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Tweaks to Frob highlight


New Horizon

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I think some loot items are difficult to identify because the highlight method doesn't use specular and normal maps of the respective surfaces. So, objects that are in the dark appear flat and loose the distinctive highlights (in the reflections-on-shiny-metal sense).

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Ideally, I would like frob hi-light to simply be this, instead of the two stages.

 

Isn't that what we used to use, back in the beginning? I recall that most agreed our current setup was an improvement over that, though it's been so long that I forget exactly how. Do you have any screenshots of what you had in mind?

 

What was suggested a few posts back would be perfect. Some way to identify the loot to the game, without too much extra effort, so that when loot is hi-lighted...it does something slightly different.

 

The two important things are that it doesn't take much effort, and that it is consistent, without relying on the mapper to remember to do anything special. If there's a chance that players could get incorrect information (non-loot things showing the loot gleam, or worse, loot objects not showing it) because the mapper swaps a few textures, then I think it would be a bad idea to attempt it.

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Isn't that what we used to use, back in the beginning? I recall that most agreed our current setup was an improvement over that, though it's been so long that I forget exactly how. Do you have any screenshots of what you had in mind?

 

Just what Bal posted. I've honestly never really liked the current setup, but I went with the majority. The reason I dislike the current setup is that the current stage washes out the diffuse blend with a flat colour, like TDS did and it just makes it look flat and gross...in my opinion. The simple T1/2 approach is best for me.

 

 

The two important things are that it doesn't take much effort, and that it is consistent, without relying on the mapper to remember to do anything special. If there's a chance that players could get incorrect information (non-loot things showing the loot gleam, or worse, loot objects not showing it) because the mapper swaps a few textures, then I think it would be a bad idea to attempt it.

 

Yeah, has to be simple and consistent. I agree.

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loot is defined by its entity not its texture so the only thing that would reliably work and also only needs a change to one entity is some effect added to the entity. If it is in the code it can read that it is being frob-hilighted presumably so then produce some effect. I can't see the texture route working myself. Unless the code can modify the shaderparm temporarily at the time it is being frob-hilighted.

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loot is defined by its entity not its texture so the only thing that would reliably work and also only needs a change to one entity is some effect added to the entity. If it is in the code it can read that it is being frob-hilighted presumably so then produce some effect

 

Yes, the entity itself is the only viable way to go, I think. But even then, you could run into problems with special mission items, which are technically "loot" but are not loot entities. For example, the relic box in St. Lucia was not a loot entity (AFAIK). Yet players might justifiably expect it to show up as 'loot' when frobbing it, since it is the most valuable thing in the mission.

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Mmmm... so yes, might need either another branch inheriting from the same root that loot inherits from or maybe a special spawnarg. Or maybe just test for loot and for a special object. I'm just developing a general entity for such objects but the mapper won't be restricted to that. They might have a quest for a special key I guess. If it's possible to test for a spawnarg then that seems the most flexible, special_hilite maybe, that is on the loot entity and can easily be added to custom objects.

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Going back and reading our original discussions, it sounds like the main reason we went with a hybrid system was to avoid the problem of objects being too bright in the dark areas. Here's a quick summary of the three options. In this case, "current" is the T1/2 method, and "Hybrid" is what we are now using (though with slightly different values than below).

 

Current: The method used currently; it just adds 50% of the diffusemap. Has the disadvantage that items appear fullbright in dark areas.

Multiplicative: The method described above. Scales the brightness up by 50%. Has the disadvantage that items might be too dark in dark areas.

Hybrid: My favorite method. Adds 15% of the diffusemap and scales it up by 45%. The brightness mostly scales based on the light hitting the object, but there's a small minimum brightness. Has the disadvantage that it uses two extra render passes instead of one. (however, since these aren't lighting passes, it may not be too bad for performance)

 

Just to make my own position clear, I have no problem with our current froblight system, other than certain bright textures needing a small boost to make it more obvious they are being frobbed.

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I really dislike the hybrid system. It mainly uses a flat white texture to illuminate the object, and the diffuse barely pokes through. I've tried reversing those values, but the white still really over powers the diffuse for some reason. You could always try different colours, but it's still going to come out the same in a lot of instances, the flat colour will over power the diffuse.

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Having objects be too bright in dark areas is one thing, but right now we have objects that are not hilighted enough in light areas, making it hard to tell if they're frobbed at all. I've always had that problem with the current system, but was assuming some values just needed tweaking. If we can't find settings for the hybrid system to get it working in all lighting conditions, then yeah we should probably go back to the simple full-bright method.

 

Re: Loot hilight, I still don't personally see the need for it. People should be able to just think about whether something is valuable. If they think it is and they grab it and find out it's junk, no big deal, and now they know it's junk the next time they see it.

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Yes, strictly speaking, a mapper should not take a standard known object like a basket or beer mug and make it into loot. So players will learn what is loot in time. It's OK to make some new unknown custom loot like a golden mirror that looks quite different from the current mirror. Anything new should attract attention. It's also OK to take a normal non-loot item like a beer mug and make it a quest item so long as it is clearly defined in the story and objective "Olaf's beer mug". So I'm not too concerned if we don't have any special loot identifier either. Nor do I mind if we do. :)

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I really dislike the hybrid system. It mainly uses a flat white texture to illuminate the object, and the diffuse barely pokes through.

