[Lightspeed]

Uhm, yes, whatever the title says



Setekh Shinemaps

Of course, creating 32-bit shinemaps would be a really useless frame rate killer so they're good old 8-bit PCX and will work with any FSO build that supports specular mapping.

[Flaser]

Originally posted by ChronoReverse
Well how about this: when the ship is moving, the trails start to appear grows longer with speed (as it should be), but when the engines are "off" the trails are gone, while the glows remain (but dimly, maybe flickering).

Thrust! Thrust we should all say!

I don't know how many times it was suggested and expressed before, but the whole operation of the engine depends on thrust.

The size of the flame only shows how much gas it pumps out, so how much force it aplies.

You already have the lead indicator to show the actual speed of any given ship.

[Flaser]

Way to go Lightspeed!

If you wrote up a TUT we could join in, so you can skin whatever you want and the whole armada would still be completed by XMas.

[Fineus]

Good reasoning really - if there's instructions on how to do this kind of thing, as well as a record of whats been done (perhaps on the SCP website) then people could pick what they wanted to do in a spare minute and submit it - it wouldn't take more than a month for sure!

[ChronoReverse]

The only thing is that it's a lot easier to adjust it in relation to speed.  And it would make sense to a lot more people (although not to the purists ).  In any case, FS engines don't work the same way as rockets (since constant thrust = constant speed).  Perhaps the engines aren't really spewing that much out (just really bright instead) and the trailing is completely caused by the motion of the ship leaving behind an ion trail as opposed to the engine throwing out gunk.


As for the flickering, what I really meant to say is a pulsating effect.  A slow rhythmic pulsating.  Again, this is just eye candy and isn't necessary at all (then again the entire trails things falls under this category XD) but it would be cool if it was added.

[Lightspeed]

Originally posted by Kalfireth
Actually "Asteroid" is the first, but i'd like to see a good reason for adding glow maps to it And it's GVA Setekh, which is nowhere near second in the alphabet.

I'm done now.

So how is it done? Tell us all!

simple.

1. open the model in any model viewer
2. open the first texture in Photoshop / PSP / whatever
3. convert it to RGB and...
bright = shiny
dark = non-shiny
colour = shiny in this specific colour
-> Apply shiny-ness (make parts black that shouldnt shine, parts bright that should, etc etc)
4. convert it back to 8-bit and save it as "Texturename-shine.pcx"
5. Repeat steps 1-4 for all textures in the first two LODs
6. Start the game, notice it looks crap and go back to step one until youre satisfied with your results

[Sheepy]

what command lines settings things are you using light or are they the defults settings?

[Lightspeed]

I'm using...

-32bit (to play in true colour)
-t32 (to enable my 32bit textures)
-htl (since non HTL will crash on the fs_open_t build, and since its playable now (although still a bit buggy) to improve my framerate)
-fov 0.39 (to make things look cool)

In order to see shine maps you dont have to set any command line options, though. Specular mapping is enabled by default (just put a blue sun in a mission and you'll see it all in pwitty shiny blue )

If you dont have any shinemaps it will use the standard texture as a shine map, too, which, in some cases, looks pretty good, but in other cases (like the Boadicea i'm working on atm) simply looks horrible (aahhH! attack of the huge plastic asteroid!!1111oenone)

[Sheepy]

i meant for the shine effects and stuff, cause you can set that as well ... and btw when you going to get on pxo so you can kick my ass some more?

Also where do i get this t build, i think im only running r atm

[Darkage]

Originally posted by Sheepy
i meant for the shine effects and stuff, cause you can set that as well ... and btw when you going to get on pxo so you can kick my ass some more?

Also where do i get this t build, i think im only running r atm

Command line: -spec_exp 11 -spec_point 0.3 -spec_static 0.5 -spec_tube 0.05


T build

[IceFire]

Originally posted by Darkage



Command line: -spec_exp 11 -spec_point 0.3 -spec_static 0.5 -spec_tube 0.05


T build

Ahh...glad to see the command line options are beginning to spread.  I very much liked those options after going through them all.

