Lightgem Again

[Domarius]

I vote for no tilting. If I'm facing upward and confused about which way the compass really means, I can always look forward again, no big deal.

 

I have to sympathise with TYROT about not having a compass at all on the HUD. I can't remember the last time I intentionally selected the compass as an item in T2. Only the odd occasion when I'm truley lost and am carefully studying the map and my surroundings to get a bearing on where I should go.

Maybe we should keep it as an item, like in T2.

 

(Yeah I've changed my tact, but that's what discussion is for )

 

I also vote against the ambient sound to replace the lightgem. Surely the lightgem is tried and true - simple and practical. Why do we need a replacement? Sure, you aren't MEANT to be in bright light much, but the fact is that all sounds must overlap, whereas the lightgem HUD item only overlaps a tiny portion of the screen. If you are straining to hear if there are guards footsteps approaching from afar and happen to not have shadows around you, the ambience would drown it out (I have the T2 ambient music turned down to less than half of normal volume). Conversly, if you are straining to see something tiny in the distance, even if the light gem is obscuring it, all you have to do is move the screen a bit.

[Springheel]

The problem with discussing this again is that we already HAD a big discussion about whether the compass should be attached to the lightgem, and we decided it should.

 

That might have been on the old forum though, since the oldest lightgem discussion I can find on this forum has us already planning the look of it. Still, the decision was made and I think we should stick with it. Hell, we already had our perfect-looking lightgem that everyone was drooling over, and we had it textured so that it was simple and needed no floating letters or anything else silly like that. Why can't that model simply be fixed and used?

 

The next thing you know, we're going to be back into a debate about running vs sprinting and whether time should stop when you read books.

[Domarius]

Well we need to document it somewhere. I wouldn't mind being the one to write up the final docs, I just need to see a record of the desicions being made in the forums. Since those posts have been deleted, maybe we need to discuss it one more time.

 

I know I just agreed with the Gem without a compass, but if we just settle for that gem&compass combination that I think you're talking about, I'd be happy to just have the topic finalised.

 

I would really like to see a pre-rendered one like oDDity was talking about. His pre-rendered stuff looks phenomanaly better than any real-time rendering could.

 

It sounds like we lost the posts where we made a desicion, so I think it needs a little discussion, one last time.

[sparhawk]

I vote for no tilting.  If I'm facing upward and confused about which way the compass really means, I can always look forward again, no big deal.

 

That's wrong because it depends on the level geometry. It is rather easy to create a level where you no longer know which way is up or down.

 

Maybe we should keep it as an item, like in T2.

 

The only thing that annoyed me in T1/T2 was that I always had to select the compass again. I prefer to have it on all the time.

 

I also vote against the ambient sound to replace the lightgem.  Surely the lightgem is tried and true - simple and practical.

 

Yes. And the lightgem is a trademark of Thief (in some way). Removing it is no option.

[sparhawk]

The next thing you know, we're going to be back into a debate about running vs sprinting and whether time should stop when you read books.

Glad that you bring that up. Now that you mention it there is some thing that should be discussed ...

[oDDity]

HEh, well surely if the lightgem is a trademark of thief it means we can't use it?

I think we need another vote now.

 

a)The easiest, quickest and best looking solution would be to have a separate gem and compass like T2. The gem and/or compass can be removed from the HUD by the player (they are both completely unecessary gimmicks after all)

 

The second preferable is to have a gem in a compass housing which doesn't tilt up and down - tis could still be prerendered with bitmaps.

 

c) The real pain in the ass and complete waste of time and resources would be to have the gem in a 3d compass housing which tilting along with the player.

[sparhawk]

HEh, well surely if the lightgem is a trademark of thief it means we can't use it?

 

It's not a trademark in the legal sense of the word. But it is a kind of trademark in terms of player recognition. Thief without a lightgem == NO Thief.

 

a)The easiest, quickest and best looking solution would be to have a separate gem and compass like T2. The gem and/or compass can be removed from the HUD by the player (they are both completely unecessary gimmicks after all)

 

The second preferable is to have a gem in a compass housing which doesn't tilt up and down - tis could still be prerendered with bitmaps.

 

c) The real pain in the ass and complete waste of time and resources would be to have the gem in a 3d compass housing which tilting along with the player.

 

d) A rotating, tilting compass housing the lighgem as a prerendered bitmap.

 

And d is what we go for. If you don't like it just disable it. No problem. That means just commenting out the lightgem in the hud. You don't need to do anything in the SDK or such and anybody can do this easily.

