[Dragon]

Is that possible to add such features?
I would like to see, for example, yellow lighting on fighter when it passes through hole in GTI Arcadia.
Or blue when it goes through engine wash of a terran capship.
It would also be great to have glowmaps, thrusters and glowpoints reflect in glass and other reflective surfaces, like now does environment.

[shiv]

Is that possible to add such features?
I would like to see, for example, yellow lightning on fighter when it passes through hole in GTI Arcadia.
Or blue when it goes through engine wash of a terran capship.
It would also be great to have glowmaps, thrusters and glowpoints reflect in glass and other reflective surfaces, like now does environment.

[Herra Tohtori]

I would rate shadows more important, but heck, this would be cool as well.

I'm just curious about how the amount of light sources affects the amount of render passes and their speed...

[Galemp]

Do you have the slightest idea how incredibly difficult and system-intensive those requests are? Emissive light from textures on a per-pixel basis? Real-time reflection? MAJOR game studios, like Epic and iD, are only JUST starting to implement things like this.

Sorry to rain on your parade, but it ain't gonna happen.

[Sushi]

I don't see why we couldn't use engines as a point light source, though. It wouldn't really be any different than it is for weapons, and would provide for some cool effects when fighters traverse capships.

[Aardwolf]

Unfortunately Galemp is right.

As for engines, however, I like the idea, and it sounds a bit more feasible than some of the other points. One small problem is the range of stuff affected by the engines... particularly, there should be 'shadows' cast on the ship itself (i.e. even if a point is very close to the engine and facing the right way, if part of the ship model is between them, it shouldn't be illuminated.

This could possibly be achieved using some sort of baked lightmap, but it would have to be separate from the -glow maps, and able to adjust to match the throttle/afterburner/normal pulsing behavior of the engines. But then there might be trouble with the combination of multiple independent engine glows. It could probably be done, though, and a lot more easily than some of the other suggestions you made.

As for reflecting certain things off of shiny stuff, that would be particularly difficult given the way the rendering engine is structured. It's really too old and bloated, unfortunately--that sort of change would require more of an overhaul than a tweak, if I'm not mistaken. The thing is, in order to do it, you'd need to basically draw the scene a second time for each time stuff is reflected.

Also... one small problem here is that you're saying 'lightning' and that's confusing me. I'm here thinking you're talking about lightning (i.e. big bright zig-zaggy branching plasma thingy that happens during thunder storms), when what you mean is l-i-g-h-t-i-n-g. I'm sorry if I sound like a jerk saying that, but if it messes with communication, it stands in the way of doing anything.

[portej05]

baked lightmap

mmm chocolate...

I'm going to second what Aardwolf and Galemp have said. The engine just isn't up to that kind of abuse at present. I'm not sure how it's done with weapons though (I have noticed that when stuff goes bang you get some lighting effects)

[Sushi]

As for engines, however, I like the idea, and it sounds a bit more feasible than some of the other points. One small problem is the range of stuff affected by the engines... particularly, there should be 'shadows' cast on the ship itself (i.e. even if a point is very close to the engine and facing the right way, if part of the ship model is between them, it shouldn't be illuminated.

An easy workaround is just to not have the engines light the ship they're mounted on. They would only cast point lights (the same as weapons fire uses) on other ships. That, IMO, should be relatively easy to implement.

[Aardwolf]

Yeah, I think at the very least that if the engines emit light, the effect for the ship they're mounted on would have to be done differently than for other objects nearby.

[Nuke]

id implement this through the existing glowpoints pof chunck. you could make a type 2 glowpoint, its radius being its effective area. if 2 lightning points have intersecting radius and are both on at the same time then lightning can arc between them. the bitmap for the glowpoint could be used in the effect. it could be bindable to rotating subobjects as well for added effect.

you could use the games existing nebula lightning and ship sparks type rendering.

but of course the poster of this thread cant spell lighting

[Dragon]

I'm sorry, I posted this around midnight in my time, I relied mostly on spellchecker when writing this.
BTW, what are glowpoint types?
I know that type "0" is the regular glowpoint, but what are other types for?

[Aardwolf]

id implement this through the existing glowpoints pof chunck. you could make a type 2 glowpoint, its radius being its effective area. if 2 lightning points have intersecting radius and are both on at the same time then lightning can arc between them. the bitmap for the glowpoint could be used in the effect. it could be bindable to rotating subobjects as well for added effect.

you could use the games existing nebula lightning and ship sparks type rendering.

but of course the poster of this thread cant spell lighting

Yeah, he wasn't talking about 'zap' lightning. But that is still an interesting idea (although your implementation plan sounds too hack-y).

[Nuke]

the glowpoint chunk just seems to have been made with future expansion in mind. making them emit lightning is a plausable expansion.

I'm sorry, I posted this around midnight in my time, I relied mostly on spellchecker when writing this.
BTW, what are glowpoint types?
I know that type "0" is the regular glowpoint, but what are other types for?

well bunnies, its 6:30 am i havent slept in over 36 hours and i just made my lua based table parser work flawlessly
anyway there are type 0 which are glows and 1 which are beams. if there are more im unaware of them.

[Aardwolf]

What, is there an int (i.e. 32+ bit value) associated with each glowpoint?

[Galemp]

No, Bobboau just coded in two types, 0 and 1, depending on whether they're camera-oriented or space-oriented.

[Nuke]

it might be parsed internally as bool, but if bob followed the existing scheme more likely theyre enumerations. but anyway the point is if two types were added, why not more? in addition to glow points why not lightning points and particle spewers and the like. i even thought about sound effects points. or killzones.

the glowpoint chunk is a good place to put anything that needs a position, normal, and radius, since it also has a properties section and a type int?, that makes the glowpoint system a pretty good foundation for other model-level effects. the other advantage is that most converters allow you to import glowpoints directly from the ship model when you convert it. its sertainly better than creating new pof specs.

[DaBrain]

... did somebody say something about baked lightmaps?

You know that crappy tilemapped ships look a lot better with baked lightmaps, don't you?

I condsider this to be one of the most important visual features right now. More important than real-time reflection, or engine lights.

[Aardwolf]

Wait, what?

* Aardwolf can't tell if that was sarcasm or not, what with this being the Internet

Assuming you're SRS, tho... what feature are you saying is the most important, exactly? Do you mean baked lightmaps with separate uvcoords, or what?

[Galemp]

Just look at the high poly Iceni. See how the engines make the surrounding area glow blue? That.

[Aardwolf]

So, he was serious, but it's an already existing feature... What about the tilemaps bit?