One thing that really stood out for me when it came to most weapons in the Origional TA game was the presence of Dynamic Lighting from impact effects and some projectiles.
Do the Programming guys plan on adding this in as a feature sometime, or do you guys feel it would be a worthy addition to add some eye candy into Spring?
If you guys could implement Dynamic Lighting into explosion effects, or even Aura Lights around beam weapons and such, IMO it could really add alot to the visual aspects of fighting in Spring.
DYNAMIC LIGHTING, On the table? or forgotten?
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SwiftSpear
- Classic Community Lead
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- Joined: 12 Aug 2005, 09:29
Caydr: All visual rendering for every game is based on tricks. No games acctually use raytracers for full lighting simulation, it just isn't preformance plausable.
That being said I think spring's dynamic lighting could do to be a bit more robust. It would be really nice to be able to have lightcasting units and features, and would massively add to the visual quality of the game. It doesn't need to be full on doom3 style softshadow casting, but some basic dymic lighting, at least to cast on the mapping environment, would be really really cool.
That being said I think spring's dynamic lighting could do to be a bit more robust. It would be really nice to be able to have lightcasting units and features, and would massively add to the visual quality of the game. It doesn't need to be full on doom3 style softshadow casting, but some basic dymic lighting, at least to cast on the mapping environment, would be really really cool.
Yeah, I guess that's mostly true Swiftspear. But the thing is that TA used an even more tricky trick than the trick you're thinking about using to trick with.
In TA, a simple one-run "flashing" animation with some jagged edges was all that was necessary. Yes... you could do the same thing in Spring, but what about certain kickass maps that aren't just flat everywhere? (such as Altored Divide) If you did that, you'd have that texture colliding with the landscape in all kinds of unholy ways. It might be an improvement, but just like current explosion effects, when it intersected with the ground it would look pretty nasty. I think what might fit the bill is if they used a sort of reverse ground scar. Rather than darkening the terrain, the scar would temporarily BRIGHTEN the terrain. At its apex, like when it's as large as it's going to be and it's going to start to shrink, then the groundscar is applied. As the flash recedes, the nice pretty groundscar is there - the same one as was used for the flash effect.
....wow. That was actually pretty good. I'm making a new thread.
Zaphod's new map renderer just might be able to do nighttime maps, from what I've seen. If we could also have some lighting effects, we could have full-blown headlights on all the units, and so on. Sounds like a lot of work, for the coder (and the modder
)
In TA, a simple one-run "flashing" animation with some jagged edges was all that was necessary. Yes... you could do the same thing in Spring, but what about certain kickass maps that aren't just flat everywhere? (such as Altored Divide) If you did that, you'd have that texture colliding with the landscape in all kinds of unholy ways. It might be an improvement, but just like current explosion effects, when it intersected with the ground it would look pretty nasty. I think what might fit the bill is if they used a sort of reverse ground scar. Rather than darkening the terrain, the scar would temporarily BRIGHTEN the terrain. At its apex, like when it's as large as it's going to be and it's going to start to shrink, then the groundscar is applied. As the flash recedes, the nice pretty groundscar is there - the same one as was used for the flash effect.
....wow. That was actually pretty good. I'm making a new thread.
Zaphod's new map renderer just might be able to do nighttime maps, from what I've seen. If we could also have some lighting effects, we could have full-blown headlights on all the units, and so on. Sounds like a lot of work, for the coder (and the modder
)
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Sean Mirrsen
- Posts: 578
- Joined: 19 Aug 2004, 17:38
While we're on the subject of explosions, can we get explosion control added to the weapon TDF? Like smoke amount, dust amount, fire amount, number of shockwaves, overlay texture and/or animation, plus maybe a simple 3do model with a few pieces with 2-vertex polygons to create directional explosions. The latter would used with the GetPieceDir to set vectors for "debris" flying off, similar to what we could get if a unit exploded at the impact point, with FALL | SMOKE | FIRE set for piece explode settings. The model would turn to orient with the projectile's facing, and the landscape slope. (see the Bertha's shell explosion in TA - it has that small effect I'm talking about, only it's 2d and not turning) I'm sure it's more difficult than it sounds, but since this is THE most moddable game in the world, it would be nice to have control over explosions, other than setting their AOE and damage.
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SwiftSpear
- Classic Community Lead
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- Joined: 12 Aug 2005, 09:29
The overlay seems to be the closest to OTA light orbs from explsions.
The Lighting effect doesn't need to be anything over the top as far as cpu intense, a simple decal style flash would be more than suffient.
A very simple way to achieve it would just to have a decal that is a very bright color, that fades very fast, similar to the blast decals that leave the dark burn marks.
At best, a pixel shaded orb that works as a worldbrush like the sun effects the ground could be pretty neat too, but pixel shaders might be GPU and CPU intense.
True Light sourced explosions should be saved for nukes and things like Bertha Plasma (where they would be rare, and not occur very often), and then they could cast shadows as well, that would be impressive.
The Lighting effect doesn't need to be anything over the top as far as cpu intense, a simple decal style flash would be more than suffient.
A very simple way to achieve it would just to have a decal that is a very bright color, that fades very fast, similar to the blast decals that leave the dark burn marks.
At best, a pixel shaded orb that works as a worldbrush like the sun effects the ground could be pretty neat too, but pixel shaders might be GPU and CPU intense.
True Light sourced explosions should be saved for nukes and things like Bertha Plasma (where they would be rare, and not occur very often), and then they could cast shadows as well, that would be impressive.