[Bobboau]

oh, Kazan made a thing for comand lines, just put them into cmdline.cfg and that should work for you

[Flaser]

An ion rocket works exactly like an ordinary rocket except it spews out ions instead of normal atoms, so it can use magnetic fields to steer the substance thereby enabling the usage of higher temperature that would melt any ordinary nozzle made of the best materials you can come up with, higher temperatures means faster exhaust gases - ergo greater thrust.

BTW it is not simplier to handle it with speed because there already is a code that shrinks the flame model based on the thrust.
It is easier to modfy that piece of code or simply relate to it than write something from scratch.

BTW no.2 - FS ships probably use a variation of nuclear engines - a hot fusion reaction powers a plasma engine, the exhasust of which can be steered just like an ion engine, except it has even bigger thrust.

This is also a reason why most FS ships never land on planets - it is too dangerous environment wisely.

Instead they use transports and shuttles with ion engines.

BTW no.3

I don't know where picked up the phrase that a rocket provides constant acceleration - nothing is farther form the truth!

A solid fuel rocket has a varying output, so even when designing one a major problem is building a reduction device that keeps the thrust stable.

With a liquid based rocket you can get about constant thrust force wise.

However both solution would result in varying acceleration!

The reason is theat the rokcet uses up fuel, so its mass decreases, therby the acceleration increases.


That's the reson why the original formula of Newton's second Law is often used in physics problems dealing with rockets:
dI=dm/dt - d=delta

[Flaser]

Lightspeed I kinda asked for what masking tools did you use and what procedures have you done to brightern/darken the selected areas?

[Goober5000]

The problem with basing it off of thrust is if a ship is moving at a constant speed, thrust is zero, so the engines are off.  When you're dogfighting and can't be bothered to target the ship and check, you might be fooled into thinking it was disabled.

[StratComm]

I think that if we were using true newtonian physics then this would apply, but based on Freespace physics a ship moving at constant speed is pushed along by a constant thrust (isn't it?  Since they stop on their own...).  Now I don't know how this relates to the thruster-scaling code, but I think it should do fine.

[übermetroid]

??  The size of the flame comming out of an engine should be based on how fast your fighter is going.  And should change color and get bigger when an Afterburner is being used.  When you have a speed of 0 there should just be a glow, that way the player knows that the engine is on and not disabled.

That is how I would like it.

[Lightspeed]

Alright, after a long day's work, here's the next two models:

The Boadicea (while the Iceni is still hidden inside):



The Iceni:



note: screenies taken with "-htl" since non HTL crashes at the moment, i.e. any ambient light is missing.


Download shine maps for the Iceni & the Boadicea

also note: some of the textures are used on other ships too.


Any comments welcome

[Flaser]

Pleas leave Newtonian physics out of this!

FS physics have little to do with reality, so what I told is how the system works now.

IMHO the whole speed based flame idea is fundamentally flaved. If we ignore newtonian physics as a whole a flame is still a sign or thrust, but there's no direct relation between thrust and speed.

As the game engine currently works when you set a speed, the flame immediately responds - in fact this sets a speed - than the engine accelerates/decelerates the ship with the given latency (in the ships.tbl) to reach that speed.

So in fact the current system uses the DESTINATION SPEED as the flame's indicator intead the actual speed.

I like th current system , because unlike the speed based system this gives you a hint of what the ship is actually trying to achieve, whereas the speed system won't tell you any of this, it would merly tell you something you already know.

This feature should also be kept like this is that once we start making strafing/reversing ships with actual thrusters it will be crucial to determine their next move.

[Galemp]

I think the contrast on the Iceni is too high, but that's probably due to the lack of ambient lighting and the ultra-intense shine mapping than your shinemaps. The Boadicea looks wonderful, though. Well done!