[Bobboau]

I can make any weapon leave any decal I want, it is going to be a table option
I could make diferent decals based on the angle of impact

[Goober5000]

too many options...

Wow, great work Bobboau.

*stares at code blankly*

Wow again.

[Bobboau]

ok I see you need some visual aids





as you can see the basic decal code is working, it is basicly just a mater of implementing it at a high level and getting it to render better, in that test I mearly set a decal texture to be whatever the laser was, also beams leave a mark
we should start talking about the higherlevel stuff now, if I don't get much responce, I'll make another topic

[Sesquipedalian]

Higher level meaning what?

[Vasudan Admiral]

awesome stuff  
do they fade out after a few seconds/minutes? (i'm not quite a code reader yet. working on it )
anway, looks sweet as

[Inquisitor]

When you get it, committ it

[IceFire]

Seems to me that what we need are some proper scorch marks.

How are they being done?  ANI?  PCX?  Alpha channel?

[Sesquipedalian]

I might be able to whip up some scorch marks in a week or two, once the semester ends.

The decal code uses alpha rendering, I assume (right?)

[Bobboau]

for the moment it is useing the normal transparency code used by the weapon effects and thrusters, this is one of the things that needs to be fixed

[Inquisitor]

Committ it, document everything that you want to change, and when we get the web gurus working this weekend, we'll tag that as a page to make

[Sesquipedalian]

Originally posted by Bobboau
for the moment it is useing the normal transparency code used by the weapon effects and thrusters, this is one of the things that needs to be fixed

Fixed to what, exactly?  Basically, I just need to know whether I need to use 0,255,0 for the transparency, or if the usual alpha-rendering that treats black as transparent will work (the latter is preferred).

[mikhael]

Out of curiosity, Bob, are you setting a maximum limit and a nominal lifetime for decal polygons?

If not, you might want to do so, to keep the overhead from piling up.

[Galemp]

Weapon effects and thrusters use alpha-channels.

[Sesquipedalian]

Originally posted by GalacticEmperor
Weapon effects and thrusters use alpha-channels.

Which is what I need to know whether is being changed.


[The above sentence does make grammatical sense, if it is somewhat cumbersome.]

[Goober5000]

I'd be wary of encouraging Bobboau to commit, since it seems like he still is working on it.  I say, only commit finished work.  It sounds like Bobboau's code, although it works, is not as efficient or clean as it should be and at the very least might slow stuff down.  At the other end, we could have, as mikhael said, overhead piling up or even memory leaks...

I say, fix the existing bug in ModelRead.cpp (where the assertion randomly fails for no apparent reason) before adding new model stuff.  And then, only add your finished work, not your work in progress.

Sesq: Yes, I see - but I had to read that sentence about 10 times before I realized it was actually gramatically correct.  Conciseness is A-1 Supar, but so is readability.

EDIT: Quoted for posterity in case you actually do change it.

Which is what I need to know whether is being changed.

[Sesquipedalian]

I stand by my sentence.

[Bobboau]

it needs a true alpha chanel, not just additive alpha, so I can have black that is totaly opeque, but I don't know how to do that, I'm hopeing RT or Phreak will be able to help with that
for now, I'm probly just going to use the green transperency trick

if I coment out the two only segments of code that call the decal creation system, then the ineffecency/unstability will be of little importance becase the code in question would never get called

this has two new cpps in there own folder, I'm hopeing this won't make commiting harder

[Galemp]

I suppose you could have a seperate grayscale map for the alpha channel...

[Sesquipedalian]

Originally posted by Bobboau
it needs a true alpha chanel, not just additive alpha, so I can have black that is totaly opeque, but I don't know how to do that, I'm hopeing RT or Phreak will be able to help with that
for now, I'm probly just going to use the green transperency trick

Alright.  Makes my job a little messier, but fair enough.  I'll make them for green transparency, and then they can be changed later if necessary.

[Bobboau]

Originally posted by GalacticEmperor
I suppose you could have a seperate grayscale map for the alpha channel...

I'd love to, but there is no way to do that with current code, and I have no idea how that section of code works, so I can't make new code to do it,
and that section of code is just about to be plowed and tilled over by the OGL and DX8 HT&L sub-project

Ses, FYI I'm going to alow for static (as opposed to animated ones) decals first, then I'm going to make code for decals that have animated textures, so it can have a beginning (a hole is made filled with hot glowing molten hull metal), a middle (for beams middle section will loop while the beam is fireing), and end (molten hull cools, leaveing a black scorch)