 

If it just uses a additive blend, then dark objects won't be highlighted much at all, will they?

 

I've tried reversing those values, but the white still really over powers the diffuse for some reason.

 

Gildoran said that the order in which the passes appear also matters, did you try switching those too?

 

The original problem Gildoran was trying to solve was making the froblight vary in intensity based on the lighting conditions, so that frobbing objects in a dark room wouldn't make them blinding, or objects in a dark room be too dark. I don't see why that can't be achieved without washing out the texture.

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If it just uses a additive blend, then dark objects won't be highlighted much at all, will they?

 

 

 

Gildoran said that the order in which the passes appear also matters, did you try switching those too?

 

No, I didn't. The white texture is first, perhaps that is the key. I'll try it out.

 

The original problem Gildoran was trying to solve was making the froblight vary in intensity based on the lighting conditions, so that frobbing objects in a dark room wouldn't make them blinding, or objects in a dark room be too dark. I don't see why that can't be achieved without washing out the texture.

 

It would require more of the diffuse coming through, instead of the white texture...which is doing most of the washing....drowning out. It's essentially taking the Thief 2 method, and putting the TDS method on top of it that we're doing now.

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Whats the difference between the t1/t2 and tds method?

 

t1/t2 just lit the whole thing up fullbright?

 

TDS sprarkled loot to you from across the globe.

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Isn't the bright highlight in dark areas necessary for the player to decide the items value?

 

I thought about that problem a bit and I think a frob highlight that takes specular and normal maps into account would be really helpful. Judging an items value just by looking at it is a great idea and for that you need more than the diffuse textures.

 

Maybe you could do something like that with a post processing shader stage but I don't know how much control the engine gives you over these.

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Whats the difference between the t1/t2 and tds method?

 

t1/t2 just lit the whole thing up fullbright?

 

TDS sprarkled loot to you from across the globe.

 

I don't think you're on quite the same page here. The frob hi-lighting and loot glimmer are two separate things.

 

We're talking primarily about the frob hi-light in this thread, which is simply how objects are lit up to let the player know they can interact with them.

 

Thief 1/2 lit up the object to hi-light them. This made the details easier to see.

 

TDS used an atomic blue overlay that obscured any details on the object, and just looked plain awful. The loot beacon that was visible from across entire maps was another issue entirely.

 

The issue at hand here is to make the Thief 1/2 method more subtle in darker areas...so it's not overly bright.

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I don't think you're on quite the same page here. The frob hi-lighting and loot glimmer are two separate things.

 

We're talking primarily about the frob hi-light in this thread, which is simply how objects are lit up to let the player know they can interact with them.

 

Thief 1/2 lit up the object to hi-light them. This made the details easier to see.

 

TDS used an atomic blue overlay that obscured any details on the object, and just looked plain awful. The loot beacon that was visible from across entire maps was another issue entirely.

 

The issue at hand here is to make the Thief 1/2 method more subtle in darker areas...so it's not overly bright.

 

aaaah gotcha. It was blue in TDS? But thats like the next darkest color to black.

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happycheeze.deviantart.com

 

Moddb

 

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This blue wasn't. :(

 

I don't think it was an additive blend as such though, was it? Trying to find a screenshot but no luck yet.

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I haven't played tds in a really long time, but I do remember it being bluish. And the sparkles.

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happycheeze.deviantart.com

 

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Oh, the sparkles... the horror... the sparkly, sparkly horror... :mellow:

My games | Public Service Announcement: TDM is not set in the Thief universe. The city in which it takes place is not the City from Thief. The player character is not called Garrett. Any person who contradicts these facts will be subjected to disapproving stares.
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I tried my idea of a frob highlight shader with normal maps and this is a first result:

 

post-2303-1232215791_thumb.jpg New vs old method.

 

Something like that could make the loot hunt much easier without colorful, atomic special effects. What do you think of that?

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@Baal: Am I understanding right that the normal maps would not be there when not frobbed, but then new features would appear when hilighted? If that's the case, wouldn't that be strange to be looking at a plate in a fully lit room and then get closer and all of a sudden patterns appear on it that you couldn't see before?

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Yes, that will be a problem. I haven't tested it under different lighting situations yet. But I think the current method doesn't work very well for objects in darkness. The screenshot illustrates that problem well, I believe.

 

Think about how Thief did it. The player could see all texture details clearly through the highlight. But a lot of those details are now contained in the normal and specular maps and should be highlighted too.

 

I'm not sure how this will work with lit objects. It could look very awkward but it's worth a try.

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I'm not sure how this will work with lit objects. It could look very awkward but it's worth a try.

I think it's okay as long as you're hilighting the normal that's already there. I was just commenting that it would look weird to blend in a completely different normal that wasn't there at all before.

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Also NPCs look flat when frobbed in dark room. In low ambient light bumps are soft and there's no specular lighting. Shots were taken with ambient light value 15:

 

with bumpmapping disabled (for comparison)

frob1kd7.jpg

 

with bumpmapping enabled

frob2qz9.jpg

 

lantern

frob3ux1.jpg

It's only a model...

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