Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: ShadowGorrath on April 09, 2008, 04:44:16 am
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Hey,
I've seen in a preview video of Nexus2: The Jupiter Incident ( but the 2nd one, unreleased ) and it seemed to have more graphical features than FS2 SCP now has, and it was a strategy game from 2002, though never released. Including reflection maps, normal maps, space distortion etc.
Normal maps are in, have no idea about those reflection maps, but I've never seen space distortion and think it would look perfect for newer mods, or just plain FS2 SCP normal campaign. You know: distortion shockwaves, engines, weapon effects, beam cannons, etc. Would look more realistic and eye catching.
Any ideas?
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I dunno......... :blah:
Is it a bit too new an effect to plug into the old trusty old SCP engine?
Or am i completely wrong, If so, I think a distortion effect should replace the subspace entry vortex.....
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Or am i completely wrong, If so, I think a distortion effect should replace the subspace entry vortex.....
Omg you know, I was just thinking the same thing. Sure, the blue swirly things are pretty, but a huge distortion with a ship coming through it would be, like, so cool. Intimidating even.
Edit: Or use it with a Knossos. Having the circling thingies generate a constant distortion within the portal... damn.
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Working distortions were on the 2002 Nexus2. I'd say it's possible on SCP, but I'm no programmer.
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it's just a shader
we'll be able to do it once all that code gets done.
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Deep joy :yes:
Funky shields on the way too no doubt after that.
Stealth systems, gravity wells and "hopefully" WC3/4 style bullet impacts on your screen. :D
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...Stealth systems...
Can you imagine being able to stealth ships with the distortion effect. It'd be like " *squinting* What the heck is that ... does anyone else see a ripply thing?... Oh crap it has beam cannons!"
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Can you imagine being able to stealth ships with the distortion effect. It'd be like " *squinting* What the heck is that ... does anyone else see a ripply thing?... Oh crap it has beam cannons!"
Then when a high-poly ship is made it's completely given away. :lol:
Granted, it would be useless, but just pretty damn badass.
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*Starts looking to replace the old 7600
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Can you imagine being able to stealth ships with the distortion effect. It'd be like " *squinting* What the heck is that ... does anyone else see a ripply thing?... Oh crap it has beam cannons!"
Then when a high-poly ship is made it's completely given away. :lol:
Granted, it would be useless, but just pretty damn badass.
I think whether or not the details give it all away depends on how heavily the ship's cloak distorts background details "behind" it. The less distortion, the harder it is to figure out what the ship is. And if a particular shader somehow bases its appearance depending on the angle at which a camera is looking at it (as opposed to simply acting as a texture modifier), then things could get really interesting.
As we know, original FS2 explosion shockwaves always faced the camera, and always appeared circular. If someday in the future we make a shader based distortion shockwave expanding like the original [V] made.......it might actually look better than a 3D planar or spherical shockwave.
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Its just a screenspace distortion shader. Rather standard in today's games, its just that the SCP doesn't support screenspace shaders (postprocessing) of any kind yet, or it'd also have bloom, and HDR, and motionblur, and...
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But it WILL support them, right ?
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anytime in the future, as far as i kno ;)
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How far of the future? 2009 ? 2010 ? 2335 ?
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I don't like the sound of that.........
How far of the future? 2009 ? 2010 ? 2335 ?
Playing Freespace in my Apollo............... Irony. :lol:
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I think he meant anytime from here on out, because there are already testing builds with shader support, so someone could already start writing a shader for it I believe.
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I nominate ShadowGorrath................. :yes:
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Nominate for what?
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so someone could already start writing a shader for it I believe.
I expect a download by 18:00..........
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Gah !
Um... Yea... Well... The thing is... *goes offline*
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Begginer Modder
Excellent,
*CD assumes ShadowGorrath is working on the download*
:lol:
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My department isn't coding though ;) :p
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No worries lol i'm pulling your leg,
Has anyone played Shadow Hearts on the PS2? It's an old'ish RPG in a FF veil, theres a guy called Roger Bacon who has a cool spherical space distortion teleport effect. If that could be mimicked and applied to a weapon (gravity cannon type thingy) That would be sweet also :D
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Old games can have distortions very easily. Like Tiberian Sun for example - the Disruptor tank's main cannon has a distortion effect. But it's 2D.
