Hard Light Productions Forums
Community Projects => The FreeSpace Upgrade Project => Topic started by: Cobra on January 29, 2007, 01:25:20 pm
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Seriously! It looks fine on capital ships, but on fighters and bombers it looks just down right FUGLY.
(http://img465.imageshack.us/img465/4847/screen0222yi7.jpg)
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You definately have something wrong going on, mine doesn't look like that.
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Indeed. This is probably a lack of a setting being enabled in the launcher, or a bad VP download.
Please post the launcher tag's being used, at the very least, and what kind of video card and what display mode your using.
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GeForce 6200 256 MB AGP at 1280x1024 resolution
-mod fsport,mediavps -spec -glow -env -jpgtga -mipmap -missile_lighting -cache_bitmaps -dualscanlines -targetinfo -orbradar -ship_choice_3d -3dwarp -warp_flash -alpha_env -ambient_factor 0
it's done that with my Radeon 9250 too.
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I noticed you don't have the CPR Angel and Valkyrie maps there either, ewww
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Sue me, I haven't downloaded them yet. I'll probably rip out the Valkyrie model and maps from INF:A. As well as other FS1 ship textures that look kickass in INF:A. :D
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Are there differing LODS to Lightning?
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I've seen this problem before as well, admittedly it's been months since I've played FreeSpace so I can't remember if this bug happened the last time I played, or if it was before that. I have seen it before though...
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Well apparently it's in 3.6.9 too.
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EMP lighting (yellow) looks sometimes as bad as this does
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I haven't noticed the blue lightning being this bad (though it could be because I'm trying not to get my tail shot off by whomever's buddies), but the EMP yellow does look bad... at least in Inferno. *shrug*
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I haven't noticed the blue lightning being this bad (though it could be because I'm trying not to get my tail shot off by whomever's buddies), but the EMP yellow does look bad... at least in Inferno. *shrug*
Inferno uses its' own (now out of date) effects. The same with Inferno Alliance, although it has newer effects. I am not a fan of mods choosing and bundling their own effects other than new weapons and ships.
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A new arc effect is on the todo list. It used to actually just be a line, which looked like crap in general. It looked better at close range (within about 80m or so) than the current affect does, but the current affect looks much better at medium and long ranges. So far the problem is just that we have never decided exactly how to fix it. "Is it something that should be textured? Moddable?", etc. There is also the issue of this being such a petty thing that no one is actually going to make time to fix it. It will just be fixed when it's fixed. :)
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ships table->$damage arch texture:
if none specified, use the line method
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Shaders!!!
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Speaking of damage, once bum-mapping (or normal mapping) gets introduced, I expect that there'll be a resurgence of damage decal use, since you could actually appear to indent into the side of the ship with the explosion. Will the coders also introduce damage decals for beam weapons at the same time? IIRC, the main problem with decals and beams is the type1 beam (slash), which would require some way to generate a scar mark across the surface of the target, rather than relying on the skipping result if it only keys off beam impacts.
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Speaking of damage, once bum-mapping (or normal mapping) gets introduced, I expect that there'll be a resurgence of damage decal use, since you could actually appear to indent into the side of the ship with the explosion. Will the coders also introduce damage decals for beam weapons at the same time? IIRC, the main problem with decals and beams is the type1 beam (slash), which would require some way to generate a scar mark across the surface of the target, rather than relying on the skipping result if it only keys off beam impacts.
Whoa, tiger... let's not get ahead of ourselves.
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lol, bum mapping.
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lol, bum mapping.
Is it true that Turey is a smaller version of you ?
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lol, bum mapping.
Is it true that Turey is a smaller version of you ?
Dude, seriously, thanks.......I just sprayed Mt. Dew all _over_ my monitor.....
*sighs*
:)
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decals need a change in the model format, not shaders.
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lol, bum mapping.
Is it true that Turey is a smaller version of you ?
Dude, seriously, thanks.......I just sprayed Mt. Dew all _over_ my monitor.....
*sighs*
:)
:lol: Oops! I guess I should rely less on FireFox's spell-checker, eh?
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Shaders!!!
And what exactly do you want the 'shaders' to do?
I don't think this is the right place to use a shader...
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I just wanted to say it.
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:lol:
Shaders, the new Coke :)
Seriously though, thing about shaders is that they aren't the end-all of graphical problems. In some ways they will be the beginning of it. Remember, there are commercial games out there written by professional paid programmeres that lag horribly when Shaders start to be used heavily.
