Hull hit sprites and shield effect

A place to discuss user-created Allegiance 3D models, textures, images, and other visual ingame content.
Bunnywabbit
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Post by Bunnywabbit »

okay, that's all well and good but I am curious to your reasoning why hits on the shields do show up in targetview.

Since shield hits explosions do show up on targetview, it makes no sense to not be able to see hull explosions. At least not in terms of game mechanics.
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Spinoza
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Post by Spinoza »

Bunnywabbit wrote:QUOTE (Bunnywabbit @ Dec 26 2010, 07:42 PM) okay, that's all well and good but I am curious to your reasoning why hits on the shields do show up in targetview.

Since shield hits explosions do show up on targetview, it makes no sense to not be able to see hull explosions. At least not in terms of game mechanics.
Bunny: 1
Logic: 0

I disagree with the way you use "game mechanics", what you're referring to is more like game-world logic.

By chance I happened to have a video open with me shooting at a bomber drone to see the shield effect... I honestly never really paid attention to the target view while shooting and I never thought about the shield effect showing there.
BTW, it look way brighter on the target view.
BTW #2, did you know that in alpha base shields were visible when hit?
I suppose that effect was removed because of plain ugliness.

Re: target view, I suspect there was no proper game-world logic to the target view decisions. Only game mechanics and visual considerations.
I suspect that the hit flares would look tiny and pixelated in target view without AA.
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SpaceJunk
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Post by SpaceJunk »

Spinoza wrote:QUOTE (Spinoza @ Dec 23 2010, 08:58 PM) I'm wondering about the shield now... they unfortunately used a single image for 9 frames of shield damage.
It might break if it's resized... then again, the explosions didn't, so it's possible the code divides the image into frame according to w/h ratio.
I have a resized fx09bmp.mdl, it uses w/h ratio.
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Bunnywabbit
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Post by Bunnywabbit »

Spinoza wrote:QUOTE (Spinoza @ Dec 26 2010, 07:52 PM) Bunny: 1
Logic: 0
thank you :)
Spinoza wrote:QUOTE (Spinoza @ Dec 26 2010, 07:52 PM) I disagree with the way you use "game mechanics", what you're referring to is more like game-world logic.
I'm pretty sure I mean 'game mechanics' as being able to see your shots land without interference from boosters and background flares changes gameplay. Especially if you're about to set loose upon the world a big-ass targetview :)
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Spinoza
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Post by Spinoza »

Just to test people's opinions, not for general distribution, I pasted a difference cloud based effect on a bomber, with the old shield for comparison: (click for full size)

I tried to edit it together in a way which simulates what it would look like when projected on the shield ovoid.

I'm not going to do what I did with my Hi-res prox (which was to make it look 100% identical to the default when downscaled) because the darn shield looks hand drawn and impossible to emulate or even imitate. Frankly, it looks like something the intern did. :roll:
What do you think, are rings cool? Are they in keeping with the general feel of Alleg effects?
Any graphics tricks to suggest?

PS
I haven't actually tested if the game will accept hi-res animation for the shield effect.
For some reason I though it would be more for to screw around with effects and not worry...
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SpaceJunk
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Post by SpaceJunk »

I like it, but you have to make sure that the edges of each frame are pure black, or it will show clipping.

I think I recall reading somewhere that the sequence could have any amount of frames as long as they were square, but I've never tested that.
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Spinoza
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Post by Spinoza »

Here's a small video with a test texture to see how it the thing plays out:

It works pretty much as you expect it to (which is always a nice surprise).
Also, it looks like the ovoid used for the shield is quite high poly... which is really excellent. (This is clearer when I watch my orig hi-res fraps)

Another thing, looking at the target view, it's clear that sharp textures end up looking badly aliased... so this is definitely a good theory as to why hits on hull don't show there. They'd be pure white 2-3px wide, awful. Doesn't mean we can't make it work with modern HW and rendering techniques...
SpaceJunk wrote:QUOTE (SpaceJunk @ Dec 27 2010, 08:42 AM) I like it, but you have to make sure that the edges of each frame are pure black, or it will show clipping.

I think I recall reading somewhere that the sequence could have any amount of frames as long as they were square, but I've never tested that.
Yes, the edges ofc, that was just an artifact from rushing a demo.

I'll test more frames, though 9 is plenty, unless more than 9 would play faster... which they won't. Animation speed is definitely hard-coded.

EDIT:
Counting frames in 45fps video, looks like 4-5 frames of video per shield anim frame, meaning the shield animates at 10 fps. It looks slower with chunky images...
Last edited by Spinoza on Mon Dec 27, 2010 10:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Spinoza
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Post by Spinoza »

Here's a very rough test of "proper" rings made with difference clouds, 256px high.

Imageshack: (low resolution)



Dropbox: (720p, filesize 6.8MB)
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5124186/Shield_rings_256px.wmv

My conclusions from this test:
Rings are cool, but the low frame rate is a hurdle. I'll either make the rings wider so they overlap, or double them up for the same effect.
I'll add more fill inside the rings.
The bright bits need to be wider, these are too weak.

256px is good, but 512 should be better. Also, I'll render the diff clouds in higher resolution so I have more detail to work with.

You can test this yourself, use with caution, backup your own stuff:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5124186/fx09bmp.mdl
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SpaceJunk
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Post by SpaceJunk »

I stumbled across this image and I'll try to do something similar with a cloud render and a wave filter.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/scien...magneticcracks/
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Spinoza
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Post by Spinoza »

SpaceJunk wrote:QUOTE (SpaceJunk @ Dec 29 2010, 12:01 AM) I stumbled across this image and I'll try to do something similar with a cloud render and a wave filter.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/scien...magneticcracks/
Do basic test first, get a feel for the way the shield renders in game. It's not quite WYSIWYG.

The process i used for the rings is good, I'm fine tuning it for a full could effect, rings make it too clear that the frame rate is low.
I'll have something in a few days.
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