Experimenting with transparent ground in maps...

[The Yak]

I've recently become aware of the voidground tag that's been added to 94.1, below you can see my limited success with using it:


(right click and view for bigger)

So yeah, it works on a basic level but I seem to only be able to get 1 bit of transparency out of it, thus is looks pretty shitty up close.

You can try it out yourself adding alpha transparency to your texture of choice before compiling and putting VoidGround=1 into your smd/mapconfig. It would have a slightly different syntax for LUA obviously but it should still work.

Can anyone else get smoother transparency using this?

[zwzsg]

Well, make sure your transparency is aligned with the pixels, and you'll be good.

[The Yak]

Transparency should be lined up fine, this is a close up shot in gimp of how it should look:

[zwzsg]

Hexagons can't line up with squares on all sides!

[The Yak]

I don't understand what your trying to say... are you saying that if this texture was a grid of semi-transparent squares instead of hexagons it would work out?

[PicassoCT]

He means you can only use rectangular structures..

[zwzsg]

are you saying that if this texture was a grid of semi-transparent squares instead of hexagons it would work out?

Yes.

Well almost. You cannot have semi-transparency, only fully opaque or fully transparent. So the pixels edge will show. Unless, you make a texture where the limit between transparent or opaque falls aligned with the pixel grid.

use rectangular structures..

Yes.

[PicassoCT]

If you could disturb map drawing enough, you could twist this into everything you want. I have to finnish now.. the boat for Exile is leaving soon, the angry devs allready are battering the second gate, and time waits for noone.


I m the sort of bad influence (on your code structure) your mothers always warned you about to hang out.

[The Yak]

Unfortunate about semi-transparancy, but square textures worked, looks much better now:

[smoth]

neat! looks cool but what does it all mean?

[The Yak]

Basically the alpha is done in large square pixels with a rounded edge, so it will look like shit if it isn't all right angles. Hex pattern without semi transparancy looks like this:

But like this ingame:

Square pattern looks like this:

and like this:


such is why squares work best

[smoth]

more that I am wondering what you are doing

[PicassoCT]

StarCraft Spacefloating plattforms inbound

[zwzsg]

Don't forget to change the detailtex into a crisper one!

[PicassoCT]

If imperial winter was still under development, warlod would drool about having this, combined with this:

[Anarchid]

inb4 behe space bridges map

[hoijui]

uff.. this map.. yak...
i can see that i would have nightmares with this map. i would be the commander, and i would try balancing on the grid.. not to fall into space all night! it is HELL! please don't release!

[Funkencool]

I'm pretty sure all he's doing is testing transparency...

[The Yak]

Could make for a cool kernal-panic like space/sky fortress map. Or perhaps the pattern could laid around the edge of maps and typemapped off to make a border, I may try the 2nd one out.

[SinbadEV]

I thought the intention here was to facilitate faking modeled terrain,so you'd model a crashed battle-cruiser and then match the terrain to it's "surface" and then void the terrain so you'd seem to be walking on the battle cruiser... or void out vertical walls and have vertical modeled panels to stop the inevitable "stretching".