just have to know how to do it
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: Fry_Day on March 10, 2003, 12:31:52 am
Quote
When of the T&L implementation will already need a larger rebuild of engine. If we can leave space to vertex shaders, then with it we can generate some damage effects (not hard after VS is up)... not very complex..but enough to make the ships look like damaged.

:mad: :mad: :mad:
You just won't get 'No' for an answer, will you?
The way FS2 stores geometry makes it impossible to do geomodding without massive changes that will most likely break backwards compatability. Vertex shaders have nothing to do with this. They are just flexible ways to transform vertices, and nothing more. They do not let you, for example, add or substract vertices. I'd love it if you'd bother to back up your statements with facts, instead of commenting on something you do not know the inner workings of.
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: Bobboau on March 10, 2003, 12:45:22 am
changeing the code for a more flexable geometry format will defenantly break bacwards compatability for models
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: Sesquipedalian on March 10, 2003, 01:03:42 am
Quote
Originally posted by Fry_Day

:mad: :mad: :mad:
You just won't get 'No' for an answer, will you?
The way FS2 stores geometry makes it impossible to do geomodding without massive changes that will most likely break backwards compatability. Vertex shaders have nothing to do with this. They are just flexible ways to transform vertices, and nothing more. They do not let you, for example, add or substract vertices. I'd love it if you'd bother to back up your statements with facts, instead of commenting on something you do not know the inner workings of.
Fry_Day my friend, you are right, but take it easy!  You're going to blow out your aorta if you keep up like that.  People are just asking and making suggestions.  Do like Goober and I do in the SEXP thread: let the not-so-feasible ideas ride.
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: OldMan on March 10, 2003, 09:30:43 am
I KNOW what I am speaking.. I am already doing something similar with medical images.. using vertex shaders to simulate corruption at tissues... and there the models were only references to a huge list of vertex... very little flexibility there.

 You cannot make BIG modifications.. but you can make that piece of hull look like with strange ilumination.. that would be the greatest effect when a flat polished surface is hit by a weapon.  Just add a noise.You would certainly notice that that place were damaged.

I didnt said it was easy... but is possible, and easier than changing the geometry data.  The problem would only be how to detect where to aply this (at wich section of vertex data set). The application would not be hard AFTER we had implemented T&L, since the drawning could be broken in two stages.. drawing the array then redrawing the pieces with modified shading.
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: Fry_Day on March 10, 2003, 12:20:00 pm
Firstly, I apologize for the outburst (I was reading the forum after a sequence of unfortunate affairs in real-life™ had unfolded, but still, that's no excuse), and I didn't get the idea behind what you are suggesting (which is definitely not geo-mod), but I really believe that damage could be better simulated using decals and pixel-shading, as the FS2 models have a low vertice/volume ratio, so per-vertex effects won't cut it, and besides, decals are already implemented.
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: CP5670 on March 10, 2003, 12:56:38 pm
I suppose this is possible (but difficult and time-consuming), but even if the SCP guys got it to work properly, a lot of gameplay complications would arise from it. For example, what if this sort of thing happens to the center of the Colossus while it still has some health left? The ship would break into two sections while still being alive, which would obviously create huge problems for the game to handle. Another possibility is that a beam hit may well tear off some ship turrets and/or subsystems, and for some ships this would make it much easier to disarm/disable them.
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: Sesquipedalian on March 10, 2003, 12:58:37 pm
Quote
Originally posted by OldMan
I KNOW what I am speaking.. I am already doing something similar with medical images.. using vertex shaders to simulate corruption at tissues... and there the models were only references to a huge list of vertex... very little flexibility there.

 You cannot make BIG modifications.. but you can make that piece of hull look like with strange ilumination.. that would be the greatest effect when a flat polished surface is hit by a weapon.  Just add a noise.You would certainly notice that that place were damaged.