 

I wont comment another word on this isuse, because it is pointless. It is absoluately easy for everybody to adjust his to his preference that there is no need to have a discussion going on for months to determine if that should be tilting or not and if it should be there at all. It will be there, it will tilt and rotate and anybody who doesn't like it can disable it on his own.

[_Atti_]

howver i cant really see the problem?

a pic of how should it be textured

so thats not good either?

[BlackThief]

???? I don't see the point of this discussion and the reason, why finger wrote that PM to Atti

 

I think we all agreed on oDDity's lightgem - now what's wrong with it ?

I can't imagine the problem you have sparhwak. why wouldn't you know where up and down is ? our thief isn't able to fly and our world has the same gravity as on earth, so what's the problem ???

[sparhawk]

so thats not good either?

The gem is good. I only need a pre-rendered texture for the various lighting stages. But that should be done when I know exactly how the lightgem is to be implemented.

 

The major problem is the gem. We don't need to have a fully 3D gme, because it is only there to highlight and we can save a lot of polies with that. Having a rotating compass around it means that it will look crap though, if the gem is not perfectly round.

 

If we can avoid unneccessary polyogns then this is a good thing, so we should give it a try.

[sparhawk]

???? I don't see the point of this discussion and the reason, why finger wrote that PM to Atti 

 

Me neither.

 

I think we all agreed on oDDity's lightgem - now what's wrong with it ?

 

Nothing. It just needs to be scaled. That's all. I can't do it, because I don't have lightwave and importing it inot Blender doesn't work properly.

 

I can't imagine the problem you have sparhwak. why wouldn't you know where up and down is ? our thief isn't able to fly and our world has the same gravity as on earth, so what's the problem ???

 

a) It's a matter of preference. I want to have the compass pointing where it should.

 

You can easily construct levels, especially cave levels, where you will not know where up and down is. And it also helps in the water, because there it is quite easy to loose orientation.

[BlackThief]

a) It's a matter of preference. I want to have the compass pointing where it should.

a real compass doesn't point up and down either

 

so we ARE using oDDity's lightgem or not ? I'm really confused....

[BlackThief]

Nothing. It just needs to be scaled. That's all. I can't do it, because I don't have lightwave and importing it inot Blender doesn't work properly.

use deep exploration to convert the file

[Fingernail]

I only asked atti to do it because of pressure from others that we needed one: as I remember, it was sparhawk & pakmannen, on IRC one time.

 

And I thought we already had all these lightgem conversations. Jesus.

[BlackThief]

I only asked atti to do it because of pressure from others that we needed one: as I remember, it was sparhawk & pakmannen, on IRC one time.

well we DO have a lightgem - full textured. it just needs to be resized.

If spar isn't able to do that I can do it for him - that's no real problem.

[sparhawk]

I only asked atti to do it because of pressure from others that we needed one: as I remember, it was sparhawk & pakmannen, on IRC one time.

Yes. But we didn't need to create a new one. We already had this model.

 

Still. Now that all these models are modeled we can skin them and see how they will look in-game and take the best.

[BlackThief]

Still. Now that all these models are modeled we can skin them and see how they will look in-game and take the best.

I think oDDity's one is already skinned, isn't it ? I just hate it, when something's done twice and we have to decide which one is better. that isn't the best for the working atmosphere here

[oDDity]

SO the compass housing IS going to affect framerate? In which case it will need normal and specular maps, and will have to be kept as low poly as possible. I think the geometric triangular design of the T2 compass would be best rather than the current organic shape. Geometric shapes by their nature use less polys. In fact the whole compass could be made with 40 polygons.

 

Example - even with the gem this is only 150 polys, compass alone is 40.

[oDDity]

and is good from all angles...

[oDDity]

...

[oDDity]

Or, we don;t even need a full compass, just the north spike is sufficent.

 

We could change the design, obviously to make it prettier, but you get the idea.

[pakmannen]

It's.. A Duck!

[sparhawk]

SO the compass housing IS going to affect framerate?

Of course it does. It has to be rendered just like everything else.

 

Your newest version is good enough for me.

[oDDity]

THere is still a problem ith the tilting compass though. It increases the number of lightgem bitmaps required exponetially YOu need a bitmap for every possible tilt and rotation the compass could be at, WITH THE 15 DIFFERENT BRIGHTNESS LEVELS FOR EVERY SINGLE ANGLE.

We're talking about 1000s of bitmaps here. ANother solution will have to be found. I vote the obvious answer which is a separte gem and compass. Sovles every problem.

[Fingernail]

I still vote for a realtime 3D lightgem...it would just look more in keeping.