Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Krackers87 on August 21, 2003, 08:25:37 pm
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How bout it? This would definently be really sweet. Being able to use .ani's as backrounds. Like lightning nebula.
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I think I may try this, keep this bunped throughout the weekend
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Ooooooooooohh!!
:yes: :yes: :yes: :yes: :yes: :yes:
Spinny black holes.....
Pulsing Quasars......
Swirling asteroid fields......
Wierd alien Star Trekky stuff.....
Nebulas are just the start ;)
Flipside :D
P.S.
:yes:
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Volition has already done this with the subspace tunnel - that might be a good place to start.
But Bobboau, I highly encourage you to finish and fix the bugs with one feature before you start another. :nod:
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most of the bugs I am aware of in the specular code seem to be caused by wrong registry settings.
/*does some more testing before declairing victory*/
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While we're on the subject, do any of the glow or shine effects or owt like that work with backgrounds?
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no, why would they, there full bright
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Originally posted by Bobboau
most of the bugs I am aware of in the specular code seem to be caused by wrong registry settings.
/*does some more testing before declairing victory*/
I haven't changed my registry settings, and I'm getting three bugs I didn't get before:
(a) the computer does all kinds of weird gyrations with the screen resolution when starting FS2, before even displaying the splash screen
(b) the interface buttons in the tech room flicker annoyingly
(c) the screen sometimes goes completely black during a mission
They need to be fixed. :nod:
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1) new inittalisation code that trys several diferent zbuffer formats
2)that is a bug, I will kill it now, this sort of thing should have been fixed alredy, are you sure you're useing the more recent builds
3)that one is serius, are you useing the most up to date version? does it stay black, can you see anything (like the HUD for example)
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Originally posted by Bobboau
1) new inittalisation code that trys several diferent zbuffer formats
Eh, hmm. Can you make this run in the launcher instead, and set a flag in the registry, so that we don't have to wait several seconds each time we run FS2?
2)that is a bug, I will kill it now, this sort of thing should have been fixed alredy, are you sure you're useing the more recent builds
3)that one is serius, are you useing the most up to date version? does it stay black, can you see anything (like the HUD for example)
Well, I'm using the most current CVS stuff, which may not be the most current build you have. Can you link me to your latest version?
Yes, it stays black until I exit FS2 and start it again.
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that is quite outdated by now
first post in the specular thread
Ill update cvs right now
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Originally posted by Goober5000
Volition has already done this with the subspace tunnel - that might be a good place to start.
nope. The Subspace tunnel actually is a POF with an animated texture which is drawn around your ship :)
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nope. the texture on the subspoace pof isn't even animated.
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how about novas in the background, like long ago shivan capella type novas?
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Well, what you make for background art is up to you, but remember that revolving planets etc are going to be BIG ani files, and as fast as computers these days are, we don't want to make the project TOO elitist :)
Flipside :D
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well yeah, ani are too damn big anyway. how about replacing them with gif files? :D
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Sounds like a pretty nifty idea. Although it would mean that the animation would not likely be used for other missions, unless they take place in round about the same area.
The player would instantly think "Wait a minute, I saw that animation not long ago!"
Most likely used as a one off thing. Still might be a nice effect though if used in small portions.
Also, rotating planets?? That's one fast planet.....:nervous:
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LOL Yes, it would be in a purely physics sense, but we've all played games where we can see the planets rotating :)
The best you could hope for with a planet would be a 180 frame render (2' per frame) and about 1 sec between each frame. I agree with Venom though, it would be nice to have a more compact animation system, but I've no idea how complex this would be :)
Flipside :D
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the best for a planet is a pof, anyway.
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Yes, you're probably right, but nonetheless, the options are aplenty :)
Flipside :D
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if someone hasn't done so alredy, someone make an ani that I can use to test with.
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actualy, here (http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/blackwater/fs2_open_s.zip) someone else test it
that was just about as easy as I thought it would be :)
in you're stars table specify a new bitmap, it will try to load a PCX first and if that fails it will try to load an ANI
it should work on nebula bitmaps planet bitmaps and star bitmaps and glows, though I've only tested it on a nebula bitmap, becase makeing an ani takes forever when you're just doing it to test something
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Groovy!
