[Bobboau]

http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/blackwater/fs2_open_decal.zip

ok, this is very crashy, you will crash to desktop, there are major memory leaks, but it untill it crashes it should give you some idea about how good my new decal system will be once operational, I recomend a non combat test mission were you can just pound on something and look at the decals.
the only bugs I want to hear about at this point are if you experience and thing like textures on ships disapearing/going all smeared. this isn't for bug hunting, as it's just to demo that I do have a solution in the works.

[J3Vr6]

Can we see a screenshot, please?  Some of us can't run Freespace anymore

[Fineus]

Very nice Bob! As you said I did get a crash to desktop and I did get memory leak issues - I also got the bug you can clearly see in the screenshots below - but the actual effect and decal seems to work very well (though, decals only work for the first few shots? After that no matter what I shot - no decal was created on the ship I hit). Anyway, examples...

Below you can see the impact effect on the ship - so far so good, no issues with textures:

[Fineus]

However, after a bit of time this happened - notice the decals are fine - but.. well you can see the problem

[Bobboau]

well it's suposed to be able to handle as many decals as a ship needs (ie as much as you'r computer's memory can store) but after a few ships get a bunch of them the decal list probly gets corupted, or you run out of memory, there is a leak somewere and I think it's in the rendering code, haveing something to do with the decals thinking they've been chaged when they havn't

hmm, maybe I should have a prealocated mass of decals that can be applyed to any ships, similarly to how the vertex buffer code works

that's another bug I was worried about, looks like your card might not suport texture clamping very well, what type of card do you have?
though, now that I think about it, that could be caused by corupted decals too...

[Fineus]

I'm running an MSI GeForce4 4600 Ti...

Might it be possible to have the decals disappear from smaller ships at a faster rate than those on larger ones (that is - say - 1 to disappear every 30 seconds from fighters, 1 every 120 seconds from cruisers / corvettes and 1 every 240 seconds from anything larger)? That way the size may not get to great but you wouldn't have to worry about maximum numbers.

[Bobboau]

most small ships arn't going to get that many decals on them before they are destroied, I'mm thinking about makeing a system of decal replacement so that the oldest decal will be deleted when ever a new one is made after the ship reaches a table defined max decal number, but the system is designed to be able to handle truely vast amounts of decals, like 1000 on a single ship, now weather I'll be able to manage that is another story, I tend to get coruption after about fifteen decals currently, but the rendering engine for it is defenantly capable of handleing that (1000 decals per ship)

[J3Vr6]

What am I supposed to notice in the screen shots?  The scorched black spots?

[Bobboau]

yeah

[J3Vr6]

Coooool... What happens if you keep firing at the same spot or hit it with bombs or lots of missiles?  Does the decal change to something else, like a wannabe hole when hit with something big or multiple shots?  Or is that in the works?

[KARMA]

bob, you already know what I'd like to see based on this

[Kazan]

hey bobboau - use a ring buffer for your decal indexies - that will make the "oldest dies" work automagically

[Unknown Target]

You should set a max-decal-limit, such as 1000 decals, and then they'll start to dissapear. Like in a shooter, you have a slider bar that sets how much you want to keep (whether this should be per-ship or total scenery, you decide, but per-ship would be better)

[karajorma]

I think bobs idea of handling it via the table is a better idea since it allows you to vary the number depending on the ship.

What might work though is to have a table based number and a mutiplier set in the launcher so that people with low end machines can lower the number of decals without having to turn them off.

[Goober5000]

Psst... Bobboau, you're violating the spirit of the code freeze. Even if you don't commit this right now, you're supposed to be bug-squashing.

[Raven2001]

aww please!!! Why don't you let one or two coders to innovate on the code so that we can be happy??

[Goober5000]

I don't think you'd be happy if we released a build full of bugs.  Remember 3.5?

Not to mention all these innovations are delaying the release of 3.6.

[Unknown Target]

Hey, Bob, if we made the decals neon green, would they be transparant?

:evil:


EDIT: Bugs! The decals don't show up. Where do I have to put them? I put the TIFFS in the maps and effects directory, and neither showed any decals when I shot a fenris.

System:

AMD 1.6 Ghz
512MB of RAM
On-board Geforce 2

[Beowulf]

*clap clap clap*

Keep up the good work. Problem shmoblem, you guys are great!

[Rga_Noris]

As cool as this looks (because hey, I LOVED that feature before it got scratched), I'd have to agree that bug squashing needs some attention. I can't wait till the afterburner bug gets squashed... then i'll be a happy camper.