Tweaks to Frob highlight

[OrbWeaver]

Maybe moving the light vector is not the best solution; the effect I am thinking of is something like the one that is applied to various objects in The Cradle in TDS, which are "important" but not loot. The effect looks like a sort of subtle band of light which passes over the object every few seconds.

 

Alternatively, a simple sinusoidal pulse of the highlight intensity might work as well.

[Baal]

I would prefer not having any effects to show you that something is important and do that through the object itself (texture and model).

But a lot of such effects are possible with shaders and material definitions.

[New Horizon]

I would also prefer if we kept it simple.

[Springheel]

Rebb, what would it take to implement your froblight, so we could test it in game?

[OrbWeaver]

I would prefer not having any effects to show you that something is important and do that through the object itself (texture and model).

 

I wasn't suggesting using an effect to identify important objects, I was suggesting using a gently animated effect to supplement the static frob highlight (on any object) with a view to addressing any issues with the highlight being difficult to distinguish in brightly-lit areas.

[rebb]

The setup should now be available on the CVS, i hope the upload worked because i had tortoiseSVN act up a bit.

 

Just start the test/frobhighlighting.map.

 

Note that only the vase has a time-animated pulsing on the frob-effect - but this can be enabled/disabled for the other objects by editing the test_frobhighlight.mtr file and commenting/uncommenting the respective "vertexParm 0 xyz" lines in each material.

[Springheel]

Yes, on first run-through this is an improvement, though it might be more clear with models that have a strong normalmap. I like the subtle pulsing effect, but I'm hesitant to want to use it by default. I think it could get distracting, especially on locked doors or other objects you have to frob for some duration. I'll test a few different models tomorrow.

[Ishtvan]

I haven't gotten a chance to test it yet, but anything that makes it easier to tell you're frobbing something in a lit area is good in my book. The pulsing sounds good in principle for this reason.

[angua]

Very nice, I like it a lot.

The amplitude of the pusling effect is a little bit too strong for me, and if you happen to highlight the vase when it is darkest, the frob hightlight is not that easy to see. I played around a little bit with the shader, this works a little bit better I think:

 

vertexParm	0	(sinTable[ time * 0.25 ] * 0.2) + 0.8 // effect strength

[rebb]

It's by no means "final" so there's still a lot that can be tweaked .

[SneaksieDave]

Does this cover all things, or do I have to view specific items (e.g. loot) to view it? So far I'm not seeing any difference that I would notice, but admittedly it could be this shitty monitor on my work machine.

[rebb]

Right now it's only available in the frobhighlighting test-map when you go into the "Test" alcove to enable it.

But you can copy this stage into other materials :

 

{
if ( parm11 > 0 )

blend add
program frob.vfp
vertexParm	0	1
// vertexParm	0	(sinTable[ time * 0.25 ] * 0.2) + 0.8 // effect strength
fragmentMap 0	theNormalMap // normalmap
fragmentMap 1	theDiffuseMap // diffusemap
fragmentMap 2	theSpecularMap // specularmap
}

 

Then set the 3 fragmentMaps to the respective Textures of the object and comment out the standard frobhighlight-stage in them so they don't overlap.

[SneaksieDave]

Sorry, thanks (I probably skipped right over it).

 

Looks pretty good. I'm undecided about the pulse. On the one hand, it serves a definite useful purpose. On the other hand, we wouldn't want it to be too "gamey." Perhaps it's not though... hm. The brightest phase of it is very nice.

[rebb]

Uploaded some minor changes to the test-highlights.

[Flanders]

Forgot to look at this earlier, but the pulsating effect looks neat. But the frobhighlight as in this post:

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?s=&am...st&p=179533

looks just as good to me, personally I think we can do without the pulsating effect.

[greebo]

We could extend the sintable[] expression to something like this:

sinTable[ time * 0.25 ] * 0.2 * parm10

such that we can control the pulsating effect via a CVAR from within the SDK. If we don't like it, we just set parm10 to 0 and we're set.

[rebb]

@Flanders :

The current CVS Version shouldn't have the "frob highlight pulses in and out" effect any more, only the coins in the map have a subtle "blinking" type of effect on them. Unless thats what you meant with the pulsating ?

 

@greebo :

Yeah, such a Shaderparm-CVar could be handy to toggle some extra effect on the frob-highlight.

 

I guess the biggest problem with a new frob-highlight effect would be to write some clever script which replaces the current frob-stages in the materials with a new one, somehow pulling the specular / diffuse / normalmap settings of the encompassing material into it .

[Flanders]

@Flanders :

The current CVS Version shouldn't have the "frob highlight pulses in and out" effect any more, only the coins in the map have a subtle "blinking" type of effect on them. Unless thats what you meant with the pulsating ?

I'll update and look again.

 

I guess the biggest problem with a new frob-highlight effect would be to write some clever script which replaces the current frob-stages in the materials with a new one, somehow pulling the specular / diffuse / normalmap settings of the encompassing material into it .

Tels has a lot of experience with that, maybe he can help us.

[Flanders]

The one under test is the best IMO. The blinking effect reminds me too much of TDS .

[greebo]

So, what's left to take this over the finish-line? The script to implement this in all shaders? How is this new method affecting performance (out of curiosity)? Is there anything left to implement coding-wise, then I'll try to help here.

 

It'd be a bit of a shame to let rebb's effort go wasted, methinks.

[OrbWeaver]

I was wondering about this a while ago, actually. Did we reach a decision on what the final effect should be (pulsating, non-pulsating etc)? Maybe we need some demo videos and a poll.

[New Horizon]

The general opinion seemed to be non-pulsating...which is also my preference. I don't want anything in there to remind us of TDS.

[Ishtvan]

If the baseline effect can distinguish hilighted stuff in medium lighting well enough, it doesn't have to pulse. If we can't figure that out though, I'd prefer pulsing to not being able to tell if someting is hilighted.

[New Horizon]

we should be able to get it working well enough I think.

[Springheel]

Yes, pulsing is a non-starter with me. Especially when so many things highlight in TDM.