Cloaking Turns Units Completely Transparent...Even to Self

[illusionist]

CA 8405 Stable

Often in both SD and (EDIT: I can no longer reproduce this behavior consistently in SD) SL, making a cloaked unit or a radar jamming tower causes the unit to turn completely transparent; I can't see the unit(s) until I select them or zoom out and see its unit icon. Also, the glitch occurs from game start to end and hasn't ever fixed itself mid-game. I can't figure out how to consistently create this behavior, but it happens more often than not. Searches on the forums yields the following (in the XTA forum though):

http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.ph ... le#p450598

Spring only makes a unit semitransparent when cloaked. The LUPS gadget makes the unit cloak in the team colour and it looks as if the model was made of coloured glass.
The downside of the gadget is that it can sometimes make the unit completly invisible when cloaking after being decloaked. That happens to mines often.

Anyone else experience this behavior or have any insight on how to resolve this? I've considered widgets, but since it appears to happen sporadically without any widgets failing, I can't pinpoint the source.

-illusionist

[aegis]

what's your video card/driver version?

[illusionist]

NVIDIA 8400M GS

I'm nearly 100% sure it's not hardware related as the glitch occurs at game start with little to no load on the system (100+ FPS).

Note: Just tested again, not working in SL, but working in SD.

-illusionist

[oksnoop2]

I too am having this problem in CA.
ATI radion 3400 mobility series/ CCC uh i'll have to get back to you on the version number.

Problem not found in XTA for me.

[Licho]

Same problem here with some driver versions for ATI. Latest seem tow rok +- ok.

[SirMaverick]

Never had that problem with GeForce 9800 GT.

Note: Just tested again, not working in SL, but working in SD.

Please post your spring config (springsettings.cfg) and each script.txt so we can reproduce that.

[illusionist]

Please post your spring config (springsettings.cfg)

Shouldn't the same springsettings.cfg be used for SD and SL?

...each script.txt so we can reproduce that.

I assume you mean script.txt and _script.txt found in Spring installation folder?

What I think is that SD is turning on some widget that provides some functionality linked with cloaking.

-illusionist

Attached below are the files after briefly playing a bot in SL with CA (cloaking turning self invisible still occurs):

[Saktoth]

The lups effect turns off the engine cloaking effect. If you lose the lups effect, the unit becomes invisible

IMO we should just reneable the engine cloaking effect as well as the lups effect. I remember it was reenabled by mistake some time ago and it looked better.

[SirMaverick]

Please post your spring config (springsettings.cfg)

Shouldn't the same springsettings.cfg be used for SD and SL?

Yes.

...each script.txt so we can reproduce that.

I assume you mean script.txt and _script.txt found in Spring installation folder?[/quote]
_script.txt is just a file created by the engine, ignore that.
I'm interested in script.txt after you started SL/SD.

Can't trigger the bug on GeForce 9800 GT with your files.

What I think is that SD is turning on some widget that provides some functionality linked with cloaking.

I'm not aware, that lobbies change widget settings.

[illusionist]

The lups effect turns off the engine cloaking effect. If you lose the lups effect, the unit becomes invisible

IMO we should just reneable the engine cloaking effect as well as the lups effect. I remember it was reenabled by mistake some time ago and it looked better.

How can I view/control/edit the lups effect manually so I can make confirm it's on for a game in SL?

Along the way, I found something interesting:

1. Start
2. Cloak (turns com invisible)
3. Enable godmode
4. /spectator
5. Your cloaked com (and all cloaked units while spectating) are now visible (the normal cloaked colored glass effect)

Upon spectating, Spring automatically turns off the following widgets for me:

Blast Radius
Ghost Site
Defense Range
Selection Send
Unit News
Unit Marker

However, turning off these manually at game start did nothing for the cloaking...so, it's probably not related to these widgets...I think...(unless certain changes to widgets don't update immediately?)

-illusionist

[luckywaldo7]

You could try playing around with the lups.cfg file in your spring folder, thats where you can control some lups settings.

Actually you can even disable unit cloaker right from it.

[illusionist]

Actually you can even disable unit cloaker right from it.

I've removed some comments from the lups.cfg to make it look like the following:

Code: Select all

//==Deactivate Specific Classes==
DisableFX= {
//  ShockWave   = true,
    UnitCloaker = true,
//  UnitJitter  = true,
}

Result: On cloaking, the unit becomes translucent briefly before turning completely invisible. So something is still wrong.

Uncommenting out ==Deactivate Specific Classes== obviously crashed a bunch of things, but hey, cloaking works!...But it's not the pretty stuff in SD (colored glass effect); it's just translucent as mentioned. Also, on decloaking, the unit turns completely invisible for a second before becoming uncloaked.

I wonder if this is a major problem since it seems this is the first post about this issue... I did upgrade my drivers to the latest hoping to fix the issue as Licho mentioned above, but it did nothing for cloaking...leading me to think that either SD or SL is modifying something... I just can't find what it is and how to prevent it.

-illusionist

[Google_Frog]

I suspect uncommenting ==Deactivate Specific Classes== causes the config to contain invalid syntax and crashing lups, which fixes your problem.

Can you see any other lups effects?

[illusionist]

Can you see any other lups effects?

After searching around both forums and http://trac.caspring.org/, I'm unable to find a clear definition of lups besides the fact that is some sort of widget based particle system. Because the definition is unclear, I'm not sure what effects it is responsible for.

I do know the following effects in CA are active for all games regardless of cloaking working or not:

- Laser particles splashing when lasering
- Yellow shockwave on large explosions
- Nuke like explosion for T2 fus etc
- Units blowing up into many little bits
- Fire/Flamethrower (though I think a Fire widget is responsible for that)

Not sure if the above effects are due to lups or the Spring engine itself.

-illusionist

<side note:> Speaking of particle effects, is snowfall or rain available in CA?

Also, I've revised my initial post to exclude SD in this issue, as I am no longer able to consistently reproduce the problem in SD </side note>

[Google_Frog]

Do you see distortion effects from some explosions (for example outlaw weapon) and on aircraft exhausts?

Snowfall and rain is available in CA.

[illusionist]

Do you see distortion effects from some explosions (for example outlaw weapon) and on aircraft exhausts?

Yes, distortion effects are present.

Snowfall and rain is available in CA.

Are these map-specific or is there a setting/widget I need to turn on? Don't remember seeing snowfall on some snow map (Nuclear Winter? or something)

I remember reading somewhere that SD turns off some widgets; perhaps something is on in SL that should be off?

-illusionist

[Google_Frog]

Snow and rain is automatic for some maps. So these effects are in CA in the sense that CA does not block them.

Also you can include external widgets which provide snow, rain or whatever in any map you play.

So for the cloaking bug if your fix seems to work keep it, though for future reference it would be nice to know how it works.

[illusionist]

@Google_Frog: Do units cloak properly (glass colored effect) on your system in Spring Lobby? If so, perhaps I'll try a clean install.

-illusionist