Map edges, how can they be fixed?

[SirArtturi]

Hmm.. how expensive its to render textures on it? I mean how did you do it?

Works pretty well with smoths map, though a bit silly with mine.

[smoth]

that's what I like kr's more, it is abstract.

[Pako]

interesting.

it still has the same tearing that king raptor's has though.

You are using king raptor's widget wrong and my widget should come with some kind of a barrier at the edge to hide the vertex gaps and to show the playing area.

Hmm.. how expensive its to render textures on it? I mean how did you do it?

It is just a minimap texture, so about 10 times smaller than the real so maybe as fast as without texture.

Of course it fails with water but less with bumpmapped water.

[smoth]

You are using king raptor's widget wrong and my widget should come with some kind of a barrier at the edge to hide the vertex gaps and to show the playing area.

how so?
it isn't there honest

[Pako]

You are using king raptor's widget wrong and my widget should come with some kind of a barrier at the edge to hide the vertex gaps and to show the playing area.

how so?
it isn't there honest

I think king raptor's widget is meant to be used with mostly transparent texture.
It could be fixed by extending the vertexes slightly into the real map.

I don't yeat know how to do that barrier it could be like a chinese wall or shiny steel or just a shader to draw a black shade on border.

[smoth]

I understand that. even with the transparent texture, it doesn't match up.

I was going to do just a solid color border.. evo has a busted up widget I figured I would look at.

[smoth]

pako, any idea why kr's widget is disturbed by the distortion effects but yours is not?

[Pako]

what distortion effects? Clear difference is that KR's widget draws in DrawWorld callin and mine in DrawWorldPreUnit.

[smoth]

ah, that could well be it. I'll try switching to it.

[KingRaptor]

Pako: Looks great although I'm not too fond of the curvature effect.

smoth: Lower "res"/gridSize may help with the gaps (prohibitively expensive beyond a certain point on mine but should be much much faster with Pako's).

[smoth]

pako's gives me that feeling I am looking off the ledge of a building. it makes me feel physically uneasy.

your widget is fine, I just need to add a border around the map as the final touch. I am including both in gundam all the same.

[hoijui]

looking at the triangles on pakos image, it looks like only the main playing area uses ROAM. could this be a problem?
naively thinking.. if you speed up rendering the main area by 100% with ROAM, and add an other 8 areas rendered without roam.. it should be pretty slow.

[BaNa]

I opened the code and it was so sickening I threw up this to my keyboard.

FUCKWIN MAN I LOVE YOU FOLKS

[knorke]

I opened the code and it was so sickening I threw up this to my keyboard.

yea i have no idea what i am doing with gl and i think kingraptor is still learning too
So I am glad someone with better knowledge quickly (i guess?) made this in a proper way!

naively thinking.. if you speed up rendering the main area by 100% with ROAM, and add an other 8 areas rendered without roam.. it should be pretty slow.

I only tested on 2 maps and did not play a real game but the fps kind of stayed the same with Pako's widget.

Btw, anyone else noticed how many (all?) maps have a black line around the bottom & right edge on the texture? Is that something mapconv creates?
Normally it does not matter but with the mirroing it is quite obvious because you get long unnatarual lines across the terrain:


I think the tearing between "real/fake" terrain is because of detail level? If you press end/pos1 to change terrain LOD you can see the gaps change etc.

What I as a mapper always dreamed was that I could have total control over how the unplayable area would look like

At the start of the widget there is this loop:
For x=...
For y=...
You could put any formular for noise/height fading or whatever there or have it read from a bitmap that you include with the map.

Also I think the question whether this should be in engine, game or map is worth thinking about.
Smoth can probally safely put it in gundam because he is the only creator of grts_ maps and so knows none of his maps will include a conflicting widget.
zeroK and other games will probally include the widget with the game but that migt be problematic in the future, if mappers include their own tweaked versions with the map? (ie making a map with a flowing river that extends past map borders or a space/asteroid map that uses Lua to draw space or an island in an endless sea of lava)
So it would be maybe good to have some way to tell the widget to turn off? Maybe a WG.variable?

[smoth]

I can safely do it because grts uses:
games/gundam/widgets...

at least the dev version does.

[smoth]

what distortion effects? Clear difference is that KR's widget draws in DrawWorld callin and mine in DrawWorldPreUnit.

interesting, the terrain starts strobing and seems inverted, as though I am looking at back faces.

why would the change from drawworld to drawworldpreunit cause this?

[smoth]

other stuff.

Pako, your widget'd terrain does not received fog. If it could do this and have a tiled texture(like king raptors) that would be awesome. The lack of fog on your terrain really hurts it imo.

[[LOeT]Zinn]

IMHO there are two different aspects to this topic:

A) How to fix in a general way, working with every map and every mod?

as well as

B) How to enhance the map file format on a long term to fix it in a non-legacy manner?

A: I think we should just put a small box around the whole map. From the very bottom to a lil bit above the map level. Which would be the biggest problem. One should still see a flea in the very south using standard camera angle. So the border should not go to high above the map at that position.
The benefit would be a very general approach working with almost every map I can imagine. No problem with water, features, fog, etc. No watching the map from below. No (visible) water under the ground.
For the texture of the boxes walls I think of a static selection (wood, stone, marble, etc. - whatever works) and some algorithm to decide on one of them based on an analysis of the given map colors.

For I am no artist here is the next best* thing I found to illustrate what I am talking about:
Where the Spring-solution needs to have the walls adapted to the maps height so there are no blind spots while watching from a low angle.

B: Some extendable enhancement of the existing map file format to incorporate every good of the ideas from this thread. From the ppl I think I can judge, SirArtturi would be the most competent to think about how to get a working and feature-proof implementation. Yet I dont want to lessen the ideas and implementations from ppl I can not judge that well, like knorke et al. :)

* I hate the whole Battlefield series. It fucked up my image search. Searching for 'battlefield -bf3 -"battlefield 3" sandbox -"bad company" museum' all I got was Battlefield3 and Bad Company screen shots

[hunterw]

Yeah this thread is much better...

I opened the code and it was so sickening I threw up this to my keyboard.

I don't prefer this method. It is confusing as to which areas are playable.

Now with heightmap mirroring!



Would probably look heaps better if combined with a fog effect in some way.

This is in my opinion better. It gives a clear border, still gives a sense of being in a bigger area than the map actually is, and fits the tech theme of nearly all the mods.

Naturally it could just be a LUA which could be turned on and off to taste.

I would recommend a thinner "line" texture, and the grid squares could be smaller.

[Pako]

other stuff.
The lack of fog on your terrain really hurts it imo.

I fixed it and few other bugs but now engine(84.0) fog shaders are all fogged up.