Cutscenes?

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

And digital movies like in Gibson's works are out of the question in my opinion. Remember, the squares are flipped mechanically. If it's buildable then it's too pixelated to be able to make out what's shown. No electronics yet. No semiconductors. Not even gallium diodes. Thermionic valves are the pinnacle of technology. (not counting the artificial intelligence autonomous coal-powered robots patrolling the houses *tong in cheek*). In fact thermionic valves are so new they're not used anywhere, only in the research labs in the inventors' guild, and since they lack a commercial application, since there is no radio industry in thought, they will remain in the lab. The Edison effect is not well known. Telegraphy exists, is rare, and nobody thought of inventing the Morse code. Five-wire telegraphy is used. The wiring consists of copper and iron, is thick, needs to be insulated with tarred cloth (assuming they don't have india rubber because they never got rubber from south america and never grew it in their colonies in india like we did), making it expensive and little used. The inventor's guild have several prototypes of Marconi-style spark wireless telegraphs.

[god_is_my_goldfish]

Any help or advice you can lend would be awesome. One thing you can definately help me with, (we can take this to PM if the mods prefer?) how did you go about character movement/silhouettes. From what i guess, it's real silhouettes imposed onto drawn background, with details drawn onto the silhouettes in some rare instances. Only i have no idea how i'd manage to record the material i'd need!

 

All you need is to have a standard digital camcorder that will export to computer (preferably through firewire), a sheet or screen to backlight, and a few fill lights. You could get a few of those worklights they have at hardware stores, set some sort of diffusion on them (be careful, they get HOT) and then shoot whatever costumed person you want in front of the backlit screen.

 

Bring this footage into After Effects, Combustion, Shake or any other video program with chromakeying, and chromakey out the white, leaving a solid silhouette with a clear background, perfect to insert with your existing animated footage.

[Domarius]

The video of the moonlight being obscured by clouds is amazing!

 

The way missions are normally made, this feature would only make things easier. But If a mapper designs it with this feature in mind, they could make it so that an area is impossible to get past unless you wait for the cloud cover, bringing the difficulty back up to normal and making the game more interesting.

 

Also you'd have to keep an eye on the sky and ground, because I imagine otherwise you wouldnt' be sure if you stepped into a shadow or its just the clouds, and you'd get caught out when the cloud leaves and there's a guard close by. That makes the game more interesting too.

[Gildoran]

BTW, if you want to see something really cool, check out the V3 sky prototype (2267K). The V3 sky uses a single Doom 3 material that's put on a sky-dome. The material simulates 3D volumetric clouds that shapeshift and cast soft shadows on eachother. No pixel-shaders were used in the making of this sky; Doom 3 materials are that powerful/flexible.

 

I think this goes to show how extensible the D3 engine is, and how it can continue to look good as machines improve... eventually TDM maps could have skyboxes with pseudo-volumetric clouds. I don't remember the Source engine giving mappers enough flexibility to make their own volumetric clouds.

 

Edit: I've added a movie of the view spinning (3126K), so you can watch passing clouds from a changing perspective.

[demagogue]

Ubercool doesn't even begin to describe how that looks. Very impressive. Edited March 25, 2007 by demagogue

[Crispy]

I don't remember the Source engine giving mappers enough flexibility to make their own volumetric clouds.

Hehe, go get 'em Gildoran.

 

The colours need a bit of work, but as a proof of concept that's pretty cool.

 

Your next challenge: Add a sunrise or sunset effect.

[Gildoran]

Your next challenge: Add a sunrise or sunset effect.

Heh, try out my volumetric lightshaft testmap on SVN, then imagine using something like that to create rays of volumetric sunlight that dynamically change shape as they're occluded by clouds.

[Crispy]

 

Do it! Do it!

[Komag]

Those clouds are very impressive, wow, just wow

[Domarius]

The V3 sky uses a single Doom 3 material that's put on a sky-dome. The material simulates 3D volumetric clouds that shapeshift and cast soft shadows on eachother.

How??

[Nyarlathotep]

Edit: I've added a movie of the view spinning (3126K), so you can watch passing clouds from a changing perspective.

I think I just had a joygasm!

 

Heh, try out my volumetric lightshaft testmap on SVN, then imagine using something like that to create rays of volumetric sunlight that dynamically change shape as they're occluded by clouds.

Do that and make them cast shadows on the ground. I think I shall have to call you "Master" if you do.

[Gildoran]

The colours need a bit of work, but as a proof of concept that's pretty cool.

 

Your next challenge: Add a sunrise or sunset effect.

Prepare to be amazed! I was awake all last night and I've constructed the V3 sky (7330K)! I'm very happy with it! It was a pain to figure out colors that resembled a sunset and to synch up the various textures, but I finally did it. The clouds look great, and the volumetric light emanating from the sun looks even better! If you look closely in-game, you can even sort of see the individual shafts of light moving as they get swallowed up by the clouds; unfortunately, the light-shafts aren't usually well-defined due to the fuzzy clouds, and they tend to appear as a glow around the sun. Also, I've discovered a couple of optimizations - clouds look just fine without realistic shadows, and since the skybox has a static perspective I can greatly reduce the cost of using volumetric light; the sky runs at above 60fps on my somewhat old system. I think this means current TDM maps could use such a sky.