While I completely support the idea of expanding FS2 so that the high level systems can feel the benefit while low level systems can turn off the extra effects, relying too heavily on shaders for all the pretty effects will still put a strain on the system, especially if we 'go large', which we usually do ;)
As far as the electricity arcs are concerned, must admit, I haven't looked at them for ages :nervous:
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So, the little orange squares that show up on the fighters aren't supposed to be like that?
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Has anybody come up with a solution to this? I've just let mine be... but it's getting annoying playing the Derelict campaign... wingmen are always critical.
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It can and will be fixed, eventually. But it's just not high enough of a priority, or big enough of a deal, that anyone is going to go out of their way to fix it anytime soon. There are far more important things to work at the moment.
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Just wondering if it's one of those "I didn't download something" things... or if this is pretty much for everyone.
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Just wondering if it's one of those "I didn't download something" things... or if this is pretty much for everyone.
There is no additional data or anything used for the damage arcs. It if looks extra strange then it's most likely a driver/video-card/settings issue, but I don't know that you can actually do anything about that. The effect doesn't look that great even in perfect conditions though and is meant mainly to look ok at distance, not up close. But when the effect is re-coded then that won't be an issue any longer.
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It only looks strange on small craft, like on the 1st page. Capital ships look fine. I'll just wait for the next release :)
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i get 2 pixel-wide "bolts". the squares must be with only certain peoples computers.
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There is no additional data or anything used for the damage arcs. It if looks extra strange then it's most likely a driver/video-card/settings issue, but I don't know that you can actually do anything about that.
Maybe. I did have all my stock driver settings, but I've changed them around since then. Maybe it has something to do with transparent anti-aliasing?
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i get 2 pixel-wide "bolts". the squares must be with only certain peoples computers.
I'm talking about the ones in nebula missions.
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Test pic of new arcs...
(http://icculus.org/~taylor/fso/pics/arcs.png)
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For inspiration: The Z Machine (melts diamond!)
(http://www.sandia.gov/media/images/jpg/Z.jpg)
Others:
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Lightning_simulator_questacon02.jpg)
(http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/4/40/320px-Tesla-coil-discharge.jpg)
(http://www.tcbouk.org.uk/corby2001/alanss2.jpg)
Also try this site: (more and different images): http://www.tcbouk.org.uk/corby2001/index.htm
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For inspiration: The Z Machine (melts diamond!)
<-snip->
Also try this site: (more and different images): http://www.tcbouk.org.uk/corby2001/index.htm
If you intend to code it up then get started. Otherwise none of that is going to happen, so there isn't much point in wanting it. :)
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Heh, heh. Code it? So the effect doesn't rely on pictures; it is completely generated? Give me a way to tweak the code if it's human - readable, I might give it a try. I've no clue how to code, but I can adjust code values until I get close to what I want, I think. Can you post a sample of the said code?
EDIT: What I'm saying is, is it sort of like tweaking a table file?
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Hmm, I think I might see the major difference - is it that the new one is neither a single pixel wide line nor a string of polys? It doesn't have that nasty fracturing that stringing multiple rectangular textured polygons would give, yet it's not a single pixel thick anymore either. :)
Though I'd need to see it in motion to say for sure, it doesn't look quite right yet. A bit thick, sharp and one solid colour to be at it's full potential. Does it use a graphic to draw it or is it value based? Either way would mean just a small amount of tweaking to make it look awesome.
Oooh, and is this to be another feature of the ship lab? :D
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EDIT: What I'm saying is, is it sort of like tweaking a table file?
Deffinitely not. If you wanted anything remotely like what you have in those images you would have to code it all in from scratch. You'd almost have to completely rip out of the existing code for the arcs and do it all over again, but far more complicated than it is now. :)
Hmm, I think I might see the major difference - is it that the new one is neither a single pixel wide line nor a string of polys? It doesn't have that nasty fracturing that stringing multiple rectangular textured polygons would give, yet it's not a single pixel thick anymore either. :)
Though I'd need to see it in motion to say for sure, it doesn't look quite right yet. A bit thick, sharp and one solid colour to be at it's full potential. Does it use a graphic to draw it or is it value based? Either way would mean just a small amount of tweaking to make it look awesome.
Previously, each section of each arc was a separate polygon. They were never truely connected in any way, they just happened to use the same basic points. It also was generally too big on smaller ships.