I didnt said it was easy... but is possible, and easier than changing the geometry data.  The problem would only be how to detect where to aply this (at wich section of vertex data set). The application would not be hard AFTER we had implemented T&L, since the drawning could be broken in two stages.. drawing the array then redrawing the pieces with modified shading.
Interesting!  I have very little (i.e. zero) knowledge of such things, but it sounds good.
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: deep_eyes on March 10, 2003, 02:34:05 pm
Blackwolf got a point on making CODE to acutally allow beams or solids in this matter to be broken down and blown out.

if you look at games like Half Life and Quake, there are for examples Brushes (the simplest shape units like boxes, triangles, cylinderes etc.) that make up the world you run around in, that are flagged using a mission editor such as Worldcraft were it makes the solids, breakable relevent to where the attack is coming from, and the material.

Since in HL, the only time the "bodies" for example carve in a similar way is when they are blown up. Every HL model has a subobject for these effects, such as the Damage MODEL that shows-up or in this case, spawns, once the ship is destroyed.

to add more subobjects to be blown off would render the game lagg extensivly due to the polygon limitations of each model. In HL its possible because its the entire world these polygons are made of, but its only the ones viewable by the gamer that break down visually, if any others break while ur not in view of it, it isnt drawn out, but the math/code made it happen (but not visually).

its possible but would render the game unplayable if u say had a Lucifer and a Orion shooting each other, the chunks would be huge...

unless they were just plates getting blown off...
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: OldMan on March 10, 2003, 04:08:53 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Fry_Day
Firstly, I apologize for the outburst (I was reading the forum after a sequence of unfortunate affairs in real-life™ had unfolded, but still, that's no excuse), and I didn't get the idea behind what you are suggesting (which is definitely not geo-mod), but I really believe that damage could be better simulated using decals and pixel-shading, as the FS2 models have a low vertice/volume ratio, so per-vertex effects won't cut it, and besides, decals are already implemented.


For sure pixel shading would be even better.. but would need much more thinking BEFORE we implement any T&L implementation (and slower in most hardware but r300 and NV30). The VS aproach would really have some problems with hits in planes of a ship made only of 2 triangles... but would be very nice in curved surfaces  like Vassudran ships. The advantage of shaders over decals it's the larger set of possibilities... strange damages and sometimes imprevísible results. The Decals would be even a good source of data for a pixel shader aproach.

About the outburst... no problem.. I know how it is... I am here exactly to forget such things.
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: Edwin on March 11, 2003, 05:14:22 pm
Quote
Originally posted by CP5670
I suppose this is possible (but difficult and time-consuming), but even if the SCP guys got it to work properly, a lot of gameplay complications would arise from it. For example, what if this sort of thing happens to the center of the Colossus while it still has some health left? The ship would break into two sections while still being alive, which would obviously create huge problems for the game to handle.



Easy fix for that, add a peice of code that has the ship get completely destroyed if a chunk larger than say, 30%, is sliced away.

Quote
Originally posted by CP5670
Another possibility is that a beam hit may well tear off some ship turrets and/or subsystems, and for some ships this would make it much easier to disarm/disable them.


thus adding to the realism of the game.
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: Sandwich on March 11, 2003, 05:53:17 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Fry_Day
I was reading the forum after a sequence of unfortunate affairs in real-life™ had unfolded


?? HaKol b'seder, achi?
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: Fry_Day on March 13, 2003, 10:24:25 am
Quote
?? HaKol b'seder, achi?

I woudln't go that far... I knew one of the people that died in the bus bombing in haifa, so it's been a bit rough lately
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: Killfrenzy on March 13, 2003, 03:35:20 pm
You have my condolences, FD. :)
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: Unknown Target on March 13, 2003, 03:40:55 pm
...I would settle for something like Star Trek: Bridge Commander :nod:
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: Sandwich on March 13, 2003, 07:19:03 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Fry_Day

I woudln't go that far... I knew one of the people that died in the bus bombing in haifa, so it's been a bit rough lately


Z"L... I didn't know anyone personally, but I have a ton of friends who knew the Litel family quite well.
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: StratComm on March 13, 2003, 08:08:07 pm
Quote
Originally posted by deep_eyes
unless they were just plates getting blown off...

