Paper Walls? Tents?

[Ombrenuit]

Playing a bit through the new Splinter Cell game, I noticed the paper walls of certain levels (the Japanese type), and the tents that you could tear through with your knife etc. and see silhouettes through. Yes, this may not be medieval, but I might as well bring it up. I think the game might get too "Ninja" for Thief if these were implemented lol, but they might make for some interesting level design.

[Ishtvan]

Seeing silhouettes thru we can definitely do in D3, since that's essentially just a shader on the material.

 

As for tearing them, well, we can do it, but I'm not sure how good it will look. We would have to make an Articulated Figure model to represent the tent cloth. We would then have to give it enough bones to look like a realistic piece of cloth when it tears.

 

Alternatively, I remember hearing that vertex animation is possible in D3, so we might be able to make it look better using that. Maybe our 3d modellers can answer that question better than me.

 

Then there is the question of whether we can make it look good regardless of where the tear starts.

 

Splintercell used scripted actions and "suck in" animations so that you always tore the tent in the same place. We are trying to avoid "suck in" animations like that, altho it's possible we could just make the tear start from the same place always when you say, frob a tent while holding the shortsword. So it wouldn't suck you in, but you'd just see the tear appear in the same place every time. Maybe that is a good compromise.

 

Otherwise we'd have to put in a huge number of bones /vertices so that it looked right regardless of where it starts to tear from.

[Domarius]

I think vertex animation is what's happening all the time in the game. The term vertex animation as I know it is just a way of animating. It's instead of mesh animation where you store a new mesh for every frame in the animation.

[oDDity]

That would be morphing.

The way vertex animaton has to work in doom, is that very vertex in the mesh is turned into a bone at export time.

I doubt paper walls of tents will have any place in our game, but it could work for paintings/curtains etc.

[Ishtvan]

I wouldn't say they have no place in the game. Someone could easily make an FM where you have to sneak thru a battlefield camp which would have many tents set up. Or there could be an FM where you must sneak thru a house with paper walls, reminiscent of Japanese architecture.

 

Of course you'd fail at ghosting since you'd leave huge suspicious holes in the walls, but we're trying to support all playstyles.

[oDDity]

When I say 'our game' I mean our campaign.

[god_is_my_goldfish]

Well i would hope that banners can at least be cut.

 

They had somewhat realistic slicable fabric in Bloodrayne, of all things, i don't know how they pulled it off in that, but it might be worth a look. Possible create somesort of script that tells the engine to create bones at the location of the cut. Though something like that would probably be insanely complex and processor consuming.

Edited April 22, 2005 by god_is_my_goldfish

[DopeFishhh]

a grid of bones within the material. when it simulates a cut the bones connecting points are cut and then gravity pulls on the free hanging bits. there is a maximum distance for each bone (ie between the two points it connects) gravity is constantly acting on each point, in more detailed material physics they factor in obstructions (like laying a cloth on a ball).

 

bloodraynes system didn't look that great, you could only cut it on specific spots. ie where the bones were. this meant there were minimum distances between cuts, this was mainly to avoid the cpu having to crunch the numbers on 1000's of bones instead of 100's and still maintain a nice looking floppy material.

 

i don't know how easy it would be to implement the physics for floppy and cut materials in the doom 3 engine but there's only one way to find out.

[oDDity]

'Is it worth it' is the question, and I can't see how it would be.

[Renzatic]

For something like this I'd say that a predetermined cutline and a canned animation would be best. It might not be as thrilling as watching a realistically rendered piece of cloth flop down in a true-to-life manner, but it's alot quicker and achieves about the same effect.

 

Going the realistic route would be one of those things that's cool the first 2 times you see it, then you never think about it again. Like Odd said, it's not worth expending the time and energy on an ultra fluff feature like that...at least not right now.

[Springheel]

There wasn't a single mission in any of the three Thief games with paper walls or tents, so I wouldn't recommend spending any time at all on this. We can't create *everything* a FM author could conceivably want to include.

 

Cutting banners down like T2 I'm all for, though a canned animation is fine there as you said.

[Macsen]

Pagans might have tents.

[Ombrenuit]

This definitely isn't necessary. The only reason I brought it up was to throw the idea on the table. It's better to eliminate options rather than regret thinking them up.

Edited May 2, 2005 by Ombrenuit

[NeonsStyle]

I would absolutely love the idea of playing and mapping in the japanense middle ages style... would be sooo cool...

[Ishtvan]

This could probably be something that's fairly easy to add for a 3rd party too, without any hardcode modifications. You'd just make something that runs a script when it takes enough damage (you can probably do that with an idBreakable, not sure if that is specific to glass breaking tho). Then make the script play your tearing animation.

 

Then once you make these "tear planes," you could make them smaller and place them closer together for better resolution on detecting where the tear starts. I dunno, just one rough idea that may or may not work.