I changed it to use a quad strip instead. That makes it a solid poly rather than the separate stuff from before, and it also means that there won't ever be a gap in the arcs. I also changed it so that the width will vary between 0.2 (for small ships) and 0.6 (for larger ships) depeding on the radius of the ship. The width is x2 though, off of each side of each point. That makes sure that it doesn't end up too large in small fighters (like the pic in the first post shows). I originally set the width at 0.09 for smaller ships, and though that looks pretty good in the lab it doesn't look as good in-game. You just have to be too close to the ship in question to actually see the arcs, so I increased the size little by little until I found something that works better in-game, and that was 0.2.
I can change the size around though, quite easily. Making it smaller doesn't work all that well in-game, but it's easy enough to change the max size. And it is just a solid color and no textures are involved. It doesn't always look like it's a single color though, but that is just some byproduct of the effect/rendering rather than the color actually being different.
Oooh, and is this to be another feature of the ship lab? :D
Hehe, I haven't decided actually. I did actually make all ships in the lab have damage arcs in the lab so that I could test it out easier, so the code is basically there to do such a thing. It's just not really a useful thing though, so I had never planned to leave that capability in place and was just going to rip it out after I got done testing. But I suppose I could be convinced to leave it in, if everyone really, really wants it. :)
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I never could see damage arcs correctly and close-up because they disappeared too quickly. Please keep the code in.
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if someone wants to do a mod for homeworld: cataclysm, i think they'd like to know more about this for the Beast.
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I changed it to use a quad strip instead. That makes it a solid poly rather than the separate stuff from before, and it also means that there won't ever be a gap in the arcs.
Ok, now that is cool. :D
Question though (what a surprise ;) ): the solid colour strip look kinda makes me think more of a ribbon than a bolt of lightning to be honest, but I'm assuming that you can't assign a texture to the strip?
If that's the case, might some sort of simple colour gradient be possible then? Just a white->blue/purple from the centre to the outside edge I reckon would look awesome.
I've never really thought about it before now, but it's occured to me that the lightning effect could be really useful for quite a lot of things if we could control it.
Eg, if we could define points/pairs of points from/between which lightning can arc, and had a scripted/SEXPed trigger mechanism of some kind, it should become possible to make things like lightning guns, fancy new non-subspace FTL drive effects, have weapon impacts that spew lightning, turrets that charge up with lightning jumping to them from random/set points on the hull, constant lightning effects that are just a feature of a ship etc.
Then if you could define parent objects of these points - so the points would move with their parents, you suddenly get a whole next level of fancy effects. The teleporter in Half Life 1 is a simplistic example of what you could do with rotating stuff, but you should also be able with a bit of work get an in-game Sathanas star killing effect happening. Perhaps you could also set different ships alltogether to act as parents which could be used for all kinds of stuff.
Anyways - there's what I came up with just now. I'll see if I can come up with more during the day. ;)
Oh, and yeah - please leave in the lightning effect for the ship lab. It's the kind of thing that just strikes me as belonging in there. :D
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Those shots are definitely a big improvement to what we have now. Oh, and one more vote for the ship lab. :)
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Question though (what a surprise ;) ): the solid colour strip look kinda makes me think more of a ribbon than a bolt of lightning to be honest, but I'm assuming that you can't assign a texture to the strip?
Actually, it is possible to use a texture rather than just a solid color, it is just a poly like any other effect uses after all. The problem is that it's almost 100% waste. The arcs are seldomly more than a couple of pixels wide, and you simply wouldn't be able to see much in the way of texture detail in them even if you were up close. We'd really just be better off tweaking the coloring rather than messing around with a texture. That way we can cut the render time down for the arcs and perhaps do some neater things with them in the future without dealing with textures at all.
If that's the case, might some sort of simple colour gradient be possible then? Just a white->blue/purple from the centre to the outside edge I reckon would look awesome.
I was thinking the same thing. :) I coded the function in question (a new one, to batch the entire arc and render it at one time) so that it's easy to render each arc multiple times, with a different color and width. That should allow us to have the current blue outside and then a white center, as one example. There are actually quite a few possibilities, but I haven't gotten far enough to actually test all of that yet. I was looking over some thing I found through Google last night about that and trying to come up with a few ideas of how that can be applied to our case.
Overall this is still pretty low priority for me, but based on what I shown and told you so far, I'm sure that all of you can come up with an idea or two to make proper use of the new code effect. About the only reason that I'm working on it right now is that I'm upgrading some other OGL rendering stuff and converting the lightning arcs to use it was a very good test of the new code.
