Hard Light Productions Forums

Community Projects => The FreeSpace Upgrade Project => Topic started by: qazwsx on June 27, 2008, 12:11:01 pm

Title: What Happened to Decals?
Post by: qazwsx on June 27, 2008, 12:11:01 pm
I'm just wondering what happened to the decals, why were they removed?
Title: Re: What Happened to Decals?
Post by: Galemp on June 27, 2008, 12:12:27 pm
They were found to cause too many bugs and glitches, and so have been deactivated for stability's sake.
Title: Re: What Happened to Decals?
Post by: haloboy100 on June 27, 2008, 12:39:12 pm
Any chance they will ever return at all? Or maybe just be included as a beta feature?
Title: Re: What Happened to Decals?
Post by: blowfish on June 27, 2008, 12:48:17 pm
Any chance they will ever return at all? Or maybe just be included as a beta feature?

There is a flag to enable them currently ( "-decals", its a custom flag, use at you own risk), and they are intended to come back in 3.7.
Title: Re: What Happened to Decals?
Post by: Goober5000 on June 27, 2008, 11:22:25 pm
That flag does nothing but display a message box saying that the feature no longer exists.  Decals have been completely removed from the code, for the very reasons mentioned by Galemp.

Just like the stencil shadow feature, the only way for decals to return to FSO is if someone were to code a new implementation from scratch.  And right now there are too many things that need fixing in the codebase to justify spending effort on that.
Title: Re: What Happened to Decals?
Post by: FreeSpaceFreak on June 28, 2008, 12:33:26 am
[n00b]What exactly are decals?[/n00b]
Title: Re: What Happened to Decals?
Post by: nubbles526 on June 28, 2008, 03:17:55 am
[n00b]What exactly are decals?[/n00b]

Like damage, you know. For example, if your fighter crashed into a cruiser, it would have a dent (supposidly). And the usage of -decal was to add that graphic.
Title: Re: What Happened to Decals?
Post by: FreeSpaceFreak on June 28, 2008, 05:02:30 am
Blowing the arms off a Sathanas... /me dreams away
Yes, sounds pretty much 3.7, just like the shadows...
Will it ever be released?
Title: Re: What Happened to Decals?
Post by: Snail on June 28, 2008, 05:08:39 am
Decals aren't geomodding, decals were textures applied over the ship's main texture when you shot them with lasers or missiles. Like  the ricochets in the walls in FPS games.
Title: Re: What Happened to Decals?
Post by: ShadowGorrath on June 28, 2008, 05:20:49 am
Does anyone have a screenie of them?
Title: Re: What Happened to Decals?
Post by: nubbles526 on June 28, 2008, 07:06:35 am
Does anyone have a screenie of them?

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,23754.20.html
Title: Re: What Happened to Decals?
Post by: Turambar on July 11, 2008, 11:47:01 am
decals in conjunction with normal maps could look nice.

also, stencil shadows with the normal maps.  Then this game would be almost modern.
Title: Re: What Happened to Decals?
Post by: colecampbell666 on July 14, 2008, 03:17:19 pm
What is the status of Geomod?
Title: Re: What Happened to Decals?
Post by: Goober5000 on July 14, 2008, 06:44:25 pm
It'll be released before Q1 2009 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Faction_3).
Title: Re: What Happened to Decals?
Post by: colecampbell666 on July 14, 2008, 07:10:42 pm
Dekker let it slip that he was beta testing it a while ago, so I assume soon. And I notice that you've stopped using DNF as a meaning for "Never".
Title: Re: What Happened to Decals?
Post by: pecenipicek on July 15, 2008, 05:21:28 am
...Just like the stencil shadow feature,..
as in... generally sort of like doom 3 shadows?

when did that even get tried?
Title: Re: What Happened to Decals?
Post by: karajorma on July 15, 2008, 07:36:25 am
Dekker let it slip that he was beta testing it a while ago, so I assume soon.

Damn you and your use of logic! The coders are obviously powerless to keep it a secret in the face of that! :p