Here's a simplistic Quasar, just off to test it now ;)
Flipside :D
Quasar (http://www.aqsx85.dsl.pipex.com/Anims/Quasar.ani) - It'll look square at the sides, I know ;)
EDIT : Hmmmmm... I'm new to the Stars.tbl. I've added the ANI to the list as a $Bitmap thingy, but it refuses to show in Fred, not sure if Fred will acknowledge it, or whether I need to be using some other mission editor, of if theres another table I need to edit elsewhere :nervous:
$Bitmap: neb08
$Bitmap: neb09
$Bitmap: neb10
$Bitmap: neb11
$Bitmap: neb12
$Bitmap: neb13
$Bitmap: neb14
$Bitmap: neb15
$Bitmap: neb16
$Bitmap: neb17
$Bitmap: neb18
$Bitmap: Quasar
$BitmapX: planeta1
$BitmapX: planetb
$BitmapX: planetc
$BitmapX: planetd
$BitmapX: planete
$BitmapX: planetf
(Section of Star.tbl) - I'll try replacing an old one instead of inserting it.
Flipside :D
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it's not going to show up in FRED, if you want a place holder for fred then take one of the frames and save it as a pcx do you're fredding and then get rid of the place holder before you test it in game
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Ok, thanks, well, I guess that's the next step.... ;) I'll let you know how it works.
Flipside :D
EDIT : Got it working and updated the Quasar file, it needed to be converted by bright really, since I have the colour layers from hell on it, but it serves the purpose :)
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Originally posted by Bobboau
it's not going to show up in FRED, if you want a place holder for fred then take one of the frames and save it as a pcx do you're fredding and then get rid of the place holder before you test it in game
wouldnt it be better if the game checked for an ".ani" file and if that fails, loaded the .pcx files? Like that, you could get rid of the FRED thing and the original files would still work :)
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its better the way it is unless you want to make place holder .anis for all the original FS .pcx's
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uhm you got me wrong there.
in FS2, the game engine searches for a .ani file background -- if it finds one, it's used.
in FRED, there will be searched for a .pcx file! So every background will be displayed in FRED (if you have a placeholder for it), but you will NOT need to delete your .pcx file in order to use the animated thing in FS2. Clear now ? ;)
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I see where you are getting at... That's a good idea :D
Any chance of it Bobb?
Flipside
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I ment it's not going to show up in fred becase I havn't made a version of fred with this enabled, and in a version of fred that does suport this it probly won't be animated, or maybe it will, there is like diferent code for loading and rendering in fred, I have never been able to get FRED_Open to compile so were stuc for a while
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Update with the latest CVS. I had to fix a linker error, but now it compiles fine.
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I think that Lightspeed is suggesting is to alter FS2 so it looks for the ANI file first. That way, if there's no ANI file it looks for the PCX. It means people making their own animated backgrounds would have to include a PCX of the first frame for Fred, but it also means that you don't have to touch Fred at all anyway, because it will find a PCX no matter what, but FS2 will load the correct file, be it ANI or PCX :)
Flipside :D
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well, not knowing anything about fs2 ani creation or how this is being implemented in the backgroung, I'm curious - how feasable would it be to create a background that makes it look like you're in the middle of a massive fleet engagement where in reality it's just several warships and a few dozen fighters?
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That would be very difficult to do indeed, the background is too far away, you could have things like a thick ring of gently spinning asteroids around the play area, and an asteroid field within, it would sort of work with enough asteroids. You could animate Quasars and Pulsars and other astronomical things, you could do lightning sparking through a distant nebula etc, but these are all things that can be 'looped' whereas a fleet battle would be far far more complex, you might get away with a fleet in silhouette, like the Sathanas in FS2, and just the occasional beam going between them, but quite frankly I suspect this would look pants.
Flipside :D
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nah, if you do it right it could look pretty cool :)
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LOL Well, suffice to say that if I tried to do it, it would look pants :)
Look forward to someone proving me wrong!
Flipside :D
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I can try to get something done, but i'll have to wait for my new comp since FS_open isn't working on this one anymore :D
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As far as background upgrades go, I'm still hoping for generalized skybox support, as described in the first page of this thread (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,13602.0.html).
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Originally posted by Lightspeed
nah, if you do it right it could look pretty cool :)
A fleet battle couldn't really loop, (Command! the Collosus is down! THE COLLOSUS IS DOWN! oh, wait, now it's back up.) so you'd need to make it all from beginning to end with no repeating frames, and since a battle usually lasts a good few minutes, you'd have a huge file on your hands. So any reasonably sized background battle animation would look totally pants.
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you caould use it for like smaller ships and stuff only have like three or four big ships and hevily script there battle, while an animation of a bunch of fighters and crusers fight it out behind them
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Originally posted by Carl
A fleet battle couldn't really loop, (Command! the Collosus is down! THE COLLOSUS IS DOWN! oh, wait, now it's back up.) so you'd need to make it all from beginning to end with no repeating frames, and since a battle usually lasts a good few minutes, you'd have a huge file on your hands. So any reasonably sized background battle animation would look totally pants.