Oh, and this quite effectively kills D3D support, as I am not going to add support for this stuff to anything but OGL. This means that for everyone that still hasn't made the switch to OGL, you aren't going to have a choice any longer. Even if the D3D code still compiles, it can't handle the effect without an upgrade. It will be up to someone else to make the D3D code compatible at some point in the future. :p
I've never really thought about it before now, but it's occured to me that the lightning effect could be really useful for quite a lot of things if we could control it.
Eg, if we could define points/pairs of points from/between which lightning can arc, and had a scripted/SEXPed trigger mechanism of some kind, it should become possible to make things like lightning guns, fancy new non-subspace FTL drive effects, have weapon impacts that spew lightning, turrets that charge up with lightning jumping to them from random/set points on the hull, constant lightning effects that are just a feature of a ship etc.
The current code just takes two points, it then randomly fills in more points between those two in order to make the full arc. So it really could do some rather neat things, and be random by design. With with the new g3_draw_rod(), which actually renders the arcs, it would be easy to do something completely different with it even. For effects that would really show it off it would be worth using textures on it, or even more elaborate color sets. The part of the code which actually generates the random stuff in between the two original points is a single, rather simple, function and it wouldn't be difficult to do much more with it in the future.
Oh, and yeah - please leave in the lightning effect for the ship lab. It's the kind of thing that just strikes me as belonging in there. :D
Ok, guess I'll leave it in. It would probably be more work to remove it at this point anyway. ;)
The effect does just play out like in-game btw, so it's just random arcs which are going all over the ship. Because of the random nature of the arc, there is no way to actually pause it or anything, since it doesn't render the exact same way twice. One thing that it doesn't do (at least not yet) is produce the light effect that goes along with the arc. I don't know that I'll bother to add that, at least not at first. It also doesn't work on debris at the moment, so I don't know if that is something anyone wants or not. It wouldn't be that difficult to add to debris, but it would be something of a pain, so I probably won't add it without a proper virgin sacrifice, or something. :)
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It wouldn't be that difficult to add to debris, but it would be something of a pain, so I probably won't add it without a proper virgin sacrifice, or something. :)
lol; no there's no need to add it to debris display - it's just the sorta thing that now it's added, there's no real reason to remove it again. :)
That and it's just a plain cool effect to watch.
Actually, it is possible to use a texture rather than just a solid color, it is just a poly like any other effect uses after all. The problem is that it's almost 100% waste.
Oooh, that'd be great for any future uses of lightning we're discussing here that require the bolt to be quite wider. The gradient method sounds very highly adaptable too, which is great.
The current code just takes two points, it then randomly fills in more points between those two in order to make the full arc. So it really could do some rather neat things, and be random by design. With with the new g3_draw_rod(), which actually renders the arcs, it would be easy to do something completely different with it even. For effects that would really show it off it would be worth using textures on it, or even more elaborate color sets. The part of the code which actually generates the random stuff in between the two original points is a single, rather simple, function and it wouldn't be difficult to do much more with it in the future.
That certainly sounds promising then. This is the kind of new functionality that I love most of all btw. :D
Stuff that just opens up whole new realms of fancy effect possabilities.
I'm sure that all of you can come up with an idea or two to make proper use of the new code effect.
Well, I have a couple more secrety secret ideas for some TI specific stuff, but it could also make for great storm effects in TI and SoL's ground missions if need-be, or much stronger EMP effects on ships (think star wars ion cannon level).
They're still coming! ;)
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Hehe, I haven't decided actually. I did actually make all ships in the lab have damage arcs in the lab so that I could test it out easier, so the code is basically there to do such a thing. It's just not really a useful thing though, so I had never planned to leave that capability in place and was just going to rip it out after I got done testing. But I suppose I could be convinced to leave it in, if everyone really, really wants it. :)
I forget, is the damage arc stuff all handled by data outside of the ship struct? If so, you could make it a model render flag and let the effect be toggled in the lab...
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I forget, is the damage arc stuff all handled by data outside of the ship struct? If so, you could make it a model render flag and let the effect be toggled in the lab...
They render if there are any arcs set for the model. I skip the ship stuff and do the arcs separately in the lab, so that it can be controled easier. So there isn't a need to make it a MR flag since it just has to be a LAB flag instead.
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ship lab?
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ship lab?
F3 in the main hall