[Aardwolf]

Then around the edges of explosions (where it's black), you'd be darkening stuff from whatever brightness it was to half that brightness. It would look crazy.

[Krackers87]

Then around the edges of explosions (where it's black), you'd be darkening stuff from whatever brightness it was to half that brightness. It would look crazy.

.... then dont count zeros? or lower than any number not considered visable?

[Aardwolf]

Well then, it's no longer the 'simple' formula you proposed.

[Tomo]

Per-pixel Maximum function as suggested by Sushi is relatively computationally cheap, but I'm not sure how it'll look in practice.

- I don't think Photoshop has that filter, so it's hard to try out.

[Krackers87]

Well then, it's no longer the 'simple' formula you proposed.

why not? just ignore the values? just add a ( x >= y) before the average. or you can still ad 0's just divide the average by the visible pixels present, for example, lets say we have 5 pixels; 1, 3, 3, 0, 0,

if n<=0    then, y+1, x+1
if n>0 then, x+1
(1+3+3+0+0)/(X-y)

X = total intergers added to average
y = intergers equal to or less than 0

or if its simpler, change the equation to take out 0's without ever averaging them in the first place.

[Aardwolf]

Well then, it's no longer the 'simple' formula you proposed.

why not? just ignore the values? just add a ( x >= y) before the average.

I believe that would require depth sorting. But it's the best I've heard so far, actually.

or you can still ad 0's just divide the average by the visible pixels present, for example, lets say we have 5 pixels; 1, 3, 3, 0, 0,

if n<=0    then, y+1, x+1
if n>0 then, x+1
(1+3+3+0+0)/(X-y)

X = total intergers added to average
y = intergers equal to or less than 0

or if its simpler, change the equation to take out 0's without ever averaging them in the first place.[/color]

AFAIK that's not (easily) possible, because there's no (easy) way to keep track of all of the colors drawn to a certain pixel. At least, not without all-out support for deferred rendering, and even then I don't know.

[Dark RevenantX]

What stops you from sorting depth by order of effect creation?  Or is the system already so f--ked up that something that hackish is still a royal pain in the balls.

[Zacam]

So far as I know, we don't have depth sorting of any kind right now. See Mantis 1583

[Bobboau]

for particles and weapon effects there is no sorting, they are drawn more or less in the order they were first created, IIRC.

interestingly the SHIPS could be drawn sorted relatively easily if the internal geometry format was just a tiny bit more flexible.

[Swifty]

Depth sprites are usually used by most game engines today to make explosions seem rounder/ clip to the surrounding geometry spherically. It's a pretty simple concept, get a pre rendered depth map of a sphere then using shaders, use the values of that map based on the Texture coords of the explosion sprite and add them to the depth values of the fragments. Then we let z-buffering take it from there.

Too bad fireballs are renderred using the fixed pipeline right now. Maybe I or someone else should work on that    

[Iss Mneur]

Well then, it's no longer the 'simple' formula you proposed.

why not? just ignore the values? just add a ( x >= y) before the average.

I believe that would require depth sorting. But it's the best I've heard so far, actually.

No, it would not require depth sorting.  It does not matter in which order the values are added before the averaging of the non zero values.  This is no different than the MAX(x,y) function, it does not matter in which order you find the MAX of a list of numbers, you will still find the same maximum number.

As for accessing the colour information, I don't know how the engine processes and renders explosions and cannot comment on it.  But algorithmically MAX(x, y) and average_non_zero both on about the same level, except average_non_zero would require keeping track of both the zero values and the total values for the average.

[DaBrain]

Depth sprites are usually used by most game engines today to make explosions seem rounder/ clip to the surrounding geometry spherically. It's a pretty simple concept, get a pre rendered depth map of a sphere then using shaders, use the values of that map based on the Texture coords of the explosion sprite and add them to the depth values of the fragments. Then we let z-buffering take it from there.

Too bad fireballs are renderred using the fixed pipeline right now. Maybe I or someone else should work on that    

That would be a requirement to allow custom shaders anyway... so there is no way around it.

[Topgun]

Per-pixel Maximum function as suggested by Sushi is relatively computationally cheap, but I'm not sure how it'll look in practice.

- I don't think Photoshop has that filter, so it's hard to try out.

lighten only.

[Pottuvoi]

Well then, it's no longer the 'simple' formula you proposed.

why not? just ignore the values? just add a ( x >= y) before the average.

I believe that would require depth sorting. But it's the best I've heard so far, actually.

No, it would not require depth sorting.  It does not matter in which order the values are added before the averaging of the non zero values.  This is no different than the MAX(x,y) function, it does not matter in which order you find the MAX of a list of numbers, you will still find the same maximum number.

As for accessing the colour information, I don't know how the engine processes and renders explosions and cannot comment on it.  But algorithmically MAX(x, y) and average_non_zero both on about the same level, except average_non_zero would require keeping track of both the zero values and the total values for the average.

It would be a good idea to use proper alpha value from the texel, this would allow smooth gradient from invisible to visible.

The problem with custom blending is that no hardware supports it, so it must be made with couple of tricks.
Easiest might be rendering explosions into a different buffer and composite later with the image.

Finding MAX should be possible by writing the explosion brightness into a Z-Buffer and right color would be the last visible. (if one needs blending between explosions, sort particles and render them as feathered particles.)
Write alpha into texture.  (how you blend here affects the transparency of explosion, not color.)

Now we have color and alpha and transparent buffer ready to be composited to a final image. (before post processing.)