Well, if you are doing it for a sense of scale it could. There is that mission in Derelict where a heavily-scripted battle goes on in the distance (with actual ships, so admitedly it's a bit different). After the Vasudan destroyer goes down, all the ships are made invulnerable and the battle just rages in the distance. You could do something similar with animated backgrounds, if just to give the impression of a larger engagement. If you wanted something to explode, put it in as an actual ship. The problem is, unless the ships in question are really huge, anything you do as a background would have to be either super-small or blown up to a large size, and the problem with the latter is that those ships should exist in the combat area if you were to fly to them and the trick of animating them into the background would be painfully obvious.
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Originally posted by Carl
A fleet battle couldn't really loop, (Command! the Collosus is down! THE COLLOSUS IS DOWN! oh, wait, now it's back up.) so you'd need to make it all from beginning to end with no repeating frames, and since a battle usually lasts a good few minutes, you'd have a huge file on your hands. So any reasonably sized background battle animation would look totally pants.
You don't watch enough anime. Big fleet battles in the far distance can loop quite well. You just make sure that all plot critical ships are in the player's area and that stuff off in the distance are mostly stationary, lobbing missiles/bombs at each other. The player should be paying attention to things local to him anyway. The stuff in the distance is just filler.
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This might be useful for me as well. I have this one mission in the middle of a spread-out asteroid field; I used Ice Heart's asteroid backgrounds to simulate a big asteroid field, but they look a little strange since they are always in the same place (and are also a bit blurry).
It also might be cool for having rapidly-rotating neutron stars and such things.
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Originally posted by Carl
A fleet battle couldn't really loop, (Command! the Collosus is down! THE COLLOSUS IS DOWN! oh, wait, now it's back up.) so you'd need to make it all from beginning to end with no repeating frames, and since a battle usually lasts a good few minutes, you'd have a huge file on your hands. So any reasonably sized background battle animation would look totally pants.
Just Think XWA, it just had lots off star destroyers pics in the background. Just add random eplosions above all those ships, et voila. you don't have to put anything critical like ships going down and stuff, you jaust need some motion in there.
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Originally posted by Venom
well yeah, ani are too damn big anyway. how about replacing them with gif files? :D
Now that would be something. Animation is hard enough, let alone adding all this proprietary format business.
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Originally posted by ZylonBane
As far as background upgrades go, I'm still hoping for generalized skybox support, as described in the first page of this thread (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,13602.0.html).
Why not a sky-sphere I know it was already mentioned, but I'm interested in your reason?
Back to topic:
If background objects could be swapped or inserted/removed during a mission with actual events (extended background editor, maybe 3ds max - timeline like) that would open up a whole range of possibilities without being forced to use huge files.
So smg. could go on a loop, and later the same thing could be shown as it blows, but that's another animation.
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when I get done with my little thruster thing, I'll look into asigning a pof file as a background pof (ie sky box/sphere/whatever)
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Yay...now I can make distant nebula crackle with electricity and nastyness :)
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Originally posted by Bobboau
when I get done with my little thruster thing, I'll look into asigning a pof file as a background pof (ie sky box/sphere/whatever)
Yes, and remember to load the POF rotational data as it would be on a normal ship POF. ;)
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Originally posted by Carl
A fleet battle couldn't really loop, (Command! the Collosus is down! THE COLLOSUS IS DOWN! oh, wait, now it's back up.) so you'd need to make it all from beginning to end with no repeating frames, and since a battle usually lasts a good few minutes, you'd have a huge file on your hands. So any reasonably sized background battle animation would look totally pants.
You could just have small explosions but no ships blowing up
just occxasional beams.
or have them warp back in.
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yeah, there are ways to create background battle ani's :)
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How would you do this, just creat the ANI then put it in the tbl as a backround file?
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ya, the game searches for a .pcx and if it cant find one loads a .ani
you cant see it in FRED but you can make a placeholder.pcx to see where it would be. Then remove the .pcx before playing.
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Originally posted by Carl
A fleet battle couldn't really loop, (Command! the Collosus is down! THE COLLOSUS IS DOWN! oh, wait, now it's back up.) so you'd need to make it all from beginning to end with no repeating frames, and since a battle usually lasts a good few minutes, you'd have a huge file on your hands. So any reasonably sized background battle animation would look totally pants.
Why not place ships at an extreme distance then make them invulnerable. I tried this once and it worked.
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This works (was done quite well in Derelict if memory serves) but it's always just capital ships. Now if someone did this, and placed an animation behind them with little explosions (fighters) and such, then THAT would be a cool use of the effect.