 

Some screenshots while waiting for the video:

 

In this screenshot, you can sort of see the beams of light caused by the sun shining through the clouds:

 

The sun is clearly shining here,

and starts to get obscured by a cloud here:

[SneaksieDave]

Is that link right, Gil? I'm still getting the old spin (3Mb).

[New Horizon]

I think I just edited it to the correct one. Try now.

[SneaksieDave]

Sweeeet....

[Nyarlathotep]

Master, that is a truly joyous sight to see. However, I think I might have preferred it when the clouds were properly self-shadowing.

 

 

Perhaps Master would like to demonstrate for us a moving sun, with the background color of the sky changing dynamically? Also, I wonder if perhaps Master could enhance the effect of the "god-rays" somewhat? The effect as is is actually far too subtle for most to notice.

[New Horizon]

Master, that is a truly joyous sight to see. However, I think I might have preferred it when the clouds were properly self-shadowing.

Perhaps Master would like to demonstrate for us a moving sun, with the background color of the sky changing dynamically? Also, I wonder if perhaps Master could enhance the effect of the "god-rays" somewhat? The effect as is is actually far too subtle for most to notice.

 

Shadows would kill playability on a sky like that...really not needed. I'm sure the effects of the rays are more visible ingame. 99% of missions will be at night though.

[Gildoran]

I'll try out a few different cloud shapes and see if any have more noticable light-shafts.

 

In theory, it would be entirely possible to move the sun around (the material file uses tables as constants, so that the color of the sky and the position of the sun can be easily modified), but in practice the sky is more like a parabola than a dome, and it can be hard to keep the textures synched if you move the sun around, especially the glow around the sun.

[Gildoran]

How??

It works by taking a bunch of horizontal cross-sections of the clouds. You have an image represent the density of each cross-section. The material first draws the highest layers, then the lower layers. The lower layers are slightly scaled up, with the origin at the viewer, to make the texture parallax as it scrolls across the screen.

 

Lighting is done via the alpha-channel. When a layer is drawn, the alpha channel is first set to the amount of light that reaches that layer; shadows are done by taking the density image from an upper layer and scaling it as though it were a lower layer, and multiplying the alpha channel by that; after repeating this for each upper layer, you have an alpha channel which can be used to control how bright that layer is drawn. You can also shift shadows as they are drawn in lower layers - this can simulate being lit from an angle.

 

However, I've noticed that it seems to be almost as effective to just draw the upper layers with a monotone bright color, and each lower layer with something slightly darker - this combined with the parallaxing will make the cloud look 3D.

 

Here's a picture of the skybox, as you can see, the clouds are all a single material,

and they don't look 3D if you're not looking at them from the proper perspective.

 

Note: The finished V3 sky uses several materials, not just one.

[Crispy]

Awesome!

 

I feel like I should point out that the sun is usually closer to the horizon during sunrise and sunset. Apart from that minor detail it looks amazing!

 

Hmm... I'm imagining a mission that takes place before and during dawn... as you play, the sun slowly rises and the amount of light outdoors increases, so it gets harder and harder. Of course there are still lots of shadows in which to hide indoors, but it would make going outside (perhaps to go from building to building) that much more difficult.

[Nyarlathotep]

Exactly. Another good mission would do the opposite, and start at sunset and ending towards twilight.

 

In theory, it would be entirely possible to move the sun around (the material file uses tables as constants, so that the color of the sky and the position of the sun can be easily modified), but in practice the sky is more like a parabola than a dome, and it can be hard to keep the textures synched if you move the sun around, especially the glow around the sun.

That's a great pity, Master. The advantage of the sky dome was that it allowed you to have a flat horizon, whereas it would appear that your parabola cannot.

[Domarius]

It's one of those trade-offs I guess You can go for one or the other, but not both.

 

Thanks for explaining it Gil, that is really incredible. So essentially it's 3 textures moving at slightly scaled speeds and sizes from each other for the parallax effect, and then you calculate the shadows somehow with the alpha channels.

[Gildoran]

Also, I wonder if perhaps Master could enhance the effect of the "god-rays" somewhat? The effect as is is actually far too subtle for most to notice.

Ask and ye shall receive... I've temporarily altered the clouds to be more suitable for producing "god-rays", and increased the intensity of said "god-rays", resulting in this (2531K).

 

So essentially it's 3 textures moving at slightly scaled speeds and sizes from each other for the parallax effect, and then you calculate the shadows somehow with the alpha channels.

Yes, but I've given up on shadows since they don't improve the clouds much and cost lots of extra fill-rate.

[Nyarlathotep]

Ask and ye shall receive... I've temporarily altered the clouds to be more suitable for producing "god-rays", and increased the intensity of said "god-rays", resulting in this (2531K).

Master? That's the same link as before, isn't it?

 

Yes, but I've given up on shadows since they don't improve the clouds much and cost lots of extra fill-rate.

Master, perhaps it's me, but in all but a few cases the difference appears massive.

[Gildoran]

Whoops, I keep on forgetting to update the links when I copy 'n paste them... sleep deprivation must be getting to me.