Now that's an idea (I know this has nothing to do with GeoMod, but it's been brought up now :p ).  Make a special object, low poly (maybe as low as 20 or so, or lower) that is a default impact debris.  Like the stuff your fighter throws off in engine wash, but bigger, solid, and persistant.  A damaged plate, with perhaps a bit of the damage texture and a default texture that is automatically replaced with the texture of the polygon taking damage, is thrown off of a capship every time a weapon deals more than a certain amount of damage.  For beams, this could be computed every couple of seconds (so long beams could cut away multiple plates) and for other weapons on impact.  Or just on impact, that would work too.  They would be capped (after so many are present, no more appear or they are replaced by new ones) so that you couldn't generate more than the engine can handle.  This would allow a lot of little bits to be floating around the site of a battle, without many extra polygons sitting around, as well as simulating damage without having to mess with the ship model itself.
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: vyper on March 14, 2003, 04:08:48 am
Quote
Originally posted by StratComm

Now that's an idea (I know this has nothing to do with GeoMod, but it's been brought up now :p ).  Make a special object, low poly (maybe as low as 20 or so, or lower) that is a default impact debris.  Like the stuff your fighter throws off in engine wash, but bigger, solid, and persistant.  A damaged plate, with perhaps a bit of the damage texture and a default texture that is automatically replaced with the texture of the polygon taking damage, is thrown off of a capship every time a weapon deals more than a certain amount of damage.  For beams, this could be computed every couple of seconds (so long beams could cut away multiple plates) and for other weapons on impact.  Or just on impact, that would work too.  They would be capped (after so many are present, no more appear or they are replaced by new ones) so that you couldn't generate more than the engine can handle.  This would allow a lot of little bits to be floating around the site of a battle, without many extra polygons sitting around, as well as simulating damage without having to mess with the ship model itself.


Give that man a headz :nod:
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: Edwin on March 14, 2003, 08:45:07 am
an excelent idea, but the parts of the model of the ship would need to be changed so that it doesn't look like the thing is just 'shedding' excess armor but not actually loosing anything.

ex. a ship like Gigas or Gargant could end up in a cloud of hull plating and look like it has taken no damage.
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: StratComm on March 14, 2003, 10:02:59 am
But that gets into geomod again, and that really can't happen with the FS2 engine.  This is just an added effect that simulates damage without actually changing the ship model.
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: Raptor on March 14, 2003, 10:19:30 am
I'm pretty sure that this has been suggested before, but what about making the main hull 'damaged', with chunks cut out of it, and then use spare submodels to 'cover up' these holes? The cover plate could only be three-four polys, just enough to hide the 'damage'. Then when the submodel/subsystem is destroyed, theres the gaping hole in the ships side.

Of course, this would be a lot of work for ship modellers...
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: StratComm on March 14, 2003, 01:44:55 pm
And it would eat polycount, and not be backwards-compatable.  That's what is refered to as making a Boadecia of a model.  Most complex model in FS2 actually, though it never gets credit for it.  It's got too many drawbacks in ship construction to be truely feasable, and there are difficulties that arise in properly texturing such models as well.
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: Terorist on March 14, 2003, 03:15:33 pm
Quote
Originally posted by StratComm
Now that's an idea (I know this has nothing to do with GeoMod, but it's been brought up now :p ).  Make a special object, low poly (maybe as low as 20 or so, or lower) that is a default impact debris.  ...

Hmm, this might work, wouldn't it? Just automate a process of putting damage decals over the places where armor gets blown off... it would also require that those parts can't produce any more plates when hit again. What do you think?
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: Edwin on March 14, 2003, 09:33:40 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Terorist

Hmm, this might work, wouldn't it? Just automate a process of putting damage decals over the places where armor gets blown off... it would also require that those parts can't produce any more plates when hit again. What do you think?



excellent idea. and ad a tag to it to check if it is over a subsystem. That way if plates get blown away from a subsystem it willl show burnt-out wiring and make the subsystem eisier to destroy.
Title: major beam effects: when?
Post by: kasperl on March 15, 2003, 11:44:28 am
another n00bish idea by me:

what about making a system where you have two versions of the model, one damagede, one ordinary, all in one pof, but the damaged thing in LOD's 5,6,7,8. it's just an ideae, and it probably isn't possible, but at least i tried.