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Updating Freespace would be amazing. High poly models, all the new texture maps, would be beautiful, but would something like that be possible without a whole new engine?
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I think that with SCP, FreeSpace will surely know no boundaries. [/Ancient-voice]
If seriously, all the coders need is time. But the FS2 SCP engine's possibilities with the source code is ALMOST endless.
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Updating Freespace would be amazing. High poly models, all the new texture maps, would be beautiful, but would something like that be possible without a whole new engine?
Have you ever looked at the SCP at all?
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Updating Freespace would be amazing. High poly models, all the new texture maps, would be beautiful, but would something like that be possible without a whole new engine?
Have you ever looked at the SCP at all?
:lol:..........................He thinks the SCP is RETAIL>...............................MUahahahhahah,...
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Updating Freespace would be amazing. High poly models, all the new texture maps, would be beautiful, but would something like that be possible without a whole new engine?
Yeah, dude, are you aware that this has already been done?
You can have your high-poly models and new textures right now.
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I've played the whole campaign with SCP. I haven't seen any high poly models. I'm talking about models with the same graphics as X2/X3, or Infinity or EVE.
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The new models in Freespace 2 SCP are every bit as high-poly as the ones in Eve, the difference is in the shaders. We have bump mapping now, but full material/shader support is planned and being worked on. Seriously, the graphics are not that far off now, most of the 'shiny' in Eve etc comes not from the models, but from those shader effects.
As for Infinity, for full procedural effects like that, it wouldn't be merely a question of upgrading the Engine, it would be a question of practically re-writing the Source Code from scratch, and, if you had ever seen the Source Code, you would realise that this concept would make a lot of grown men cry ;)
Oh, and in my opinion X2 had terrible graphics, though X3 had great graphics as long as you had a mega-machine, and Egosoft focussed so much on the graphics, they forgot to do anything new with the game.
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Someone link him to a few good screnies or videos... I would do so, but lazyness is interfering.
Here's the video which convinced me to tell you all about the distortions : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhZQEvg1V0Y (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhZQEvg1V0Y)
I hope that with the shaders, FS2 SCP will have something similar to those distortions.
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I still pine for that game, even if I'm still not convinced that whole engine wasn't a pipe-dream, I doubt they could have pulled it off at that level even on modern machines.
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I think you guys missed Dragon93's point; I don't think he has the media vps...
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Actually, he has (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,46851.msg1053499.html#msg1053499). And I wouldn't call it "his point". But it is highly possible that someone has forgotten to choose the mediavps folder from the Launcher's mod tab; that happens so ****ing often.
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Even the main campaign with LS nebulas is in a seperate folder with the 3.6.10 mediavps linked in the mod.ini in my case.
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Just checked, i did have mediavps on, i guess the main reason the models don't look amazing is because the textures look mostly like the originals, with not as much of the new maps. Speaking of textures, i think the main menu etc. is in great need of a re-do. With most modern resolutions things don't look as good due to stretching.
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Just checked, i did have mediavps on, i guess the main reason the models don't look amazing is because the textures look mostly like the originals, with not as much of the new maps. Speaking of textures, i think the main menu etc. is in great need of a re-do. With most modern resolutions things don't look as good due to stretching.
:wtf: Something is wrong here. If you have the mediavps (version 3.6.8Zeta or newer) installed, selected as a mod and accompanied by the necessary command line options, there should be a noticeable, I say, a noticeable difference compared to the retail textures.
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No jpg-tga flag ? No -glow flag ? No mv_textures.vp ? But that's only for older-than-3.6.10, except for the -glow and -spec flags.
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Just checked, i did have mediavps on, i guess the main reason the models don't look amazing is because the textures look mostly like the originals, with not as much of the new maps. Speaking of textures, i think the main menu etc. is in great need of a re-do. With most modern resolutions things don't look as good due to stretching.
Yeah, dude, you should see an enormous difference. Simply comparing the Herc I model with and without the MediaVPs should make it clear.
The textures are wildly different.